Problem Solved

A Powerful System for Making Complex

Decisions with Confidence and Conviction
Cheryl Strauss Einhorn
©2017 by Cheryl Strauss Einhorn
Adapted by permission of The Career Press, Inc.
ISBN: 978-1-6326-5917-0
Estimated reading time of book: 2–3 hours

Key Concepts
To successfully navigate life’s gray areas and overcome the mental shortcuts that may be holding you back, you
must understand the following aspects of Cheryl Strauss Einhorn’s AREA Method:

• Absolute. Identify and understand your targets by looking at their numerical data, exploring their websites,
learning about their leadership, and reading their published communications.
• Relative. Research your secondary sources by mapping your target industry, reviewing existing literature,
and reconciling the narratives.
• Exploration. Broaden your perspective by identifying good prospects, crafting great questions, and con-
ducting effective interviews.
• Exploitation. Challenge your assumptions by considering rival hypotheses, conducting pro/con exercises,
and scrutinizing future scenarios.
• Analysis. Reduce your uncertainty and come to conviction by thinking about mistakes, determining solv-
ability, and analyzing how things could fail.

Introduction
Making thoughtful decisions in today’s volatile environment can be difficult, but you can use Cheryl Strauss
Einhorn’s disciplined AREA Method to make complex decisions in a more mindful way. In Problem Solved, Ein-
horn takes you through a step-by-step analytic process to overcome potential errors, avoid common biases, and
anchor your decisions in research. Whether you’re determining where to find information, evaluating the quality
of that information, or examining how you process it, you can use the powerful tools presented in this book to
engage people and problems, articulate in ways that resonate, and turn good ideas into great thinking.

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Problem Solved Cheryl Strauss Einhorn

Navigating the Gray AREA

Einhorn’s AREA Method improves classic research and decision-making training by:

• Recognizing the value of research. Your ability to make a thoughtful decision depends on the quality of infor-
mation you have, and the AREA Method can help you break research down into manageable and organized
chunks.
• Overcoming mental shortcuts. Your biases, snap judgments, and assumptions drive your decision making,
so the AREA Method uses a perspective-taking process to isolate and categorize information based on its
source and point of view.
• Addressing timing head-on. High-stakes decisions deserve your time and attention, so the AREA Method of-
fers calculated pauses and periods of thoughtful reflection to increase stability and maneuverability.
• Providing a repeatable process. Not all investigations are linear, so the AREA Method continually creates cog-
nitive space to openly receive new data inputs and insights.
Researching is easy when information is accessible and clear, but when information is insufficient, conducting
research can be difficult. Part of the AREA Method is recognizing where things are working for you and where
you may have a disadvantage. To counter your weaknesses and capitalize on your strengths, consider framing
your researching using four methods:

1. Behavioral. Pay attention to and control your biases so they don’t negatively influence your behavior.
2. Informational. Get the right information to effectively make a good decision.
3. Analytical. Synthesize the data to reach the right conclusion.
4. Structural. Understand the opportunities and limitations of your environ-
Use the AREA Method
ment and assess whether the timing is right to move forward.
to intensively research
These four frames can point you toward areas where you need to know and
the two or three criti-
do more, but with the AREA Method, you don’t need to be the most knowl-
edgeable about everything related to your research topic; for most decisions, cal points that will
only a few factors are critical to the outcome. Use the AREA Method to inten- determine the success
sively research the two or three critical points that will determine the success or failure of your deci-
or failure of your decision. sion.

A = Absolute
The first perspective that the AREA Method addresses is Absolute. This phase is about understanding the target
at the center of your research decision, so you must gather information that helps you understand how the
target wants to be seen. You can gather information by looking at your target’s:

• Numerical data. Limit your initial focus to just the numbers so you’re able to see your Absolute target as
objectively as possible. Numerical data can help you understand exactly how your target wants to be per-
ceived and whether the data is relevant and clear. Pay attention to the types of numerical data available, if
that data makes sense, and what the numbers are saying about your target.
• Website. Your target describes what it does, why it does it, and how well it’s succeeding on its website. Read
and analyze the way your research target presents its values and messages to determine how it thinks about
business. Pay attention to who the website is targeting, the content and language used, and if any informa-
tion is missing.

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Problem Solved Cheryl Strauss Einhorn

• Leadership. Read about your target’s leadership, focusing on key people and their qualifications, decisions,
and impacts. Identify how leaders came into their roles, their strengths and weaknesses, how they perceive
their accomplishments, and how they’re compensated.
• Official communication. Search to see if your target has published any press releases, research, policy reports,
or proposals. Pay attention to the frequency of the releases and what the tone and word choices convey.
Once you’ve completed your Absolute phase of research, summarize your con-
Recording your evi- clusions into a clear and concise thesis statement. Recording your evidence,
dence, thoughts, thoughts, and convictions in a thesis statement can help you identify what you
and convictions in must research next, point out gaps in your work that need to be addressed
before moving forward, and help you find the foundation of your decision.
a thesis statement
can help you iden-
tify what you must
R = Relative
research next. The second perspective that the AREA Method addresses is Relative. In this
phase, you must put the information you collected into a broader context by
finding Relative, or external, sources that offer a filtered view of your research target, help you expand and
confirm information you’ve gathered, and expose disconnects. In the Relative phase, you must complete the
following two research tasks:

1. Map your Absolute target’s ecosystem. Begin with a business and industry map that puts your research target
into context, helps you identify important issues, and exploits how your target stacks up against the best
and the worst. The map should provide you with an assessment of what your target offers, when it offers it,
where it makes those offers, and the price of the offers.
2. Conduct a literature review. After you’ve completed your map, conduct a literature review of the published
material about your particular subject. The literature review will give you a wider lens on your research tar-
get, enable you to gather new information, and help put older information into context. A literature review
will also help you understand how the outside world perceives your target, what issues other participants
are focused on, and the key debates or issues impacting decision-making processes.

