Tag: problem solving

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BLG Leadership Insights

Richard Feynman’s Problem Solving Skill

We’ve talked about Richard Feynman here before. We concluded that his unique problem solving skills should be employed by people in all fields.

That was last year.

Since then Bill Gates has bought the rights to Feynman’s 1964 Cornell University lecture series, The Character of Physical Law, and posted them online in an interactive media player.

The videos are transcribed, embedded with commentary, packed with additional resources, and invite users to take chronological notes while they are watching. And, yes. They are completely free. We owe Gates a big thank-you for his generous gift.

The lectures, roughly 7 hours total, are targeted to first year college students and are easy to follow even if you lack a background in math or physics. Feynman’s intellectual energy and natural curiosity make the videos entertaining and fascinating. Before your know it, they are over.

Gates bought the lectures from Cornell University, the BBC, and the Feynman estate for an undisclosed sum. He has said that if he had the chance to watch the lectures as a student he would have studied physics–not computers. It’s easy to see why. Feynman’s personality, humor, and mathematical excitement are hard to ignore.

The complete Feynman lectures reinforce our old point: unique problem perception isn’t simply for Nobel Prize winning physicists–it’s a skill that can and should be applied in any industry, pursuit, or agenda. The lectures, as a whole, also make another point. Big, exciting, curious thinking is needed in all subject areas. It creates problem solving energy and a big-picture view that welcomes creativity and skepticism.

Here is a short clip from the lecture series below:

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BLG Leadership Insights

Problem Solving With Einstein

Sometimes how you articulate or look at a problem is more important than the solution. I’m paraphrasing Einstein, of course.

Dan Meyer, a high school math teacher, agrees (see video below). He argues that one-dimensional problem solving endorsed by math textbooks are killing students’ problem solving-skills and, worse, their interest in logical thought.

Consider your average math textbook.

They define a formula and tell you how it works. Next they give you a problem with some prescribed information and ask you to key it into the formula they just explained.

There’s no problem solving skill involved. All a student does is demonstrate his ability to plug in numbers and follow instructions.

At the end of the day, a student doesn’t know why the formula exists or how to apply it to real-world problems.

Meyer says we should give students a problem and abandon them. Let them find out what information is relevant to the problem and let them figure out how to put it together.

As a result the problem will not only get solved, but each student will know exactly why. They’ll finally appreciate why people who do math for a living use letters to represent points and they’ll understand how formulas save everyone a lot of time and finger counting.

I’m guessing you don’t have a basic algebra math book on your nightstand. I’ll even bet you don’t have the time to take offense to lazy textbook composition. But what Meyer illustrates here is applicable to teaching, training, and problem solving in any field.

Meyer rightly argues that problems shouldn’t be approached with a list of formulas, strategies, and clues. Instead, problems should be handled analytically and simply. Problem solving should be less about the answer and more about discovering the fastest, most efficient route to the answer.

Approaching a problem head-on can get results, but it can also be put you at a disadvantage. How much did you learn? Did you discover exactly how and why the problem was solved? Did you just follow the industry steps or did you beat your own path? If you ran into a similar problem would you be able to tackle it swiftly?

It’s to your benefit to approach problems from a basic, bare-bones approach. You want to know why and how you are solving the problem, not just the answer. You want to build your problem solving muscles.

Possessing the skill to look at problems in different, unbiased ways can help you formulate better, more meaningful answers. Better yet, unique problem perception can give you ammunition to fight future hurdles.

We’re learning every day. It’s important that we put down the text book and discover solutions on your own.

It’s not always about the answer. “The formulation of a problem is often more essential than its solution, which may be a matter of mathematical or experimental skill.” –Einstein

Pic Cred: http://www.flickr.com/photos/paul-w-locke/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

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BLG Leadership Insights

Leadership and Problem Solving in Somalia

The United Nations peace-building mission in Somalia failed because of several key strategic errors that resulted from poor pragmatic leadership. International awareness and resource allocation weren’t the only hurdles.

The Somali state collapsed in 1991-1992 from a civil war among the United Somali Congress (USC) who were responsible for overthrowing the brutal Siyad-Barre regime. The infighting crippled the branches of Somali’s central government and forced Siyad-Barre and his army into the countryside. What ensued was a series of civil wars between General Adid’s USC and Siyad’s forces. The resulting clashes turned the nation’s capital, Mogadishu, into a famine-plagued war zone. Events spiraled out of control and the international community stepped in (1992-1995). The last UNSOM mission was depicted in the movie, Black Hawk Down.

Hussein Adam writes, in his article Somalia: International versus Local Attempts at Peacekeeping, that international attempts at peace building failed because “a mix of factors led to incorrect UNSOM decisions: incompetence, vanity, ambition, short term orientation, and bureaucratic infighting.” Then Secretary-General Boutros Boutros Ghali selected Admiral Jonathan Howe to lead the UN mission in Somalia. Howe failed to implement a strategy suited to the unique environmental and structural factors present in Somalia.

A critical failing was that the United Nations leadership did not accurately assess the political and social realities in place at the time of the intervention. Even though UNSOM moved to support decentralization in Somalia, the organization was itself highly centralized, which led to problems with managing crises in outlying regions.

Somalia, like many other African nations, is a decentralized country divided along regional and clan lines. The UNOSOM method attempted to establish district and regional councils based on a top-down approach rather than focusing locally. Needless to say the measures implemented by the UN did not yield the intended results.

Somalia was originally intended to be an example of how the “New World Order” could eliminate large-scale humanitarian disasters…and it failed. The ramifications of the Somali intervention caused the United States to prevent or delay taking humanitarian action in Haiti and Rwanda. When organizations face unique structural and environmental challenges it’s vital to take time to understand the parameters of the problem. Over confidence and trying to solve the wrong parts of a problem can lead to bigger disasters.

Good pragmatic leadership is about seeing the problem in the right light and analyzing it with the correct information. It’s not about easy solutions and old formulas. All anyone truly cares about is how well you can problem-solve and execute. Leaders who incessantly pontificate, instead of taking time to see the whole picture, have little value.