good morning I'm Maxine Riley a current
MBA student adesh to say path and I'm
Michael Stapleton also an MBA student
here at HEC Paris we're here this
morning with professors
Olivia Shivani and Bernard Garrett to
discuss their new book cracked it how to
solve big problems and sell solutions
like top strategy consultants Bernard
Garrett is the former dean of our MBA
program and olivia boney joins us after
over 25 years as a senior partner at
McKinsey they wrote cracked it together
with Corey Phelps who's a strategy
professor and the Dean of executive
education at McGill University so to
start this discussion when Maxine and I
started the MBA program here we were a
little bit surprised to see a course on
problem solving in communications as
part of our curriculum can you talk
about why this skill matters for MBAs
why it needs to be part of a curriculum
well the the obvious place to start is
to ask the recruiters the people who
hire the MBAs and the tell is loud and
clear that these skills do matter when
you ask recruiters the financial times
did for instance it pulled MBA
recruiters and asked them what are the
most important skills that you're
looking for and consistently when they
do that the ability to solve complex
problems ranks among the top five
Bloomberg Businessweek did another
survey same kind of answer
the thing is they also tell the
pollsters that these skills are among
the hardest to find you know they are
not only important they're also very
difficult to find in newly minted MBAs
so basically whether were selling US was
you guys your business schools in
general you're not doing your job you're
not delivering what we need that was a
real gap so is this mainly a career
fingers are also an academic component
to this skillset well actually both so
it's definitely a Carrie Carrie I think
but also in terms of the curriculum of
the MBA we thought that was a really
important addition and one of the
reasons
that the students told us that the
causes sometimes can be perceived as
disconnected so they get causes in
marketing finance right eg etc etc but
MBA students who are experienced people
and then they go back to their two
companies realize that when problems
arise in real life they don't come with
a nice label saying it's a finance
problem or strategy problem and
basically what they need is an
integrative way to solve problems and so
in terms of the curriculum in terms of
the connection between the courses and
sort of integrating all the the
knowledge together we thought that the
cost like problem solving and
communication was really useful could
you give us an example of that type of
problem integrated across disciplines
well here's one the the difference
between the integrated problems and the
sort of problems that every business
person in fact everyone solves everyday
is the integrative nature so typical
problem that we solve every days would
be for instance you're a marketing
person and you need to design a new
campaign and you need to choose between
different options or your production
manager and you've got a problem in the
plans and you need to solve the problem
and to get the line back to normal
production those are very important
problems and when we talk about problem
solving people often think but that's
what I do all day because that's the
sort of problems they solve now here is
an integrative type of room that's
completely different from this suppose
since we're in facebook suppose you're
Mark Zuckerberg and the can bridge
analytic a scandal is hitting what kind
of problem is that as Bernard was saying
it doesn't come with a label that says
hey it's a PR problem or hey it's a
strategy problem or hey it's a marketing
problem or hey it's a technical problem
it's all those things at the same time
how are you going to frame that problem
in order to be able to solve it that's
what we mean well not all the problems
that we are talking about are as
dramatic as
but yes I mean the important distinction
is between routine problems and non
routine problems and so the example that
Olivia mentioned is non routine problem
yeah and and so the book is dedicated to
this type of problems but it can be for
example an entrepreneur trying to design
a new offering for for a new target of
clients it can be a young consultant
starting her job and having a chunk of
the study to do you know it can be a lot
of different things just problems that
are non routine complex and that call
for a specific problem solving approach
professor Simon you just mentioned that
we you know we run into these problems
all the time at our jobs so can't we
just learn this in our day to day
routines of at work what do we need to
look at this in an academic lens well I
think the the danger if you are not
trained in problem solving is to mistake
non routine problems for routine
problems and in this case the the
pitfall is that you will solve any
problem like a routine problem and so
what do we do when we solve routine
problems well in general we jump to
conclusions so basically we know what
the problem is about we have a solution
in mind we do a quick mental check to
verify that it might work and then we
switch into implementation mode
immediately and so we don't take the
time to really post the problem to
analyze it etc etc we just jump to
conclusions and implement that and this
can be very deceptive very risky so so
yes I need I think the training is
important here's an example actually we
which is one of the many stories we tell
and cracked it
suppose you are the music industry at
the turn of the century and you're
suddenly realizing that students in
their dorms are going to Napster and to
other peer-to-peer sites and downloading
music for free what is this now if you
are
looking at this as a routine problem is
one of the many problems you've sold
before you recognize this or you think
you recognize this as a problem of
