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Take a New Look At Insight: Think Like... An Engineer

This 'take a new look series' investigates how other professions can teach us some valuable lessons. This month, we take a look at engineers.

In our insight roles, we’re often asked to help to solve a problem or to find out why something isn’t working properly. Which is what engineers do all of the time. So what can we learn from them that could help us to become more effective in our insight role?

 
First things first…
There are two keys to the ways in which engineers approach problems. Firstly, they take pride in actually knowing how things work – typically in a lot of detail. But secondly, they tend to approach problem-solving by following a very logical process. In essence, this involves the following three steps:
  1. Check and see if the problem is “bleeding obvious”. If it is, then don’t waste time looking for anything else. Just get on and fix it, and only if you then find that the problem hasn’t been solved do you need to look further. Take the example of a car where one headlight doesn’t work. In 99% of cases, it will be a blown bulb, so the answer is to replace it. Very occasionally it may be something else – but don’t go looking for this unless the obvious solution doesn’t work.
  2. If it isn’t obvious, at least try and narrow it down to one area. Using the car analogy, if the engine is playing up, can you deduce whether the problem is mechanical, electrical, or connected with the fuel supply? If you can narrow it down, the problem may become clearer.
  3. Finally, if the problem isn’t obvious even after things have been narrowed down, an engineer will use detailed diagrams and plans to trace the problem to its source.
This whole process is very logical, but the further you go down the road, the more important it becomes to really understand how something works. If you don’t, looking at complex diagrams and plans will make little sense.
 
One of the most insightful people we’ve ever met was the Head of Complaints at a major UK organisation. The reason she was so good was that she was ‘mature’ and had spent all of her life working in different operational areas of the company. As a result, whenever a complaint (or string of complaints) arose, she could almost always pinpoint where the problem was, simply because she knew the business so well.
 
Reason it out
So, how does this work in a business context? If you have a sizeable customer base, but a retention issue suddenly arises, is the solution obvious? Has a competitor launched a major new product or had a major promotion to attract your customers? If so, then a phone call to your call centre (if you have one) will probably confirm whether this is at the heart of your problem.
 
But if it isn’t something so obvious, can you narrow it down? Is the problem related to specific types of customers? Is it those that have used a particular element of your service or customers that have come through a particular channel? If so, look for the problem in that area.
 
But problems often aren’t that simple. If the situation is more complex, it’s vital that you really understand the way in which your business works; the way that the different divisions or silos interact; and the myriad pathways that customers may use to interact with you (and the experiences they may have on the way).
 
This is where you really need as many process maps and models available as possible. Finding the ones for operational processes should be fairly easy, because operational people tend to use logical flows. But when it comes to customers, do you have maps of the decision processes your customers use, and the combinations of these? If not, it can be very hard to pinpoint the real problems. But with a decision process map (particularly if you’ve been able to quantify the flows through it), you’ll often find that problems can be traced to specific ‘pinch points’.
 
Process maps may be the subject of a future article but meanwhile, just take as much time as possible to learn how your business really works and then take a logical approach to problem solving.
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