Bulletproof Problem Solving

Define the problem with a concise statement, clarify context and boundaries, and identify decision makers. Use the problem-definition worksheet to frame issues and guide action.

Analyze Truck Gear’s profitability challenge by examining margins, costs, and constraints, and define a low-risk six-month plan that avoids debt and preserves dealer and customer relations.

Apply the SMARTA framework to define and refine problems, ensuring specificity, measurability, actionability, relevance, time-bound goals, and ethics review, while revisiting the problem as you learn.

Disaggregate complex problems in a team workshop using sticky notes and a whiteboard to map components and build a logic tree for insights.

Form hypotheses from runway utilization by examining planes per hour and people per plane, test with hypothesis and deductive logic trees, using MISI and profit trees to guide decisions.

Prioritize the problem by pruning and focusing on the critical path, using 80/20 Pareto thinking to identify the 20% of levers that drive 80% of the consequences.

Apply back-of-the-envelope analysis and Pareto thinking to identify the 20% that drives 80% of impact, prune weak factors, and focus on the critical path. Revisit parked items with impact estimates.

Practice the one-day answer in a team meeting, outlining seven problem-solving steps with situation observation implication to align the team and guide decision making toward a clear work plan.

Apply the blank model work plan with clear asks and defined roles, plan two to three weeks ahead, and build diverse teams to tap collective intelligence through networks and crowdsourcing.

Discover how cognitive biases affect decision making and how teams reduce bias through bias awareness, equal voting, and mindsets like curiosity, imperfectionism, dragonfly eyes, occurrent behavior, and collective intelligence.

Build diverse, egalitarian teams to unlock easy problem solving and reduce cognitive biases, using a model work plan with Gantt charts.

Explore the analytics step by starting simple with summary statistics and heuristics, then apply a broad toolkit to test hypotheses, using accessible methods and practical techniques.

Explore when heuristics give way to the big guns of analytics, including A-B testing, simulations, AI predictions, and crowdsourcing, with examples from air quality and asthma data visualization.

Apply a simple two-branch framework to analytics: understand drivers with data and predict outcomes, using statistics, A-B testing, Bayesian statistics, or game theory.

Synthesize your work to create the strongest possible story, marshalling facts and evidence to support robust conclusions. Present a compelling, actionable narrative that persuades the decision maker to take action.

final thoughts emphasize synthesizing findings by adding visual data to your logic tree, turning data into the strongest story your analysis supports, and modifying hypotheses as new evidence emerges.

Visualize a solution by presenting the governing thought with supporting data, using pyramid structures and templates from the workbook to choose between argument and grouping styles.

Celebrate completing the course and embrace a lifetime of problem solving with the seven steps of Bulletproof Problem Solving, even when facing wicked problems and uncertainty.