How, What and Why in Problem Solving

I was doing a new hire training yesterday in KMS Arlington office, it occurred to me people solve problems at different dimensions. The dimensions define people’s perceptions of their realities, therefore their understanding of the problems, and the quality of their solutions. The first dimension is the “how”. There could be many ways to solve a problem: some ways are better than others; some can create more problems than they solve. How do we choose? To choose the solution wisely. We need to climb to the “what” is the problem dimension. Most junior engineers operate at the “how” dimension. That is why the problems assigned to them need to be well defined with clearly written “runbooks”. But as they move up the ladder of enlightenment, the problems become more ambiguous and the solutions are not just copy and paste. They have to understand “what” is the problem they are solving. In Object Orientated Design paradigm, we call the “what” the interface, and the “how” implementation. We promote the practice to separate interface from implementation, so that we can improve implementation without impacting the interface, and impacting the consumers relying on the interface. A common way to differentiate people at “what” and “how” dimension is to ask “what project are you working on?” People at “what” dimension can answer in less than three sentences, while the people at “how” dimension will give a lecture of 15+ minutes, and listeners still don’t have a clue what problems they are solving. In Amazon, we often use the PR/FAQ (Process Release) process to help us clarify “what” is the problem we are solving, and “what” would be the user experience when the problem is solved in the proposed way. We purposely avoid getting into the “how” discussion at this stage because premature design discussion without understanding of the problem can limit our creativity for long term elegant solutions. Above the “what” dimension is the “why” dimension. At this level people start to ask : “why” is this problem worth solving? why are we solving this problem, instead of other problems, given the time and resource constraints we face? What is the opportunity cost we are willing to take? How would we measure the value of solving this problem? Are there dimensions even higher? I think so. Above “why” we have the “tenet” dimension. Tenets are the rubric or standards we use to compare and make decisions: why one decision is better than the other? Above the “tenet” dimension we have the “belief” dimension. Belief is the “story” that holds a human society together. It is the “we hold this truth to be self evident…” The higher the dimensions one can operate, the more likely they can find the right problem to solve, and the long term, innovative solution for it. “The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.” Lao Tzu