BASP5 LP4 Learner Guide v.2

Business Analysis Support Practice
NQF Level 5
Learner Guide
LP4: Manage an innovative environment

BASP NQF 5 LP 4 – Manage an innovative environment and team Page 1 of 207
and team Learner Guide

SAQA ID 252020: Create and manage an environment that promotes innovation
NQF Level 5, 6 Credits
SAQA ID 115835: Operate in a professional manner utilising trouble shooting
techniques while applying creative thinking processes
NQF Level 5, (3) Credits
SAQA ID 15234: Apply efficient time management to the work of a
department/division/section

Learner Guide
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
PROGRAMME OVERVIEW.................................................................................. 8
Programme entry level requirements ..................................................... 9
Programme Outcomes ........................................................................... 9
Assessment ......................................................................................... 11
Learning map (delivery structure) ..................................................... 13
Learner Support ................................................................................... 13
MODULE 1 INTRODUCTION TO CREATIVE THINKING AND PROBLEM
SOLVING TECHNIQUES............................................................................... 15
CREATIVE THINKING AND PROBLEM SOLVING TECHNIQUES ................................. 16
1.1 Creative thinking techniques ............................................................. 18
Creative thinking techniques and their application ............................... 19
Technique 1:Thought experiments .................................................... 24
Technique 2:Challenge facts ............................................................. 25
Technique 3Brainstorming ................................................................ 26
Technique 4: Mind maps ................................................................... 33
Other techniques: ................................................................................. 40
Idea cards ......................................................................................... 40
Six thinking hats................................................................................ 41
Systems thinking ............................................................................... 42
Class Activity 1: Creative thinking techniques ................................... 43
1.2 Problem solving techniques ............................................................... 44
Problem solving principles methods and techniques............................ 44
Problem Solving Techniques ................................................................ 45
Problem-solving steps....................................................................... 45
Technique 1:Problem Definition ........................................................ 50
Technique 2:Assumption Busting ...................................................... 52
Technique 3: Idea Generation ........................................................... 52
Technique 4:Consensus Mapping ..................................................... 52
Technique 5:Synectics ...................................................................... 54
Technique 6:Appreciation.................................................................. 55
Technique 7:Drill Down ..................................................................... 55
Technique 8:Cause and Effect diagrams .......................................... 57
Technique 9:SWOT ........................................................................... 60
Technique 10:Risk analysis............................................................... 63
Technique 11:Five Forces ................................................................. 65
Technique 12:PEST analysis ............................................................ 69
Class Activity 2: Problem solving techniques .................................... 72
MODULE 2 CREATE AND MANAGE AN ENVIRONMENT THAT
PROMOTES INNOVATION ........................................................................... 73
INNOVATION .................................................................................................. 74
ANALYSE OWN UNIT IN TERMS OF OPPORTUNITIES FOR INNOVATION .................... 77
2.1 Identify features of an environment that promotes innovation ........... 77
2.1.1 Features of a Culture of Enquiry and Risk-Taking ....................... 78
Impact of personal and organisational values on innovation and risk
taking ................................................................................................ 79
Learner Guide
Table of Contents
2.2 Analyse own unit in relation to the features of an environment

conducive to innovation ........................................................................... 81
Link between culture and innovation ................................................. 82
Innovative Behaviour............................................................................ 83
Innovation Processes........................................................................ 83
Product vs Process Innovation ......................................................... 83
2.3 Interpret the findings of the analysis to determine whether the current
environment promotes innovation ........................................................... 85
Always start with your research goals ............................................... 85
Basic analysis of "quantitative" information ....................................... 85
Basic analysis of "qualitative" information ......................................... 85
Interpreting information ..................................................................... 86
Contents of a Research Report -- An Example ................................. 86
2.4 Identify areas for improvement on the basis of the analysis conducted
................................................................................................................ 87
Class Activity 3: Analyse own unit in terms of opportunities for
innovation ......................................................................................... 90
DEVELOP A PLAN FOR CREATING AN ENVIRONMENT CONDUCIVE TO INNOVATION ... 91
2.5 Understand the techniques for promoting creativity .......................... 91
2.5.1 Creativity and Innovation Techniques .......................................... 92
2.6 Describe the role of the manager in innovation ................................. 93
2.6.1 Management Practices that Inhibit Creativity, Risk Taking and
Innovation ............................................................................................ 94
2.7 Plan to create an innovative environment.......................................... 96
2.7.1 Recording and communicating new ideas ................................... 96
2.7.2 Describe the Implementation of the Plan .................................... 97
2.7.3 Promote the Plan ........................................................................ 98
Class Activity 4: Develop a plan for creating an environment
conducive to innovation .................................................................... 98
LEAD A TEAM THROUGH A CREATIVE THINKING PROCESS .................................... 99
2.8 Apply Techniques for Promoting Innovation and Creativity ................ 99
Step 1: Identify the Problem ................................................................. 99
Step 2: Clearly Define the Problem ...................................................... 99
Step 3: Define the Options ................................................................. 100
Step 4: Identify possible solutions ...................................................... 101
Run a brainstorming session .......................................................... 101
Step 5: Select the Best Alternative Solution ....................................... 109
Step 6: Develop a Concept for Implementation .................................. 109
Step 7: Record the Concept and Communicate it for Implementation 110
Introduce elements of innovation in regular team meetings ............ 111
Class Activity 5: Lead a team through a creative thinking process . 112
MODULE 3 APPLY CREATIVE THINKING AND TROUBLESHOOTING
TECHNIQUES TO BUSINESS ADVISING PRACTICES (SMMES) ............ 113
APPLY CREATIVE THINKING TO BUSINESS ADVISING PRACTICES ........................ 114
Problem solving principles methods and techniques.......................... 115
3.1 Identify creative thinking concepts in line with purpose and set
objectives .............................................................................................. 116

Learner Guide
Table of Contents
3.2 Interpret creative thinking concepts and describe the implications for
SMME's ................................................................................................. 117
3.3 The effects which stimulate or frustrate creative thinking ................ 118
3.4 Processes for stimulating creative thinking...................................... 118
Class Activity 6: Explain and apply creative thinking to business
advising practices ........................................................................... 119
IDENTIFY AND UTILISE TROUBLE-SHOOTING TECHNIQUES ................................. 120
3.5 Trouble-shooting principles, methods and techniques ..................... 122
The Delphi Method ............................................................................. 123
The Nominal group process ............................................................... 124
Trouble-shooting tools ........................................................................... 125
Tools Part A: Identifying potential causes ........................................... 126
Pareto charts .................................................................................. 127
C&E Matrix...................................................................................... 129
Tools Part B: Confirming causal effects and results ........................... 130
Stratified data charts ....................................................................... 131
3.6 Assess conditions to use trouble-shooting techniques .................... 132
3.7 Identify problems to determine trouble-shooting requirements ........ 135
3.8 Select special trouble shooting-techniques according to SMME and
circumstance requirements ................................................................... 140
Business Goals and Objectives.......................................................... 141
Requirements [Stated] ....................................................................... 141
Business Need ................................................................................... 143
Assess Capability Gaps ..................................................................... 143
3.9 Develop a trouble-shooting plan that would address the root cause of
the problem ........................................................................................... 144
5 Whys ............................................................................................... 144
Cause-and-effect diagrams (fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams) ............ 145
Planning principles and practices and their application .................. 147
Planning Principles ......................................................................... 147
3.10 Implement the trouble-shooting plan according to the developed plan
.............................................................................................................. 148
3.11 Monitor, review and modify the implemented trouble-shooting
solutions ................................................................................................ 149
Class Activity 7: Identify and utilise trouble-shooting techniques to
business advising practices ............................................................ 150
MODULE 4 APPLY EFFICIENT TIME MANAGEMENT TO THE WORK OF A
DEPARTMENT ............................................................................................ 151
IDENTIFY TIME MANAGEMENT PROFILES ......................................................... 152
4.1 Time management techniques and processes ................................ 153
Self-management ............................................................................... 153
4.2 Weaknesses in current work processes .......................................... 161
4.3 The top time wasters that impact on the organisation's productivity 164
Plan to eliminate or manage time wasters in the team ................... 167
4.4 The external forces that affect time utilisation ................................. 168
Class Activity 8: Identify time management profiles ........................ 169
UNDERSTAND THE PRINCIPLES OF TIME MANAGEMENT .................................... 170
Benefits of Planning ........................................................................ 170
Learner Guide
Table of Contents
4.5 The 80/20 principle in identifying key tasks (The Pareto Principle) . 173
4.6 Delegation as a means of utilising time and human resources ........ 175
4.7 Prioritising........................................................................................ 177
Setting priorities for you and your team .............................................. 178
Using Task Typing to prioritise ............................................................ 178
4.8 The principle of balance between the various aspects of one's life . 179
Class Activity 9: Understand the principles of time management .... 180
DRAW UP TIME EFFICIENT WORK PLANS TO CARRY OUT DEPARTMENT / DIVISION
WORK FUNCTIONS ....................................................................................... 181
How to draw up a schedule ................................................................ 182
4.9 The organisation's objectives in terms of work to be done .............. 184
4.10 The objectives are translated into work plans ................................ 185
Setting SMART Goals ........................................................................ 185
Goals vs. Results ............................................................................ 186
Aligning, Anchoring and Linking your Goals ....................................... 187
Translate the objectives into work plans............................................. 187
4.11 The key activities required to complete a specific project .............. 189
Organising the tasks .......................................................................... 189
4.12 Identify persons to whom tasks can be delegated ......................... 190
The Steps of Successful Delegation .................................................. 191
4.13 Plan to eliminate and/or manage time wasters .............................. 192
4.14 Prioritise tasks in terms of urgency and importance ...................... 193
Using the Urgency / Importance Grid to prioritise ........................... 193
Use Common Sense ....................................................................... 194
Rule Breakers ................................................................................. 194
Class Activity 10: Draw up time efficient work plans to carry out
department/division work functions ................................................. 194
IMPLEMENT TIME EFFICIENT WORK PLANS ...................................................... 195
4.15 Use delegation correctly ................................................................ 196
4.16 Take proactive measures............................................................... 196
Control paper flow .............................................................................. 196
4.17 Inform all involved of their roles, duties and functions ................... 201
4.18 Monitor progress with work plans and make amendments where
necessary .............................................................................................. 202
Class Activity 11: Implement time efficient work plans .................... 203
Reflection ........................................................................................ 203
Facilitator Observation Checklist .................................................... 203
SUMMATIVE ASSESSMENT ............................................................................ 205
Knowledge Questions ..................................................................... 205
Practical Activities ........................................................................... 205
Summative Project .......................................................................... 205
Logbook .......................................................................................... 205
REFERENCES AND FURTHER READING .......................................................... 207

Learner Guide
Table of Contents

Learner Guide
Programme overview
Programme Overview
Welcome to this learning programme that will lead you to greater understanding
of:
• creating and managing an environment that promotes innovation
• operating in a professional manner utilising trouble shooting techniques
while applying creative thinking processes
• applying efficient time management to the work of a department / division
/ section
As you work your way through the learning programme you will gain
competence against the following Unit Standard:
Programme LP4: Manage an innovative environment and team

SAQA ID 252020: Create and manage an environment that
promotes innovation
SAQA ID 115835: Operate in a professional manner utilising
Unit trouble shooting techniques while applying creative thinking
Standards processes
NQF Level 5, (3) Credits
SAQA ID 15234: Apply efficient time management to the
work of a department/division/section; NQF Level 5, 4
Credits
This learning programme is intended for all persons who need to:
• create and manage an environment that promotes innovation. This Unit
Standard is intended for managers in all economic sectors. These
managers would typically be second level managers such as heads of
department, section heads or divisional heads, who may have more than
one team reporting to them.
• operate in a professional manner utilising trouble shooting techniques
while applying creative thinking processes. People credited with this unit
standard are able to behave in a professional manner and discuss the
significance of a professional approach for business advisors. They will
also be able to use thinking processes that show a creative streak. The
learner will also be in a position to use trouble-shooting techniques when
dealing with clients in a business advising capacity
• apply efficient time management to the work of a department / division /
section. This unit standard is designed for executives involved in
Leadership and the management of teams, and focuses on translating
strategic intent into effective daily action. Competence against this
standard will ensure that teams are effectively managed and that
managers can translate strategy into action

Learner Guide
Programme overview
Programme entry level requirements

It is assumed that people learning towards this Unit Standard are already
competent in:
• Communication at NQF Level 4
• Mathematical Literacy at NQF Level 4
• Computer Literacy at NQF Level 4
• Accountancy and Communications at NQF level 4 or its equivalent
Programme Outcomes
This learning programme is outcomes-based which means we take the
responsibility of learning away from the facilitator and place it in your hands.
Learning will begin in the workshop where you will identify the skills and
knowledge you require in order to meet the specific outcomes and assessment
criteria contained in the unit standard.
In this learning programme, we will be covering the following learning
outcomes:
Module 1: Module 2:
Introduction to Creative Thinking Create and manage an
and Problem Solving techniques environment that promotes
innovation
• Understand and apply various • Analyse own unit in terms of
creative thinking techniques opportunities for innovation
• Understand and apply various • Demonstrate understanding of the
problem solving techniques techniques for promoting
creativity
• Develop a plan for creating an
environment conducive to
innovation
• Lead a team through a creative
thinking process

Learner Guide
Programme overview
Module 3: Module 4:
Apply creative thinking and Apply efficient time management
troubleshooting techniques to to the work of a department
business advising practices
(SMMEs)
• Apply creative thinking • Identify time management
techniques to business advising profiles
practices • Understand the principles of time
• Apply troubleshooting techniques management
to business advising practices • Draw up time efficient work plans
to carry out work functions
• Implement time efficient work
plans
During the workshop you will complete a number of class activities that will form
part of your formative assessment. In this you have the opportunity to practice
and explore your new skills in a safe environment. You should take the
opportunity to gather as much information as you can to use during your
workplace learning and self-study.
The workshop will be followed by summative assessment tasks to be completed
through self-study in your workplace. In some cases, you may be required to
do research and complete the tasks in your own time.

Learner Guide
Programme overview
Assessment
It is important to note that the onus is on you, as the learner, to prove your
competence. You therefore need to plan your time and ensure that your
Portfolio of Evidence is kept up to date and handed in timeously.
A Portfolio of Evidence is a collection of documents of work you have produced
to prove your competence. You will compile your portfolio from activities, tools
and checklists associated with the unit standard and relevant to the unit
standard being assessed.
You will be given the following documents to assist you in creating a portfolio of
evidence:
• Learner Guide: The Learner Guide is designed to serve as a guide for
the duration of your learning programme and as the main source
document for transfer of learning. It contains information (knowledge
and skills required) and application aids that will assist you in developing
the knowledge and skills stipulated in the specific outcomes and
assessment criteria. The learner guide also indicates the formative
assessment class activities that you need to complete towards your
Portfolio of Evidence.
• Learner Workbook: The learner Workbook contains all the class
activities that you will be completing to show formative learning. These
will be assessed as part of your portfolio of evidence as formative
assessment. You will be handing in the Learner Workbook as part of
your Portfolio of Evidence.
• Learner Portfolio of Evidence Guide: The Learner Portfolio of
Evidence Guide provides details about the assessment, such as the
assessment preparation, plan and specific summative assessment
activities that you need to complete in the workplace.
Both formative and summative assessment is used as part of this outcomes-
based learning programme:
• Formative Assessment: In order to gain credits for this Unit Standard
you will need to prove to an assessor that you are competent. The Class
Activities throughout your Learner Workbook are designed not only to
help you learn new skills, but also to prove that you have mastered
competence. You will be required to develop a Portfolio of Evidence to
hand in to an assessor so that you can be assessed against the
outcomes of this Unit Standard. Where you encounter a Class Activity
icon, you must complete the formative assessment activity in the Learner
Workbook. Comprehensive guidelines for the development of your
Portfolio of Evidence may be found in the Learner Portfolio of Evidence
Guide for the particular learning programme that you are working with.

Learner Guide
Programme overview
• Summative Assessment: The NQF’s objective is to create

independent and self-sufficient learners. This means that you will also
be required to do independent research and assignments, such as
Knowledge Questions, Practical Activity (completed in the workplace),
Summative Project and Logbook.
The assessment process is discussed in detail in the Learner Portfolio
of Evidence Guide. When you are ready, you will advise your mentor
that you are ready for assessment. He or she will then sign off the
required sections in the Learner Portfolio of Evidence Guide and you will
be able to submit your Portfolio of Evidence for assessment. The
summative assessment activities placed in the Learner Portfolio of
Evidence Guide for your convenience. If any of your assessment is
conducted using observation, role plays or verbal assessment, place a
signed copy of the checklists, once completed by your mentor or line
manager in your Learner Portfolio of Evidence Guide, as indicated.
The Training Provider will assess your portfolio. If successful, you will receive
the credit value of this learning programme. The entire assessment process is
explained in the Learner Portfolio of Evidence Guide and you are urged to read
this guide as soon as possible as it explains the assessment process in detail
and clarifies your rights and responsibilities to ensure that the assessment is
fair, valid and reliable.
If you are not successful, you will receive all the guidance needed to resubmit
your Portfolio of Evidence within a specific time period, as per the Training
Provider requirements.

Learner Guide
Programme overview
Learning map (delivery structure)

Formative Assessment Summative
Assessment
30% Assessment70%
Summative
Contact Learning assessment in
Theory input PoE:
Learning
Formative Prescribed Learning and knowledge
activities assessment reading, application questions,
(workbook support, at the practical
for 130 hours
activities): coaching workplace workplace
of notional group activities, activity,
simulations summative
learning
project, logbook
35 hours 4 hours 67 hours 24 hours
   
Portfolio of
Compilation of Portfolio of Evidence
Evidence
Complementary workplace Coaching and Mentoring; Performance
practices Management
Learner Support
Please remember that as the programme is outcomes based – this implies the
following:
• You are responsible for your own learning – make sure you manage your
study, practical, workplace and portfolio time responsibly.
• Learning activities are learner driven – make sure you use the Learner
Guide, Learner Workbook and Learner Portfolio of Evidence Guide in the
manner intended, and are familiar with the Portfolio requirements.
• The Facilitator is there to reasonably assist you during contact, practical
and workplace time of this programme – make sure that you have his/her
contact details.

Learner Guide
Programme overview

Learner Guide
Module 1
Module 1
Introduction to Creative Thinking and
Problem Solving techniques
After completing this module, the learner will be able to analyse own unit in
terms of opportunities for innovation, by successfully completing the following:
• Understand and apply various creative thinking techniques

• Understand and apply various problem solving techniques

Learner Guide
Module 1
Creative thinking and problem solving techniques

Problem solving requires two distinct types of mental skill, analytical and
creative.
Analytical or logical thinking includes skills such as ordering, comparing,
contrasting, evaluating and selecting. It provides a logical framework for
problem solving and helps to select the best alternative from those available by
narrowing down the range of possibilities (a convergent process).. Analytical
thinking often predominates in solving closed problems, where the many
possible causes have to be identified and analysed to find the real cause.
Creative thinking is a divergent
process, using the imagination to
create a large range of ideas for
solutions. It requires us to look beyond
the obvious, creating ideas which may,
at first, seem unrealistic or have no
logical connection with the problem.
There is a large element of creative
thinking in solving open problems.
The creative thinking skills can be
divided into several key elements:
• fluency - producing many ideas
• flexibility - producing a broad
range of ideas
• originality - producing
uncommon ideas
• elaboration - developing ideas
Effective problem solving requires a
controlled mixture of analytical and
creative thinking.
Research has shown that, in general
terms, each side or hemisphere of the
brain is specialised to serve one of these groups of skills. The degree of
specialisation of each hemisphere varies from person to person, but it has given
rise to the terms right-brain thinking and left-brain thinking. Left-brain thinking
is more logical and analytical, and is predominantly verbal. Right-brain thinking
is more holistic and is concerned with feelings and impressionistic
relationships.1
1
Source: http://www.tuition.com.hk/the-skills-of-problem-solving.htm
Learner Guide
Module 1
To be a good problem solver you need to be able to switch from one group of
skills to the other and back again, although this is not always easy. Traditional
education gives far greater encouragement to the development and use of left-
brain thinking. This is reinforced in the way we are required to work, where
emphasis is placed on rational, logical analysis of data in drawing conclusions.
Some other terms which are often used in discussions of creativity include:
• Intuition - the ability to draw conclusions based on impressions and
feelings rather than hard facts. It is a characteristic of right-brain thinking
and some people rely on it more than others.
• Incubation - the period between stopping conscious work on a problem
and the time when we become aware of a solution or part solution.
People struggling with problems often suddenly become aware of a
solution after a period of incubation, during which the mind is occupied
by other things.
• Invention - the creation of new, meaningful ideas or concepts.
• Innovation - putting new ideas or concepts to a practical use, as in the
development of a new product or service.

Learner Guide
Module 1
1.1 Creative thinking techniques (also see LP6 Mod5)

Much of the thinking done in formal education emphasizes the skills of analysis-
-teaching students how to understand claims, follow or create a logical
argument, figure out the answer, eliminate the incorrect paths and focus on the
correct one. However, there is another kind of thinking, one that focuses on
exploring ideas, generating possibilities, looking for many right answers rather
than just one. Both of these kinds of thinking are vital to a successful working
life, yet the latter one tends to be ignored until after college. We might
differentiate these two kinds of thinking like this2:
Critical Thinking Creative Thinking
analytic generative
convergent divergent
vertical lateral
probability possibility
judgment suspended judgment
focused diffuse
objective subjective
answer an answer
left brain right brain
verbal visual
linear associative
reasoning richness, novelty
yes but yes and
In an activity like problem solving, both kinds of thinking are important to us.
First, we must analyse the problem; then we must generate possible solutions;
next we must choose and implement the best solution; and finally, we must
evaluate the effectiveness of the solution. As you can see, this process reveals
an alternation between the two kinds of thinking, critical and creative. In
practice, both kinds of thinking operate together much of the time and are not
really independent of each other.
2
Source: http://www.virtualsalt.com/crebook1.htm
Learner Guide
Module 1
What is Creativity?
• An Ability. A simple definition is that creativity is the ability to imagine or
invent something new. As we will see below, creativity is not the ability to
create out of nothing (only God can do that), but the ability to generate
new ideas by combining, changing, or reapplying existing ideas. Some
creative ideas are astonishing and brilliant, while others are just simple,
good, practical ideas that no one seems to have thought of yet.
Believe it or not, everyone has substantial creative ability. Just look at
how creative children are. In adults, creativity has too often been
suppressed through education, but it is still there and can be
reawakened. Often all that's needed to be creative is to make a
commitment to creativity and to take the time for it.
• An Attitude. Creativity is also an attitude: the ability to accept change
and newness, a willingness to play with ideas and possibilities, a
flexibility of outlook, the habit of enjoying the good, while looking for ways
to improve it. We are socialized into accepting only a small number of
permitted or normal things, like chocolate-covered strawberries, for
example. The creative person realizes that there are other possibilities,
like peanut butter and banana sandwiches, or chocolate-covered
prunes.
• A Process. Creative people work hard and continually to improve ideas
and solutions, by making gradual alterations and refinements to their
works. Contrary to the mythology surrounding creativity, very, very few
works of creative excellence are produced with a single stroke of
brilliance or in a frenzy of rapid activity. Much closer to the real truth are
the stories of companies who had to take the invention away from the
inventor in order to market it because the inventor would have kept on
tweaking it and fiddling with it, always trying to make it a little better.
The creative person knows that there is always room for improvement.
Creative thinking techniques and their application

As we have seen before, the difference between logical and creative thinking
“…Thinking is a skill that can be learned, practised, and developed. But you
have to want to develop that skill. You need to learn how to ride a bicycle or
drive a car…”
Edward de Bono

Learner Guide
Module 1
Programmed, logical or convergent thinking recognises that our brains are

pattern-recognition systems, and that they do not function like computers. It
takes years of training before we learn to do simple arithmetic - something that
computers do very easily. On the other hand, we can instantly recognise
patterns such as faces, language and handwriting. The only computers that
begin to be able to do these things do it by modelling the way that human brain
cells work. Even then, computers will need to become more powerful before
they approach our ability to handle patterns.
The benefit of good pattern recognition is that we can recognise objects and
situations very quickly.
Imagine how much time would be wasted if you had to do a full analysis every
time you came across a cylindrical canister of effervescent fluid. Most people
would just open their can of cold drink. Without pattern recognition we would
starve or be eaten. We could not cross the road safely.
Unfortunately, we get stuck in our patterns. We tend to think within them.
Solutions we develop are based on previous solutions to similar problems.
Normally it does not occur to us to use solutions belonging to other patterns.
When we are faced with a familiar problem, logical thinking enables us to tap
into our personal experiences and find a suitable solution with the minimum of
effort.
By assessing a situation against your relevant experience, you can choose the
most appropriate path, and move towards a solution. This logical approach is
very efficient.
However, it can become a barrier when you have little relevant experience;
when there is more than one potential solution, or when you need a brand new
solution.
A person who is able to work outside the boundaries of his / her experiences,
will be more successful in the long run.
We use lateral, creative or divergent thinking techniques to break out of this
patterned way of thinking.
Creative thinking is the process which we use when we come up with a new
idea. It is the merging of ideas which have not been merged before. This
creative thinking process can be accidental or deliberate.
Without using special techniques creative thinking does still occur, but usually
in the accidental way; like a chance happening making you think about
something in a different way and you then discovering a beneficial change.
Other changes happen slowly through pure use of intelligence and logical
progression. When using this accidental or logical progression process, it often
takes a long time for products to develop and improve. In an accelerating and
competitive world this is obviously disadvantageous.
Using special techniques, deliberate creative thinking can be used to develop
new ideas. These techniques force the merging of a wide range of ideas to
spark off new thoughts and processes.

Learner Guide
Module 1
Developments of products occur much more rapidly using these deliberate

techniques than by accident. Many people known for being creative use these
techniques, but are not aware they are doing so because they have not been
formally trained in them. Lateral thinking techniques help us to come up with
startling, brilliant and original solutions to problems and opportunities.
Each type of approach has its strength. Logical, disciplined thinking is

enormously effective in making products and services better. It can, however,
only go so far before all practical improvements have been carried out. Lateral
thinking can generate completely new concepts and ideas, and brilliant
improvements to existing systems. In the wrong place, however, it can be sterile
or unnecessarily disruptive.
Divergent or creative thinking involves opening up your mind to find new

solutions and new ways of doing things. Instead of taking your usual, logical
approach to a problem, you can learn to suspend your judgment and look for
different, more inventive solutions. Once you have generated as many ideas as
possible in this way, use a logical thinking process to refine your ideas and
identify the best solution to the problem.
With practice, ongoing creative thinking (the continuous investigation,
questioning and analysis that develops through education, training and self-
awareness) occurs all the time. Ongoing creativity maximises both accidental
and deliberate creative thinking. Ongoing creativity takes time and deliberate
practice to become skilful, but it's surprising how quickly it becomes an attitude,
not a technique.
The first step to take is to learn the creative thinking techniques so that you can
deliberately use them to come up with new ideas. You should then practise the
techniques to increase your skill at ongoing creative thinking. (After a while you
may even find it unnecessary to use specific techniques because you may be
having too many ideas anyway.)
Creative thinking techniques work to stimulate original ideas. New ideas
happen when two or more ideas are accidentally or deliberately merged when
they have never been merged before. Creative thinking techniques provide the
method for deliberately combining ideas in ways which you would not normally
come across or think about. This combination generates a truly original idea for
you.
The creative thinking process looks like this3:
3
Retrieved from www.brainstorming.co.uk
Learner Guide
Module 1
Creative thinking is all about merging two previously unrelated or unmerged

thoughts, products or processes.
In practice, of course, it can be very difficult to find the ideas to merge, and then
to develop that new idea into a workable solution.
Processes for extracting ideas from a stimulus
Extract a concept or principle from the stimulus and reuse it

• How does it work?
• What does it achieve?
• How does it achieve it?
• What does the stimulus do?
• In what order does it work?
• Who is involved and why?
Extract a feature from the stimulus and reuse it
• What are its physical attributes?
• Why is it that shape?
• What process is involved and why?
• Who is crucial to its success?
• What is the timing of events?
Extract a positive attribute from the stimulus and try to replicate it
• What is good about the stimulus?
• Why is the stimulus good at what it does?
• How does it succeed?
• In what situations does it work best?

