It wasn’t until my third year in a professional job that I engaged with a systematic approach to analyzing a problem. For the first few years in academia, I was encouraged to try anything and everything seeking to engage students in learning. Success was defined by low-stakes failure to discover what works in our culture, with our attention economy, and within our budgets. My approach to solving problems remained very operationally based. First steps were to list what tools we had to apply and figure out the timeline for delivery. Second stage steps included finding human resources to delegate tasks to (task-loading) and setting the first goal and next meeting. So I applied this operational analysis process like a hammer to all the types of problems that cropped up throughout the year, and there were many across the spectrum of knowledge, organizational, technological, human, environmental, and complex problems. Some of these problems were how to organize and manage teaching requests as a one-shot Librarian teaching to 80% of courses across disciplines, increasing engagement with peer support learning programs (Writing Lab), redesigning student training, developing a plan for a Media Lab.
After a few years, I was often in meetings with Associate Vice Presidents and Chief Academic Officers and the approach to analyzing an issue, need, problem, or even perception was a deliberately slower process involving new questions, voices, and stages. Whereas before there was an outcome and action to point to, now problems sometimes remain as they originate, as abstract problems but with a clear ownership, analysis, and evaluative process attached. Some of these problems were/are a low retention rate of freshmen, misleading college readiness in math for engineering, horizontal data mining and collection across disciplines, and coordinating co-curricular academic support across academic and student affairs. Two of the analysis tools I have used in a group setting are SWOT analysis for departmental and university strategic planning and cost-benefit analysis of merging departments.
This is a representative sample of the evolution of my questioning techniques:
What tools do I already know how to use (hardware/ human?)
What access do I have into the systems?
Does my level of technology fluidity match the learning curve of the technology that will solve my problem the fastest?
Why are we solving this problem? Is this a problem that needs solving?
What technology attributes am I willing to compromise?
Can I expect similar product value using a “lower-grade” tool?What is the equation I can use to determine best fit for the technology I need?
How much time am I willing to sink personally? Or wait for others to learn on my behalf?
The goal now is to carry the initial energy and excitement of a new technology or product throughout the planning process which includes the deliberate review about the intentionality behind the problem or proposed program and careful selection of analysis. Two tools I would like to look into for future approaches to analysis are soft systems methodology and critical systems thinking in order to review and assess complicated problems.
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