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Simplex
A Powerful Integrated Problem-Solving Process
Simplex is an industrial-strength creativity
tool. Developed by Min Basadur, it takes the approach of DO
IT to the next level of sophistication.
Rather than seeing creativity as a single
straight-line process, Simplex sees it as the continuous
cycle it should be. Completion and implementation of one
cycle of creativity leads straight into the next cycle of
creative improvement.
How to Use the Tool:
Simplex uses the eight stages shown in figure 1, below:
These are explained below:
1. Problem Finding
Often finding the right problem to solve is the most difficult
part
of the creative process. When using Simplex, actively seek problems
out. Wherever they exist you have opportunities for change and
improvement.
Problems may be obvious, or can be flushed out using trigger questions
like the ones below:
- What would your customers want you to improve?
- What could they be doing better if we could help them?
- Who else could we help using our core competences?
- What small problems do we have which could grow into bigger
ones?
- What slows our work or makes it more difficult? What do we often
fail to achieve?
- How can we improve quality?
- What are our competitors doing that we could do?
- What is frustrating and irritating?
These questions deal with problems that exist now. It is also useful
to try to look into the future. Think about how you expect markets
and customers to change over the next few years; the problems you
may experience as your organization expands; and social, political
and legal changes that may affect it.
At this stage you may not have enough information to formulate
your problem precisely. Do not worry about this until step 3!
2.
Fact Finding
The next stage is to find out as much
information relating to the problem as possible.
This gives you the depth of knowledge
you need to:
- Use the best ideas your competitors have
had
- Understand customers needs in more detail
- Know what has already been tried
- Fully understand any processes, components,
services or technologies that you may need to use
- Ensure that the benefits of solving the
problem will be worth the effort you will put into it
This stage also involves assessing the
quality of the information that you have. Here it is worth
listing your assumptions and checking that they are correct.
3. Problem Definition
By the time you reach this stage, you should know roughly what
the problem is and should have a good understanding of the facts
relating to it. From here the thing to do is to crystallize the
exact problem or problems you want to solve.
It is important to solve a problem at the right
level. If you ask questions that are too broad, then you will
never have enough resources to answer them effectively. If you
ask questions that are too narrow, you may end up fixing symptoms
of a problem, rather than the problem itself.
Min Basadur (who created the Simplex Process)
suggests using the question 'Why?' to broaden a question, and
'What's stopping you?' to narrow it.
For example, if your problem is one of trees dying, ask 'Why
do I want to keep trees healthy?'. This might broaden the question
to 'How can I maintain the quality of our environment?'.
A 'What's stopping you?' here could be 'I do not know how to
control a disease killing the tree'.
Big problems are normally made up of many smaller ones. This is
the stage at which you can use a technique like Drill-Down
to break the problem down to its component parts.
4. Idea Finding
The next stage is to generate as many ideas as possible. Ways of
doing this range from asking other people for their opinions, through
programmed creativity tools and lateral thinking techniques to brainstorming.
Do not evaluate ideas during this stage. Instead, concentrate
on generating
many ideas as possible. Bad ideas often trigger good ones.
5. Selection and Evaluation
Once you have a number of possible solutions to your problem, it
is time to select the best one.
The best solution may be obvious. If it is not, then it is important
to think through the criteria you will use to select the best idea.
The Decision Making Techniques
section of Mind Tools lays out a number of good methods for this.
Particularly useful techniques may be Decision
Trees, Paired Comparison Analysis
and Grid Analysis.
Once you have selected an idea, develop it as far as possible.
It is then essential to evaluate it to see if it is good enough
to be considered worth using. It is important not to let your ego
get in the
way of your common sense. If your idea does not give big enough
benefit, then either see if you can generate more ideas, or restart
the whole process. You can waste years of your life developing
creative
ideas that no-one wants.
There are two excellent techniques for doing this. One is Edward
de Bono's 6 Thinking Hats, which is
an excellent tool for qualitative analysis. The other is Cost/Benefit
Analysis, which gives you a good basis for financially based
decisions.
6. Planning
Once you have selected an idea, and are confident that your idea
is worthwhile, then it is time to plan its implementation.
The best way of doing this is to set this out as an Action
Plan, which lays out the who, what, when, where, why and how
of making it work. For large projects it may be worth using more
formal planning techniques.
7. Sell Idea
Up to this stage you may have done all this work on your own or
with a small committee. Now you will have to sell the idea to the
people who must support it. This might be your boss, a bank manager
or other people involved with the project.
In selling the project you will have to address not only the practicality
of the project, but also things such internal politics, hidden fear
of change, etc.
8. Action
Finally, after all the creativity and preparation, comes action!
This is where all the careful work and planning pays off.
Once the action is firmly under way, return to stage 1, Problem
Finding, to continue improving your idea.
Min Basadur's book, The
Power of Innovation, explores this process in much more detail.
Key points:
The Simplex Process is a powerful, sophisticated approach to innovation.
It is suitable for projects and organizations of almost any scale.
The Process is an eight-stage cycle. Upon completion of the eight
stages you start it again to find and solve another problem. This
helps to ensure continuous improvement.
Stages in the process are:
- Problem finding
- Fact finding
- Problem Definition
- Idea Finding
- Selection and Evaluation
- Planning
- Selling of the Idea
- Action
By moving through these stages you ensure that you solve the
most significant problems with the best solutions available to
you. This process can help you to be intensely creative.
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In the next article we move on to look at time management techniques
- essential if you're to beat work overload and increase your
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A full list of Mind Tools articles is available here.
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