piracy you've been dealing with piracy
at the time of the cassette tapes you've
been dealing with piracy when people are
printing bootleg CDs and selling them on
the night markets in Asia so you
recognize this problem you've been there
before
what's the solution the solution is sue
the bastards and that's what you do now
right and so you you join forces with
all your peers in the industry and you
soon AppStore and you get them shut down
and you declare victory have you been
successful of course not you've solved
the wrong problem the people who've been
solving the right problem who framed the
right problem who stated the right
problems as we as we call it which is
the first step and in the
problem-solving method are the folks at
Apple who said hold on for a second the
real problem here is how do we make
money in the age of digital music now if
you can solve that problem you can
create the iPod and the iTunes Store so
that's not the wrong work what happen if
we graduate our MB and we don't learn
how to solve problems well I think the
the exactly what we said the the risk is
to to not to take the time basically to
really try to understand what the
problem is and just jump to conclusions
and this is how I mean people solve
problems in in companies and
organizations in general only too
frequently so the advantage of having
systematic method and an organized
method is at least twofold the first
thing is that our method is systematic
and so we call it the forest method
because we I mean the forest stands for
state structure solve and sell so
basically solve comes only third which
means that the message is to take the
time to really state and structure the
problem before trying to to solving it
so I think this is the decision this is
a this is an advantage or
and and this this can have major
consequences in the way in which you you
really approach approach the problems
and so of course the advantages just to
have a better solution because you will
have looked at the problem from
different facets and you will have
explored all the analysis and all the
steps you need to really go through in
order to find the solution so this is
this the advantages just to be
systematic the second thing is the
ability to work in teams because most
people solve problems in teams and in in
current organizations these teams are
generally multinational and sometimes
they work from different
I mean people work from different places
and so miscommunication or the you know
the inability to really tackle the
problem in an organized manner manner is
is really is really important so having
a common method a shared approach to
solve the problem can be really
impactful because if people share the
same approach they will communicate much
easier the communication will be much
easier and and the ability to find the
solution and to leverage the knowledge
and the skills of the whole team will be
much better so problem solving is
something that's not usually taught as a
standalone course sort of embedded in
courses here and there where did the
frameworks that you talked about and
cracked it come from and just make them
up we we didn't just make them up
although we did make up the forest
method as a sort of integrative approach
to problem solving the it comes from
three different places which we blended
together the first is the first place we
looked is what the strategy consultants
do because they solve complex business
problems for a living you know typically
when you have a very complex integrative
my problem of the sort we talked about
earlier what do you do you call strategy
consultants and somehow they solve it
it's not because they are smaller than
you are it's not because they know your
business better they clearly don't so
how is it well it's because they have a
method and their method is rooted in
good old logic that goes back to the
captains who Aristotle and so on but
it's packaged in very neat useful tools
like the issue tree and the hypothesis
pyramid and we talk about all those
things in some great detail and they are
very useful they are usually not taught
outside of the world of consulting they
will be very useful to people preparing
for case interviews in consulting firms
so that's one source however we didn't
want this to just be a book about
consulting it's not a consulting
textbook it's a book for executives and
managers who have business problems to
solve so we look for two other places
one we look into other places sorry one
is cognitive psychology because it has a
lot to tell us about the pitfalls that
people run into when they try to solve
problems and the other interestingly is
Design Thinking because it's truckers
that many problems that people actually
face are not amenable to the sort of
decomposition that consultants are very
good at doing but actually require more
holistic thinking so these three sources
that the consulting toolbox cognitive
psychology and Design Thinking are the
three inspirations and are you know work
has been to blend them together in an
integrative framework that actually
tells you which method to use for what
problem so I can see how this type of
approach would be really useful for CEOs
or ultimate decision makers but what
about for us just having you know
graduated our MBA are we going to be
able to apply these tools to advance our
careers always certainly hope so and and
I think well in particular at the at the
beginning of a career it can be
extremely useful because you know as as
Olivier said at the beginning recruiters
look for this type of skills in
candidates and the reason why is because
in in current organizations you know the
well organizations are not as let's say
hierarchical as they used to be and so
most of them are project based so you
will be put in teams and basically to
solve problems or all your boss will
give you some kind of work to do or you
will join I don't know a management
