Jeff Standridge:
Hey guys, welcome to another season and another episode of the Innovation Junkies Podcast. I’m Jeff Standridge.
Jeff Amerine:
Hey, this is Jeff Amerine. Glad to be here.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, me too. Um, gonna have to forgive us today. We’re kind of burning on fumes late night.
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, staying up all night drinking bourbon. Not a good recipe for success. Too bad we weren’t doing that, right?
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, that’s right. I’m glad we weren’t doing that. No, one of our teams was, was recognized as a finalist for, for Arkansas business of the year, which we’re very proud of. And so we had a little shindig down in Little Rock last night. And so I know you guys drove and had a late night getting back home.
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, it was exciting though. I mean, in addition to the recognition of being a finalist for our team, it was really great to see some of our fantastic clients being recognized as well. It was a good event. A lot of fun.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah. So a number of our clients were not only recognized as finalists, but a, but a number of, of our clients as well actually took home the winning title, so to speak.
Jeff Amerine:
They did well deserved, well deserved and well done on all counts for sure.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah. So this episode, or this season rather, is going to be a little bit different. We’re going to, some episodes will be you and me talking about specific concepts, and other episodes, probably more of the other episodes, we’ll be bringing in specific guests, similar to what we did in season one, guests that are experts in innovation, leadership, strategy, etc. So looking forward to it.
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah. Translated to mean smarter and better-looking people than the two of us.
Jeff Standridge:
At least smarter. I don’t know on the other, if you can actually get there, but we’ll, you know, we’ll try. So what do you want to talk about today? I thought we might talk a little bit about, you know, we work with clients a lot, helping them solve challenges and issues within their organization. We also work with them to chart new courses for the future. And so, I had the privilege of doing a presentation last week or a couple of weeks ago, with an organization just around the concept of what’s the approach to problem-solving, but what’s the approach to strategic thinking? How are they different, and how can we use them in our organizations? What do you think about talking about that this morning?
Jeff Amerine:
Oh, it sounds great. And there, there is a definite difference, a significant difference between the two. So I’m curious to see what your experience has been and what you’re thinking, I’ll share some thoughts on that as well.
Jeff Standridge:
No, absolutely. Yeah. So, you know, I know when we, when we do innovation sprints with teams, we get very pedantic on making sure that the teams are very clear, crisp, and concise about the problem they’re trying to solve or the opportunity they’re trying to seize, uh, before they actually set about establishing solutions. Right.
Jeff Amerine:
Absolutely. And some of that can be, ultimately be pretty tactical. You know, it doesn’t always include any strategic thinking for sure.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, I can’t, I can’t tell you the number of times that in a large organization, particularly where someone gets a great idea, they spin up an initiative, they put a cast of thousands around it, and they start trying to implement the great idea. And, you know, several weeks, sometimes several months into it, someone asks the profound question, what’s the problem we’re really trying to solve here? And no one really has a clear, crisp, concise answer or worse. Um,
They have about four answers, and they’re different. They’re not the same.
Jeff Amerine:
Exactly. And so, so how you, how you go through the process of deciding what really is the problem, how do you know, and what you do next is kind of key aspect of it.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah. Yeah. You know, so problem-solving, I like to describe as a, um, generally it begins with a, with a pain, right? Um, path and the way, you know, that it’s a problem is, is generally the narrative around the issue or the set of circumstances has past tense language, negative oriented language, and pain oriented words. And many times it can be summarized as.
We have too much of a bad thing happening. What is that bad thing? Right.
Jeff Amerine:
Absolutely. And the trick at times as well is to get the people that have the problem to state it in the form of a true problem rather than disguising a solution in the problem statement.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, that’s right. That’s right. Uh, and the other thing about problem-solving is it’s, it’s very, it starts in the, in the present or past tense, meaning that it’s what we call a present forward approach to creating, you know, new plans and new strategies or whatever it’s present forward. So we start with where we are. We’ve got too much of a bad thing happening and we plan our future to overcome that challenge or that obstacle. Sometimes it’s called path-dependent, meaning we’re already on a path. We don’t intend to change the path. We just have to figure out how to overcome the obstacle that has fallen in the way of our path.
Jeff Amerine:
Right. And that’s, that’s a big part of it. And one other nuance that I’ve seen is a lot of times, there are people who are new to this kind of an approach. They get hung up on the idea of the problem. And sometimes you have to recast it and say, problem can also be an unmet need. Something that’s not happening. And that, sometimes that gives them the frame of mind that will allow them to move ahead in their thinking.
Jeff Standridge:
That’s right. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, when it’s, it’s really difficult to, to articulate the problem, you know, I like to do a kind of a gap analysis exercise, a kind of a current state, desired state say, okay, we’re, we’re having a hard time homing in on exactly what the problem is. So let’s start. And maybe we have a group of three, five, seven, 10 people or whatever. So let’s, let’s try to articulate what’s the current state of our circumstances today. And, you know, we can do those with post -its and flip charts or.