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Extract the differences between the stimulus and the current solution
• How do the stimulus and the current solution achieve the same thing,
but in a different way?
• Why does the stimulus do something one way and the current solution
another?
• What is the difference in physical characteristics?
• What is the difference in process?
• In what way are they used differently?
Merge the stimulus and problem and then reapply the processes of extraction
on the mixture. After you have exhausted extracting the initial ideas from the
stimulus itself, you should merge the stimulus into the current situation and use
the same idea extraction principles described above to the new mixed product.
Remember, this involves using your imagination - which is a lot cheaper than
physical experimentation - and that you're only using it to stimulate new ideas;
it does not matter if the intermediate ideas don't work.
• Physically include the stimulus in the current situation and see what
happens
• Force yourself to use the stimulus as a solution (and extract the ideas
this creates).
• Mix the stimulus with the current object/method and extract the good
ideas from it (and extract the ideas this creates ...)
• Imagine what would happen if you followed the process involved with the
stimulus within your current process.
• Examine what happens on a frame-by-frame basis and examine the
benefits at each frame. Is there a benefit at one time and not at another?
• Under what circumstances is the merged solution useful? (A different
time, place, culture, market, ...)
• Physically include part of the stimulus in the current situation and see
what happens
Take a part of the stimulus (e.g. a feature, a process, a physical section, a

person involved) and place that into the current problem situation and examine
what happens. Start extracting the principles and ideas as before. Look at the
intermediate idea on a frame-by-frame basis and examine under what
circumstances the idea would be useful and generally find some beneficial
ideas you can reuse and reapply.

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When the stimulus is a question, do the following:

• Answer the question directly without embarrassment or inhibition.
• Answer the question in as many different ways that you can. Most
questions have many answers.
• Answer the question from a variety of different points of view. Give
answers from radically opposing views.
• Answer the principles behind why the question was asked. See the
question as asking many things.
• Answer the question both broadly and in great detail. Summarise and
expand on your answers. Answer the larger question too.
By following the above guidelines with each thinking technique, you should be
able to extract ideas from every stimulus you are given. You will never be stuck
for a new idea if you apply the above guidelines and use the creative thinking
techniques we are going to study next to supply you with fresh and original
stimuli.
We are going to look at a few of the most common creative thinking techniques:
Technique 1: Thought experiments

"We don't see things as they are; we see them as we are."
Thought experiments are highly-structured hypothetical questions that employ
“What if?” scenarios
Thought experiments are designed to:

• Help us understand the way we think through reflection on the process
• Identify flaws in the way we have been educated
• Help us find the right question. For example, it does not matter what the
bird on the roof is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it
beautiful?
• Show how all things are subject to interpretation
• Show how to look at the same thing as everyone else and see something
different
• Encourage different ways of thinking
• Encourage flexibility in thought
• Challenge cognitive bias that limits a person to using an object only in
the way is traditionally used
• Promote thinking beyond the boundaries of already established fact

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Example: Matchstick problem

Correct the following equation by only moving one matchstick:
IV = III – I
Technique 2: Challenge facts

How many facts are really facts and how many are just the most reasonable,
educated guess based upon the knowledge known at the time?
It is very rare that anything remains an undeniable fact for too long, especially
when you consider people's views and differently acquired knowledge. We are
in a constant state of change. We think differently as we gain knowledge and
skills in thinking.
From one generation to the next we have different aims, ambitions and morals.
What might be seen as a good thing by one generation could be seen as a bad
thing by the next. Political parties change their views, as do their voters. Due to
personal circumstances, individuals can change their whole philosophy of life
within months.
Technology and other inventions now change the world faster than most people
can keep up. What seemed impossible one week can become plausible the
next, reality within months and an accepted way of life in a year or two. This is
not really surprising when you consider the combined, diverse thought power
of billions of people spread across the globe.
How do you know that what you considered to be a fact in the past has now
become inappropriate due to changes which have happened since then? Might
you now be able to improve your current product because of a change in human
values or lifestyles?
The way to answer these questions is to challenge the facts. You are not saying
that the facts are wrong but you are investigating what might happen if that fact
were not true.
It is important not to see this technique as a way of proving someone wrong or
inaccurate. Everyone does what they think to be right at the time and based
upon the knowledge they have at that time.
If you now have more information or the world has changed in some way, this
does not put any blame on the person who had the original idea or on someone
who could not solve the problem.
Just as you must be considerate towards the people whose facts you are
challenging, you should acknowledge that the world will probably develop a
better way of doing what you are doing now. This does not reflect on your ability;
it merely reflects the way in which the world develops.
At one time all the available evidence gave rise to the fact that the sun went
round the world. If no one had challenged this fact, then we might still believe
it.
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Even Einstein's theory of relativity has been modified to take into account
effects which were not possible for him to contemplate because technology at
the time could not do what it does now.
The Challenge Facts technique asks you to consider what you think are facts
and investigate what differences and advantages it would make if they were not
facts.
You could try to imagine what would be the case if the fact were totally wrong.
Or you could try to modify the fact and see whether that now fits into the current
situation better than the original one. Or is the world likely to change so that the
modified fact will fit in better in the future? If so, what new ideas does this future
world suggest? If you find that your new consideration blatantly doesn't fit, then
consider what advantages this hypothetical situation might have and how you
might be able to incorporate them into your current solution.
You are using the challenge of a fact as a stimulus for new ideas, nothing else.
First list the facts, then write a statement which challenges that fact, then use
that challenge to develop new ideas.
Example:
Fact: Companies pay employees for their time.
Challenge of the fact: Employees pay their company for the use of its facilities.
New idea based on challenging the fact:
Each employee receives a percentage of the profits based on his/her position
within the company and the amount of time and contributions spent on its
products or services. Out of this amount is taken the amount of money related
to that employee's use of the facilities. In this way the employee is directly
affected by the quality of the product or service and is more motivated to
improve it. Also, the employees are directly affected by the amount of money
they use in the course of their work. It could also mean that employees are free
to live their own life and work the way they want to work.
Technique 3 Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a form of creative thinking: it works by merging someone else's
ideas with your own to create a new one. You are using the ideas of others as
a stimulus for your own.
Brainstorming is an excellent way of developing many creative solutions to a
problem. It works by focusing on a problem, and then coming up with very many
radical solutions to it. Ideas should deliberately be as broad and odd as
possible, and should be developed as fast as possible. Brainstorming is a lateral
thinking process. It is designed to help you break out of your thinking patterns
into new ways of looking at things.

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Rules of Brainstorming4
Rule 1: Postpone and withhold your judgment of ideas
Do not pass judgment on ideas until the completion of the brainstorming
session. Do not suggest that an idea won't work or that it has negative side-
effects. All ideas are potentially good so don't judge them until afterwards. At
this stage, avoid discussing the ideas at all, as this will inevitably involve either
criticising or complimenting them.
Ideas should be put forward both as solutions and also as a basis to spark off
solutions. Even seemingly foolish ideas can spark off better ones. Therefore,
do not judge the ideas until after the brainstorming process. Note down all
ideas. There is no such thing as a bad idea.
The evaluation of ideas takes up valuable brain power which should be devoted
to the creation of ideas. Maximise your brainstorming session by only spending
time generating new ideas.
Rule 2: Encourage wild and exaggerated ideas

The 'wilder' the idea is, the better. Shout out bizarre and unworkable ideas to
see what they spark off. No idea is too ridiculous. State any outlandish ideas.
Exaggerate ideas to the extreme.
Rule 3: Quantity counts at this stage, not quality

Go for quantity of ideas at this point; narrow down the list later. All activities
should be geared towards extracting as many ideas as possible in a given
period.
The more creative ideas a person or a group has to choose from, the better. If
the number of ideas at the end of the session is very large, there is a greater
chance of finding a really good idea.
Keep each idea short, do not describe it in detail - just capture its essence. Brief
clarifications can be requested. Think fast, reflect later.
Rule 4: Build on the ideas put forward by others
Build and expand on the ideas of others. Try and add extra thoughts to each
idea. Use other people's ideas as inspiration for your own. Creative people are
also good listeners. Combine several of the suggested ideas to explore new
possibilities.
It's just as valuable to be able to adapt and improve other people's ideas as it
is to generate the initial idea that sets off new trains of thought.
Rule 5: Every person and every idea has equal worth

Every person has a valid viewpoint and a unique perspective on the situation
and solution. In a brainstorming session you can always put forward ideas
4
These rules were created by http://www.brainstorming.co.uk/. Please visit http://www.brainstorming.co.uk/, internet
and computer resources for creativity and brainstorming.
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purely to spark off other people and not just as a final solution. Encourage
participation from everyone.
Each idea presented belongs to the group, not to the person who said it. It is
the group's responsibility and an indication of its ability to brainstorm if all
participants feel able to contribute freely and confidently.
Principles behind brainstorming5

The fear of making mistakes
In nature, mistakes can mean dying, injury or being eaten by predators. In the
human jungle, mistakes usually lead to mental pain rather than physical pain.
Some people fear that their whole existence is at risk if they say the wrong
words in front of their manager. The fear of making mistakes at work can be the
greatest fear of all because it can lead to the destruction of an individual's vision
of his/her future. Some people see the smallest of mistakes at work leading to
lack of promotion, reduced salary, and even unemployment - and all of the
social problems associated with this. They see their family and social life held
together by the fact that they are working and earning money. And now you put
these people in a room and tell them to put forward crazy ideas which may not
work!
Everyone has thousands of good ideas within them just waiting to come out.
Even if you don't know what yours are, you will have them and those ideas will
help improve the world. The problem is creating an environment where those
ideas can come out without feeling the fear of making mistakes. This
environment is the brainstorming environment. This is a situation where the
group has actively decided not to judge anyone by what they put forward. Here,
making "mistakes" and putting forward ideas which don't work is not only
acceptable but is actually encouraged. Your ideas are never criticised and never
judged. Your ideas can never be a mistake because they can be used either as
a solution or as a stimulus for others.
Brainstorming is designed to remove, or at least reduce, the fear of making
mistakes. The professionalism and attitude of the participants is the key to how
much inhibitions are reduced. This is why sticking strictly to the rules, coupled
with good training and a good facilitator, are so important.
The fear of the manager
Now, imagine you are with your manager and your manager's manager in a
room for a normal business meeting. They ask you for your ideas on how well
your department is run and how they should change their management style.
Some of us do actually have managers whom we can approach with confidence
and who are actually pleased when we tell them. However, in most situations
this is highly awkward and many of your true ideas will be kept to yourself,
however valid and valuable they are.
5
Retrieved from: www.brainstorming.co.uk
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This is because of the fear of making suggestions which challenge those people
who can affect your personal future. There are many situations where valuable
ideas are not put forward because of fear of "the manager", such as:
• Job interviews
• Sales presentations
• Press releases
• Government strategy meetings open to the public
We need to create a special situation where the participants do not feel that
their actions will harm them when they put forward ideas which challenge the
views and feelings of those in authority. Brainstorming sessions are ideal for
this as good managers realise that they can get valuable feedback and
suggestions which they would not normally get. If you really want to improve
yourself as a manager and get good quality feedback, try a brainstorming
session on company improvement, but be very careful not to criticise at any
point and remember to thank anyone for their ideas which were frightening to
say. Your staff will reduce their fear of you if you join in actively and purposefully
help to start the session by putting forward ridiculous ideas, however
challenging this is to you personally!
Principles relating to Rule 1: Withholding judgment

• Ideas which initially seem like they won't work can sometimes have
enormous benefits when modified.
• You will reduce the inhibitions in others.
• You will encourage others to give you the freedom to share your own
ideas.
• Original ideas are more likely to surface.
• Ideas which stimulate good solutions are more likely to be shared.
• The generation of new ideas is maximised because no brain power is
used on evaluation.
Principles relating to Rule 2: Encourage wild and exaggerated ideas
• It's easier to tame wild ideas into a valid solution than it is to boost normal
ideas into an original solution.
• Ideas which stimulate good solutions are more likely to be shared.
• Wild ideas are better at stimulating new thought patterns.
• Original ideas are encouraged by such actions.
• A loss of inhibitions is more likely.

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Principles relating to Rule 3: Quantity counts at this stage, not quality

• It's easier to pick out good ideas from a large list than a small list. Idea
evaluation is often easier than idea generation, so give yourself lots of
ideas to analyse later.
• It's easier to create a good idea from combining lots of little ideas.
• A fast output of ideas reduces the likelihood of evaluation and so helps
a loss of inhibitions.
• People get more absorbed by the process and think more freely.
• Quantity, in this case, brings quality.
• The focus on each idea is minimal at this stage and so participants feel
less pressure on each idea.
Principles relating to Rule 4: Build on the ideas put forward by others
• Every idea put forward has a principle or concept that will be useful.
• Wild ideas can be turned into valid solutions.
• You encourage others to put forward stimulating ideas by using those
ideas.
• You build freedom for yourself when you put forward stimulating ideas.
• It's often easier to adapt someone else's idea than to generate a
completely original one.
Principles relating to Rule 5: Every person and every idea has equal worth
• You will get solutions from a wider range of people.
• The breadth of ideas will cover different personality types.
• You will encourage others to listen to your own ideas.
• Every idea has equal worth as a stimulus.
• You will know that you have created a healthy brainstorming environment
if everyone feels confident to contribute
While there are risks involved in the early stages of establishing brainstorming
sessions, the overall benefits are enormous and with a little preparation and
thought you can run brainstorming sessions which will improve your own and
your organisation's prospects in both the short and long term.
Brainstorming is a well-established technique for generating new ideas and
solutions. However, it still has some faults. Brainstorming is supposed to allow
people to ignore their natural inhibitions; but, in reality, this is often difficult to
do. It is also very hard for people naturally to think in new directions without
assistance.

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Brainstorming by yourself without the need for a group

You will be pleased to learn that you can brainstorm effectively by yourself
without the need for a group. This means that you can hold a brainstorming
session absolutely any time - and as many times as you want - with no money,
time or difficulty spent organising a group of people.
In fact, many individuals find that they can be more creative on their own rather
than as part of a traditional brainstorming group.
Times when you may want to brainstorm by yourself
• You work by yourself
• You work for yourself and are self-employed
• There is no one available for a group session
• The people around you do not like brainstorming sessions
• The people around you will not follow the brainstorming rules
• It is too time-consuming or expensive for you to hold a group
brainstorming session
• You want to take credit for the ideas all by yourself
• The problem is too small to justify gathering a large group of people
• You work in an uncreative or very critical organisation
How to brainstorm by yourself

• Use creative thinking techniques to start off your approach from a
different angle
• Spark off new ideas by getting stimuli from books, pictures, websites,
etc. instead of relying on other people
• Challenge your current ways of thinking
• Think of all possibilities
• When you get stuck for an idea, instantly move on to a next stimulus
If you use a structured problem-solving approach to generate and analyse new
ideas, you will be at a great advantage over people who do not think that they
can be creative by themselves. It is possible to be more creative by yourself
using creative techniques than you might be in a group of people in a badly-run
brainstorming session.

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Possible problems with Brainstorming

• You don't have the time or resources for a group session
• People don't lose their inhibitions
• The session doesn't flow naturally and people feel uncomfortable
• People constantly struggle to think in new ways
• You need a group of people to do it and cannot do it by yourself
• There are too many awkward periods of silence and discomfort
• The sessions are dominated by one or two people
• Some people do not contribute
• The facilitator needs to give constant encouragement to the participants
• The same ideas are repeated again and again
• No successful outcome or solution is reached
Possible causes of the problems:
• Many people are uncomfortable in the brainstorming environment
• People do not believe they can be creative
• Authority is accidentally used which makes people feel scared of their
actions
• No real objectives are set
• Participants do not know how to think creatively
• Participants do not use creative thinking techniques
• A poor mixture of participants is present
• Different personality types need different brainstorming styles
• None or not enough training has been given
• Not enough guidance and encouragement is given by the facilitator
• No warm-up exercise was used
• The brainstorming environment is hostile to creativity
• People are not using other people's ideas to stimulate their own

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Technique 4: Mind maps

For the last few hundred years it has been popularly thought that man's mind
worked in a linear or list-like manner, a falsehood based on speech and print.
In speech we are restricted by the nature of time and space to communicating
one word at a time.
Recent evidence shows the brain to be far more multi-dimensional and pattern
making, suggesting that in the speech /print arguments there must be
fundamental flaws.
How does the brain which is speaking, and the brain which is receiving the
words deal with them internally? Although a single stream of words is being
processed, a continuing and enormously complex process of sorting and
selecting is taking place in your mind during a conversation, reading a book, or
listening to a lecture.
A linear presentation is not necessary for understanding and in many cases is
a disadvantage. Your mind is perfectly capable of taking in information which is
non-linear.
Therefore, the human brain is very different from a computer. Whereas a
computer works in a linear fashion, the brain works associatively as well as
linearly - comparing, integrating and synthesising as it goes.
Association plays a dominant role in nearly every mental function, and words
themselves are no exception. Every single word and idea has numerous links
attaching them to other ideas and concepts.
Mind Maps™, developed by Tony Buzan, are an effective method of note-
taking, as they help organise information, and are useful for the generation of
ideas by association.
Because of the large amount of association involved, they can be very creative,
tending to generate new ideas and associations that have not been thought of
before. Every item in a map is in effect, a centre of another map.
The creative potential of a mind map is useful in brainstorming sessions. You
only need to start with the basic problem as the centre, and generate

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associations and ideas from it in order to arrive at a large number of different

possible approaches. By presenting your thoughts and perceptions in a spatial
manner and by using colour and pictures, a better overview is gained and new
connections can be made visible.
Mind maps are a way of representing associated thoughts with symbols rather
than with extraneous words- something like organic chemistry. The mind forms
associations almost instantaneously, and "mapping" allows you to write your
ideas quicker than expressing them using only words or phrases.
Key features of mind maps are:
• Organisation
• Key Words
• Association
• Clustering
• Visual Memory
• Conscious involvement
Imagine your hobby is reading short stories, you read five a day, and you keep
notes so that you will not forget any of them. On each of these cards you record
key words and phrases. How would you choose the key words? Image words?
Imaginative? Evocative?
Reviewing these notes five years later may be difficult, depending on how the
words were chosen. A good key word or phrase is one which funnels into itself
a wide range of special images, and which, when it is triggered, funnels back
the same images. It will tend to be a strong noun or verb.
A creative word is one which is particularly evocative and image forming, but
far more general than a directed key word. Words are 'multi-ordinate' meaning
that each word is like a little centre on which there are many, many little hooks.
Each hook can attach to other words.
Key words are essential for memory recall, forging new associations and recall
of other experiences or sensations. Taking notes, thinking of new ideas and
summarising information is best done using association of keywords, and not
in a linear, written form.
To make a mind map, one starts in the centre of the page with the main idea,
and works outward in all directions, producing a growing and organised
structure composed of key words and key images.
If the brain is to relate to information most efficiently, the information must be
structured in such a way as to "slot-in" as easily as possible. It follows that if the
brain works primarily with key concepts in an interlinked and integrated manner,
then so should our notes and word relations be structured in a similar manner.
Rather than starting from the top of a page and working down in sentences or
lists, one should start from the centre with the main idea and branch out as
dictated by the individual ideas and general form of the theme.

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The disadvantages of standard notes:

• They obscure key words. This prevents the brain from making
appropriate associations between the key concepts.
• They make it difficult to remember. Monotonous single colour notes are
boring. Most notes look like lists.
• They waste time by encouraging or requiring unnecessary noting,
reading and rereading unnecessary notes, and searching for key words.
• They fail to stimulate the brain creatively. Linear presentations prevent
the brain from making associations, thus counteracting creativity and
memory. Reading a list implies an `end' or `finish’, whereas a mind map
encourages the brain to build on existing thoughts and ideas.
A mind map has a number of advantages over the linear form of note-taking:
• The centre with the main idea is more clearly defined
• The relative importance of each idea is clearly indicated. More important
ideas will be nearer the centre.
• The links between key concepts will be immediately recognised.
• Recall and review will be more effective and more rapid
• Addition of new information is easy
• Each map will look different from other maps, aiding recall
• In the more creative areas of note making, the open-ended nature of the
map will enable the brain to make new connections far more readily.
Example:
Consider the problem of "What are some alternative uses for a paper clip"
If you started to write a list, you would become bored and would probably slow
down. Alternatively, a mind map allows building on previous ideas, attributes,
or stepping stone ideas.

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Mind maps use pictures:

The reason why pictures are `worth a thousand words' is that they make use of
a massive range of cortical skills: colour, form, line, dimension, texture, visual
rhythm and especially imagination - a word taken from the Latin imaginari3,
literally meaning `to picture mentally'.
Images are therefore often more evocative than words, more precise and potent
in triggering a wide range of associations, thereby enhancing creative thinking
and memory.
Mind maps harness the full range of your cortical skills:

Hierarchies and categories:
A classic study done in 1969 demonstrated the importance of hierarchies in an
aid to memory. Generating ideas with a mind map is much easier than making
lists, because key words or "Basic Ordering Ideas" can be used as triggers.
Linear notes in the form of lists directly oppose the workings of the mind, in that
they generate an idea and then deliberately cut it off from ideas the preceding
and following it.
Wholeness/Gestalt:
Harnessing the brain's tendency to function in gestalts or wholes, allows the
addition of blank lines to the key words on the Mind Map, enticing the brain to
`fill in' the beckoning areas.
Once the brain realises it can associate anything with anything else, it will
almost instantaneously find associations, especially when given the trigger of
an additional stimulus.

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The Mind Map is based on the logic of association, not the logic of time (as in
a list)
The Basic Ordering Ideas in any Mind Map are those words or images which
are the simplest and most obvious ordering devices. They are the key concepts,
gathering the greatest number of associations to themselves. A good way to
find these Basic Ordering Ideas is to ask:
• What knowledge is required?
• If this were a book, what would the chapter headings be?
• What are my specific objectives?
• What are the most important seven (7) categories in the area under
consideration?
• What are the basic questions?
• Why? What? Where? Who? How? When? often serve remarkably well
as major branches in a Mind Map.
Techniques for drawing Mind Maps:

• Use emphasis
• Always use a central image
• Use images throughout your Mind Map
• Use three or more colours per central image
• Use dimension in images
• Use variations of size of printing, line and image
• Use organised spacing
• Use appropriate spacing
• Use Association
• Use arrows when you want to make connections within and across the
branch pattern
• Use colours
• Use codes
• Be Clear
• Use only one key word per line
• Print all words
• Print key words on lines
• Make line length equal to word length
• Connect lines to other lines
• Make the central lines thicker
• Make your images as clear as possible
• Keep your paper placed horizontally in front of you

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• Keep your printing as upright as possible

• Develop a personal style
• Pay attention to layout
• Use hierarchy
• Use numerical order
Examples:
Arrows
These can be used to show how concepts which appear on different parts of a
pattern are connected. The arrow can be single or multi-headed and can show
backward and forward directions.
Codes
Asterisks, exclamation marks, crosses and question marks as well as many
other indicators can be used next to words to show connection or other
'dimensions'.
Geometrical shapes
Squares, oblongs, circles, ellipses, etc. can be used to mark areas or words
which are similar in nature - for example triangles might be used to show areas
of possible solution in a problem-solving pattern.
Geometrical shapes can also be used to show order of importance. Some
people, for example, prefer to use a square always for their main centre,
oblongs for the ideas near the centre, triangles for ideas of next importance,
and so on.
Artistic three dimension

Each of the geometrical shapes mentioned, and many others, can be given
perspective, for example, making a square into a cube. The ideas printed in
these shapes will thus 'stand-off' the page.
Creativity images
Creativity can be combined with the use of dimension by making aspects of the
pattern fit the topic. Someone, for example, when doing a pattern on atomic

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physics, used the nucleus of an atom and the electrons that surrounded it, as
the centre for his pattern.
Colour
Colour is particularly useful as a memory and creative aid. It can be used, like
arrows, to show how concepts which appear on different parts of the pattern
are connected. It can also be used to mark off the boundaries between major
areas of a pattern.
Creative Thinking Mind Maps

Objectives:
• To explore all the creative possibilities of a given subject
• To clear the mind of previous assumptions about the subject, thus
providing space for new creative thought
• To generate ideas that result in specific action being taken, or physical
reality being created or changed.
• To encourage more consistent creative thinking
• To create new conceptual frameworks within which previous ideas can
be reorganised.
• To capture and develop 'flashes' of insight when they occur.
• To plan creatively (Mind Map diaries with a yearly plan, monthly plan and
daily plan maps)
Computer Mind Mapping

At the moment computer Mind Mapping cannot compete with the infinite visual
variety, portability and `minimum tool requirement' of traditional Mind Mapping
techniques. However, the areas where computers can offer a significant
improvement to personal productivity are the areas of automatic Mind Map
generation; Mind Map editing; data storage and retrieval, text input and
organisation of data. The creation of many variations of the same Mind Map is
also facilitated and accelerated.
Mind Maps are an external 'photograph' of the complex inter-relationships of
your thoughts at any given time. They enable your brain to 'see itself' more
clearly, and will greatly enhance the full range of your thinking skills: they will
add increasing competence, enjoyment, elegance and fun to your life.