development program in a company in
which you will be assigned to different
positions and in each position during I
don't know one one year and a half you
will have different problems to solve so
yes I think even at the beginning of a
career the the likelihood that you are
exposed to non routine problems to solve
is actually very high and it gets higher
and higher so so I think yeah students
best be equipped with this type of alpha
skills and so a lot of these skills are
consulting skills which obviously have
value but how do business leaders
entrepreneurs visionary leaders approach
their problems why should we trust
consultants approaches over theirs well
actually maybe we shouldn't exactly well
I think as a review said the consulting
part is only one part and it's well and
it's based on decomposing a problem into
smaller issues that you can solve one by
one so it's extremely analytical so it
basically tells you which analysis you
have to perform in order to solve tiny
bits of a bigger problem and then make
that cohere into a solution for a larger
problem so this is the consulting part
and it's useful but I agree with you it
doesn't help to solve any type of
problem and so this is why basically we
looked into other things and so speaking
of visionary leaders entrepreneurs etc
yeah I agree not all problems and these
type of problems do not fit with the
typical analytical method so some
problems are amenable to this analytical
method others are not and so this is
what design thinking is so important
it's not just the visionary leaders by
the way even you know a regular
executive will sometimes have to decide
on an advertising campaign or in
designing a new product or in fact on
shaping a new strategy and that's the
sort of thing where you need a holistic
approach as opposed to a decomposition
approach looking so looking beyond a
broader set of just than normal
consulting tools exactly so let's get a
little even more forward-thinking here
we live in the world a world where two
big terms are used quite a bit
artificial intelligence in Big Data you
mentioned earlier professor Savini that
recruiters when polled said that solving
complex problems was one of the biggest
skills they looked for and weren't quite
getting from MBAs isn't the real skill
then the ability to write the code for
the AI tool that will solve the problem
for you that would be neat wouldn't it
you can just sit back and relax and
enjoy life and let the Machine solve all
the problems for us unfortunately or
fortunately actually I don't think we
don't think that's going to happen and
the the reality is that Big Data and
artificial intelligence will be a
tremendous help in the solving part of
problem solving which as bernard
mentioned earlier is only the third step
right it's a very powerful analytical
help but to state what the problem is to
define what problem you're trying to
solve to structure this problem and
decide on what approach you're going to
take to solve it and eventually to sell
the solution to human beings you're
going to require human beings in fact
business judgment of the kind that
solves problem is not a substitute for
artificial intelligence or Artefill
artificial intelligence is not a
substitute for it it's a compliment and
as the cost of artificial intelligence
goes down the authors of a book called
prediction machines explained this very
neatly as the cost of artificial
intelligence goes down the demand for
its complement business judgment
right so the value of being able to have
good problem-solving instincts and good
problem-solving method is going to be
greater not less in the age of
artificial intelligence actually there
is a study or forecast by the World
Economic Forum that things that the top
the top three skills to thrive in the in
the fourth Industrial Revolution are
complex problem solving critical
thinking and creativity
so these needs will become greater not
smaller because of this new technology
and this is basically your table of
contents a lot of people think that they
are intuitively good at problem-solving
how do you communicate to people when
you work in a team to solve problems
that they need to be using these
frameworks and get on board with the
same structure well there is a there is
a very simple trick that you can use
them that we use in our course which is
just to to put people in a situation so
basically give them a case and tell them
ok now you have one hour as a team to
state the problem just to write the
problem statement to tell us what the
problem is and so of course they think
they will spend like ten minutes doing
it and they are surprised to realize
that actually they need one Hauer and
sometimes they did they don't even
finish in when how and probably the fact
that we have international students is
also a factor because they have to just
to communicate properly in order to do
that and so some students tell us well I
didn't believe that it would take one
Howard to agree on a simple sentence in
plain English to state the problem and
so it shows the importance of just you
know stepping back and trying to really
understand what the situation is what
the issue is and and you need a method
to do that because other because then
they realize that if they hadn't done
that they would have proceeded to so
completely
exactly and they would have talked past
each other for the entire time of the
problem-solving exercise so beyond just
stating the problem and getting on the
same page what are the most difficult
aspects of problem solving and solution
filling well I don't think it's
necessarily difficult if you take the
method it's in its entirety and if you
if you do it right basically it's not
that difficult it takes a bit of effort
to actually see the whole forest and not
to grab one branch of one tree
I'll give you an example very often
people hear about this tool of the