However we want to do it, but let’s articulate what those current States are today. And then once we’ve got a good idea of, okay, everyone agrees, this is the current state, then let’s talk about, okay, well, what do we wish it would be? What’s the desired state? Um, and, and we, we articulate those, and maybe it’s a brainstorming exercise, same process with flip charts and pads. And I like to put the current state on one side and the desired state on the other. And once we’re clear on, yeah, this is where we are. This is where we want to be.
So let’s talk about the gap in between and what’s preventing us from getting there. And if we go through that same exercise on the gap, many times we can begin to identify the actual obstacles that are standing in our way that we can frame up in the form of a problem statement or statements that we need to actually solve.
Jeff Amerine:
And I think the thing that’s instructive as well about the process we use and the process that works is it’s a significant amount of iteration and asking these questions about why does it matter? What, what truly is the problem? You know, how, how is that, uh, end state going to be different, all that kind of stuff. But I think that you can’t afford to be impatient in the process because it’s iteration and your thinking to get to the point, you kind of spiral through it to get to the point that you actually have more clarity of the beginning state and the end state you want to get to.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, and sometimes that process requires on the front end, a fair amount of what I would just call quantitative evaluation and analysis. Let’s look at the credible facts and statistics. Let’s look at the issues that we’re observing that lead us to believe there’s a problem. That’s articulate those issues in the form of the current state, right? Let’s look at the data. What is the data telling us? But once then we’ve looked at those credible facts and statistics. We’ve done our kind of key issues or current state desired state. And, and we analyze that gap and we’ve got, let’s call it a single clear, crisp, concise problem statement. That’s still 60% maybe accurate and 40% assumption.
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, that’s right. You know, to your point, I think it was Edward Deming, the father of total quality management and the lean movement who said, “In God we trust. All others, bring data.” And so continually pushing people to get out of the frame of mind where they’re using adjectives and instead where they’ve got empirical evidence to back up their assertion is much better. It removes opinion and you just have the clarity of having facts.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, and then it always does good to sniff test our problem statement with some customer discovery, you know, go out and put together some unbiased open -ended questions, identify the people that we think are the ones that experienced the problem to the greatest degree and go have a conversation with several of them to really understand, you know, are they experiencing the problem to the same degree we think it exists as a problem?
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, exactly. And this is a little bit like a qualitative inquiry or a trench warfare part of it where to truly get meaning, you’ve got to engage with the customer, ask those good open -ended questions, the customer or the subject matter expert or the influencer to try to get the insights that you need. And it’s so inherent in human nature to want to talk about the solution. And in the early process of doing this, you can’t, you really need to not disclose it because it will lead the person you’re interviewing to give you the information you want rather than the information you need.
Jeff Standridge:
So once we’ve done that, then we’ve adapted or iterated our problem statement. We’re clear. We’ve got both the quantitative and the qualitative validation, so to speak, that it is a problem. Then we set about brainstorming a number of potential solutions, a range of those solutions, doing some research on which ones we think are the most likely solutions to solve the problem with the least degree of human expenditure of effort and fanfare and what have you, and then again, go through that process of quantitative and qualitative discovery to validate that. So.
Jeff Amerine:
You know, a thought, a thought along those lines, which is always instructive when we get down to talking to this part of it is I think it was Ash Maurya, the guy that wrote Running Lean that said, fall in love with the problem and the process and not the product, you know, not the solution. And I think that forces a mindset where you’re more objective as you go through it. And that, again, is counter to human nature. We always instantly kind of want to jump to the solution, but if you’re true to the process, you’re going to end up with a better solution because you really fall in love with the problem statement and not a specific point solution you might have in mind.
Jeff Standridge:
That’s right. And bringing, bringing dimming back in with a lot less waste, right? Wasted time, wasted effort, wasted expenditure of money and what have you. So let’s, let’s pivot a little bit and talk about strategy. You know, I like to think of strategy. So we talked about problem-solving being path, defendant, dependent or present forward. I like to think of strategy as being path independent or future back. Right? So generally, it’s, uh, uh, begins with an opportunity, which is future tense, positive, gain-oriented words, or not enough of a good thing, where a problem is too much of a bad thing, that strategy begins with an opportunity where we don’t have enough of this good thing that we need to have. And the thing about strategy, problem-solving is more comfortable because it’s more concrete strategy that involves a theory or a set of theories. By definition, strategy contains uncertainties and it’s uncomfortable. It’s more abstract.
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, it’s more abstract, and in some ways, it forces you to think with the end in mind as part of it, you know, we talk a lot about what’s the vision and why does it matter? I think there’s, there’s been some good frameworks for strategy over time. Like.