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Other techniques:
Idea cards
The objective of idea cards is to stimulate and generate new ideas. It is a group
technique and is performed after the essence of a problem has been
determined (root-cause analysis has been performed).
The method to follow is:
• Each member of the group is handed a number of idea cards (12cm x
20cm).
• For approximately 20 minutes each member writes down one idea per
card.
• It should flow spontaneously (10 – 12 cards per person).
• Members then exchange their cards.
• If the idea of one member stimulates another member into generating an
idea of his own, he writes his idea down below the original one – again
only one idea per card.
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• Cards are then swopped again and the two ideas that now appear on
the cards may lead to the creation of yet another idea.
• The process continues until each person has seen all of the cards or
three ideas appear on the card.
• Put cards on the wall, combine similar ideas onto one card.
Six thinking hats

The six thinking hats is a creative thinking technique introduced by Edward de
Bono in a book with the same title. The premise of the method is that the human
brain thinks in a number of distinct ways which can be deliberately challenged,
and hence planned for use in a structured way allowing one to develop tactics
for thinking about particular issues. De Bono identifies six distinct directions in
which the brain can be challenged. In each of these directions the brain will
identify and bring into conscious thought certain aspects of issues being
considered (e.g. gut instinct, pessimistic judgement, neutral facts).
Since the hats do not represent natural modes of thinking, each hat must be
used for a limited time only.
Coloured hats are used as metaphors for each direction. Switching to a
direction is symbolised by the act of putting on a coloured hat, either literally or
metaphorically. These metaphors allow for a more complete and elaborate
segregation of the thinking directions. The six thinking hats indicate problems
and solutions about an idea the thinker may come up with.
Combined with the idea of parallel thinking which is associated with it, the
thinking hat tool provides a means for groups to think together more effectively,
and a means to plan thinking processes in a detailed and cohesive way.
[reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_Thinking_Hats]

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The six hats and there meanings are depicted below in the table:
The six thinking hats should become part of the culture of the organisation if it
is to be used effectively.
Examples of how the concept can be used are provided below:
• Chair of meeting might say: “I think we need some yellow hat thinking
here”.
• Ask someone to put a specific hat on for a while, perhaps someone who
is taking a very logical view of the problem might have to wear the red
hat for a while.
• Most people spend most of their time wearing the black hat.
• You might ask to put a hat on yourself – ask to wear the green hat for a
moment, you want to be creative without being criticized for not being
logical.
• Apply each different type of thinking in turn.
• You might also use the method on your own.
Systems thinking
Business analysts need to understand how people, processes and technology
interact within the organisation in order to identify relationships and patterns (or
the absence of relationships and patterns).
Systems theory and systems thinking which has been described in another
section, will allow the business analyst to think logically about the concept and

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component of the business and the supporting solutions as systems. Systems

thinking therefore provides the business analyst with a tool to structure the
problem being investigated logically. It also provides a structured way to
investigate the system and determine things such as:
• Is the system output correctly defined and complete?
• Are the required sub-processes in place to enable the creation of the
output?
• Are the necessary inputs available to produce the output?
• What is the impact of the environment of the system?
• What is the context of the system?
• Understand how a change to one component will affect other
components.
Systems thinking provides a facilitation tool to the business analyst that enables
the analyst to divide and conquer as well as to structure his or her thoughts
around the problem at hand.
Systems theory and systems thinking suggest that the system as a whole will
have properties, behaviours and characteristics that emerge from the
interaction of the components of the system, and which are not predictable from
an understanding of the components alone. A system does not only refer to
information system.
Class Activity 1: Creative thinking techniques

In small groups, complete the formative activity in your Learner
Workbook

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1.2 Problem solving techniques (also refer to LP6 Mod1; Mod5 and LP9
Mod1)
Throughout the course of any given day, you handle a variety of decisions and
problems automatically. At times, however, situations arise which you cannot
solve “automatically.” In those situations, the use of problem-solving skills
becomes an invaluable asset that allows you to make the best choices and
decisions available. In addition, problem-solving is a life skill that will serve you
well throughout your life.
Problem-solving is a tool, a skill, and a process. As a tool is helps you solve a
problem or achieve a goal. As a skill you can use it repeatedly throughout your
life.
It is not unusual for problems to arise when you are working towards a goal and
encounter obstacles along the way. People usually have many and varied
goals, both related to work and to other areas of their lives, and it is likely that
you will encounter barriers to your success at times. As these barriers are
encountered, problem-solving strategies can be utilized to help you overcome
the obstacle and achieve your goal. With each use of problem-solving
strategies, these skills become more refined and integrated so that eventually
their use becomes second nature.
Problem solving principles methods and techniques

Problems can be defined broadly as situations in which we experience
uncertainty or difficulty in achieving what we want to achieve.
Problems affect everybody and they occur when we have an objective (an
intention/plan or something we want to achieve) and a stumbling block
(something not expected) prevents us from achieving our objective.
We encounter a large variety of problems during the course of our work, with
objectives and obstacles of different types and importance. Defining these
accurately is essential to finding an effective solution.
Solving a problem involves finding ways to overcome any obstacles and to
achieve our objective by:
• identification of the problem
• investigating ways and alternatives to solve the problem
• selecting the best solution and setting goals
• implementation of solutions
• evaluation of goal/objective achieved

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Problem Solving Techniques

Problem solving forms part of thinking. Considered the most complex of all
intellectual functions, problem solving has been defined as higher-order
cognitive process that requires the modulation and control of more routine or
fundamental skills (McCarthy & Worthington, 1990). It occurs if an organism or
an artificial intelligence system does not know how to proceed from a given
state to a desired goal state. It is part of the larger problem process that includes
problem finding and problem shaping6.
Characteristics of difficult problems

As elucidated by Dietrich Dorner and later expanded upon by Joachim Funke,
difficult problems have some typical characteristics. Re-categorised and
somewhat reformulated from these original works, these characteristics can be
summarised as follows:
• In-transparency (lack of clarity of the situation)
• Complexity (large numbers of items, interrelations, and decisions)
• Dynamism (time considerations)
The resolution of difficult problems requires a direct attack on each of these

characteristics that are encountered.
Problem-solving steps
Problem solving is a tool, a skill and a process. It is a tool because it can help
you solve an immediate problem or to achieve a goal. It is a skill because once
you have learnt it you can use it repeatedly, like the ability to ride a bicycle, add
numbers or speak a language. It is also a process because it involves taking a
number of steps.
You can engage in problem solving if you want to reach a goal and experience
obstacles on the way. It is very likely that in working towards your goals you will
encounter some barriers.
At the point at which you come up against a barrier you can engage in a problem
solving process to help you achieve your goal. Every time you use a problem
solving process you are increasing your problem-solving skills.
Much of what managers do is solve problems and make decisions. New
managers, in particular, often make decisions by reacting to problems. They
are "under the gun", stressed and very short on time. Consequently, when they
encounter a new problem or decision they must make, they react with a decision
that seemed to work before. It's easy with this approach to get stuck in a circle
of solving the same problem over and over again. Therefore, as a manager, get
used to an organised approach to problem solving and decision making. Not all
problems can be solved and decisions made by the following, rather rational
approach.
6
Retrieved from : www.wikipedia.com
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However, the following basic guidelines will get you started. Don't be intimidated
by the length of the list of guidelines7. After you've practised them a few times,
they'll become second nature to you- so that you can deepen and enrich them
to suit your own needs and nature.
(It might be more advisable to view a "problem" as an "opportunity". Therefore,
you might substitute "problem" for "opportunity" in the following guidelines.)
Step 1: Define the problem

This is often where people struggle. They react to what they think the problem
is. Some problems are big and unmistakable, such as failure of an air-freight
delivery service to get packages to customers on time. Other problems may be
continuing annoyances, such as regularly running out of toner for an office copy
machine.
The first step in reaching a solution is pinpointing the problem area. Seek to
understand more about why you think there's a problem.
Ask yourself and others, the following questions:
• What can you see that causes you to think there's a problem?
• Where is it happening?
• How is it happening?
• When is it happening?
• With whom is it happening? (HINT: Don't jump to "Who is causing the
problem?" When we're stressed, blaming is often one of our first
reactions. To be an effective manager, you need to address issues more
than people.)
• Why is it happening?
• Write down a five-sentence description of the problem in terms of "The
following should be happening, but isn't ..." or "The following is
happening and should be: ..." As much as possible, be specific in your
description, including what is happening, where, how, with whom and
why.
• Defining complex problems: If the problem still seems overwhelming,

break it down by repeating steps above until you have descriptions of
several related problems.
• Verifying your understanding of the problems: It helps a great deal

to verify your problem analysis by conferring with a peer or someone
else.
7 Retrieved from: http://www.managementhelp.org/prsn_prd/prb_bsc.htm

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• Prioritise the problems: If you discover that you are looking at several
related problems, then prioritise which ones you should address first.
Note the difference between "important" and "urgent" problems. Often,
what we consider to be important problems to consider are really just
urgent problems. Important problems deserve more attention. For
example, if you're continually answering "urgent" phone calls, then
you've probably got a more "important" problem and that's to design a
system that screens and prioritises your phone calls.
• Understand your role in the problem: Your role in the problem can
greatly influence how you perceive the role of others. For example, if
you're very stressed out, it'll probably look like others are, too, or, you
may resort too quickly to blaming and reprimanding others. Or, if you are
feeling very guilty about your role in the problem, you may ignore the
accountabilities of others.
Step 2: Look at potential causes for the problem

Learn more about the problem situation. Look for possible causes and
solutions. This step may mean checking files, calling suppliers, or brainstorming
with fellow workers. For example, the air-freight delivery service referred to in
Step 1 would investigate the tracking systems of the commercial airlines
carrying its packages to determine what went wrong.
• In this phase, it's critical to get input from other people who notice the
problem and who are affected by it.
• It's often useful to collect input from other individuals one at a time (at
least at first). Otherwise, people tend to be inhibited about offering their
impressions of the real causes of problems.
• Write down what your opinions are and what you've heard from others.
If you think there might be performance problems associated with an
employee, it's often useful to seek advice from a peer or your supervisor
in order to verify your impression of the problem.
• Write down a description of the cause of the problem and in terms of
what is happening, where, when, how, with whom and why.

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Step 3: Identify alternatives for approaches to resolve the problem

At this point, it's useful to keep others involved (unless you're facing a personal
and/or employee performance problem).
• Brainstorm for solutions to the problem. (We will learn about
brainstorming in the next section)
• Distinguish between fact and opinion, for example, it is a fact that
packages are missing; it is an opinion that they are merely lost and will
turn up eventually.
• Draw conclusions from the gathered evidence and pose solutions.
• Finally, weigh the advantages and disadvantages of each alternative.
What are the costs, benefits, and consequences? What are the
obstacles, and how can they be handled? Most important, what solution
best serves your goals and those of your organisation? Here's where
your creativity is especially important.
Step 4: Select an approach to resolve the problem

When selecting the best approach, consider:
• Which approach is the most likely to solve the problem for the long term?
• Which approach is the most realistic to accomplish for now?
• Do you have the resources?
• Are they affordable?
• Do you have enough time to implement the approach?
• What is the extent of risk associated with each alternative?
In our example in Step 1, the freight company decided to give its unhappy
customers free delivery service to make up for the lost packages and downtime.
Step 5: Plan the implementation of the best alternative (this is your

action plan)
• Carefully consider "What will the situation look like when the problem is
solved?"
• What steps should be taken to implement the best alternative to solving
the problem?
• What systems or processes should be changed in your organisation, for
example, a new policy or procedure? Don't resort to solutions where
someone is "just going to try harder".
• How will you know if the steps are being followed or not? (these are your
indicators of the success of your plan)
• What resources will you need in terms of people, money and facilities?

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• How much time will you need to implement the solution? Write a
schedule that includes the start and stop times, and when you expect to
see certain indicators of success.
• Who will primarily be responsible for ensuring implementation of the
plan?
Write down the answers to the above questions and consider this as your action
plan. Communicate the plan to those who will be involved in implementing it
and, at least, to your immediate supervisor. (An important aspect of this step in
the problem-solving process is continual observation and feedback.)
Step 6: Monitor implementation of the plan

Monitor the indicators of success:
• Are you seeing what you would expect from the indicators?
• Will the plan be done according to schedule?
• If the plan is not being followed as expected, then consider: Was the plan
realistic? Are there sufficient resources to accomplish the plan on
schedule? Should more priority be placed on various aspects of the
plan? Should the plan be changed?
Step 7: Verify if the problem has been resolved

One of the best ways to verify if a problem has been solved is to resume normal
operations in the organisation.
For future reference, consider the following:
• What changes should be made to avoid this type of problem in the
future? Consider changes to policies and procedures, training, etc.
• Lastly, consider "What did you learn from this problem solving?"
Consider new knowledge, understanding and/or skills.
• Consider writing a brief memo that highlights the success of the problem
solving effort, and what you learned as a result. Share it with your
supervisor, peers and subordinates.

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Overview of Process8
Examples of problem-solving techniques:
Technique 1: Problem Definition

(including problem analysis, redefinition, and all aspects associated with
defining the problem clearly)
• Paraphrasing Key Words

This technique requires you to alter the meanings of key words in the problem
statement (or any sentence that contains key words) to reveal assumptions and
generate alternative perceptions.
• Replacing Key words with Synonyms

This method, devised by Edward de Bono (1970), requires you to identify key
words in the sentence, substitute them one at a time with other words that have
the equivalent general meaning, and create different emphases and a different
rhetoric.
It can be achieved in a simple and informal way from general knowledge, or at

a deeper level with imaginative use of a thesaurus. Look at the example below,
8
Retrieved from : http://www.studygs.net/problem/problemsolvingo.htm
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which an average word-processor thesaurus gave the direct and indirect

synonyms for the 3 key words in the problem statement:
We have Overused Reprographic Resources

We have Wasted Copying Property
We have Squandered Remaking Machines and people
We have Derelict Transcribing Mechanisms
We have Superfluous Facsimile Holdings
We have Excessive Mimicking Agency
We have Bountiful Mirroring Investment
We have Generous Reproducing Means
We have Redundant Mimeographing Belongings
We have Ignored Cloning Facility
Altering just one word at a time produces very distinct shifts in the meaning and
boundary assumptions such as:
• We have over-capitalised reprographic resources
• We have underused cloning resources
• We have underused reprographic belongings
Obviously the amount of potential paraphrasing is very large, just using the
synonyms in the table above, this simple problem statement may well be
reworded in at least 1000 (10 x 10 x 10) ways, many of which correspond to
very different meanings. Paraphrasing as such can be used either to alter the
problem statement itself, or to trigger different streams of ideas about possible
solutions.
• Use Synonym Pairs to Trigger Ideas

A variation of the method above devised by Olson (1980) takes just 2 key words
from the problem statement (ideally a grammatically linked pair such as noun-
verb, verb-noun, verb-adverb, adjective-noun), generates lists of synonyms for
each word (as above), and then uses word pairs generated from the 2 synonym
lists to stimulate ideas. For example:
• Select grammatical keyword pair: I choose: Reprographic resources
(adjective-noun pair).
• Generate synonyms: e.g. the two right hand columns of synonyms in
the table above.
• Select some interesting word pairs: e.g.: mimicking agency;
transcribing investment; cloning capital; mimeographing belongings etc.
• Use these to trigger ideas: e.g. from mimicking agency: Develop an
agency to make copies of photos; develop a service for transcribing
hand-written records; start a service to print cheque-books or pay-in
books or toy money for children, etc.

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Technique 2: Assumption Busting
• List assumptions
List all the assumptions you have about the “problem”, especially the obvious
ones that you would not consider challenging...
• Challenge assumptions
Test each assumption. Ask under what conditions it would not be true.
You will start to make assumptions as you challenge some assumptions, simply
add these to the list, and challenge them later.
• Find several ways in which you can force the assumption to be true
This is the opposite way of challenging the assumption from 2.
Technique 3: Idea Generation

Talking Pictures is from the book Instant Creativity by Brian Clegg and Paul
9
Birch.
When you need a little extra boost for a group that have got a little stale during
the Idea Generation phase, split up into teams, giving each a digital camera
and access to a printer (you could use a Polaroid, or provide a set of bizarre
photographs you have, but it's best to get the teams to capture them).
Get the teams to spend about 5 minutes outside of the immediate area, taking
pictures of either unusual objects, or objects from unusual angles. The more
bizarre the better.
Bring the groups back together and distribute their pictures to the other groups.
Each group should now use the pictures provided to create associations that
occur to them and then use these associations for idea generation. At the end
of the session you can either collect all of the ideas together by writing them
onto flipcharts or you can ask the groups to have listed their own and have
these displayed for general perusal.
This technique uses random stimuli with the advantage of a challenge /

competition thrown in. The humour generated from the unusual objects / angles
also raises the energy levels of the group, along with the fact that they have
been up and moving about.
Technique 4: Consensus Mapping10

The consensus mapping technique helps a facilitator and group reach
consensus about how best to arrange a network of up to maybe 20 – 30
activities that have to be sequenced over time into a useable plan of action (e.g.
outlining a 10-year network of sequentially linked activities to deal with a
9
Retrieved from "http://www.mycoted.com/Talking_Pictures"
10 Retrieved from "http://www.mycoted.com/Consensus_Mapping"
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complex environmental pollution issue). These will usually be activities that

could be done in a range of orders – i.e. the order has to be approved – it is not
given by the internal logic of the activities themselves.
The technique has parallels to many of the usual project planning methods (and
could if necessary feed into them) but operates at a purely qualitative, outline,
level.
Here is the suggested procedure:

1. Present the ideas: Devise a master list, via any suitable means, detailing
all the ideas to be used in the single coherent action plan required, e.g.
brainstorm the activities needed to implement some idea or project.
Everyone copies the master list onto Post-its, or equivalent, one idea per
slip.
2. Form groups: The facilitator forms 2 – 4 task groups, each of 5 – 9
individuals in each.
3. Private clustering: Individuals in groups makes their own private attempt
to group the ideas into related clusters or categories.
4. Sharing in triads: Join together in pairs or triads within each task group to
describe one another’s clusters.
5. Group clustering: Individual task groups combine to try merging their
private clustering into a shared clustering they can all accept.
6. Group review: following group clustering, clarification of the original ideas,
and re-evaluation of them takes place.
7. Facilitators create and present an integrated map: each task group
delivers their group clusters to the facilitator. They then take a break. During
the break, staff members consolidate the group cluster maps into a single
overall cluster map, containing all the ideas, categories, and relationships
generated by the groups. This integrated map is presented to the group as
a whole when they come back together.
8. Map reconfiguration: The whole group splits itself again into the respective
task groups, and each one uses the integrated map for motivation and
stimuli for developing its own map in which cluster of activities are linked
sequentially. Links made of ribbon or yarns are better than pen lines at this
stage, because they can be changed.
9. Plenary presentation: Each task group exhibits its map of sequentially
linked clusters to the others.
10. Map consolidation: Representatives from each task group meet to
construct a single final map that combines the features of all the maps.
The complete procedure works best with a trained group, but the mapping
element could easily be adapted to informal solo use.

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Technique 5: Synectics11
Synectics is based on a simple concept for problem solving and creative
thinking - you need to generate ideas, and you need to evaluate ideas. Whilst
this may be stating the obvious, the methods used to perform these two tasks
are extremely powerful.
• Preliminary planning
In advance, hold a preliminary planning meeting with the problem owner(s).
This checks that there are genuine problem owners, wanting new options that
they themselves can implement, within their authority; helps you to understand
the problem-owners' perceptions of the problem area; gives a feel for the
number and quality of solutions needed; helps to ensure realistic expectations
about results; and allows you to agree team membership.
Procedure during the session:
• Problem owner provides headline and wish: They describe the issue,
how it is experienced, the background, what has been tried, and the
possible scope of action. It is then expressed in one or more ‘big wish’
statements of the form: ‘I wish (IW)...’ or ‘How to (H2) ...’ Note that this is
not a ‘problem definition’ but a wish reflecting the way the issue is
experienced. The group listen imaginatively, rather than analytically.
• Group generates large numbers of ‘springboards’: The mood here
should be expansive and unconstrained. The springboards use the same
formats as the ‘big wish’ (IW, H2, etc.). They are not ideas for solutions,
but articulate further wishes to open up space for invention: ‘It would be
nice if we could do X but we don’t yet know how to.’
• Select an interesting springboard: The mood now switches to a more
focused approach than in Steps 1-2. Problem owner and group members
choose their favourite springboards (more on the basis of interest or
appeal than on the basis of logical relevance). They share their choices,
but final choice rests with the problem-owner. However, the process can
always be repeated, so the choice is not critical. The assumption is that
within any springboard will be creative possibilities that can usefully be
explored.
• Ideas to help achieve the selected springboard are generated (see
creative-thinking techniques). The problem-owner selects some that
seem interesting.
• Check understanding of these by paraphrasing them and checking
with their authors until the paraphrase is correct. An idea is selected for
the Itemised Response.
• Itemised response. Every conceivable positive feature of the selected
idea is listed. Then (and only then), a single concern / problem / issue is
expressed as a problem for solution (e.g. ‘How to ...’). Solutions for these
are expressed by all in terms of ‘What you do is (WYDI)...’.
11 Retrieved from "http://www.mycoted.com/Synectics"

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• Recycle or end: Back to ideas generation until sufficient ideas for this
springboard have been explored and the problem-solver has a solution
s/he is happy to run with, or until time runs out.
Technique 6: Appreciation
(Extracting Maximum Information from Facts)
Appreciation is a very simple but powerful technique for extracting the
maximum amount of information from a simple fact.
Starting with a fact, ask the question 'So what?' - i.e. what are the implications
of that fact? Keep on asking that question until you have drawn all possible
inferences.
Example:
Appreciation is a technique used by military planners, so we will take a military
example:
Fact: It rained heavily last night
So What?
- The ground will be wet
So What?
- It will turn into mud quickly
So What?
- If many troops and vehicles pass over the same ground, movement will be
progressively slower and more difficult as the ground gets muddier and
more difficult.
So What?
- Where possible, stick to paved roads. Otherwise expect movement to be
much slower than normal.
While it would be possible to reach this conclusion without the use of a

formal technique, Appreciation provides a framework within which you can
extract information quickly, effectively and reliably.
Asking 'so what?' repeatedly helps you to extract all important information
implied by a fact.
Technique 7: Drill Down

(Breaking Problems Down into Manageable Parts)
Drill Down is a simple technique for breaking complex problems down into
progressively smaller parts.

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To use the technique:

- Start by writing the problem down on the left-hand side of a large
sheet of paper.
- Next, write down the points that make up the next level of detail on
the problem a little to the right of this. These may be factors
contributing to the problem, information relating to it, or questions
raised by it. This process of breaking the problem down into its
component part is called 'drilling down'.
For each of these points, repeat the process. Keep on drilling down into points
until you fully understand the factors contributing to the problem.
If you cannot break them down using the knowledge you have, then carry out
whatever research is necessary to understand the point.
Drilling into a question helps you to get a much deeper understanding of it. The
process helps you to recognise and understand the factors that contribute to it.
Drill Down prompts you to link in information that you had not initially associated
with a problem. It also shows exactly where you need further information.
Example:
The owner of a windsurfing club is having complaints from its members about
the unpleasant quality of the water close to the clubhouse.
This seems like a huge problem.
She carries out the analysis on the next page:

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This gives her a starting point in which to begin thinking about the problem. It
highlights where she does not fully understand the problem, and shows where
she needs to carry out further research.
'Drill Down' helps you to break a large and complex problem down into its
component parts, so that you can develop plans to deal with these parts. It also
shows you which points you need to research in more detail.
Technique 8: Cause and Effect diagrams

(Identify the Likely Causes of Problems. Also called Fish or Fishbone Diagrams,
and Ishikawa Diagrams)
• Identify the problem:

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Write down the exact problem you face in detail. Where appropriate identify
who is involved, what the problem is, and when and where it occurs. Write the
problem in a box on the left hand side of a large sheet of paper. Draw a line
across the paper horizontally from the box. This gives you space to develop
ideas.
• Work out the major factors involved:

Next identify the factors that may contribute to the problem. Draw lines off the
spine for each factor, and label it. These may be people involved with the
problem, systems, equipment, materials, external forces, etc. Try to draw out
as many possible factors as possible. If you are trying to solve the problem as
part of a group, then this may be a good time for some brainstorming (see later).
Using the 'Fish bone' analogy, the factors you find can be thought of as the
bones of the fish.
• Identify possible causes:

For each of the factors, brainstorm possible causes of the problem that may be
related to the factor. Show these as smaller lines coming off the 'bones' of the
fish. Where a cause is large or complex, then it may be best to break it down
into sub-causes. Show these as lines coming off each cause line.
• Analyse your diagram:

By this stage you should have a diagram showing all the possible causes of
your problem. Depending on the complexity and importance of the problem, you
can now investigate the most likely causes further. This may involve setting up
investigations, carrying out surveys, etc. These will be designed to test whether
your assessments are correct.
Example:
The example below shows a Cause & Effect diagram drawn by a manager who
is having trouble getting cooperation from a branch office:
If the manager had not thought the problem through, he might have dealt with
the problem by assuming that people were being difficult. Instead he might think
that the best approach is to arrange a meeting with the Branch Manager. This
would allow him to brief the manger fully, and talk through any problems that he
may be facing.
Cause & Effect analysis (or fishbone analysis) provide a structured way to help
you think through all possible causes of a problem. This helps you to carry out
a thorough analysis of a situation.

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Technique 9: SWOT
(Discover new opportunities. Manage and eliminate threats.)
To carry out a SWOT Analysis, write down answers to the following questions:
Strengths:
• What advantages does your company have?
• What do you do better than anyone else?
• What unique or lowest-cost resources do you have access to?
• What do people in your market see as your strengths?
Consider this from an internal perspective, and from the point of view of your
customers and people in your market. And be realistic: It's far too easy to fall
prey to "not invented here syndrome". Also, if you are having any difficulty with
this, try writing down a list of your characteristics. Some of these will hopefully
be strengths!
In looking at your strengths, think about them in relation to your competitors -

for example, if all your competitors provide high quality products, then a high
quality production process is not a strength in the market, it is a necessity.
Weaknesses:
• What could you improve?
• What should you avoid?
• What are people in your market likely to see as weaknesses?
Again, consider this from an internal and external basis: Do other people seem
to perceive weaknesses that you do not see? Are your competitors doing any
better than you? It is best to be realistic now, and face any unpleasant truths as
soon as possible.

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Opportunities:
• Where are the good opportunities facing you?
• What are the interesting trends you are aware of?
Useful opportunities can come from such things as:
• Changes in technology and markets on both a broad and narrow scale
• Changes in government policy related to your field
• Changes in social patterns, population profiles, lifestyle changes, etc.
• Local Events
A useful approach to looking at opportunities is to look at your strengths and
ask yourself whether these open up any opportunities.
Alternatively, look at your weaknesses and ask yourself whether you could open
up opportunities by eliminating them.
Threats:
• What obstacles do you face?
• What is your competition doing?
• Are the required specifications for your job, products or services
changing?
• Is changing technology threatening your position?
• Do you have bad debt or cash-flow problems?
• Could any of your weaknesses seriously threaten your business?
Carrying out this analysis will often be illuminating - both in terms of pointing
out what needs to be done, and in putting problems into perspective.
Strengths and weaknesses are often internal to your organisation.

Opportunities and threats often relate to external factors. For this reason the
SWOT Analysis is sometimes called Internal-External Analysis and the SWOT
Matrix is sometimes called an IE Matrix Analysis Tool.
You can also apply SWOT Analysis to your competitors. As you do this, you'll
start to see how and where you should compete against them.