consulting toolbox called hypothesis
driven problem-solving it sounds really
cool because what it basically says is
hey instead of looking at all the
possible options let's pick one that is
our hypothesis and of course we don't
say it's the right solution but we're
going to test it and if the test is
conclusive it will be the solution if
it's not we'll look for something else
it's a very efficient way of solving
problems and consultants do it all the
time now what happens when you try to do
this in a corporate setting the
hypothesis is most likely going to be
supplied by your boss and then how
thoroughly are you going to challenge
that hypothesis well maybe not quite as
thoroughly as an external consultant who
is not subject to the same pressures
would so some of the safeguards that
exist in a consulting setting cannot be
reproduced in a corporate setting and
therefore some of the methods that you
would naturally apply if you don't see
the whole picture can actually turn out
to be dangerous so what is difficult is
picking the right part of the toolkit
the right tool from the toolbox and for
that you need the entire method so one
final question you talked about how
using the wrong framework for the wrong
problem can can be can get you to the
wrong solution are there any other
limitations to the frameworks or if you
use them properly earth will they work
every time
yeah while picking the right framework
is definitely a challenge and selling
the solution and selling this yeah
selling the solutions probably even a
greater challenge well and then the
problem is that in a lot of cases what
what people tend to do is to enter into
selling mode too early so when I said
the earlier that solve was only the
third step sell is the fourth step is
the final step and and if you believe
that you are going to make time by for
example writing PowerPoint slides from
day one in a consulting study in general
you're wrong because actually the you
will not even show most of these pages
to the clients but but it's a very very
sort of tempting behavior because you
actually believe you are going to make
time by starting to design the solution
almost immediately which is the which is
the selling part so one of the one of
the messages that we we have in the book
is to tell people well don't click on
PowerPoint too early just start I mean
where when you are in the selling mode
so you are convinced you have found the
correct solution try first to write your
storyline so basically the story you are
going to tell the the the problem owner
and tell the story of the solution not
the story of the search so basically you
have to find convincing arguments to
actually sell the solution and on top of
that start with the core message the the
governing thought the the most important
thing and this must be a call for action
because what what problem owners want is
something that they can act upon in
order to really implement the solutions
so the selling part must be something
action
not just you know recommendation that
stays like a sort of intellectual
analysis of the problem and then finally
probably we must also understand that
selling is as important as solving so
solving comes first but then selling is
very important and not selling a correct
solution is obviously a problem because
it will not be implemented if you don't
sell it which is and so and there are
many probably many reports many very
good work that is just lost because it
was not sold to the total problem owners
but also selling a wrong solution so
selling too early or selling a wrong
solution is also very dangerous so there
is a very well-known example which is
the the nutrition example order you know
the the that in the world there is an
epidemics of obesity and for years the
solution that was sold to people was to
eat less fatty food over divers so
basically the die low-fat diet was the
most common solution that was that was
just sold to people and well I mean
since the 1970s scientists know it's
wrong that the main source of obesity
and coronary diseases etc is sugar not
fat but the problem is that the fat
story was solved very efficiently while
the sugar story was not solved very well
even though it was better in scientific
terms and actually there was a book
written by a British scientist in the
70s it was called white pure and deadly
the problem of sugar something like that
and this book actually was very well
received but the author didn't really
you know convince the public authorities
etcetera that his views was right and he
had a competitor us
scientist who probably truly believed
that he was right in his fat story or
low-fat diet story and who sold it
extremely well even conducted in
conducting international empirical
studies to you know to make the point
etc and he sold it to the to the US
Congress to the presidents to everyone
and and you know for decades people
believed in the industry so selling the
wrong solution can be even more harmful
than you know not selling the product
solution so the connection between these
two things the ability to really state
structure and solve a problem and the
ability to sell the solution this
connection is really important and I
think is it is probably what make our
approach different which is that in a
lot of situations these two things are
disconnected so you can find a lot of
things on how to convince people how to
tell stories etc but the problem is that
storytelling if storytelling is the only
important skill that you learn the risk
is you know to tell a nice story but
actually a wrong story right
so reading your book and learning the
frameworks that's just step one
implementing over yeah definitely more
important right the kindle version of
crafted is now available on amazon and
ranked currently as number one in the
business management category professors
thank you very much for your time thank
you very much thank you