Jeff Standridge (12:05.902)
Yeah, excuse me one second. I apologize. I had to bring him with me today and he was being so good. Uh, so a little human moment there for you on the Innovation Junkies Podcast, ladies and gentlemen.
Jeff Amerine:
And that was way, way better. Cause I was just getting ready to talk about esoteric things like quarters, five forces, and systems thinking, but it is something, and I can’t remember who it was that said it. They said the problem with most strategic plans and strategic planning is there’s no strategy built into it. We kind of get involved in the mechanics of the process that we all know and love without really any strategic thinking to think about. You know, what are the strategic components of this and what are the trade-offs and what’s, what are the external forces and the competitive influences that are going to push you one way or another in strategy? So.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah. So strategy says that this is what we believe will happen. We’re not entirely certain, but based on our experience, based on our research, based on our examination of the internal and external factors, as you said, this is our educated theory. And so, you know, while it needs to be well thought out, it needs to be based in fact, it needs to be based in data, both qualitative and quantitative. It still is, in fact, a set of theories.
Jeff Amerine:
And there’s also other good frameworks like the blue ocean, you know, red ocean types of things where you’re really thinking about competitive influences. Who else is around you? The adjacencies as you think about your, your strategy, uh, some, there’s lots and lots of good stuff written great book by Peter Thiel called, uh, uh, zero to one. And he talks a lot about thinking about things that will make an organization 10 times better thinking about the special sauce that will differentiate all those things that we talk about in terms of sustained competitive advantage. They’re typically achieved by having a strategy that’s a little bit different, that’s well thought out, that’s vetted, and it captures a vision of where you want to go. And it’s more than just the mechanics of going through the strategic planning process. It requires some real thought and analysis.
Jeff Standridge:
Yep. Agreed. You know, I’ve kind of put side by side here and I want to, um, you know, the, the difference in problem-solving and strategic thinking. And maybe we round out this episode by just talking a little bit about those. Um, you know, if we look on the one side, uh, problem-solving the other side, strategic thinking problem-solving tends to be focused on more of the immediate issues or problems. So it can tend to be more reactive where strategic thinking takes a broader and more, more long -term view or more proactive. You agree with that?
Jeff Amerine:
Yeah, I completely agree with that. I mean, I think, I think strategy is tied to the vision. The vision is tied to the ability to prognosticate of what that future might look like based on what you see and how things are proceeding in whatever business or organization you’re in.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, problem-solving tends to be, you know, present forward or what we call path, path-dependent. So we’re in, we were in a situation, we’re headed down a path and we, we encounter an obstacle where strategic thinking tends to be future back or path independent, meaning we’re, as you said, pro prognosticating the future and backing into a plan to get there.
Jeff Amerine:
Exactly. Exactly. And that’s a good distinction. I would say the one caveat too, is sometimes people will feel like they’re in chains based on what their strategy is. I think it’s also important when you develop a strategy and when you begin to implement your strategic plan to also be opportunistic because the market is dynamic. The environment is dynamic. The circumstances are dynamic. You stay on the path. All those cliches about burning the ships agree with all of that, but you also have to be a good student of the market and understand that it’s not a static world in which you’re competing.
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah. On problem-solving, quantitative evaluation is usually the priority, not trying to lessen the significance of doing some qualitative inquiry. Whereas on strategic thinking, qualitative inquiry is much more important in terms of gathering feedback from your stakeholders in terms of articulating that strategy, because it is less certain and does involve a number of prognostications and theories.
Jeff Amerine:
And you really need to try it. You’re trying to find meaning and patterns and key themes that are difficult to get through classic quantitative inquiry.
Jeff Standridge:
And then finally, problem-solving asks the question, what do we do? This is where we are. What do we do? Where strategic thinking tends to ask the question, where are we going? I’m sorry. What? One second here. One second here.
We’re never too good for a human moment, are we?
Jeff Amerine:
I was going to say, you need to feed that dog. What’s wrong?
Jeff Standridge:
Yeah, yeah, he’s eating, but we’re downtown and people walk by the windows and that gets him going here.
Jeff Amerine:
He’s just doing his job, right?
Jeff Standridge:
He’s just doing his job. He’s trying to keep his pal safe. So problem-solving, ask the question, what do we do? This is where we are. What do we do? We’re strategic thinking, uh, ask the question, where are we going?
Jeff Amerine:
Exactly. And one, one is typically more long -term looking into the future. The other is in the moment. There’s no doubt about that. Yeah. Great stuff.
Jeff Standridge:
That’s right. That’s right. Well, ladies and gentlemen, this has been another episode of the Innovation Junkies Podcast. Join us next week where we’re going to be talking about how do you use strategy to move your organization forward!
Jeff Amerine:
It’s going to be a great season. Be sure to tune in.
Jeff Standridge:
Thanks for joining. We’ll see you next time.