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Example:
A start-up small consultancy business might draw up the following SWOT
matrix:
Strengths:
• We are able to respond very quickly as we have no red tape, no need
for higher management approval, etc.
• We are able to give really good customer care, as the current small
amount of work means we have plenty of time to devote to customers
• Our lead consultant has strong reputation within the market
• We can change direction quickly if we find that our marketing is not
working
• We have little overhead, so can offer good value to customers
Weaknesses:
• Our company has no market presence or reputation
• We have a small staff with a shallow skills base in many areas
• We are vulnerable to vital staff being sick, leaving, etc.
• Our cash flow will be unreliable in the early stages
Opportunities:
• Our business sector is expanding, with many future opportunities for
success
• Our local council wants to encourage local businesses with work where
possible
• Our competitors may be slow to adopt new technologies
Threats:
• Will developments in technology change this market beyond our ability
to adapt?
• A small change in focus of a large competitor might wipe out any market
position we achieve
The consultancy may therefore decide to specialise in rapid response, good
value services to local businesses. Marketing would be in selected local
publications, to get the greatest possible market presence for a set advertising
budget. The consultancy should keep up-to-date with changes in technology
where possible.
Key points:
SWOT Analysis is a simple but powerful framework for analysing your
company's Strengths and Weaknesses, and the Opportunities and Threats you
face. This helps you to focus on your strengths, minimise threats, and take the
greatest possible advantage of opportunities available to you.

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Technique 10: Risk analysis

Risk is 'the perceived extent of possible loss'. Different people will have different
views of the impact of a particular risk - what may be a small risk for one person
may destroy the livelihood of someone else.
Almost everything we do in today's business world involves a risk of some kind:

customer habits change, new competitors appear, factors outside your control
could delay your project. But formal risk analysis and risk management can help
you to assess these risks and decide what actions to take to minimise
disruptions to your plans. They will also help you to decide whether the
strategies you could use to control risk are cost-effective.
One way of putting figures to risk is to calculate a value for it as:
Risk = probability of event x cost of event
Doing this allows you to compare risks objectively.
To carry out a risk analysis, follow these steps:
1. Identify Threats
The first stage of a risk analysis is to identify threats facing you. Threats may
be:
• Human - from individuals or organisations, illness, death, etc.
• Operational - from disruption to supplies and operations, loss of access
to essential assets, failures in distribution, etc.
• Reputational - from loss of business partner or employee confidence,
or damage to reputation in the market.
• Procedural - from failures of accountability, internal systems and
controls, organisation, fraud, etc.
• Project - risks of cost over-runs, jobs taking too long, of insufficient
product or service quality, etc.
• Financial - from business failure, stock market, interest rates,
unemployment, etc.
• Technical - from advances in technology, technical failure, etc.
• Natural - threats from weather, natural disaster, accident, disease, etc.
• Political - from changes in tax regimes, public opinion, government
policy, foreign influence, etc.

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This analysis of threat is important because it is so easy to overlook important

threats. One way of trying to capture them all is to use a number of different
approaches:
• Firstly, run through a list such as the one above, to see if any apply
• Secondly, think through the systems, organisations or structures you
operate, and analyse risks to any part of those
• See if you can see any vulnerabilities within these systems or structures
• Ask other people, who might have different perspectives.
2. Estimate Risk:
Once you have identified the threats you face, the next step is to work out the
likelihood of the threat being realised and to assess its impact.
One approach to this is to make your best estimate of the probability of the
event occurring, and to multiply this by the amount it will cost you to set things
right if it happens. This gives you a value for the risk.
3. Manage Risk:
Once you have worked out the value of risks you face, you can start to look at
ways of managing them. When you are doing this, it is important to choose cost
effective approaches - in most cases, there is no point in spending more to
eliminating a risk than the cost of the event if it occurs. Often, it may be better
to accept the risk than to use excessive resources to eliminate it.
Risk may be managed in a number of ways:

• By using existing assets: Here existing resources can be used to
counter risk. This may involve improvements to existing methods and
systems, changes in responsibilities, improvements to accountability and
internal controls, etc.
• By contingency planning: You may decide to accept a risk, but choose
to develop a plan to minimise its effects if it happens. A good contingency
plan will allow you to take action immediately, with the minimum of
project control if you find yourself in a crisis management situation.
• By investing in new resources: Your risk analysis should give you the
basis for deciding whether to bring in additional resources to counter the
risk. This can also include insuring the risk: Here you pay someone else
to carry part of the risk - this is particularly important where the risk is so
great as to threaten your or your organisation's solvency.

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4. Reviews:
Once you have carried out a risk analysis and management exercise, it may be
worth carrying out regular reviews. These might involve formal reviews of the
risk analysis, or may involve testing systems and plans appropriately.
Risk analysis allows you to examine the risks that you or your organisation
faces. It is based on a structured approach to thinking through threats, followed
by an evaluation of the probability and cost of events occurring.
Risk analysis forms the basis for risk management and crisis prevention. Here
the emphasis is on cost effectiveness. Risk management involves adapting the
use of existing resources, contingency planning and good use of new
resources.
Technique 11: Five Forces

Porter’s 5 Forces tool is a simple but powerful tool for understanding where
power lies in a business situation. This tool was created by Harvard Business
School professor, Michael Porter, to analyse the attractiveness and likely-
profitability of an industry. Since publication, it has become one of the most
important business strategy tools. The classic article which introduces it is “How
Competitive Forces Shape Strategy” in Harvard Business Review 57, March –
April 1979, pages 86-93.
With a clear understanding of where power lies, you can take fair advantage of
a situation of strength, improve a situation of weakness, and avoid taking wrong
steps. This makes it an important part of your planning toolkit.
Conventionally, the tool is used to identify whether new products, services or

businesses have the potential to be profitable. However it can be very
illuminating when used to understand the balance of power in other situations.
Five Forces Analysis assumes that there are five important forces that
determine competitive power in a situation. These are:
• Supplier Power: Here you assess how easy it is for suppliers to drive
up prices. This is driven by the number of suppliers of each key input,
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the uniqueness of their product or service, their strength and control over
you, the cost of switching from one to another, and so on. The fewer the
supplier choices you have, and the more you need suppliers' help, the
more powerful your suppliers are.
• Buyer Power: Here you ask yourself how easy it is for buyers to drive
prices down. Again, this is driven by the number of buyers, the
importance of each individual buyer to your business, the cost to them
of switching from your products and services to those of someone else,
and so on. If you deal with few, powerful buyers, they are often able to
dictate terms to you.
• Competitive Rivalry: What is important here is the number and
capability of your competitors – if you have many competitors, and they
offer equally attractive products and services, then you’ll most likely have
little power in the situation. If suppliers and buyers don’t get a good deal
from you, they’ll go elsewhere. On the other hand, if no-one else can do
what you do, then you can often have tremendous strength.
• Threat of Substitution: This is affected by the ability of your customers
to find a different way of doing what you do – for example, if you supply
a unique software product that automates an important process, people
may substitute by doing the process manually or by outsourcing it. If
substitution is easy and substitution is viable, then this weakens your
power.
• Threat of New Entry: Power is also affected by the ability of people to
enter your market. If it costs little in time or money to enter your market
and compete effectively, if there are few economies of scale in place, or
if you have little protection for your key technologies, then new
competitors can quickly enter your market and weaken your position. If
you have strong and durable barriers to entry, then you can preserve a
favourable position and take fair advantage of it.

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These forces can be neatly brought together in a diagram like the one below:
To use the tool to understand your situation, look at each of these forces one-
by-one.
Brainstorm the relevant factors for your market or situation, and then check
against the factors listed for the force in the diagram above.
Example:
Martin Johnson is deciding whether to switch career and become a farmer –
he’s always loved the countryside, and wants to switch to a career where he’s
his own boss. He creates the following Five Forces Analysis as he thinks the
situation through:

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This worries him:

• The threat of new entry is quite high: if anyone looks as if they’re
making a sustained profit, new competitors can come into the industry
easily, reducing profits;
• Competitive rivalry is extremely high: if someone raises prices, they’ll
be quickly undercut. Intense competition puts strong downward pressure
on prices;
• Buyer Power is strong, again implying strong downward pressure on
prices; and
• There is some threat of substitution. Unless he is able to find some
way of changing this situation, this looks like a very tough industry to
survive in. Maybe he’ll need to specialise in a sector of the market that’s
protected from some of these forces, or find a related business that’s in
a stronger position.
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Porter’s Five Forces Analysis is an important tool for assessing the potential for
profitability in an industry. With a little adaptation, it is also useful as a way of
assessing the balance of power in more general situations.
It works by looking at the strength of five important forces that affect

competition:
• Supplier Power: The power of suppliers to drive up the prices of your
inputs;
• Buyer Power: The power of your customers to drive down your prices;
• Competitive Rivalry: The strength of competition in the industry;
• The Threat of Substitution: The extent to which different products and
services can be used in place of your own; and
• The Threat of New Entry: The ease with which new competitors can
enter the market if they see that you are making good profits (and then
drive your prices down).
By thinking through how each force affects you, and by identifying the strength
and direction of each force, you can quickly assess the strength of the position
and your ability to make a sustained profit in the industry.
You can then look at how you can affect each of the forces to move the balance
of power more in your favour.
Technique 12: PEST analysis

PEST Analysis is a simple but important and widely-used tool that helps you
understand the big picture of the Political, Economic, Socio-Cultural and
Technological environment you are operating in. PEST is used by business
leaders worldwide to build their vision of the future.
It is important for the following main reasons:

• Firstly, by making effective use of PEST Analysis, you ensure that what
you are doing is aligned positively with the powerful forces of change
that are affecting our world. By taking advantage of change, you are
much more likely to be successful than if your activities oppose it;
• Secondly, good use of PEST Analysis helps you avoid taking action that
is doomed to failure for reasons beyond your control
• Thirdly, PEST is useful when you start operating in a new country or
region. Use of PEST helps you break free of unconscious assumptions,
and helps you quickly adapt to the realities of the new environment.

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PEST is a simple mnemonic standing for Political, Economic, Socio-Cultural

and Technological. Using the tool is a three stage process:
• Firstly, you brainstorm the relevant factors that apply to you;
• Secondly, you identify the information that applies to these factors
• Thirdly, you draw conclusions from this information.
Tip:
The important point is to move from the second step to the third step: it is
sterile just to describe factors without thinking through what they mean.
However, be careful not to assume that your analysis is perfect: use it as a
starting point, and test your conclusions against the reality you experience.
The following factors may help as a starting point for brainstorming (but make
sure you include others that may be appropriate to your situation):
Political:
• Government type and stability
• Freedom of press, rule of law and levels of bureaucracy and corruption
• Regulation and de-regulation trends
• Social and employment legislation
• Tax policy, and trade and tariff controls
• Environmental and consumer-protection legislation
• Likely changes in the political environment
Economic:
• Stage of business cycle
• Current and project economic growth, inflation and interest rates
• Unemployment and labour supply
• Labour costs
• Levels of disposable income and income distribution
• Impact of globalisation
• Likely impact of technological or other change on the economy
• Likely changes in the economic environment
Socio-Cultural:
• Population growth rate and age profile
• Population health, education and social mobility, and attitudes to these
• Population employment patterns, job market freedom and attitudes to
work
• Press attitudes, public opinion, social attitudes and social taboos
• Lifestyle choices and attitudes to these
• Socio-Cultural changes

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Technological Environment:
• Impact of emerging technologies
• Impact of Internet, reduction in communications costs and increased
remote working
• Research & Development activity
• Impact of technology transfer
Things that make activity more difficult for people or organisations raise the cost
of doing business: activity is either blocked altogether, or costs more in time/
money as difficulties are circumvented. The higher the cost of doing business
in a region, the more project profitability is squeezed or eliminated.
And given that businesspeople normally have at least some level of intelligence,
businesses and projects that could otherwise operate are never launched -
meaning that less economic activity takes place. And the lower the amount of
economic activity, the poorer and less capable societies tend to be.
Another broad principle is wherever there is rapid or major change in an area,
there are likely to be new opportunities and threats that arise. Smart people and
companies will take advantage of the opportunities and manage the threats.
Remember that few situations are perfect: it is up to us to make the most of the
situation in which we find ourselves.
PEST Analysis is a useful tool for understanding the “big picture” of the
environment in which you are operating, and the opportunities and threats that
lie within it. By understanding your environment, you can take advantage of the
opportunities and minimise the threats.
PEST is a mnemonic standing for Political, Economic, Social and Technological.

These headings are used firstly to brainstorm the characteristics of a country or
region and, from this, draw conclusions as to the significant forces of change
operating within it. This provides the context within which more detailed
planning can take place to take full advantage of the opportunities that present
themselves.
Common pitfalls of problem-solving efforts
• Identifying the wrong problem. Sometimes what really needs to
decided is very obvious, but other times the issue is harder to spot. For
example, let’s say your colleague cancelled a study session with you to
hang out with other friends. Is the problem that you are hurt by your
friend’s actions or that you are worried about his study habits? Figuring
out the focus of your decision can save you from big headaches later
on.
• Listening to only one source. This will hurt your chances of coming up
with a broad choice of alternatives and coming up with the best solution.
Overestimating how helpful or reliable one person can be is also
dangerous, because nobody can completely understand the particular
dynamics of your situation.

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• Listening to too many sources. It is important to collect as much

information as possible to help you make your decision, but an overload
of input may prevent you from following your gut instinct. Trusting your
intuition is a key component of successful decision-making.
• Overshooting on the outcome. When considering your options, take
care to also assess how probable the outcomes of each option truly are.
A decision that looks attractive but is totally unfeasible will not help you
solve the problem.
• Bad timing. Sometimes it’s best to hold off on making a decision, but
other times delaying a response can make things a lot worse. Taking
your time will probably result in a higher-quality decision, but expediting
the process could also give you more time to fix things in the event of an
undesirable outcome. Since each choice is often case-specific, consider
how the pros and cons of timing will affect your decision and the ensuing
outcome.
Class Activity 2: Problem solving techniques

Workbook

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Module 2
Create and manage an environment that promotes innovation
After completing this module, the learner will be able to Create and manage an
environment that promotes innovation, by successfully completing the
following:
• Analyse own unit in terms of opportunities for innovation

• Demonstrate understanding of the techniques for promoting creativity
• Develop a plan for creating an environment conducive to innovation
• Lead a team through a creative thinking process

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Innovation
Innovation is the introduction of new ideas, products, services, and practices
which are intended to be useful (although a number of unsuccessful innovations
can be found throughout history).
Let’s explore innovations in well-known business sectors:
Business Sector Company/ Source Innovation
Coal mines in Acid mine water treated
Mining
Mpumalanga and used for farming
Mining Sasol Oil form coal
Medical EMI laboratories Cat scan
Communications Vodaphone 3G HSDPA
Communications Telkom ADSL
Telephonic and on-line
Financial services Banks
banking
Innovation leads to change which will impact your business sector as

competitors strive to improve their product and service offering. It will also
impact your business and department, as your customer needs and
expectations change.
Change is achieved by realigning your people, processes and technology to
develop a capability that supports the innovation and leads to the desired
behaviours.
In order to maintain competitive advantage and market share, a business may
need to adopt a new strategy as products and services are introduced to the
business sector.
Consider the innovation rivalry in the local cell phone market. Maintaining
market share is all about finding new and improved ways to attract and retain
clients. MTN followed in the footsteps of Vodacom when the 3G card was
introduced to the South African market. Vodacom’s next step was the quick
introduction of HSDPA.
The introduction of these new services by Vodacom raised expectations of the
South African public.
Innovations can include:
• Products and services that meet customer needs (new opportunities)
• Products and services that address customer “pains”
• New processes that improve service delivery and accessibility
• Technology that improves service delivery and accessibility
• New ideas

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Let’s look at the potential impact of innovations in the Telecommunications

business sectors:
Positive Impact on the Negative Impact on
Innovation
Business Sector the Business Sector
Cell phones Introduction of new Cost of initial
players into the infrastructure
telecommunications requirements
sector
Alternatives to Telkom
Communication
flexibility and
accessibility for the
customer
The introduction of cell phones has an impact on Telkom. Telkom had to
explore the introduction of new services to try and maintain market value with
landline users. Telkom’s service offerings have expanded to include:
• Internet services
• Line services
• Call services
• Network solutions
• Phones and equipment
• International services
• On-line services
As with any business, innovations that impact the business sector and raise
customer expectations, will impact your business and your department.
Innovation
Innovation is the bringing into being of something that did not exist before, i.e.
a product, process or idea. Innovation happens when two or more ideas merge,
that have never been merged before.
The Pros and Cons of Innovations

Pros and Cons of an innovation should be investigated from various
perspectives. At first glance one would immediately think of the pros and cons
for your business and for your customer. However, the value chain needs to be
taken into consideration. The value chain refers to “a sequenced set of primary
and support activities that a business performs to turn inputs into value-added
outputs for its external customers.”

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Consider all role players involved in the delivery of that service or product to the
customer. Pros and cons must be considered for all the people involved as you
are only as strong as your weakest link.
So the first step is to determine all the stakeholder perspectives you will need
to consider. Include the pros and cons from an internal and external
perspective. The internal focus refers to your business/department and
external focus could refer to the customer, your suppliers, your distributors and
your competitors.
External: Pros
Internal: Pros
and Cons for
and Cons for Innovation customer,
company and
suppliers and
department
competition
Let’s consider the following example. In the 1990’s a Management Consulting

firm introduces the concept of e-learning. This is a new training product, where
a learner within a business accesses a course via the internet and studies at
his own pace, and is tested by the system during the process.
A few examples are given to illustrate how this is completed:
Stakeholder Pros Cons

Management Pioneers the product May experience
Consulting Firm Potential increase in technical problems with
market share the first few attempts
Potential additional Market may not be
revenue disciplined enough at
self-managed learning
to be interested
Start-up costs
Training and Can sell a combined Has to develop skills to
Development solution of instructor led support technology
Department training and e-learning based product
Develop new skills Start-up costs
Expansion
Customer (businesses) Alternative to trainer Learners may not have
based learning technical skills to
Managed within own support using this
time constraints medium
Limits the effect on Learners may not be
operations disciplined

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Creates a culture of Companies may be

learning hesitant to be the “first”
Sliding scale used to International material
reduce costs with may be costly due to
increased number of import costs
learners
Suppliers Additional business Need delivery of
Promotes brand name international products
e.g. Harvard within expected
timeframes
Limited supply to one
distributor (if
negotiated)
Competition (other Have an opportunity to May not have capital to
firms who offer training contact alternative secure product
and development suppliers May not have
solutions) Can learn from the international supplier
“pioneers” mistakes May not have technical
expertise
Analyse own unit in terms of opportunities for innovation

As a business analyst, you are often required to lead a team. This would give
you the opportunity to create and manage an environment that promotes
innovation. In order to do this, you need to analyse your team (own unit) in
terms of opportunities for innovation, by:
• identifying features of an environment that promotes innovation
• analysing own unit in relation to the features of an environment
conducive to innovation
• interpreting the findings of the analysis to determine whether the current
environment promotes innovation
• identifying areas for improvement on the basis of the analysis conducted
2.1 Identify features of an environment that promotes innovation

We have seen that management need to come up with creative solutions to the
challenges presented by globalisation and the advancement of technology.
You might say that that is easier said than done. In fact, you may be thinking,
“I’m not one of those creative types who can invent great new gadgets or dream
up new ideas in a split second.”
Remember, that often the only difference between creative and uncreative
people is self-perception. Creative people see themselves as creative and

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give themselves the freedom to create. Uncreative people do not think about
creativity and do not give themselves the opportunity to create anything new.
So, what is creativity?
Creativity is the bringing into being of something which did not exist before,
either as a product, a process or a thought.
You would be demonstrating creativity if you:
• Invent something which has never existed before
• Invent something which exists elsewhere but you are not aware of
• Invent a new process for doing something
• Reapply an existing process or product into a new or different market
• Develop a new way of looking at something (bringing a new idea into
existence)
• Change the way someone else looks at something
In fact, we are all creative every day because we are constantly changing the
ideas which we hold about the world about us. Creativity does not have to be
about developing something new to the world, it is more to do with developing
something new to ourselves. The world changes with us when we change
ourselves. Our actions affect the world, and we experience the world in a
different way.
Creativity can be used to make products, processes and services better and it
can be used to create them in the first place. By increasing your creativity, you,
your organisation and your customers become happier through improvements
in your quality and quantity of output.
Being creative may just be a matter of setting aside the time needed to take a
step back to ask yourself if there is a better way of doing something. Edward
de Bono calls this a 'Creative Pause'. He suggests that this should be a short
break of maybe only 30 seconds, but that this should be a habitual part of
thinking. This needs self-discipline, as it is easy to forget.
Another important attitude-shift is to view problems as opportunities for

improvement. While this is something of a cliché, it is true. Whenever you solve
a problem, you have a better product or service to offer afterwards
2.1.1 Features of a Culture of Enquiry and Risk-Taking

While one’s innovative abilities are partially genetic, the expression of creative
talent is dependent on several cultural aspects of the work environment that
either stimulate or suppress innovative thinking.

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Companies who wish to create an innovative work culture must not only hire
creative individuals but must also support and embrace an environment that is
conducive to innovation.
Just as we may need to change our thinking about innovation and creativity, we
need to encourage an attitude shift in our team members too. Multiple inputs
stimulate thought and creativity. We all have different experiences,
backgrounds, ideas and perceptions that can lead to greater innovations.
As a leader, you should create opportunities for innovation.
So how can we encourage our immediate team, the larger group and our
stakeholders to participate in the innovation process?
A system should be put in place that allows key stakeholders to contribute to
the innovation process.
Total Quality Management is a method by which management and employees
can become involved in the continuous improvement of goods and services.
Ford Motor Company, Phillips, Toyota and Motorola have all implemented TQM.
The objective of TQM is to do the right things right, the first time, every time”.
The activities within TQM include:
1) Buy-in and commitment from the senior management team
2) Buy-in and commitment by all employees
3) Meeting customer needs and expectations
4) Just in time delivery of products and services
5) Improvement teams
6) Reducing product and service costs
7) Systems that facilitate continuous improvement
8) Ownership by line management
9) Recognition and reward
10) Challenging goals and benchmarks
11) Improvement processes and plans
12) Strategic planning
Total quality management cannot be achieved without the inclusion of
innovative thinking from various stakeholders. Establishing improvement
teams is the key step in taking innovation forward. The improvement teams will
work on the feedback that is obtained from quality circle meetings and other
methods for gathering feedback.
Impact of personal and organisational values on innovation and risk

taking
Personal and organisational values can have a profound effect in either
promoting or constraining risk taking or innovation.
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Individual values are the fundamental beliefs a person holds about an issue, a
course of action, or the desirability of a future situation. Individual values are for
the most part not consciously chosen. They tend to be the product of past
influences and experiences, and they evolve gradually. For example, the values
of religious devotees, environmental activists, or pedantic bureaucrats are
rarely formed overnight. They are the result of living in a certain milieu for
lengthy periods of time. Once formed, values are difficult to change. Many
armed conflicts, as well as seemingly irrational behaviours, are the
consequences of strongly held beliefs and values.
To a large extent, values drive individual and organisational behaviour.
"Improving service and performance in the Public Service is a function not only
of systems and structures, but also of people and values. Values influence
which tasks people will do with care, which they will do superficially, and which
they will try to avoid. The role of values has received little attention. Managers
tend to give more attention to systems and structures."12
The conventional view of organisations is that they are run by systems,
structures and rules. This is the truth, of course, but it is not the whole truth.
Organisations are also run by the values and beliefs of their members. It is for
this reason that we see tensions between rules and values which often result
in paralysis. If, for example, an organisation officially announces that there
needs to be more risk-taking in order to foster innovation, and if the underlying
values of the organisation and its members are risk-aversive, then more risk-
taking is unlikely to occur. The case study below offers an illustration.
Public Service values
On the morning of May 22, 1986, Donald Trump, the New York real estate
developer, called one of his executives, Anthony Gliedman, into his office.
They discussed the inability of the City of New York, despite six years of effort
and the expenditure of nearly $13 million, to rebuild the ice-skating rink in
Central Park. On May 28 Trump offered to take over the rink reconstruction,
promising to do the job in less than six months. A week later Mayor Edward
Koch accepted the offer and shortly thereafter the city appropriated $3 million
on the understanding that Trump would have to pay for any cost overruns out
of his own pocket. On October 28, the renovation was complete, over a month
ahead of schedule and about $750,000 under budget. Two weeks later,
skaters were using it.
This example illustrates the tensions between innovation, risk taking and
values, and the paralysis that can result when the tensions are not resolved.
Public servants in the city administration needed to take into account the values
of accountability, equity, responsiveness, efficiency and fiscal integrity. Yet they
also needed to be innovative, which included some risk taking. And they
couldn't reconcile these conflicting interests with the result that the job did not
get done!
12Auditor General of Canada; http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pubs_pol/dcgpubs/riskmanagement/rm-riv1-

eng.asp#_Toc456673609
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2.2 Analyse own unit in relation to the features of an environment

A dictionary definition is a change or alteration by the introduction of something
new. By definition, innovation includes the introduction of a new product, a new
process, or a new way of doing things. The common word is the word new.
This means something more than a modification. For example, providing the
first escalator in a hotel or store I take to be innovation. Modifying the operation
of that escalator so that it was activated only by someone stepping on it is
arguably not innovation but improvement, in terms of operating cost. The
demarcation line between innovation and improvement is sometimes a grey
area; however, we needn’t lose any sleep over it.
Another explanation of innovation is that it is the successful exploitation of new

ideas. The use of the word successful is important because an invention that
is not commercialised is not considered to be innovation, since innovation
implies the generation of economic value, of wealth for the innovator.
Whilst there is a lot written on the subject of innovation, there is much less
written on any benchmarks to depict an innovative organisation.
Something had to be done about this so that some way of measuring the level
of innovativeness reached by an organisation could be devised. In this way, a
yardstick of achievement could be established against which organisations
could measure themselves. Here commenced my study of innovation, leading
eventually to a PhD in that subject.
We established several characteristics that depicted the innovative

organisation, by research and company analysis carried out in several
organisations deemed to be innovative.
This section deals with some of the key segments of innovation. These are:
• Culture
• Leadership
• Human Resources
• Customers
These are chosen from a total of 9 key segments. An Innovation Grid is used to
show the various levels of implementation by the innovative organisation.

