The SCOTCH Method of Problem Solving

Problems can be complicated, and each vintage is its own witches’ brew of causes and considerations.

But by and large, problems are cocktails of just a few basic ingredients:

Strategic causes
The symptom at hand is a necessary effect of an overarching strategy that benefitted other things elsewhere.

Communicational causes
Somewhere in the pipeline, requirements got lost in translation. Or it’s a case of the do what I mean, not what I say effect.

Organizational causes
The structure of the team and its leadership form is running contrary to the nature of the task.

Technical causes
The tools aren’t working the way we expected. Are we using the right end?

Criterial causes
Who says it’s a problem and why? Is our measuring stick potentially the real problem?

Human causes
Do the people involved bring the right skill sets to the table? Is the team chemistry more like a chain reaction?

Does the business world need another acronym?

No.

But is it fun to create them and useful for disentangling chaotic situations?

It certainly is for me.

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Brian Junker-Latocha