E = Exploration
The third perspective that the AREA Method addresses is Exploration. In this phase, you must acquire new knowl-
edge and perspectives by conducting interviews. The most effective interviews have:

• Good prospects. Sometimes interesting information turns up in unexpected places, so gather resources from
experts in other fields, customers, government and regulatory agencies, lawyers, accountants, employees in
other office departments, freelance reporters, and librarians.
• Great questions. Think about the kinds of responses you want to elicit, determine what information you need
from your interviewees, and write questions that clearly communicate what types of answers you’re looking
for.
• Quality guides. As the interviewer, provide a framework of open-ended questions where people may re-
spond comfortably, accurately, and honestly. Determine a logical interview progression so all of your rel-
evant topics are thoughtfully covered and all of the right information is extracted in the time allowed.
In addition to finding good prospects, generating great questions, and adhering to a quality framework, you
must easily interact with your interviewees, generate rapid insights, take detailed notes, quickly formulate new
questions, and read clues to respond to what isn’t being said. Successful interviews provide insights you can’t

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Problem Solved Cheryl Strauss Einhorn

develop on your own, confirm data and information you’ve already gathered, and give a deeper understanding
of how something works.

E = Exploitation
The fourth perspective that the AREA Method addresses is Exploitation, which allows you to focus inward, evalu-
ate your perspective, and challenge your assumptions and judgments. You can question your own thinking
using four exercises:

1. Competing alternative hypotheses (CAH). CAH forces you to systematically work through evidence and its im-
plications, give all hypotheses equal attention, and find key connections between data and hypotheses that
aren’t always obvious or intuitive. In CAH, it’s more important to focus on the negatives than the positives,
because the most probable hypothesis is usually the one with the least evidence against it.
2. Pro/con analysis. This exercise asks you to combine your different pieces of research into two arguments that
you can analyze. By looking at both views, you’ll develop a more complete understanding of the arguments
surrounding your research target.
3. Visual maps. These maps translate visual thinking onto paper by combining words and images. By referring
to this visual record of your thoughts, you can foster creativity, challenge your imagination, and spark dia-
logue with others.
4. Scenario analysis. This risk-assessment technique presents several alter- After gaining new
native future developments and key factors that could affect a decision.
A good scenario analysis reveals new elements you’ll need to consider,
insight and origi-
questions you’ll need to find answers for, important turning points that nal ideas through
may make the difference between outcomes, and ways your decision the four Exploitation
could be impacted by possible scenarios. exercises, you can
After gaining new insight and original ideas through the four Exploitation finally analyze all the
exercises, you can finally analyze all the perspectives you’ve researched. perspectives you’ve
researched.
A = Analysis
The fifth and final perspective addressed by the AREA Method is Analysis. After you’ve gathered data from a vari-
ety of perspectives and evaluated your understanding of the data, you can use the Analysis process to reconcile
your thesis statements into one thoughtful, well-researched, and confident decision. In this phase, consider the
following elements:

• Solvability. You must prevent up-front assumptions and judgments about what’s solvable. The goal of think-
ing about solvability is to avoid spending a lot of time on things you’re never going to figure out completely,
so if your decision is dependent on an unpredictable future event, use the past to determine a range of
probabilities.
• Mistakes. It’s easy to make a mistake in your analysis, but the power of discovering a mistake is that it gives
you something concrete and detailed to fix and allows you to advance your knowledge. Reduce mistakes
by making sure your data comes from at least three different sources, reviewing how data was selected, and
understanding how studies were designed and conducted.
• Pre-mortems. A pre-mortem is implemented before a decision is made so a process can be improved. You
must generate a list of all the probable reasons why your decision could fail, including reasons that are less
obvious or seem to have a low probability. Once all the possibilities have been recorded, look for ways to
strengthen your research in areas that demand it.
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Problem Solved Cheryl Strauss Einhorn

• Checklists. Checklists are an easy, low-tech tool to help guard against poor decisions. Avoiding mistakes that
you don’t already know are mistakes is difficult, but checklists are repeatable, easily understood, and can
help you avoid mistakes that you do know are mistakes.
By utilizing the AREA Method, you can take advantage of your ideas and make sound decisions about what to
do with them. Using the process can help you see past your biases, tap into your logical thinking, find the con-
fidence to act on your ideas, and move forward with conviction.

About the Author

Cheryl Strauss Einhorn, an award-winning investigative journalist, covers business, economic, and financial
news for publications including Barron’s, The Council on Foreign Relations, Pro Publica, Foreign Policy, and the New
York Times. As the founder of CSE Consulting, a strategic consulting practice, she applies her AREA Method—ini-
tially developed to promote better decision making in her journalism work—toward the success of businesses
and individuals. A Columbia University adjunct professor, Einhorn teaches her AREA Method at Columbia Busi-
ness School.

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