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Innovation Grid
Key Segment Corporate culture encourages innovation

Level 1 Look externally for new ideas
Level 2 Link with external institutions
Level 3 Tolerate internal diversity
Key Segment Leadership

Level 1 Directors represent innovation and technical functions
Level 2 Innovation is part of mainstream
Level 3 Link innovation to corporate plan
Key Segment Human Resources

Level 1 Everybody understands clearly what the business is about
Level 2 Managers are given opportunities to rethink business operations
Level 3 New ideas are encouraged, generated, captured and shared
Key Segment Customers and Suppliers

Level 1 Seek out leading edge customers; partner with major suppliers
Level 2 Ensure current customers do not inhibit innovation
Level 3 Functional groups meet the customer
The above is a sample only of the various aspects present in truly innovative
organisations.
Link between culture and innovation

There is a strong link between corporate culture and innovation. To go further,
whilst current benchmarks for being innovative include high investment in R &
D and quantity of patents registered, these can be argued to be outcomes of
prior factors. For example, R & D stems from a decision to have innovation as
a goal and from having an availability of resources. Successful patents arise
from investment in R & D. The question then becomes: Where did being
innovative begin? It began with the right culture for innovation. Where did the
right culture for innovation begin? The right culture for innovation begins with
expectations, where goals and measures for innovation are set.
In an innovative organisation, decisions are based on having clear goals.
Setting these goals in the first place is the top function of senior management.
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One clear goal is to be innovative. It is not enough to get on with inventing things
and think: Gee, were innovative. Innovation is a goal in its own right which is
the number one goal in an innovative company.
Innovative Behaviour
Innovative organisations strongly encourage an innovation orientation. In some,
staff are encouraged to send their ideas directly to the CEO by way of email or
hard copy. They receive a written acknowledgement within a few days and a
full written reply within a few weeks. n some types of organisation this may not
be necessary. For example, a management consulting company with a thin
hierarchical structure where the CEO interfaces readily and regularly with
consultants lends itself to get-togethers where ideas can be thrown on the table
without too much formality.
Innovation Processes
The infrastructure in place for innovation to occur has been labelled as:
• Suggestion schemes
• Reward schemes
• Organisational systems and procedures
• Resources to enhance co-operation and collaboration
These have been called hard innovation. Soft innovation arises from
organisational culture, leadership, and people. Innovation will arise more easily
in a corporate culture where staff are encouraged to reflect on their jobs and
how they add value to the overall operation of producing good products or
services, and where both soft and hard innovation factors are present.
Product vs Process Innovation

Traditionally, product innovation has been regarded as more important than
process innovation. However, some managers are becoming aware that
product and process innovation are strategically equal, and require the same
commitment to research and development. Process innovation should be
considered and implemented with current customers in mind, but product
innovation that is of a radical type may be inhibited by current customers. This
could happen if current customers believe that certain standards that they value
and that apply currently will be lowered by the introduction of the proposed new
product. Current customers may not appreciate radical change. Therefore,
current customer focus needs to be managed so as not to inhibit innovation.
Avoid the temptation to separate your "innovation" efforts from your everyday
work. Instead, recognize that innovation is part of the real world, and strive to

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create a fostering, sustainable environment where it can prosper. In the end,

innovation will either thrive or be threatened in any given working environment.
Listen to these three principles to figure out what direction innovation is headed
in your organization:
First, the elements of destruction are present at creation. Destructive elements

to innovation aren't always easy to see but are present from the start. The life
of a product or procedure - no matter how innovative - depends on a number of
factors. It is difficult, if not impossible, to manage the elements of destruction.
The best anyone can do is to be aware of them and, when a seed of destruction
is detected, take appropriate action.
The second principle to remember regarding innovation is this: soft values drive
the organization. Hard values are results, like the scores and statistics of sports.
Soft values have to do with how the game is played. Soft values such as motive,
spirit, service and patience create environments conducive to innovation. By
contrast, contentiousness, stubbornness, pride, indiscriminate criticism and
dominating attitudes will prevent innovation from flourishing.
And the third principle to remember: trust is the means and love is the unspoken
word. According to Rosenfeld, obstacles, problems, doubts and objections are
frictions that slow down the innovative process. Trust and love enable that
process to glide over friction.
So what does love look like in the workplace? Love means caring for others,
being concerned about their personal and professional well-being and placing
a high value on their interests. It means listening and trying to understand their
concerns. It means respecting their intelligence and giving credit to their ideas.
Loving the people within the organization gives innovation its best shot.
The word innovation is used freely these days and most people on hearing the
word might think of it as something new. By new, do they mean a new product,
a new way of doing things, a new way of looking at things, something invented
but still on the drawing board, something invented and commercialised to the
point of generating good cash flow, something already in use elsewhere but
being implemented by our company for the first time, something radical,
something simply sustaining a continual drive for improvement and so on?
The fact is that most people confuse invention with innovation. They think they
mean the same thing. As has been suggested, innovation can be defined in
several ways whereas invention generally applies to a product that exists
somewhere along a sequence starting with a blueprint and ending with a
prototype. A blueprint that sits in a drawer or a prototype that remains a
prototype, and represents something new, is an invention. If and when it is
commercialised, it becomes innovation. Innovation implies action. With
innovation we are not just dealing with products, we are dealing with processes
also. Innovation is concerned with not only doing things but also with how to do
them.

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2.3 Interpret the findings of the analysis to determine whether the

current environment promotes innovation
Analysing quantitative and qualitative data is often the topic of advanced
research and evaluation methods courses. However, there are certain basics
which can help to make sense of reams of data.
Always start with your research goals

When analysing data (whether from questionnaires, interviews, focus groups,
or whatever), always start from review of your research goals, i.e., the reason
you undertook the research in the first place. This will help you organize your
data and focus your analysis. For example, if you wanted to improve a program
by identifying its strengths and weaknesses, you can organize data into
program strengths, weaknesses and suggestions to improve the program. If
you wanted to fully understand how your program works, you could organize
data in the chronological order in which customers or clients go through your
program. If you are conducting a performance improvement study, you can
categorize data according to each measure associated with each overall
performance result, e.g., employee learning, productivity and results.
Basic analysis of "quantitative" information

(For information other than commentary, e.g., ratings, rankings, yes's, no's,
etc.):
1. Make copies of your data and store the master copy away. Use the copy for
making edits, cutting and pasting, etc.
2. Tabulate the information, i.e., add up the number of ratings, rankings, yes's,
no's for each question.
3. For ratings and rankings, consider computing a mean, or average, for each
question. For example, "For question #1, the average ranking was 2.4". This
is more meaningful than indicating, e.g., how many respondents ranked 1,
2, or 3.
4. Consider conveying the range of answers, e.g., 20 people ranked "1", 30
ranked "2", and 20 people ranked "3".
Basic analysis of "qualitative" information

(Respondents' verbal answers in interviews, focus groups, or written
commentary on questionnaires):
1. Read through all the data.
2. Organize comments into similar categories, e.g., concerns, suggestions,
strengths, weaknesses, similar experiences, program inputs,
recommendations, outputs, outcome indicators, etc.

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3. Label the categories or themes, e.g., concerns, suggestions, etc.

4. Attempt to identify patterns, or associations and causal relationships in the
themes, e.g., all people who attended programs in the evening had similar
concerns, most people came from the same geographic area, most people
were in the same salary range, what processes or events respondents
experience during the program, etc.
5. Keep all commentary for several years after completion in case needed for
future reference.
Interpreting information
1. Attempt to put the information in perspective, e.g., compare results to what
you expected, promised results; management or program staff; any
common standards for your products or services; original goals (especially
if you're conducting a program evaluation); indications or measures of
accomplishing outcomes or results (especially if you're conducting an
outcomes or performance evaluation); description of the program's
experiences, strengths, weaknesses, etc. (especially if you're conducting a
process evaluation).
2. Consider recommendations to help employees improve the program,
product or service; conclusions about program operations or meeting goals,
etc.
3. Record conclusions and recommendations in a report, and associate
interpretations to justify your conclusions or recommendations.
Contents of a Research Report -- An Example

Ensure your research plan is documented so that you can regularly and
efficiently carry out your research activities. In your plan, record enough
information so that someone outside of the organization can understand what
you're researching and how. For example, consider the following format:
1. Title Page (name of the organization that is being, or has a
product/service/program that is being researched; date)
2. Table of Contents
3. Executive Summary (one-page, concise overview of findings and
recommendations)
4. Purpose of the Report (what type of research was conducted, what
decisions are being aided by the findings of the research, who is making the
decision, etc.)
5. Background About Organization and Product/Service/Program that is being
researched
1. Organization Description/History
2. Product/Service/Program Description (that is being researched)
1. Problem Statement (in the case of non-profits, description of
the community need that is being met by the
product/service/program)
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2. Overall Goal(s) of Product/Service/Program

3. Outcomes (or client/customer impacts) and Performance
Measures (that can be measured as indicators toward the
outcomes)
4. Activities/Technologies of the Product/Service/Program
(general description of how the product/service/program is
developed and delivered)
5. Staffing (description of the number of personnel and roles in
the organization that are relevant to developing and delivering
the product/service/program)
6. Overall Evaluation Goals (e.g., what questions are being answered by the
research)
7. Methodology
1. Types of data/information that were collected
2. How data/information were collected (what instruments were used,
etc.)
3. How data/information were analysed
4. Limitations of the evaluation (e.g., cautions about
findings/conclusions and how to use the findings/conclusions, etc.)
8. Interpretations and Conclusions (from analysis of the data/information)
9. Recommendations (regarding the decisions that must be made about the
product/service/program)
10. Appendices: content of the appendices depends on the goals of the
research report, e.g.:
1. Instruments used to collect data/information
2. Data, e.g., in tabular format, etc.
3. Testimonials, comments made by users of the
product/service/program
4. Case studies of users of the product/service/program
5. Any related literature
2.4 Identify areas for improvement on the basis of the analysis

conducted
Signalling a commitment to innovation is a critical first step in the innovation
process. The development of a sustainable culture that expects and
encourages innovation at every level and function of the organization actually
undergirds each element of the innovation framework. Culture is both the
starting place and the underlying base for the entire innovation process.
Creating an innovation-friendly culture means moving steadily toward
comprehensive changes that make the organization a different place. In the
business world, it is widely recognized that the most successful “socially
responsible” corporations are those that embed that commitment into
everything they do. From the smallest decisions about the quality of office
supplies to hiring employees and making major strategic business decisions, a
socially responsible corporation aspires to a coherent and integrated culture of
responsibility. Organizations that “go green” often do so by conducting a full
360-degree analysis of operations, products, and services and then make
environmental improvements at every level from the acquisition and recycling

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of materials to net-positive energy use. Similarly, an organization that wants to

be deeply innovative will create a culture that embeds innovation-friendly values
and practices throughout its operations. Ideally the leaders will enrol all of their
people in an intentional, thoughtful cultural commitment to creativity and
learning.
Creating an innovative culture is totally intertwined with creating a learning
culture. For some organizations the language about “learning organizations”
has already grown tiresome. And yet innovation is fundamentally about effective
learning. Intentional learning processes help to identify the full potential of
deliberately developed innovation or to discover the value of an accidental idea.
Without a learning culture that is constantly looking for patterns in activities,
refining and improving activities, and sifting for the meaning of things,
organizations frequently end up losing or warehousing their best information
and knowledge. Systematizing innovation requires more attention to the
learning culture, i.e. a work environment that promotes collaborative inquiry,
experimentation, tolerance for risk, and an acceptance of and commitment to
learning from setbacks or failures. Understanding the creation of learning
cultures that go beyond mere information systems will be as important to
understanding innovation as direct research on innovation itself.
Research suggests that cultures that enable innovation often focus on a

number of key practices that can be incorporated into any organization:
• Demonstrate leadership and intentionality. Innovation requires visible
and vocal top management commitment, supported by aligned resources
and incentives. Once leaders give their signal of support for innovation, they
open a call for innovation to all. At the same time, leaders must find some
people with core competencies in innovation to lead specific efforts to
integrate innovative pursuits. An organization that wants systemic
commitment to innovation will want to recruit, train, nurture, and reward
innovative behaviour of staff and leaders.
• Democratize innovation. Not all innovation is completely new; in fact,
innovation most often is a tweak on an existing idea or the unexpected
juxtaposition of existing ideas. As such, innovation can come from anyone
and anywhere. This is leading to more extensive organizational practices to
discover internal innovation as well as to open up to external ideas and
processes. Often referred to as the “democratization” of innovation, this
practice recognizes and encourages a wide range of people to participate
in the generation of new ideas, the translation and adaptation of existing
ideas to new circumstances, and the combination of multiple existing ideas
into a new concept. Empowering people is essential. If it is a good idea that
can be prototyped, implemented, refined and disseminated, the source is
of little importance.
• Experiment and learn. The realm of innovation is inherently filled with the
unknown and unknowable. Only a culture willing to experiment, test, and
learn will be able to produce and sustain innovation over time. New ideas
simply aren’t meaningful unless you are able to put them into practice and
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test how well they work. Effective experimentation and learning requires a
commitment to trying new things and clear methods for capturing
information and transforming it into insight that accelerates innovative
thinking and actual innovations.
• Run the risk. Successful innovation efforts cultivate a climate of smart risk-
taking and make a point of learning from, not punishing, failure. At the same
time smart organizations don’t confuse low or non-performance with the
more creative “failure” of innovation efforts. Be clear on what is an
appropriate and acceptable risk tolerance for your organization and adapt
an approach to innovation to match that level of risk tolerance—financially
as well as strategically. For-profit and non-profit/philanthropic entities have
overall different levels of risk tolerance—with most companies exhibiting
higher levels if and when they have generous research and development
budgets and latitude for experimentation. The intensities of the “life and
death” responsibilities of many non-profits for people who rely on their
services, along with more stringent budgetary boundaries, can lower the
ability to take multiple or high-stakes risks. Philanthropic institutions have
more financial flexibility for risk, yet often operate within tight strategies or
restrictions imposed by the donor.
• Collaborate and network. Great ideas are rarely created by a solitary
genius. More often, innovation comes from the right network of people and
teams bringing disparate ideas together. The iconic image of innovation
often portrays Thomas Edison as the sole inventor of the light bulb, but
Edison was actually an astute knowledge broker who developed his famous
Menlo Park lab to bring together thinkers and their inventions, out of which
came the light bulb.13
Innovators often collaborate with those inside and outside their
organizations to bridge across and recombine existing ideas into new ones.
Collaboration nurtures emergence, which can often lead to unexpected
opportunities. Networks are also critical to the diffusion and spread of
innovation, as adoption often relies on the choices made by other actors
within a system. Expectations that staff should work collaboratively inside
the organization and/or externally must be clear, demonstrated actively, and
reiterated continuously. The organizational structure, including the
allocation of appropriate resources of time and other supports, are needed
to bolster collaborative working relationships. And new tools for social
network analysis now allow us to see and understand networks of
relationships that were previously invisible to us. Building a full view of your
network enables an organization to understand its human resources better
and to accelerate the flow of information, ideas, and products in and out of
your organization.
• Measure and be accountable. As companies and organizations try to
prove whether or not their various investments in innovation are “paying off”
there is a new field emerging to “measure” innovation by creating accepted
systems of metrics. The U.S. Department of Commerce recently formed an
13 Andrew Hargadon, How Breakthroughs Happen, Harvard Business School Press, 2003
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advisory committee to bring together business, academic and philanthropic

leaders to define innovation and to explore the options for measurement.
While no standards currently exist to measure “innovativeness” or the
effectiveness of investing in innovation, there is much attentiveness to
feedback and learning from innovations as they move from idea to practice.
Organizations do this in a number of ways, from eBay’s feedback process
on every transaction to the Women’s Funding Network’s “Making the Case”
tool for participatory evaluation of social change with grantee partners. The
preference for rapid cycling of testing and improving ideas dominates both
literature and practice right now; and Cisco Systems has boiled it down to
a slogan: “Instant feedback creates instant success!” Measuring and
assessing effectiveness is a critical element of an organization’s ability to
effectively experiment, test, and learn.
• Communicate. Good communications practices are essential to an
innovation culture. Organizations need a process to create and share
information in order to reduce uncertainty generated around innovation and
the change it produces. Linked to the learning dimension of innovative
culture, the communications’ capacity enables broader participation in the
innovative process. Good communications enable organizations to
welcome innovations and innovators; poor communications can contribute
to the destructive temptation for one person or faction to “kill off” the
innovations of others in order to keep their own competitive advantage.
The Kellogg approach highlighted many of the key activities that are essential
to creating a culture of innovation.
Class Activity 3: Analyse own unit in terms of opportunities

for innovation
Workbook

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Develop a plan for creating an environment conducive to innovation

In an environment where products, markets, operations, and business models
are in permanent flux, clear values and goals provide alignment and cohesion,
and create a culture where the team are comfortable with change and
unpredictability.
What's required is for managers to become visionary challengers – people who
question assumptions and suggest radical alternatives (even being brave
enough to suggest alternatives that others might consider impractical). These
will be charismatic change leaders who set direction, inspire, deliver against
defined business outcomes, and move the organisation forward. In this
environment, strong management (and especially change management) is a
core competence at all levels and nurtured as a professional discipline, not an
"art".
2.5 Understand the techniques for promoting creativity

A new way of thinking can only occur in an environment of possibility. It's
essential to develop a cooperative, all-inclusive connection between employees
and the company so that everyone is moving in the same direction — so that
there is an overall “we.” In a competitive environment of “us” and “them,” people
are too busy focusing on power struggles and politics. You might get spurts of
creativity from some employees, but not from everyone. It takes constant
practice to keep everyone in the company on track with innovative or possibility
thinking.
This Module focuses on techniques to stimulate creative thinking and
encourage a problem-solving mindset.
What the BABOK® Guide says:
Applicable knowledge area: Underlying Competencies – Analytical Thinking

and Problem Solving
Business analysts need to be able to generate alternative solutions and new
ideas when solving problems. As such the analyst needs to understand the root-
cause of a problem and creatively solve the problem.
Creative thinking involves generating new ideas and concepts, as well as finding
new associations between or new applications of existing ideas and concepts.
These concepts should be innovative and appropriate to the situation. In addition
to identifying and proposing alternatives, the business analyst can be effective in
promoting creative thinking in others by asking questions and challenging
assumptions.
Measures of success:
• The successful generation of new ideas
• Application of new ideas to solve problems
• Willingness of the stakeholders to accept the new ideas
[reference: BABOK® Guide v2, p 141]

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2.5.1 Creativity and Innovation Techniques

“Your creativity is atrophied – that is, it’s totally ordinary”. This was the sharp
diagnosis of a well-known creativity trainer when confronting her seminar
students on one occasion. Although there is hardly any other human intellectual
faculty that enjoys such a high reputation as creativity, in most areas of our
society today it is treated very much as a poor relation. Creativity seems to be
the privilege of artistic professions, or of those that lean to publicity or media
presentation. Job descriptions for medical practitioners rarely feature the word
“creativity” among the criteria for selection. It almost looks as if creative thinking
is quite unnecessary for doctors and other staff engaged in clinical practice.14
Admittedly, things would be at a pretty pass if surgeons suddenly took it into

their heads to express themselves creatively when working in the operating
theatre. But a spot of inventiveness is sometimes called for even there. Not all
issues can be resolved on the basis of mere routine: even surgeons can
sometimes find themselves faced with problems in their work that calls for
flexible thinking and unconventional solutions. It remains the case that every
patient is a unique medical case, whose condition requires to be individually
treated. It isn’t always possible to get the answer out of the textbook. As for
clinical research, that would not be possible at all without a fair dash of
creativity. In research the whole object is to develop new and original
approaches, and then investigate ways in which they may be implemented on
the practical level.
To put it in a nutshell, human creativity is an indispensable impulse and an

important factor for success in practically all walks of life. Medical science and
clinical work are no exception to this rule. But how do you find the right creative
solution when you need it? Isn’t creativity a gift of Nature? Is there any chance
of compelling it by the application of these “creativity techniques”?
Creativity techniques are tools that are designed to overcome barriers in your
head. On the basis of pure analytical thinking you will hardly be able to find
solutions that are really innovative and surprising. Creativity techniques can
help get you out of the
rutted tracks of your habitual thinking.
As with all initiatives, innovation is best served in a project environment. And a

project is best ordered with a team approach. So innovation becomes
successful with a culture in the organisation that promotes initiative, ideation,
transparent value analysis of ideas, and prompt and efficient implementation
and exploitation.
Each key stage in innovation is aided by techniques and tools as aides to

achieving valuable outputs that serve the pipeline towards exploitation of new
ideas.
14
http://www.mathysmedical.com/fileadmin/user_upload/pdf_download/Downloads/Arztforum/Kreativitaetstechniken_E.
pdf
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Many techniques exist to promote the generation of ideas. Typically called

creativity tools, they frequently are associated with a workshop style approach
to the generation and qualification of ideas. While an idea comes from an
individual, many consider that it emerges most effectively in a supportive group
environment. The traditional workshop is described as brainstorming. This
approach can be greatly enhanced by use of tools, each of which will have a
different effect, for example ‘random word’ use and ‘ideas to concept’ use can
aid increase in numbers of ideas, De Bono’s Six Hats can modify the tendency
for immediate criticism of new ideas, QFD can be used as an aid to
classification. Ideas are consolidated and translated into concepts in order to
evaluate them. Valuation of ideas is supported by Six Hats, and by many other
techniques such as Function Analysis and other techniques with the area of
Value Management.
When ideas are brought in from external sources, they will have typically
evolved to well defined concepts, and validated through market research,
through prototyping with one of more designs, and by test marketing, and
perhaps protected through patenting.
Design is a critical phase and is supported by many design tools. Where a

physical size and shape are important as in automobiles and household
appliances then 3D CAD models and physical models are produced. Indeed,
modelling forms an important part of design in very many products. Prototypes
that address a single aspect of a product is frequently employed, as example a
system may have a paper model to show its navigation. Scaling is becoming
more important with certain products and services. In the pharmaceutical and
petrochemical industries, chemical engineering models address its ability for
mass production while maintaining product integrity. In software for social
networking, the use of distributed databases, partitioning of data, memory
caching, and architectural layers with loose coupling contribute to increased
performance.
2.6 Describe the role of the manager in innovation

It has been said that traditional management practice has little to contribute to
processes of creation and innovation. Therefore, if innovation is to be fostered
in an organisation, the role and practices of management require innovation as
well.
But what kind of innovation in management are we thinking about?
First of all, organisations need a new kind of leadership. Innovation is directly
proportional to the attitude of senior management. Without a corporate strategy
to reach defined corporate goals, innovation will be misdirected and unguided.
Actions of top managers should set the context: they must guide the process,
clearly communicate the reasons for the innovation and protect their creative
teams. Managers would also need to adjust their thinking to appreciate
distinctiveness in people and their thinking; and welcome change.

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Management would need courage, and the CEO needs to have the vision and
fortitude to stand before the board and defend the opportunity to explore and
fail.
Because innovation is most often carried out in teams, leadership's role is also
to provide a work environment of openness built on trust where every member
of the team feels free to express their views/opinions without fear of ridicule or
reprisal.
In addition, management should consider facilitating calculated testing
environments to evaluate and secure viability of new ideas.
Managers must provide staff the support and freedom that allows them to fulfil
their potential, and to deliver the optimal creativity and innovation that elevates
performance to world-class. To deal successfully with the cultural changes
demanded by today's smarter working practices, a manager must demonstrate
integrity, honesty, sensitivity, and humility. In equal measure, they must also
inspire, motivate, and be willing to challenge habits and conventions.
When distilled against this new work backdrop, the work of management is
focused on two essential tasks:
• Amplifying human capability (creating an environment that inspires,
enables and empowers people to give the very best of themselves) and:
• Aggregating human effort (co-ordinating the activities of individuals in
ways that allow them to achieve together what they could not otherwise
achieve alone).
The case is clear – managers must adapt to survive and thrive – and so are the
tough questions that must be asked:
• Are managers the visionary challengers required to create the freedom
to effect meaningful change? Does your organisation manage change
as a structured program and precisely measure the effectiveness of
change?
• Does your organisation have robust processes in place to incubate new
product, service and business model concepts – and redirect investment
when required?
• Does your organisation have a healthy appetite for change? And how
quickly can managers adapt?
2.6.1 Management Practices that Inhibit Creativity, Risk Taking and

Innovation
Managers have much more power than they realise. They can crush creativity
with subtle comments and gestures and responses to suggestions and ideas
that are deciphered by staff as rejection.

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The following are ways in which managers can inhibit risk-taking and innovation
among their employees:
• Criticism of all new ideas - Point out some of the weaknesses and
flaws that will prevent an idea's success. The more experienced a leader,
the easier it is for that leader to find fault with other people's ideas.
Remember, though:
o Decca Records turned down the Beatles
o IBM rejected the photocopying idea that launched Xerox
o DEC turned down the spreadsheet
o Various major publishers turned down the first Harry Potter novel
New ideas tend to be partly-formed so it is easy to reject them as "bad."
New ideas often diverge from the narrow focus previously established and
are, thus, easily discarded. Every time a new idea is criticised, the person
with the idea is disinclined to waste further time presenting more
suggestions. Criticising sends a message that new ideas are not welcome
and that anyone who volunteers them is risking criticism or ridicule.
• Lack of staff involvement - The chief executive and senior team try to
shoulder the responsibility for solving all the company's major problems
as they believe strategic issues are too complicated and high-level for
the "ordinary" staff and forget that employees can be challenged to
develop solutions.
• Focus on efficiency, not innovation - By concentrating on making the
current system work better, time will not be wasted looking for different
systems. The current business model is the one that is obviously the best
one for the business. “If the makers of horse drawn carriages, after all,
had improved quality they could have stopped automobiles taking their
markets. The same principle applies to makers of slide rules, LP records,
typewriters and gas lights”.15
• A culture of long hours and hard work - Managers insist on working
harder at the old way of doing things believing that will eventually solve
any issues. They do not deviate from set plans regardless of
circumstances and market changes. If an idea was not part of the original
plan, there is no budget for it and, thus, the idea would not be
implemented.
• Punish mistakes - If an employee tries an innovative idea that fails,
blame and punishment follow. The existing way of doing things will be
reinforced and dangerous experiments are discouraged.
• Don’t value training - Workshops, budgets and time allocated to
creativity and innovation are often looked at as wasteful extravagances.
15 By Paul Sloane; Retrieved from: http://www.realinnovation.com/content/c071112a.asp

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2.7 Plan to create an innovative environment

You need to plan to create an innovative environment:
2.7.1 Recording and communicating new ideas

Regular team meetings provide the opportunity to voice any new ideas that may
emerge during the life cycle of the project. New ideas should be recorded in
the meetings and the tips and techniques for creative thinking can be used to
further develop the ideas and perhaps, to initiate new projects.
Using the innovation pro-forma

The innovation pro forma is an ideal tool that can be used to promote innovative
thinking. The principle of the tool is that it gives everyone a chance to voice their
opinions or ideas, but at the same time, holds them responsible for providing
solutions to problems and ideas they may generate. It also prevents the filtering
of information as feedback is aimed at the project manager (or senior
management team where necessary).
It also provides the opportunity for all ideas to be recorded and communicated.
The project administrator could be responsible for capturing all ideas into a
consolidated documented that provides a historical view of the ideas that have
been generated and in some cases, actioned, throughout the project.
Setting up the process for recording and communicating new ideas

During the team planning meeting introduce the concept of the innovation pro-
forma. Ask the team to first agree on how the pro-forma will be accessed. This
could be hard copies of the template or soft copies via e-mail or the intranet.
Then discuss how the forms will be returned and who they will be returned to
for sorting and capturing of the data.
The next step is to determine the turnaround times for giving feedback to the
team on the recommendations and the forum that it will be completed in.
The last step is optional and could include rewards for the best ideas.
A motor manufacturing company in South Africa included the last step in their
problem solving process, and told their employees that any innovative ideas
that were recommended by staff would be reviewed against the ability to
implement and the ability to save costs. The reward was 10% of the cost
savings to the business. A worker on the assembly line came up with an idea
that saved the company over R2, 000, 000. He was rewarded with a cheque
for R200, 000.
Let’s look at an example of how the innovation pro-forma could be used.

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Innovation pro-forma
This is an innovation pro-forma for the customer service department of an airline
company.
Current problems experience: Recommended solutions to
address problems:
Too much paper being used on the Send all reports on-line. No printing
project. Too many copies of reports of reports for standard meetings.
being distributed and piles of paper Source the route of the work that has
are being wasted at the photocopier been printed and left at the
machine. photocopier and address with each
individual.
Ideas for improving the product and Recommended steps for improving
service offering: these:
Customers complain that Review existing policy
Johannesburg and Durban have Get inputs form Jhb and Dbn on what
different policy on hand luggage. Jhb works best for the customer within
allows you to take laptop, handbag safety regulations.
and carry-bag. Durban only allows 2 Redefine policy.
pieces of hand luggage. Line managers to communicate
Define clear policy and educate staff. changes to staff.
Managers to assess implementation.
Lateral thinking ideas: Recommendations for implementing
ideas:
Economy class customers can use Have an open day to use the VIP
the VIP lounges. lounges
Vouchers to the lounge for frequent
flyers
Questions Answers to be provided within _____
number of days.
None
2.7.2 Describe the Implementation of the Plan

Now that you are enthused and ready to stimulate creativity in your team, you
need to come up with a plan. Look at your environment and availability of
resources- do you already have that sinking feeling that this is going to be a
futile exercise?
We already know that organisational structure can inhibit or foster creativity and
innovation. The problem with organisational structure though, is that it is
resultant of many factors, including history, organic growth, strategy, operational
design, product diversity, logistics, marketing, client base, supplier base and so
forth. Therefore, what you need, are not recipes for complete structural change,
but a plan to foster structures that can be adapted into the existing structure.

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In its simplest form, your plan can aim for the following:
• Direct communication links to decision makers.
• Communication and information flow between departments and creative
teams in other departments
• Tangible progression of ideas from problem to solution
• Fostering a culture of creativity in your team
Now that you have established your goals, you can draw up your action plan.
2.7.3 Promote the Plan

Of course your plan will be dead in the water without buy-in and commitment
from relevant stakeholders, such as team members, other managers, perhaps
even customers, suppliers and other interest groups.
Depending on the prevailing culture in your company, you could find responses
ranging from apathy to ridicule and you could have your work cut out for you
when trying to change attitudes and gain commitment from the role players.
Class Activity 4: Develop a plan for creating an environment

Workbook

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Lead a team through a creative thinking process

Initially you may find that you have to lead your team through the creative
thinking process, but as they experience the freedom and rewards of innovation
and acknowledgement, they will be able to run brainstorming sessions by
themselves.
2.8 Apply Techniques for Promoting Innovation and Creativity (also refer
to LP6 Mod1)
Innovation and creative thinking are often required to address problems, pains
and barriers to performance. Innovation and new ideas are an important part
of the problem solving process. Steps in the problem solving process include:
1. Identify the problem
2. Clearly define the problem
3. Define the options
4. Identify possible solutions
5. Implement and evaluate the results
Step 1: Identify the Problem

The first step in the problem solving process is to identify or acknowledge that
there is a problem. This may be a problem such as missing stock, poor
turnaround times in service delivery, continuous errors, not getting things right
the first time, bad behaviour, problems with technology etc. Once the problem
has been identified, the next step is to clearly define the problem.
Step 2: Clearly Define the Problem

In order to clearly define a problem, you need to gather information and
evidence. Ask questions to determine the true source of the problem. For
example, if customer’s phones in to say that his calls are not being returned by
a staff member, the immediate response is to attribute the problem to the staff
member. However, upon investigation, you may establish that the call answer
facilities on the PABX is faulty and does not save messages.
A technique that can be used to identify the root cause of a problem is to use
the 5 Why’s. When you use this technique you look at a situation, or at a
person’s behaviour and you ask why a situation or behaviour has occurred.
You continue to ask the question why, until you get to the root cause of the
problem.

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For example:
Manager: Why are the customer’s calls not being returned?
Employee: I have not received any messages?
Manager: Why have you not received any messages?
Employee: I have checked the messages on the phone and it says no
messages
Manager: Why would the system say there are no messages when the
customer says he has been leaving messages?
IT manager: The system does not appear to be recording messages on the
call answer facility
Manager: Why is the system not recording messages?
IT Manager: It has not been programmed properly
Manager: Why hasn’t it been programmed properly?
IT Manager: The suppliers were supposed to have done it a week ago
Evaluate all of the information that is given to you. Look at things such as
internal bias and consider all stakeholders involved.
It is evident in this example that the root cause of the problem rests with the
supplier and needs to be addressed by them to ensure that the problem is
resolved. It has however created a knock on effect that has affected a
relationship with a customer, and that is another problem that will need to be
resolved.
Step 3: Define the Options

Once you have gathered data, evaluated all of the information and identified
the root cause of the problem, you are able to look at options for addressing the
problems. Use creative thinking to generate options and innovative ideas.
Let’s look at an example of customer’s ordering the product telephonically, but
the turnaround time on orders is 4 days and the customer wants it in 2 days.
You could use the reversal technique in this situation and reverse the statement
“the product gets delivered to the customer” to “the product does not get
delivered to the customer”. If the product does not get delivered to the
customer, what are the options?
• The customer collects the product
• The product is not assembled and parts get sent to the customer
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Use the techniques for creative thinking that were discussed earlier to assist
you in generating options and innovating new ideas.
Once you have generated alternatives, possibilities or choices, you are in a

position to identify possible solutions.
Step 4: Identify possible solutions

When identifying solutions, ensure that you consider all the stakeholders
involved and that you predict the long term and short term consequences of the
options.
When predicting the consequences, consider both the positive and the
negative. This should give you enough information to make an informed
decision.
Example:
3Ms production of “Post It” note pads”. Glue was made in production that did
not meet the expected standards. So instead of disposing of it, the 3M team
looked at what the glue could be used for. It could be used as a reusable
adhesive on paper that sticks to surfaces. This then led to “Post Its” which are
used all over the world for note taking and used as reminders.
You can explore attributes in the following categories:
• Physical e.g. colour, weight, materials, speed
• Psychological e.g. appearance, symbols, feelings it generates
• Functional e.g. its uses, applications
• People e.g. anyone who is involved
• Miscellaneous e.g. cost, reputation, origin
Run a brainstorming session

A brainstorming session should be used for generating lots of new ideas and
solutions. It should not be used for analysis or for decision making. Of course
you will need to analyse and judge the ideas but this is done afterwards and the
analysis process does not involve brainstorming techniques.
A brainstorming session must be targeted to a specific topic or else you run the
risk of downgrading any future sessions. You must define the problem area or
the opportunity area you want to create ideas for. You must draw up a specific
problem/ opportunity statement which describes what you are trying to achieve.
This statement must not even suggest what a typical solution might be because
this will hinder the idea generation.
It is perfectly acceptable to propose a brainstorming session to investigate a
whole area of interest which you wish to explore. You will have no fixed
perceptions about the area and can often discover new ideas and markets
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precisely because you didn't follow the normal training path. Creative thinkers
often suggest that before you do research in a specific area, you should
generate your own ideas because if you follow what everyone else has done,
you will follow the normal line of thinking and come up with the same or similar
answers.
Once you have an initial statement you should decide whether a brainstorming
session is appropriate. The time and costs spent brainstorming can sometimes
be saved by just implementing a currently known solution and spending your
valuable time on more crucial opportunities. Some problems are best solved by
computer simulation or mathematical calculations because they do not need a
change in perception. You should not be planning a brainstorming session if
you already have several solutions and all you want to do is to decide which
one to use (this is done by analysis). If you are only going to ignore what
everyone else suggests then you shouldn't waste their time, or yours.
Decide how you will run the session and who will take part
Assume you now have a goal statement describing what you are trying to
achieve or investigate. You have also decided that brainstorming is the most
valid approach to your investigation.
Now you need to decide how you will run the session and who will take part. It
is important to adjust the style and management of the session depending on
the topic and the participants involved.
First you should decide who will lead the session, namely who is going to be
the facilitator. This person needs to introduce the session, to keep an eye on
the time and to make sure the rules are obeyed. This person will facilitate the
session to make it run smoothly and ensure that the participants feel
comfortable and join in the process. They will also be responsible for restarting
the creative process if it slows down.
This central facilitator will normally be you. But you should be careful not to
automatically select yourself in this role. If it is a sensitive issue and includes
an evaluation of your position, maybe you shouldn't be there. Alternatively, you
may be better at being a regular participant than as a facilitator. Or to remove
all biases you could employ a facilitator from another department or from
outside your company.
Next you should decide who will take part. The natural inclination and easiest
option is to gather your own group of colleagues and friends from within your
department, group or company. This is what normally happens, and normally
works well. If you are more confident then you should invite people from other
departments / groups / companies whom you don't normally work with. You may
now be mixing many more different personalities into the creative flow and this
can only result in a broader outlook in your ideas.
Group sizes often number between 4 and 30 people. More people mean more
opportunities for diversity but can lead to nervousness or to frustration if each
person is not given enough individual time to suggest ideas.
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Creating the right conditions for innovation

The nature of innovation is such that it cannot exist without +risk taking. In a
study on innovative organisations, managers invariably identified two critical
elements for innovation:
• Support for risk taking and change
• Tolerance of mistakes.
Innovation means working in new ways and this may lead to errors. A key
problem for managers is how to deal with honest errors - those efforts that,
despite the best of intentions, fall short of expectations. Where performance
falls short of expectations, this should be seen as an opportunity to learn. But
this is a very difficult shift in environments where precision and time constraints
are of extreme importance.
There is therefore a close relationship between innovation and risk taking.
Indeed, the relationship is intimate to the extent that organisations cannot
engage in innovation without taking at least a minimum of risk. The tolerance
for risk taking is therefore a gauge for the innovativeness with which an
organisation is likely to pursue its goals.
Prepare the room and materials

The choice of room will obviously depend on what is available:
A group of approximately 12 people:
Arrange people to be seated in a circle with no "head of the table". Ideally, a
round-shaped table is best, though a set of tables in a circle is the usual
solution. Otherwise a broad U shape layout is fine. This makes everybody feel
equal and when people's ideas start to flow you will find that the person initiating
the session becomes part of the group and can play an equal role without
pushing any authority. You could have flipcharts just behind the members
(approximately one per two people) and with lots of coloured pens. Each person
should also have a notepad and pen so that they can write down their personal
ideas at the same time as ideas shouted out by other people are being written
down elsewhere. Make sure no ideas are lost at any stage. The cost of extra
pads is small compared to the loss of a potential winning solution.
You may well need a projector if you intend to display the problem/ opportunity
description and any background information or pictures.
A room which has space around the table in which to move about, but not one
which makes the group feel small in comparison, is ideal. Comfortable chairs
and tables coupled with refreshments on a nearby table are useful. Providing
an object in the middle of the circle gives people something to fix on while
thinking and removes the need to look into the face of someone else while
suggesting an idea.
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A dedicated scribe (or two) whose only job is to grab and write down the ideas
is extremely useful. This releases some pressure on the facilitator who can
spend more time guiding the process
• Smaller groups: Smaller groups are easier to control but there are fewer
people to keep the process moving smoothly onward. A very small group is
more like a quick-fire conversation and could be seated round a small table
with a large pad of paper covering the whole table surface. Everyone can
add their ideas at the same time. Try to move the group close together so
they don't feel remote from each other.
• Larger groups: With large groups it's impossible to arrange people in a circle
without them being too far away to feel part of the group. In this situation
you will need to have a theatre-style seating pattern with the facilitator at the
front.
If you need a microphone and speakers, then it's likely that the group is too big
for brainstorming because ideas will be lost while people wait for their turn to
speak. If you want to brainstorm with such a large group then you need to have
everyone write their ideas down on a notepad or on a computer, use some ideas
as stimuli to help people with their personal brainstorming and then gather the
pads in afterwards.
Prepare the participants and issue invitations

When you know who you will be inviting and where it is going to be held, you
need to invite everyone. First find out when you can get the room you require
and if you can have all of the equipment for those times. Try to find three
different times when it is available (and reserve it for those three times if you
can).
Send out invites by post or by e-mail telling people the time and the place and
how long the session will last. Suggest just the most suitable time and location
for you and specify a date by which they must have replied. Tell them you want
a reply whether their answer is “yes” or “no”. Let them know the topic of the
brainstorming session and let them know how much you appreciate their
assistance.
You may need to remind people to reply just before the deadline. If the deadline
arrives and you have too few people that can come, send out an invite for the
next two times you have planned and ask them which ones they can attend. If
they cannot attend those either, then you should not ask them again and you
should hold a smaller session. Remember to cancel any bookings you don't
need.
Thank everyone for replying and tell them the final meeting place and time and
invite those who say they cannot attend to turn up if they change their situation.
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Running the session itself

First of all, you should arrive early, prepare the room and feel relaxed within it.
Stick the brainstorming rules up in a prominent place. Mentally prepare
yourself by running through what you will be doing during the session and
remembering that you will be friendly and encouraging at all times.
As the participants arrive, welcome them individually and try to get them talking
to each other socially. You are trying to relax everyone and make them feel
comfortable with each other. It is very useful if you can introduce people who
haven't met each other before. Turn on some peaceful music if you have some.
At the point when everyone has arrived (or most people have, depending on
the time), gather everyone together and settle them down in their seats.
Welcome them to the brainstorming session and outline the purpose of the
session: to get as many ideas as possible on the subject of your choice. Allow
people clarification of your intentions but be careful not to suggest specific
solutions and try not to place any barriers to solutions at this stage. For now,
they should pretend that anything is possible.
Run through the brainstorming rules. If anyone is new to brainstorming, then
it is useful if they have a printout of the rules.
Highlight the importance of the rules. Also explain that the ideas they shout out
are both to serve as possible solutions AND to stimulate ideas in other people.
You are expecting strange and impossible ideas which will spark off workable
solutions. Let them know how much you value weird and bizarre ideas.
If people are new to brainstorming or do not brainstorm very often, it is important
to hold a warm-up session to get people "in the mood" and to help them lose
their initial inhibitions. One way to do this is to ask people to approach a non-
related topic which will not influence anyone in the company. The purpose is to
get minds thinking in a flexible and creative way. Typical examples are:
"Generating new features for cars" or "Generating new features and gadgets
for the kitchen" or "Generating new television programmes". Anything fun,
stimulating and, most importantly, not job related.
After warming up for about 5 to 10 minutes, you should reintroduce your main
topic for brainstorming.
Open the session by asking for as many ideas and suggestions as possible.
Write every one of them down. Tell people to write them down on their own pads
of paper if they think they will forget before it can be written down "officially".
Then start asking for radical ideas, ideas which will work in a strange way and
any ideas which just spring to mind for no apparent reason. Write them all down
on the flipcharts. As each piece of paper is filled, remove it from the pad and
fasten it to the wall so that everyone can see it.
Remind people to use other people's ideas as a springboard for their own. Get
them to read the current ideas and expand on them radically. Change, warp
and exaggerate them and see what further ideas come up. What is the
strangest way of solving the problem? Occasionally remind people that you
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want the ordinary ideas too. They should shout out all of their ideas, not only
the interesting ones.
Keep telling them how well they are doing when they come up with new ideas,
especially when the idea is very weird. Thank them for saying their ideas. Be
encouraging. Lightly scold the group if they criticise or sound shocked at the
ideas. Encourage and reward all suggestions, radical or not. Glance from
person to person, catching their eye in a pleasant way and smile. Try to speed
up the ideas so that there is less time for criticism or evaluation.
Do not call people by their names because this reduces the group bonding. Use
"we" when you speak. Let them know that it is a group effort and that you are
all responsible for making a helpful and creative environment.
Inevitably there will be awkward silent periods. Try not to highlight this as bad.
People need time and space to think. Light conversation to the other
participants will help them speak out again and will stop them feeling like they
are breaking the silence. Move back to the ideas listed on the flipcharts, pick
an interesting one and put that to the group asking them to expand, modify or
remodel it. Keep going until the ideas dry up.
After a short period, your group will have exhausted their ideas for a while and
will need a break. The time this takes could be as little as ten minutes or as
much as an hour. Depending on the time you have allocated to the session and
depending on the number of ideas generated, you should ask them to take a
break or, indeed, it may be time to end the session. Don't force people to stay
for two hours just because the room is booked for that long. Stop when you
have finished.
If you are taking a mid-session break, get people to move about, chat outside,
meet other people and relax. Thank them for taking part and for their ideas so
far. Allow people to talk about anything they want to. Encourage them to look
through the flipcharts of ideas. When the break is over ask people to sit in a
different place, greet their new neighbours and then start again. Remind people
of the rules and the purpose, then ask for suggestions.
You should try to change the process if you are having several sessions or if
you find things drying up:
Get people to create small groups around different flipcharts and brainstorm
around the ideas on it. Then they can move on to the next one.
Get people to write their ideas on a piece of paper and hand it to the next person
to build on those. (Or you can redistribute them randomly so that people will be
less embarrassed and inhibited.)
By this stage you should have a great brainstorming session running and will
have hundreds if not thousands of ideas and potential solutions. At some point
you will need to stop the session, either at a natural break or end point or, if
necessary, due to lack of time.
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Getting the immediate team to participate in innovation

Set up channels that allow your immediate team to identify problems or
opportunities and to share ideas on innovative actions to address/action these.
Select a variety of channels so that input is encouraged. Channels could
include:
• The Idea Room - Ideas are posted on a notice board in the room. Meetings
are held in this room and innovative ideas are explored.
• E-mail - Problems or opportunities are e-mailed to the team and they are
asked to think of ideas to address them prior to the next team meeting.
• Innovation workshops - Workshops are held with the team to brainstorm
innovative ideas for the customer and the department.
• Graffiti wall - A graffiti wall is set up on a notice board for staff to post ideas.
• Quality circle meetings - Meetings are held with the team identify ways in
which quality can be improved upon to meet and surpass customer
expectations.
• Innovation pro-forma - An innovation pro-forma is a template that allows
ideas and solution to be expressed and delivered directly to senior
management. The importance of the process is to get feedback on the ideas
returned to the employees within an agreed upon turnaround time.
Refer to the template example of the pro-forma.
Innovation pro-forma
Recommended solutions to
Current problems experienced:
address problems:
Ideas for improving the product Recommended steps for

and service offering: improving these:
Recommendations for
Lateral thinking ideas:
implementing ideas:
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Answers to be provide within

Questions
_____ number of days.
Ending the session

When you decide to end the session, for whatever reason, catch everyone's
attention and ask them to finish off their writing. Thank them very much for
taking part, tell them how good the process was and how enjoyable you found
it. Let them know that you will be collating the ideas in a large list and analysing
them to find out which ones you will use. You can offer to send the list to them
if appropriate.
Tell them that if they have any ideas later in the day, on the way home, in the
bath or during the next week, that they should let you know because you are
still interested in all their ideas. Tell them where and how to contact you - don't
assume that they all know.
At the end of good session your participants will normally be mentally exhausted
so give them a break or some refreshments and tell them to leave everything
where it is. When they have gone, go round and gather every bit of paper with
writing on it - notepads, flip chart paper, even scraps of paper (accidentally) put
in the bin.
If you leave the room now, you can often forget what really happened and so it
can sometimes be productive to just sit in the middle of the empty room with a
pad of paper and think through the session and note down any extra ideas you
now have. You can often think very clearly at this stage and have hundreds of
suggestions swimming round in your head just waiting to join together and
surprise you. You should also note down your ideas on how the brainstorming
session went and how it could be improved next time.
Now take the set of papers to your office, and take a well-earned break.
Congratulate yourself on a job well done.
Post-session work and idea analysis

You should now have a large number of ideas scattered about on lots of bits of
paper (unless you used a computer program to store your ideas). It is
recommended that you put all of the ideas into one list.
If you intend to do any amount of analysis on the ideas or you want to share the
complete set with other people in your organisation (which is a very good way
of encouraging people to contribute) then you will want to enter all of the ideas
on to a computer. The simplest way of sorting and analysing them is using a
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spreadsheet package such as Microsoft Excel. With the ideas stored

electronically you can easily restructure them and send them to other people
by e-mail or by disk.
Technically, the brainstorming session is over at this point and the analysis
process has begun. It is important to make this distinction. Brainstorming is only
the generation of the ideas. When you start to analyse the ideas you are not
brainstorming.
Step 5: Select the Best Alternative Solution

The analysis of the ideas can be done by just you or it can be done in a group.
The group can be the same group who did the brainstorming or it can be the
dedicated group of people who will eventually be implementing the chosen
ideas. Because it is best to have "external" people in the brainstorming session
it is often the case that the group which analyses the ideas is a different group
to that which produced them.
Even if you are using a group to analyse the ideas it is always helpful to do an
initial sort-out to remove duplicates and remove ideas which are really are
totally impractical. This removal should be based on valid physical criteria such
as cost, time and physical laws. Try not to remove any remotely possible
solutions at too early a stage.
Now that you have a long list of possible ideas, work through them and arrange
them into three lists:
• Excellent. Definitely will work and can be implemented immediately.
• Interesting. Will possibly work or may require further analysis to decide
if it will work. Needs more investigating. May work in the future.
• Useless. Will not work.
When you have the lists you should plan to implement the excellent ideas and
to investigate the interesting ones. This is where your management and
leadership skills are necessary.
Analyse the ideas and discover your solutions Once you have made your
decision, you are in a position to implement your innovative idea.
Step 6: Develop a Concept for Implementation

If it is a large scale initiative, use your action plan to detail the steps required,
and allocate responsibilities. Make sure that your planned implementation is in
accordance with the organisation's policies and procedures
Once an innovative idea has been generated, the next step is to take the idea
into reality through some form of testing and refinement. From the simplicity of
low-tech models of prototyping like visual ketches and story boards to the most
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high-tech simulations, testing and prototyping is an iterative process. An idea

may cycle through numerous repetitions of prototyping or piloting until it is
improved sufficiently for full implementation and scaling. The positive value of
cycling rapidly and frequently through idea and application is a dominant idea
throughout the literature about innovation. In most innovation systems the
ability to learn early in the innovation process is essential for success. Stefan
Thomke, author of Experimentation Matters, lays out six key principles of how
to organize for successful experimentation:
1. Anticipate and exploit early information through “front-loaded”

innovation processes. Avoid large expenditures to correct late-stage
development problems. New technologies (e.g. simulations or digital
models) are most powerful when they are deployed to test what
works and what doesn’t work as early as possible.
2. Experiment frequently but do not overload your organization or

project team. A good experimentation strategy balances the value of
early information against the cost of repeated testing.
3. Integrate new and traditional technologies to unlock performance.

4. Organize for rapid experimentation. Integral to innovation is the ability
to experiment quickly: rapid feedback shapes new ideas by
reinforcing, modifying, or complementing existing knowledge.
5. Fail early and often but avoid mistakes. Ask: How often are people
rewarded for exposing failure early, thus saving their employer from
investing precious resources in opportunities with little promise. (But
don’t confuse “failures” with mistakes or low performance.)
6. Manage projects as experiments and maximize learning.
With these principles in mind, it is important to consider the appropriate pace

for experimentation. Rapid prototyping has been at the heart of most writing
and thinking about innovation, helping companies as well as social sector
organizations to solve design problems earlier in the developmental process
for products and processes. But in the social sector innovation often also
involves broad social change movements and more complex idea design;
another approach, slow prototyping, may be called for in these
circumstances.
Step 7: Record the Concept and communicate it for Implementation

Ensure that the concept is recorded in an agreed and approved format and that
it is communicated properly to all the relevant stakeholders.
Knowledge dissemination—actively providing information to others looking to
bring an innovation to their organization or community. Sharing information
about an innovation allows others to learn about your ideas and to choose
whether or not to adopt the innovation. In its essence, dissemination gets you
into the core of communications theory—selecting the most appropriate vehicle
for sharing knowledge and persuading audiences to try new approaches. In
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sharing an innovation in this way, it is important to identify early adopters,

change agents, and opinion leaders that can help you spread the innovation
across a network. Conveying the information to these key hubs becomes a
matter of identifying the best platforms and channels of communication, using
either push (sending the information out, as with emails) or pull (getting people
to come to the information, as with a website) strategies.
Technical assistance—providing technical assistance, training, coaching,
consulting, or other capacity building help to others interested in implementing
the innovation. Technical assistance helps others build the capacity and skills
that allow them to adopt innovations, and to get hands-on assistance in
implementing new approaches.
Introduce elements of innovation in regular team meetings

Ensure that innovation is included in the regular team meetings. The innovation
pro-forma and the other channels mentioned provide a framework for including
innovation in team meetings.
First determine which channels you will use in your business to elicit innovative
ideas. Collect all of the ideas and consolidate the feedback into a presentation
or document.
Channels: e-
mail, pro-forma,
idea room,
graffiti wall -
Consolidate
What should Actions for

What needs
it change making it
to change?
to? happen
During your meeting discuss:

• What needs to change (what are our business pains and opportunities?)
Use this as your framework for innovation by facilitating:
• What should it change to (what will the desired state look like?)
• Actions for making the change happen (how can we get to the desired
state?)
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Use creative thinking tips and techniques for idea generation. (Tips and
techniques for brainstorming and creative thinking follow in the next Module).
Class Activity 5: Lead a team through a creative thinking

process
Workbook
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Module 3
Apply creative thinking and troubleshooting techniques to
business advising practices (SMMEs)
After completing this module, the learner will be able to apply creative thinking
and troubleshooting techniques to business advising practices, by successfully
completing the following:
• Apply creative thinking techniques to business advising practices

• Apply troubleshooting techniques to business advising practices
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Apply creative thinking to business advising practices

Applicable knowledge area: Underlying Competencies – Analytical Thinking

and Problem Solving
Business analysts need to be able to generate alternative solutions and new
ideas when solving problems. As such the analyst needs to understand the root-
cause of a problem and creatively solve the problem.
Creative thinking involves generating new ideas and concepts, as well as finding
new associations between or new applications of existing ideas and concepts.
These concepts should be innovative and appropriate to the situation. In addition
to identifying and proposing alternatives, the business analyst can be effective in
promoting creative thinking in others by asking questions and challenging
assumptions.
Measures of success:
• The successful generation of new ideas
• Application of new ideas to solve problems
• Willingness of the stakeholders to accept the new ideas
[reference: BABOK® Guide v2, p 141]
A Business Analyst / Advisor is a person who has to collaborate with all

stakeholders of a business to understand the structure and policies in order
advise a business on how to achieve its goals.
Business analysis is the set of tasks and techniques used to work as a liaison
among
stakeholders in order to understand the structure, policies, and operations of
an
organisation, and to recommend solutions that enable the organisation to
achieve its
goals.
A Business Advisor will analyse a business in order to:

• Understand how the business functions to accomplish its purposes
• What the requirements are to provide products
• What the requirements are provide services to external stakeholders
• Define the business goals and how those goals connect to specific
objectives, determining the courses of action that a business has to
undertake to achieve those goals and objectives
• Define how various business units and stakeholders within and outside
of that a business should interact
Business analysis may be performed to understand the current state of a

business or to serve as a basis for the later identification of business needs. In
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most cases, however, business analysis is performed to define and validate

solutions that meet business needs, goals, or objectives.
Business advisors must analyse and process information provided by a large

number of people who interact with the business, such as customers, staff, IT
professionals, and executives. The business advisor is responsible for eliciting
the actual needs of stakeholders, not simply their expressed desires. In many
cases, the business advisor will also work to facilitate communication between
different organisations aligning the needs of business units with the capabilities
delivered by information technology, and may serve as an intermediary
between those groups.
A business advisor is any person who performs business analysis activities, no

matter what their job title or organisational role may be. Business analysis
practitioners include not only people with the job title of business analyst, but
may also include business systems analysts, systems analysts, requirements
engineers, process analysts, product managers, product owners, enterprise
analysts, business architects, management consultants, or any other person
who performs the tasks described in the BABOK® Guide, including those who
also perform related disciplines such as project management, software
development, quality assurance, and interaction design.
No matter what they're called, these professionals serve as bridges between

the development staff and your business stakeholders. Business advisors work
with project stakeholders to identify, document and validate requirements.
They help to examine the system, identify potential areas of automation and
improve the underlying business process. Business advisors transform what
might have been problem areas into development areas which in turn helps
grow a business into a successful venture.
Problem solving principles methods and techniques

Problems can be defined broadly as situations in which we experience
uncertainty or difficulty in achieving what we want to achieve.
Problems affect everybody and they occur when we have an objective (an
intention/plan or something we want to achieve) and a stumbling block
(something not expected) prevents us from achieving our objective.
We encounter a large variety of problems during the course of our work, with
objectives and obstacles of different types and importance. Defining these
accurately is essential to finding an effective solution.
Solving a problem involves finding ways to overcome any obstacles and to
achieve our objective by:
• identification of the problem
• investigating ways and alternatives to solve the problem
• selecting the best solution and setting goals
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• implementation of solutions
• evaluation of goal/objective achieved
3.1 Identify creative thinking concepts in line with purpose and set
objectives
Creative thinking is the process which we use when we come up with a new
idea. It is the merging of ideas which have not been merged before. This
creative thinking process can be accidental or deliberate.
Creative thinking skills use very different approaches to critical thinking skills.
They involve a much more relaxed, open, playful approach. This can require
some risk-taking. Creative thinking skills involve such approaches as:
• Looking for many possible answers rather than one.
• Allowing yourself to make wild and crazy suggestions as well as those
that seem sensible.
• Not judging ideas early in the process - treat all ideas as if they may
contain the seeds of something potentially useful.
• Allowing yourself to doodle, daydream or play with a theory or
suggestion.
• Being aware that these approaches necessarily involve making lots of
suggestions that are unworkable and may sound silly.
• Making mistakes.
• Learning from what has not worked as well as what did
Brainstorming is an idea generating technique. Its main goals are:
• to break us out of our habit-bound thinking; and
• to produce a set of ideas from which we can choose.
No one wants to have a choice of only one product when buying detergent or
cars, so why have a choice of only one solution when working on a problem?
A mind map is a whole-brain method for generating and organising ideas.
Mind Maps can be used for the following:
• Problem solving
• Writing a business plan
• Generating ideas
• Studying for exams
• Personal goal setting
• Learning languages; and
• Improving reading, comprehension and retention.
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Checklists
This creative technique is used mainly for product improvement or modification.

It involves applying a series of words, verbs, adjectives or phrases contained in
checklists or tables to an existing product or service or its attributes.
Osborn’s Checklist is the best known and includes the verbs: put to other uses,
adapt, modify, magnify, minify, substitute, rearrange, reverse and combine.
Each verb contains also an expanded definition in the form of questions.
For example, the description of the verb substitute is:
• Who else instead?
• What else instead?
• Other ingredient?
• Other material?
• Other process?
• Other power?
• Other place?
• Other approach?
• Other tone of voice?
3.2 Interpret creative thinking concepts and describe the implications

for SMME's
Creative thinking involves the generation of new ideas or the recombination of
known elements into something new, providing valuable solutions to a problem.
It also involves motivation and emotion. Creativity “is a fundamental feature of
human intelligence in general. It is grounded in everyday capacities such as the
association of ideas, reminding, perception, analogical thinking, searching a
structured problem-space, and reflecting self-criticism. It involves not only a
cognitive dimension (the generation of new ideas) but also motivation and
emotion, and is closely linked to cultural context and personality factors.
Creative thinking is the flip side of analytical thinking. The aim of creative
thinking is to develop new ideas, find new solutions, take chances.
Here it is important not to be confined by logic. New ideas often come about by
considering what is impossible or very unlikely and finding ways of making it
happen. For example, many people said that powered flight aeroplane flight
was impossible until the Wright Brothers first did it. Even then, many
newspapers across the USA refused to report it because they still believed it to
be impossible.
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Creative thinking can lead to new insights. A classic example is Albert Einstein.
He imagined what it would it would be like to ride on a beam of light and as a
result came up with his two theories of relativity. He conducted many other of
these thought experiments to test his theories. While there is only one Einstein,
anyone can use creative thinking techniques to generate new ideas. You don't
have to be a genius.
If you are involved in any situation or career where innovation or originality is
important, learning to think creativity is vital.
3.3 The effects which stimulate or frustrate creative thinking

Creativity in a company is:
• to be happy, to have fun
• keep channels of communication open
• trust, failure accepted
• contacts with external sources of information
• independence, initiatives taken
• support participatory decision-making and employees’ contribution
• experiment with new ideas
The results of the creativity process are:

• innovation through new product and process ideas
• continuous improvement of products or services
• productivity increase
• efficiency
• rapidity
• flexibility
• quality of products or services
• high performance
3.4 Processes for stimulating creative thinking

Stimulus to extend perspectives to approach a problem, include:
• List the elements that would bring on success.
• List the elements that we visualise as failure.
• Visualise success seen from the viewpoint of fifty years from now.
• Visualise success seen from the perspective of one hundred years ago.
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• Look for impossible and desirable ideas.

• Create analogies with other things that have been successful.
• Imagine and write down ideas that are wild, illegal, crazy, etc.
• Insert the problem from its present scenario to a totally different scenario.
• Return from the fantasy scenario to the present scenario and try to
associate the ideas
• Generated in the fantasy scenario, with ideas that might apply to the real
problem.
• Imagine what people we admire would say.
• Search for pairs of ideas that are apparently unconnected and that can
be associated by a third.
• Imagine that everything exists and all we have to do is find it.
• Change the level on which the problem is approached
Class Activity 6: Explain and apply creative thinking to

business advising practices
Please follow the instructions from the facilitator to complete the
formative activity in your Learner Workbook
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Identify and utilise trouble-shooting techniques

Applicable knowledge area: Underlying Competencies – Problem Solving

Business analysts must be effective at defining and solving problems in order to
ensure that the real, underlying problem is understood and that solutions actually
address that problem.
Defining a problem involves ensuring that the nature of the problem is clearly
understood by all parties and that underlying issues are visible. Conflicts between
the goals and objectives of the stakeholders need to be articulated and
addressed. Underlying assumptions must be identified and tested. The objectives
that will be met once the problem is solved need to be clearly specified and
alternative solutions should be developed. Alternatives are measured against the
objectives to determine which possible solution is best and identify the tradeoffs
that may exist between solutions. The business analyst should be aware of a
number of problem solving techniques that may be applied.
Measures of successful problem-solving include:
• Confidence of the participants in the problem-solving process that a
selected solution is correct.
• New solution options can be evaluated effectively using the problem
solving framework.
• Selected solutions meet the defined objectives and solve the underlying
problem.
• The problem-solving process avoids making decisions based on
preconceived notions, organisational politics, or other traps that may
cause a sub-optimal solution to be selected.
[reference: BABOK® Guide v2, pp 142-143]
Identifying and defining the problem

Problems often go unnoticed and are only identified when the situation
becomes serious and so opportunities are missed. However, if you are able to
identify problems at an early stage, by using certain techniques, you can
overcome them and create new opportunities for your business. There are
various approaches, or ‘tools’, which will help to solve certain types of problems.
Most of them are only ordered common sense, but this is precisely what is
lacking in many intuitive attempts to tackle problems. Analysts must be
comfortable with a number of tools and should not be afraid of trying out several
on any given problem. They are all methods that help us to think our way
through the issue. The end result will be an all-round effective improvement and
growth of your business.
Once you have identified a problem you need to give it a label, a tentative
definition. This serves to focus your search for relevant information, from which
you can write an accurate description or definition of the problem.
The process of definition differs for closed and open-ended problems. With
closed problems you need to define all the circumstances surrounding the
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problem from the norm. Sometimes this will provide strong clues as to the cause
of the problem.
Defining open-ended problems involves identifying and defining your goal and
any obstacles which could prevent you reaching them.
Defining a problem forms the basis for finding solutions.
Finding possible solutions

Closed problems generally have one or a limited number of possible solutions,
while open-ended problems usually can be solved in a large number of ways.
The most effective solution to an open-ended problem is found by selecting the
best from a wide range of possibilities. Finding solutions involves analysing the
problem to ensure that you fully understand it and then constructing courses of
action which will achieve your objective.
Analysing the problem involves identifying and collecting the relevant
information and representing it in a meaningful way. Analysing closed problems
helps you to identify all the possible causes and confirm the real cause, or
obstacle, before looking for a solution. With open-ended problems you are
looking for information which will help to suggest a range of possible ways to
solve the problem. Analysis also helps you to decide what the ideal solution
would be, which helps to guide your search for solutions.
Constructing courses of action and techniques to solve the problem involves
discovering what actions will deal with any obstacles and achieve your
objective. Workable solutions are developed by combining and modifying ideas
and a range of creative techniques are available to help in this process. The
more ideas you have to work with, the better your chances of finding an effective
solution.
Choosing the best solution

Choosing the best solution involves the following:
• identifying all the features of an ideal solution, including the constraints
it has to meet
• eliminating solutions which do not meet the constraints
• evaluating the remaining solutions against the outcome required and
assessing the risks associated with the 'best' solution; and
• making the decision to implement this solution
Implementing the solution

Implementing the solution involves:
• planning and preparing to implement the solution
• taking the appropriate action and monitoring its effects; and
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• reviewing the ultimate success of the action

If you are unable to solve your problems apply business analysis, find a
business advisor to assist you to show how effective it can be and help to create
a culture of business analysis thinking.
Gerald Weinberg and Donald Gause, in their book, ‘Are Your Lights On?’,
explore the problem of problem solving and in the chapter ‘Whose Problem is
it?’ warns you to be on the look-out for the following:
• Don’t solve other people’s problems when they can solve them perfectly
well themselves If it’s their problem, make it their problem
• Don’t mistake a solution method for a problem definition
• Don’t leap to conclusions, but don’t ignore your first impression. We
never have enough time to consider if we want it, but always have time
to regret it. We never have enough time to do it right, but always have
time to do it over again
• Don’t bother trying to solve problems for people without a sense of
humour.
3.5 Trouble-shooting principles, methods and techniques (also refer to

LP9 mod1)
To properly diagnose what is happening in an organisation, we start like a doctor
- with symptoms. Once we can describe what is going wrong, we look for
causes, and recommend a prescription for what ails us.
By utilising Surveys, Interviews and Focus groups, we can determine the
breadth and depth of the organizational symptoms. The breadth of
organizational illness can be divided into three categories:
1. Symptoms within just a few groups. These causes generally focus
around the goals, roles and relationships in the team. The team's charter
or purpose may be vague, or in conflict with group members (or their
department's) priorities. Who gets to do what, group membership, poor
group skills and as well as personality conflicts are also potential causes.
2. Symptoms between and within groups. Specific issues can arise
between teams that create negative effects inside those teams. Such
issues include disagreement over responsibilities, allocation of scarce
resources, struggles for political power and the like. A typical triangle of
conflict is between Marketing, Engineering and Manufacturing.
3. Symptoms across most of your organisation. If illness is prevalent in the
company, it implies that organisational systems are a primary cause of
the symptoms. Organisational systems such as the organisational
structure, compensation, management style, performance appraisal,
employee selection process, authority/communication patterns, as well
as organisational mission, vision and goals are the major (but often
overlooked) causes of organisational ill health. A rule of thumb is that the
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more widespread the organisational sickness, the more likely that these
systems are causing it.
The Delphi Method

The Delphi technique is a forecasting method based on the results of
questionnaires sent to a panel of expert participants who might be employers
of a company, specialists or academics. There is no single way of conducting a
Delphi study. It refers to a method/process of experts formulating solutions
based on each other’s feedback. Several rounds of questionnaires are sent
out, and the anonymous responses are aggregated and shared with the group
after each round. The experts are allowed to adjust their answers in subsequent
rounds. Because multiple rounds of questions are asked and because each
member of the panel is told what the group thinks as a whole, the Delphi Method
seeks to reach the "correct" response through consensus. The Delphi technique
is used in various disciplines as a method of identifying and solving problems.
The essential steps are as follows:

1. Describe a problem.
2. Ask participants to provide potential solutions through a series of
carefully designed questionnaires.
3. Participants complete the first questionnaire anonymously and
independently.
4. The results of the first questionnaire are tabulated at a central location,
transcribed, reproduced, and forwarded to each participant.
5. After reviewing the initial results, members submit new solutions.
They may make new estimates, often based on a 50-50 probability, as to
whether each breakthrough will occur earlier or later than predicted by the other
participants. Or, they might suggest that the events predicted may not occur at
all and explain why they feel that way. In any case, each round of results
invariably triggers new resolutions.
The submission of new solutions based on reiterations of the questionnaire
process is repeated until the participants reach a consensus.
Advantages
The Delphi Technique builds consensus. People feel ownership for the item
rated most important. This is because all participants have an opportunity to
make his or her point and hear the opinions of others. It builds more consensus
than other techniques such as multi-voting, where the items are selected on the
majority vote rather than consensus of all participants.
The Delphi Technique has been proven in building reliable predictors. Studies
have shown the technique to produce uncannily accurate results.
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Disadvantages
The Delphi Technique session is relatively expensive to conduct. It requires the
time of a large group of participants, usually senior management. The iterative
process is more time consuming than other problem solving techniques.
Although the Delphi Technique promotes consensus and identification of all
information categories, it may suppress important individual differences.
The Nominal group process

The nominal group technique is a more-controlled alternative of brainstorming,
a structured variation of a small-group discussion to reach consensus used in
problem solving sessions. It encourages creative thinking, and gathers
information by asking individuals to respond to questions posed by a moderator,
and then asking participants to prioritize the ideas or suggestions of all group
members. The process prevents the domination of the discussion by a single
person, encourages all group members to participate, and results in a set of
prioritised solutions or recommendations that represent the group’s
preferences. Each member of the group writes down his or her ideas which are
then discussed and prioritised one by one by the group. It is also called the
nominal group process.
The nominal group technique consists of four steps namely:
1. Generating Ideas: The moderator presents the question or problem to
the group in written form and reads the question to the group. The
moderator directs everyone to write ideas in brief phrases or statements
and to work silently and independently. Each person silently generates
ideas and writes them down.
2. Recording Ideas: Group members engage in a round-robin feedback
session to concisely record each idea (without debate at this point). The
moderator writes an idea from a group member on a flip chart that is
visible to the entire group, and proceeds to ask for another idea from the
next group member, and so on. There is no need to repeat ideas;
however, if group members believe that an idea provides a different
emphasis or variation, feel free to include it. Proceed until all members’
ideas have been documented.
3. Discussing Ideas: Each recorded idea is then discussed to determine
clarity and importance. For each idea, the moderator asks, “Are there
any questions or comments group members would like to make about
the item?” This step provides an opportunity for members to express
their understanding of the logic and the relative importance of the item.
The creator of the idea need not feel obliged to clarify or explain the item;
any member of the group can play that role.
4. Voting on Ideas: Individuals vote privately to prioritize the ideas. The
votes are tallied to identify the ideas that are rated highest by the group
as a whole. The moderator establishes what criteria are used to
prioritize the ideas. To start, each group member selects the five most
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important items from the group list and writes one idea on each index
card. Next, each member ranks the five ideas selected, with the most
important receiving a rank of 5, and the least important receiving a rank
of 1.
After members rank their responses in order of priority, the moderator creates
a tally sheet on the flip chart with numbers down the left-hand side of the chart,
which correspond to the ideas from the round-robin. The moderator collects
all the cards from the participants and asks one group member to read the
idea number and number of points allocated to each one, while the moderator
records and then adds the scores on the tally sheet. The ideas that are the
most highly rated by the group are the most preferred group actions or ideas
in response to the question posed by the moderator. (For an example of a
ranking sheet and final tally table of an NGT session, see:
NGT is a good method to use to gain group consensus, for example, when
various people (program staff, stakeholders, community residents, etc.) are
involved in constructing a logic model and the list of outputs for a specific
component is too long and therefore has to be prioritized. In this case, the
questions to consider would be: “Which of the outputs listed are most important
to achieving our goal and are easier to measure? Which of our outputs are
less important to achieving our goal and are more difficult for us to measure?”
Advantages
The Nominal Group Technique generates a greater number of ideas than
traditional group discussions and balances the influence of individuals by
limiting the power of opinion makers (particularly advantageous where
established leaders tend to dominate the discussion). It diminishes
competition and pressure to conform, based on status within the group and
encourages participants to confront issues through constructive problem
solving. It allows the group to prioritize ideas democratically and provides a
greater sense of closure than can be obtained through group discussion.
Disadvantages
The Nominal Group Technique requires preparation, is regimented and lends
itself only to a single-purpose, single-topic meeting. It minimizes discussion,
does not allow for the full development of ideas and therefore can be a less
stimulating group process than other techniques.
To increase the chances that you can identify the true root causes of problems,
which can then be targeted for improvement we look at a few tools that can
assist:
Trouble-shooting tools
The tools in this next section fall into two very different categories:
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1. Tools for identifying potential causes are techniques for sparking

creative thinking about the causes of observed problems. The emphasis
is on thinking broadly about what's going on in your process.
2. Tools for verifying potential causes are at the opposite end of the
spectrum. Here the emphasis is on rigorous data analysis or specific
statistical tests used to verify whether a cause-and-effect relationship
exists and how strong it is.
Tools Part A: Identifying potential causes

The purpose of these tools is to help you consider a wide range of potential
causes when trying to find explanations for patterns in your data.
They will help you…
• Propose Critical Xs—Suggest ideas (hypotheses) about factors (Xs) that
are contributing to problems in a targeted process, product, or service
• Prioritise Critical Xs—Identify the most likely causes that should be
investigated further
Be sure to check the tools in part B to validate the suspected Xs.
Deciding which tool to use

This section covers two types of tools used to identify potential causes:
• Data display tools: Many basic tools covered elsewhere in this guide
(time series plots, control charts, histograms, etc.) may spark your
thinking about potential causes. Your team should simply review any of
those charts created as part of your investigative efforts. One addition
tool covered here is…
o Pareto charts (below): specialized bar charts that help you focus
on the "vital few" sources of trouble. You can then focus your
cause-identification efforts on the areas where your work will have
the biggest impact.
• Cause-focused brainstorming tools: All three of these tools are
variations on brainstorming.
• 5 Whys: A basic technique used to push your thinking about a
potential cause down to the root level. Very quick and focused.
• Fishbone diagram (cause-and-effect diagrams or Ishikawa
diagrams,): A format that helps you arrange and organize many
potential causes. Encourages broad thinking.
• C&E Matrix: A table that forces you to think about how specific
process inputs may affect outputs (and how the outputs relate to
customer requirements). Similar in function to a fishbone diagram,
but more targeted in showing the input-output linkages
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Pareto charts
Pareto charts are a type of bar chart in which the horizontal axis represents
categories rather than a continuous scale:
• The categories are often defects, errors or sources (causes) of
defects/errors
• The height of the bars can represent a count or percent of errors/defects
or their impact in terms of delays, rework, cost, etc.
• By arranging the bars from largest to smallest, a Pareto chart can help
you determine which categories will yield the biggest gains if addressed,
and which are only minor contributors to the problem
To create a Pareto chart…

1. Collect data on different types or categories of problems.
o Tabulate the scores. Determine the total number of problems
observed and/or the total impact. Also determine the counts or
impact for each category.
2. If there are a lot of small or infrequent problems, consider adding them
together into an "other" category
3. Sort the problems by frequency or by level of impact.
4. Draw a vertical axis and divide into increments equal to the total number
you observed.
o In the example here, the total number of problems was 42, so the
vertical axis on the left goes to 42
o People often mistakenly make the vertical axis only as tall as the
tallest bar, which can overemphasize the importance of the tall
bars and lead to false conclusions
5. Draw bars for each category, starting with the largest and working down.
o The "other" category always goes last even if it is not the shortest
bar
6. OPTIONAL: Add in the cumulative percentage line. (Convert the raw
counts to percentages of the total, then draw a vertical axis on the right
that represents percentage. Plot a point above the first bar at the
percentage represented by that bar, then another above the second bar
representing the combined percentage, and so on. Connect the points.)
7. Interpret the results
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Interpreting a Pareto chart

1. Clear Pareto effect
o This pattern shows that just a few categories of the problem
account for the most occurrences or impact
o Focus your improvement efforts on those categories
Just a few categories account for ~80% of the count or impact
2. No Pareto effect
o This pattern shows that no cause you've identified is more
important than any other
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▪ If working with counts or percentages, convert to an

"impact" Pareto by calculating impacts such as "cost to fix"
or "time to fix"
▪ A pattern often shows up in impact that is not apparent by
count or percentage alone
Though some bars are taller than others, it takes a lot of categories to account
for ~80% of the count or impact
The most frequent problems may not have the biggest impact in terms of quality,
time, or costs. When possible, construct two Pareto charts on a set of data, one
that uses count or frequency data and another that looks at impact (time
required to fix the problem, dollar impact, etc.) You may end up targeting both
the most frequent problems and the ones with the biggest impact.
C&E Matrix
The purpose of a C&E Matrix is to identify the few key process input variables
that must be addressed to improve the key process output variable(s).
When to use a C&E matrix
• Similar in purpose to a fishbone diagram, but allows you to see what
effect various inputs and outputs have on ranked customer priorities
• Use in Improve to pinpoint the focus of improvement efforts
Temp of Taste Strength Process

Coffee Outputs
Importance 8 10 6
Process Steps Process Correlation of Input to Output Total
Inputs
0
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Clean Carafe [blank] 3 1 36

Fill Carafe 9 9 144
with Water
Pour Water 1 1 16
into Maker
Place Filter in 3 1 36
Maker
To create a C&E matrix

1. Identify key customer requirements (outputs) from the process map or
Voice of the Customer (VOC) studies. (This should be a relatively small
number, say 5 or fewer outputs.) List the outputs across the top of a
matrix.
2. Assign a priority score to each output according to importance to the
customer.
o Usually on a 1 to 10 scale, with 10 being most important
o If available, review existing customer surveys or other customer
data to make sure your scores reflect customer needs and
priorities
3. Identify all process steps and key inputs from the process map. List down
the side of the matrix.
4. Rate each input against each output based on the strength of their
relationship:
Blank = no correlation 3 = moderate
correlation
1 = remote correlation 9 = strong correlation
Tip At least 50% to 60% of the cells should be blank. If you have too
many filled-in cells, you are likely forcing relationships that don't exist.
5. Cross-multiply correlation scores with priority scores and add across for
each input, e.g.: Clean carafe = (3*10) + (1 * 6) = 30 + 6 = 36
6. Create a Pareto chart and focus on the variables relationships with the
highest total scores. Especially focus on those where there are
acknowledged performance gaps (shortfalls).
Tools Part B: Confirming causal effects and results

The purpose of these tools is to confirm whether a potential cause contributes
to the problem. The tools in this section will help you confirm a cause-and-effect
relationship and quantify the magnitude of the effect.
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Deciding between these tools

Often in the early stages of improvement, the problems are so obvious or
dramatic that you don't need sophisticated tools to verify the impact. In such
cases, try confirming the effect by creating stratified data plots or scatter plots
o of cause variables vs. the outcome of interest, or by testing quick
fixes/obvious solutions
However, there are times when more rigor, precision, or sophistication is
needed. The options are:
• Basic hypothesis testing principles and techniques. The basic statistical
calculations for determining whether two values are statistically different
within a certain range of probability.
• Specific cause-and-effect (hypothesis) testing techniques. The choice
depends in part on what kinds of data you have.
• Design of Experiments, a discipline of planned experimentation that
allows investigation of multiple potential causes. It is an excellent choice
whenever there are a number of factors that may be affecting the
outcome of interest, or when you suspect there are interactions between
different causal factors.
Stratified data charts

Simple technique for visually displaying the source of data points. It allows you
to discover patterns that can narrow your improvement focus and/or point
towards potential causes.
To use stratified data charts…

1. Before collecting data, identify factors that you think may affect the
impact or frequency of problems
o Typical factors include: work shift, supplier, time of day, type of
customer, type of order.
2. Collect the stratification information at the same time as you collect the
basic data
3. During analysis, visually distinguish the "strata" or categories on the
chart (see examples)
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Option 1: Create different charts for each strata
Facility A Facility B Facility C

Time (in 0-9 xxx x xx
mins) 10-19 xxxxx xxxx xxxxx
20-29 xxxx xxxx xxxxxxx
30-39 xxxxxx xxxxx xxxxxxxx
40-49 xxxx xxxxxxx xxxx
50-59 xxxx xxxxxx xx
60-69 xx xxxx x
70-79 x xx x
These stratified dot plots show the differences in delivery times
in three locations. You'd need to use hypothesis testing to find
out if the differences are statistically significant.
Option 2: Colour code or use symbols for different strata
This chart uses symbols to show performance differences between people from
different work teams. Training seems to have paid off for Team D (all its top
performers are in the upper right corner); Team C has high performers who
received little training (they are in the lower right corner).
3.6 Assess conditions to use trouble-shooting techniques

The following is an example of assessing conditions to use trouble shooting
techniques when advising SMME’s:
Small and Medium Enterprises’ special requirements are numerous. Here are
a few SMME problems which business analysts have to take into account when
assisting an SMME to devise a business plan.
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It is a daunting task to understand the conditions, needs and problems of

SMME’s, to develop business plans and find methods to resolve problem areas
in a developing and troubleshooting principals and methods therefore becomes
an important aid.
The following are conditions SMME’s experience:
SMME’s have to:
• compete with large firms
• develop and adapt products and processes that are already in use in the
industrially advanced countries
• rely more on personal ways of transferring basic knowledge and on
learning-by-doing and interaction
• learn skills in respect of technology, legislation, business networks and
financial, legal and marketing services
• find venture capital
• battle with high interest rates on loans, short repayment periods, the high
cost of fuel, water and electricity supplies and weak infrastructure
• keep up the rapid development in global finance and economy, and the
inadequacy of their management and organisational skills add to their
problems
Planning has to take place at different levels and SMME’s often fail to be
realistic and their selection of technology is inappropriate. There is a lack of
coordination among different planning entities and, and inability to prioritise if
more than one related technology needs to be acquired
Inadequate planning includes:

• No assessment of the number of research units that need to be engaged
in the transfer process
• No assessment of the number and the nature of employees to be
involved
• No serious consideration of the project’s viability
• No regard for the division of work into small, manageable units
• No/limited attention to technology obsolescence
• No study of the utilisation of excess capacity and the volume of
resources such as suitability/availability of local raw material
• No training of personnel and no assessment of skill levels small firms
find it extremely difficult to accept and to implement available technology,
as their employees lack the requisite education and the appropriate skills
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• lack of proper documentation and inept handling of information and

people at different stages of development – be it during transfer, at the
production stage, or at the post-acquisition level – lead to problems at
the time of implementation
• inability of the staff involved at the pre-acquisition level to explain the
procedural know-how to members at the implementation level is a major
setback
The lack of face-to-face talks with key implementers and the non-involvement
of competent people in the implementation and the operation of new technology
cause serious bottlenecks in the delivery of technology and its operation.
Problems with the integration of new technology arise from the neglect to
monitor the performance of the new technology and its synchronization with
other technology interfaces. In other words, key people involved in
implementation fail to grasp for example the essentials of plant and machine
layout, equipment positioning, repairs and troubleshooting, testing, quality
control, and other operational procedures. Failure to estimate the technology’s
cost and pricing and to arrange working capital for smooth operations adds to
the existing risks to adapt the chosen technology to local needs.
The failure of SMEs to conduct a professional market research deprives them
of an accurate evaluation of the acquired technology’s market potential which
results in limited or a complete absence of focus on marketing channels
comprised of distributors, wholesalers, retailers, and such other entities.
Another major shortcoming of SMMEs is the total disregard of an assessment

of suppliers and competition in their limited research efforts.
The SMMEs’ apparent lack of interest in Intellectual Property Rights protection,
the high cost of obtaining a patent, and the prospect of larger litigation costs –
these factors combine to discourage SMEs from investing in patents
Limited incentives provided by the government to acquire technology,
government approvals and certifications which are impeded by long delays, and
excessive interference by the government often adds to the existing problems.
Some SMMEs are also unaware of the regulatory norms.
SMMEs often do not explore avenues for information and knowledge such as
prospective buyers/sellers, technology exhibitions/fairs, related on-line
services, publications, conferences/seminars, and the patent literature and
databases. The high service fees charged for providing expertise is also
problematic.
The option of learning, knowledge access, and sharing knowledge is often
overlooked by SMMEs, depriving them of the privilege to be more forthcoming
in technology transfer negotiations, as also in effective implementation post-
acquisition. The same drawback applies to the technology provider who is
unable to extend support to SMMEs due to the lack of interaction with other
knowledge production sites.
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Lack of negotiation skills and the differences in negotiation approaches and

strategies lead to complexities.
The lack of SMMEs’ knowledge in the application of Information and
Communication Technology information technology in the production process
and the transfer of know-how and know-why (if applicable) is not language-
specific.
SMMEs ignore the established safety norms. They are not equipped to deal
with environmental concerns and pay scant attention to sustainable
development, ignoring the importance of green technologies,
Finally, geographical distances and cultural differences is even more acute
when the source is a foreign country whose different language is often
misinterpreted and diversity in language and legal provisions in different nations
is yet another obstacle to SMME’s.
It is therefore clear that a Business Advisor has numerous factors to consider

and the implementation of trouble-shooting principles and techniques is
inevitable.
3.7 Identify problems to determine trouble-shooting requirements

In order to identify problems to determine trouble-shooting techniques you have
to start by posing research questions to determine which data collection method
or combination of methods is most appropriate for identification of the problem.
It is important to triangulate your data collection methods.
• This means, using a variety of different methods to collect data instead
of relying on just one type.
• Triangulation provides data from multiple perspectives and helps reduce
the effects that the limitations of any one particular method may have on
your data and conclusions.
o For example, you can supplement what you learn during a
participant interview with document reviews and/or observations,
thus reducing the effects of the participant’s potential biases or
misinformation (Maxwell, 1996).
• Once you have selected your data collection method, it is important to
map these back to your original research questions to ensure that you
will be able to answer all of your questions using the most appropriate
method(s).
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The table below shows the types of research questions each data collection
method is most appropriate for.
Data Collection Method Forms of Research Questions
Document Reviews Who? What? Where? How many? How
much?
Surveys Who? What? Where? How many? How
much?
Interviews and Focus Who? What? Where? How? Why?
Groups
Observations Who? What? Where? How many? How
much?
Case Studies Who? What? Where? How many? How
much? How? Why?
After you have decided which methods are most appropriate for answering
which research questions you can map out which method(s) will be used to
answer each question on an “evaluation crosswalk” table (O’Sullivan, 1991).
Another aspect of crafting questions16 for your interview guide is asking the
appropriate types of questions. Questions may be primary or secondary;
open-ended or closed-ended; neutral, leading, or loaded. There are also
special types of questions we will discuss below.
1. Open-ended: broad questions, often specifying only the topic
a. highly open-ended: virtually no restrictions
▪ Tell me about yourself.
▪ What is photography like?
▪ How is life in Brazil?
b. moderately open-ended: restrict interviewees to a narrower
response and greater focus
▪ Tell me about your first internship at a radio station.
▪ What led you to leave your career in advertising and return
to school to pursue your interest in photography?
▪ What are the main ways that life in Brazil is different from
life in the United States?
2. Close-ended: limit answer options; specific response required
a. highly closed-ended: interviewees select answers from
specified choices
▪ How would you describe the performance of your new car?
1. excellent
16
A Professional's Guide to Systems Analysis, Second Edition Written by Martin E. Modell
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2. good
3. fair
4. poor
▪ What is your class standing?
1. Freshman
2. Sophomore
3. Junior
4. Senior
5. Graduate
6. Other
b. bipolar: a special type of closed-ended questions having only two
options that are at opposite ends of a continuum
▪ Have you finished your assignment?
here the implied possible answers are "yes" or "no"
▪ Is the electricity on or off?
▪ Do you like or dislike your new computer?
c. moderately closed-ended: asks for specific information
▪ How old are you?
▪ In what languages are you fluent?
▪ When did you move to Chile?
3. Primary: introduce topics or new areas within a topic; can stand alone
out of context and make sense
o Describe your ideal job.
o How do others describe the gardens you design?
o How did you first get interested in surfing?
4. Secondary: attempt to elicit more fully information asked for in primary
question or previous secondary question; may be open or closed
o silence: most people are uncomfortable with silence, so will try to
"fill" it by talking; as the interviewer, resist the inclination to talk
and wait for the interviewee to continue
o nudging probes: these "questions" encourage interviewees to
keep talking, but don't suggest a particular direction
▪ I see.
▪ Go on.
▪ Tell me more.
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o clearinghouse probes: these are a check to be sure if you have

elicited all the information an interviewee wants to provide on a
topic or in the interview
▪ Is there anything else you would like to add?
▪ Are there any questions I should have asked, but didn't?
▪ Was there anything more you wanted to cover?
o probes to increase depth of content: these probes encourage
interviewees to provide greater information about a particular
topic
▪ What happened after you found your old guitar in the attic?
▪ Tell me more about your experiences as a bicycle
messenger in New York.
▪ Explain the process for re-installing computer software in
greater detail.
o probes to increase clarity: these questions focus on clarifying
particular words interviewees use
▪ I'm not sure I understand what you mean by "incompetent."
▪ How are you defining "excellent"?
▪ What do you mean when you say the website's design is
"drab"?
o probes to identify feelings: with these probes, the interviewer
attempts to have the interviewee explore feelings underlying
particular statements
▪ Why do you think you feel that way?
▪ What led to your happiness when you were a child?
▪ What were you feeling at the time?
o probes to get the other back on track: use these when the
interviewee veers far away from the topic or doesn't answer the
question you asked
▪ So how did that affect you?
▪ Let's return to your years as a newspaper editor.
▪ You began by talking about the first short story you wrote.
o mirror or summary questions: summarize series of answers to
insure understanding
▪ I'll review what you've covered . . .
▪ I want to be sure that my notes are accurate. First . . .
▪ Let me check to see if I understand your points . . .
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o reflective questions: these restate the answer given to check

that the interviewer has heard the interviewee correctly
▪ Did you say the article was old or bold?
▪ Your sister's name is Irene or Joleen?
▪ Was that in 1988 or 1998?
o hypothetical probes: pose a hypothetical situation and ask
interviewees to respond
▪ Suppose you could live anywhere in the world. Where
would that be?
▪ Imagine that you could go back in time. Who is the one
person you'd like to meet?
▪ Say you've just won the lottery--$50 million. What would
you do with money?
o reactive probes: the objective of these questions is to test an
interviewee's reactions to a controversial statement; these should
be used with care as interviewees may become offended and
abruptly end the interview
▪ A recent newspaper article characterized your work as,
"unimaginative, void of any feeling, and tragically over-
priced." What is your response?
▪ The university you attended has a reputation as a party
school. What do you think about that?
▪ Most of the students in your classes receive As or Bs. How
do you explain that?
5. Neutral: seek straight-forward answer; typically, the questions you ask
in the information interview are neutral
o What is your favourite colour?
o How would you describe the music you play?
o Where were you born?
6. Leading: imply or state expected answer in question; generally, you will
want to avoid these questions in the information interview
o Wouldn't you agree that older home have more charm than
modern ones?
o Don't you think essay exams are easier than multiple choice?
o Aren't you a big fan of the Indigo Girls?
7. Loaded: imply both answer and some negative belief, behaviour, etc. on
the part of respondent; provides a strong, direct, virtual demand for a
particular answer; often include emotionally-charged language, name
calling, entrapment; these are not appropriate questions in an
information interview
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o Are you still as boring as you were 10 years ago?

o How can you rot your brain by watching that idiotic television
show?
o So you're going to take that worthless idea of yours to the boss?
8. TAG: inserted at end of answer; often weaken impact of answer; you
want to avoid these as an interviewer (or an interviewee) in the
information interview
o You agree with my assessment, right?
o I feel that's a good idea, don't you?
o You don't have to answer that question, okay?
9. Multiple: two or more questions asked at the same time; also called
double-barrelled questions; you'll want to avoid these in an information
interview as they confuse interviewees
o How did you like your trip to Hollywood? What was the most
interesting part? Meeting the star of the movie, getting to walk
around the movie lot, being mistaken for a star?
o Name your three favourite authors, the books you like best by
each author, and why you like those books.
o Tell me about the first house you remodelled. Where was it
located? Why did you choose that house?
In developing the Interview Guide for your information interview, you want to
design questions that will help your interviewee give complete, thoughtful, and
coherent answers. Base your questions on the interview's purpose, what you
know about the topic, and what you know about the interviewee. Careful
preparation will increase the likelihood of a productive information interview.
3.8 Select special trouble shooting-techniques according to SMME and

circumstance requirements
An issue encountered in the organisation, such as a customer complaint, a loss
of revenue, or a new market opportunity, usually triggers the evaluation of a
business need. It is common for organisations to act to resolve the issue without
investigating the underlying business need. The business analyst should
question the assumptions and constraints that are generally buried in the
statement of the issue to ensure that the correct problem is being solved and
the widest possible range of alternative solutions are considered.
New business needs can be generated in several different ways:
• From the top down − the need to achieve a strategic goal
• From the bottom up − a problem with the current state of a process,
function or system
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• From middle management − a manager needs additional information to

make sound decisions or must perform additional functions to meet
business objectives
• From external drivers − driven by customer demand or business
competition in the marketplace
Business Goals and Objectives

Business goals and objectives usually have to be refined in order to define the
business need. In some cases, the goal or objective may be exploratory—the
business need may be to understand if a methodology or business model can
work.
Business goals and objectives describe the ends that the organisation is
seeking to achieve. Goals and objectives can relate to changes that the
organisation wants to accomplish, or current conditions that it wants to
maintain.
Goals are longer-term, ongoing, and qualitative statements of a state or
condition that the organisation is seeking to establish and maintain.
High-level goals can be decomposed to break down the general strategy
into distinct focus areas that may lead to desired results, such as
increased customer satisfaction, operational excellence and/or business
growth. Focus areas are usually described in brief statements. For
example, a goal may be to “increase high-revenue customers” and then
further refined into a goal to “increase high-revenue customers through
mergers and acquisitions”.
As goals are analysed they are converted into more descriptive, granular
and specific objectives, and linked to measures that make it possible to
objectively assess if the objective has been achieved. A common test for
assessing objectives is to ensure that they are SMART:
• Specific – describing something that has an observable outcome
• Measurable – tracking and measuring the outcome
• Achievable – testing the feasibility of the effort
• Relevant – in alignment with the organisation’s key vision,
mission, goals
• Time-bounded – the objective has a defined timeframe that is
consistent with the business need
Requirements [Stated]
Elicitation must be performed in order to assist stakeholders in defining their
perceived needs. Ensure that they reflect actual business requirements, as
opposed to describing solutions.
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Business Problem or Opportunity

In order to define a business need, an issue must be investigated to
ensure that there is in fact an opportunity for improvement if the issue is
resolved. Factors the business analyst may consider include:
• Adverse impacts the problem is causing within the organisation
and quantify those impacts (e.g., potential lost revenue,
inefficiencies, dissatisfied customers, low employee morale).
• Expected benefits from any potential solution (e.g., increased
revenue, reduced costs, increased market share).
• How quickly the problem could potentially be resolved or the
opportunity could be taken, and the cost of doing nothing.
Desired Outcome
A desired outcome is not a solution. It describes the business benefits
that will result from meeting the business need and the end state desired
by stakeholders. Proposed solutions must be evaluated against desired
outcomes to ensure that they can deliver those outcomes. Examples
include:
• Create a new capability such as a new product or service,
addressing a competitive disadvantage, or creating a new
competitive advantage;
• Improve revenue, by increasing sales or reducing cost;
• Increase customer satisfaction;
• Increase employee satisfaction;
• Comply with new regulations;
• Improve safety;
• Reduce time to deliver a product or service.
Desired outcomes should address a problem or opportunity and support
the business goals and objectives.
Techniques that you can use include:

• Benchmarking: Understanding what competing organisations
and peers are doing allows the organisation to remain at a
comparable level of service or identify opportunities to increase
efficiency.
• Brainstorming: Generate insights and options.
• Business Rules Analysis: Identify changes in the policies that
guide the organisation towards achieving its goals and objectives.
• Focus Groups: To identify and discuss problems.
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• Functional Decomposition: Convert business goals into

achievable objectives and measures.
• Root Cause Analysis: Determine the underlying source of a
problem.
The stakeholders would include:

• Customer or Supplier: A business need may arise from actions
taken by, or needs of, a customer or supplier. New opportunities
often arise as an unmet customer need is identified.
• Domain SME and End User: Likely to have the most direct
awareness of problems or limitations that exist in current systems
and the effects those have.
• Implementation SME: May be aware of capabilities currently
present in or easily added to existing systems that may provide
new opportunities.
• Regulator: May impose new regulatory or governance
requirements on the organisation.
• Sponsor: A sponsor must be identified within the organisation
who is responsible for making sure that the business need is met
and who can authorize action to meet it.
Business Need
A business need describes a problem that the organisation is (or is likely to)
face or an opportunity that it has not taken, and the desired outcome. The
business need will guide the identification and definition of possible solutions.
Assess Capability Gaps

The purpose of assessing capability gaps is to identify new capabilities required
by the enterprise to meet the business need.
Assess the current capabilities of the enterprise and identify the gaps that
prevent it from meeting business needs and achieving desired outcomes.
Determine if it is possible for the organisation to meet the business need using
its existing structure, people, processes, and technology. If the organisation can
meet the business need with existing capabilities, the resulting change is likely
to be relatively small.
However, if existing capabilities are inadequate, it will probably be necessary to
launch a project to create that capability. Change may be needed to any
component of the enterprise, including (but not limited to): business processes,
functions, lines of business, organisation structures, staff competencies,
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knowledge and skills, training, facilities, desktop tools, organisation locations,

data and information, application systems and/or technology infrastructure.
3.9 Develop a trouble-shooting plan that would address the root cause
of the problem
Your role as the business analyst would be to develop a trouble-shooting plan
that would address the root cause of the problem.
The following are some useful guidelines for using various troubleshooting
techniques:
a) 5 Whys
The 5 Whys is a troubleshooting method for pushing people to think about root
causes. It prevents a team from being satisfied with superficial solutions that
won't fix the problem in the long run.
To use 5 Whys…
1. Select any cause (from a cause-and-effect diagram, or a tall bar on a
Pareto chart). Make sure everyone has a common understanding of
what that cause means. ("Why 1")
2. Ask "why does this outcome occur"? (Why 2)
3. Select one of the reasons for Why 2 and ask "why does that occur"?
(Why 3)
4. Continue in this way until you feel you've reached a potential root cause.
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Tips
There's nothing sacred about the number 5. Sometimes you may reach a root
cause after two or three whys, sometimes you may have to go more than five
layers down.
Stop whenever you've reached a potential cause that the team can act on.
Example:
"Why are we late in delivery?" … Because the copier jams…"Why does the
copier jam?" … Because of high humidity in the copier room … "Why does high
humidity cause jams?" … Because the paper absorbs moisture and sticks
together.
(If you can't do anything about paper that absorbs moisture, go back to solving
the problem of high humidity in the copier room—"What can we do to control or
reduce humidity in the copier room"?)
b) Cause-and-effect diagrams (fishbone or Ishikawa diagrams)

The purpose of cause-and-effect diagrams is:
• To help teams push beyond symptoms to uncover potential root causes
• To provide structure to cause identification effort
• To ensure that a balanced list of ideas have been generated during
brainstorming or that major possible causes are not overlooked
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When to use cause-and-effect diagrams

• Best used for cause identification once you have a focused definition of
the problem (which may not happen until Analyse or Improve)
• Can also be used as a cause—prevention tool by brainstorming ways to
maintain or prevent future problems (include in planning efforts in
Improve or Control)
How to create and use a cause-and-effect diagram

1. Name the problem or effect of interest. Be as specific as possible.
o Write the problem at the head of a fishbone "skeleton"
2. Decide the major categories for causes and create the basic diagram on
a flip chart or whiteboard.
o Typical categories include the 6 Ms: manpower (personnel),
machines, materials, methods, measurements, and Mother
Nature (or environment)
3. Brainstorm for more detailed causes and create the diagram.
o Option 1: Work through each category, brainstorming potential
causes and asking "why" each major cause happens.
o Option 2: Do silent or open brainstorming (people come up with
ideas in any order).
o Write suggestions onto self-stick notes and arrange in the
fishbone format, placing each idea under the appropriate
categories.
4. Review the diagram for completeness.
o Eliminate causes that do not apply
o Brainstorm for more ideas in categories that contain fewer items
(this will help you avoid the "groupthink" effect that can sometimes
limit creativity)
5. Discuss the final diagram. Identify causes you think are most critical for
follow-up investigation.
o OK to rely on people's instincts or experience (you still need to
collect data before taking action).
o Mark the causes you plan to investigate. (This will help you keep
track of team decisions and explain them to your sponsor or other
advisors.)
6. Develop plans for confirming that the potential causes are actual causes.
DO NOT GENERATE ACTION PLANS until you've verified the cause.
Learner Guide
Module 3
Planning principles and practices and their application

Planning refers to the process of deciding what to do and how to do it. Effective
planning takes into account diverse perspectives and impacts, allowing
decision-makers to identify and implement the most effective ways to achieve
goals.
Good planning makes progress toward paradise while bad planning leaves a
legacy of problems and disputes. Planning perform civilization’s heavy lifting by
anticipating and resolving conflicts. Good planning requires special skills and
perspectives. Most people:
• prefer to ignore problems until they become unavoidable. Planners are

professional worriers who seek out potential problems so they can be
mitigated.
• look at a problem from a single perspective. Planners are responsible for

considering multiple perspectives; they ask “what is best for everybody
overall?”
• prefer simple problems and solutions. Planners learn to appreciate

complexity, and search for deeper meanings and underlying causes.
Planners learn to work with uncertainty and ambiguity.
• consider compromise a sign of weakness and failure. Planners are

passionate about compromise because it resolves conflicts and often
leads to better solutions.
• prefer to consider one issue at a time. Planners apply integrated

analysis, so individual, short-term decisions are consistent with multiple,
long-term goals.
According to Harvard University Professor Daniel Gilbert (2006), the human

species greatest and most unique ability is to imagine and anticipate objects
and episodes that do not currently exist, that is, to plan for the future. That is
our individual and collective strength.
Planning Principles
Good planning requires a methodical process that clearly defines the steps
that lead to optimal solutions. This process should reflect the following
principles:
• Comprehensive – all significant options and impacts are considered.
• Efficient – the process should not waste time or money.
• Inclusive – people affected by the plan have opportunities to be
involved.
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• Informative – results are understood by stakeholders (people affected

by a decision).
• Integrated – individual, short-term decisions should support strategic,
long-term goals.
• Logical – each step leads to the next.
• Transparent – everybody involved understands how the process
operates.
A principle of good planning is that individual, short-term decisions should
support strategic, long-term goals. This requires comprehensive evaluation
and negotiation to help people accept solutions that may seem difficult and
costly in the short-term.
Good planning is insightful, comprehensive and strategic. Analyst should strive
to truly understand problems, not just a single perspective or manifestation.
Effective planning requires correctly defining problems and asking critical
questions. A planning process should not be limited to the first solution
proposed or the concerns of people who attend meetings.
3.10 Implement the trouble-shooting plan according to the developed

plan
The Business Analysis Planning and Monitoring Knowledge Area defines the
tasks associated with the planning and monitoring of business analysis
activities, including:
• identifying stakeholders
• defining roles and responsibilities of stakeholders in the business
analysis effort
• developing estimates for business analysis tasks
• planning how the business analyst will communicate with
stakeholders
• planning how requirements will be approached, traced, and
prioritized
• determining the deliverables that the business analyst will produce
• defining and determining business analysis processes
• determining the metrics that will be used for monitoring business
analysis work
In addition, this knowledge area describes the work involved in monitoring and
reporting on work performed to ensure that the business analysis effort
produces the expected outcomes. If these outcomes do not occur, the business
analyst must take corrective action to meet stakeholder expectations.
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3.11 Monitor, review and modify the implemented trouble-shooting

solutions
Solution assessment and validation has several objectives:
• Evaluate organisational preparedness to the proposed change
• Evaluate performance of existing solutions to support enterprise analysis
• Assess the proposed solution prior to its selection
• Validate the designed solution to ensure that it meets the requirements
• Determine transition requirements for moving from the current state (“as
is”) into the target state (“to be”).
Assessment of organisational readiness to changes plays a critical role in a
project’s success. The results of the assessment determine the scope of the
project in terms of actions to be taken to train personnel, modify business
processes, change certain activities and reporting, not to mention changes to
behaviour and beliefs. These results also support a definition of transition
requirements which describe how the solution should be implemented and
released into production with minimal disruption to the existing solutions and
processes.
A business analyst performs assessment of the designed solution to ensure
that the solution meets the acceptance and evaluation criteria and meets the
approved requirements.
When the solution has been constructed, the business analyst validates the
solution to ensure that defects are identified, their causes are known and the
defects are communicated to the responsible stakeholders.
The business analyst carries out an evaluation of solution performance multiple
times within the project. Firstly, an evaluation of performance of the existing
solution helps identify weaknesses of the solution and supports the
investigation of causes of poor performance. This information feeds into gap
analysis conducted within enterprise analysis. Secondly, the business analyst
evaluates performance of the solution once it’s ready for deployment in order
to ensure that the solution delivers the expected value to the business.
In practice, the business analyst works closely with solution architects, vendors,
software developers, testers, technical personnel and change managers, acting
a bit like a conductor of a big orchestra to ensure the satisfaction of the listeners.
Finally supervise the action, monitor its-implementation and effects and keep it
on track by countering unexpected delays, faults and obstacles.
Review and analyse the success of the action by comparing the outcome of the
action with the expected results. Identify any discrepancies (positive or
negative) and analyse them to identify the causes and if necessary take further
action eg to correct a shortfall or to maintain current results.
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Class Activity 7: Identify and utilise trouble-shooting

techniques to business advising practices
Please follow the instructions from the facilitator to complete the
formative activity in your Learner Workbook
Learner Guide
Module 4
Module 4
Apply efficient time management to the work of a department
After completing this module, the learner will be able to apply efficient time
management to the work of a department, by successfully completing the
following:
• Identify time management profiles

• Understand the principles of time management
• Draw up time efficient work plans to carry out work functions
• Implement time efficient work plans
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Identify time management profiles

There is little else in today’s world that is as precious as the commodity of time.
In our business lives, or our personal lives, nearly everyone feels the crunch of
“so much to do; so little time”. Although many of us wish unrealistically for longer
days, others have learned to manage the time they’re given, while still having
time for themselves.
To get control of your and your team’s time, you need to be familiar with some
basic principles of time management:
• Time “goes” where you direct it. You are in control of your time.
• Time management is about what we are able to accomplish with time.
• Time management means breaking old habits and realising that your
habits are usually the problem.
• Time management can enhance your work experience if you are able to
accomplish your plan.
Benefits of time management

• Control stress. Time management is stress prevention. Time management
reduces stress because you can meet deadlines, and you can work fewer
hours with greater results.
• Balance your life. Working long hours and taking work home with you can
harm the natural balance you should have in your life. By learning to manage
your time, you can do things you want to do instead of spending all your
time on work responsibilities.
• Increase productivity. Part of time management is determining how you
and your team spend your time. Once you determine how you spend your
time, you can modify your schedule to increase productivity. For example,
you might find that you waste time in meetings when a group e-mail could
address the issue just as well.
• Identify priorities. People who have the most trouble managing their time
are those who do not know what their priorities are or should be. Knowing
your priorities helps you spend valuable time where you need it most and
ensuring that your team uses their time productively.
• Accomplish goals. One of the most important aspects of having a time
management plan is setting goals. Without goals, what you are working
toward is unclear. Following a time management plan increases the chances
of accomplishing the goals you need to achieve.
Why do you want to improve your Time Management?

• To get more done?
• To do more important things?
• To “save” time?
• To do something else with your free time (when you find some!)?
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• To be a time mastery role-model for others?
Time management starts with the commitment to change. Time management is

easy as long as you commit to action. You can improve your own time
management through better planning; prioritising; delegating; controlling your
environment; understanding yourself and identifying what you will change about
your habits, routines and attitude.
New habits are seldom easily formed, but with this skills programme, and your
strong commitment, you, too, can change the ways in which you manage your
time.
If you don’t manage your time, YOUR TIME WILL MANAGE YOU!
Using the manager role effectively

Most people would agree that your responsibility as a manager is to manage
money, people and time. The way you manage money, people and time will
determine your success as a manager.
Arguably, money and people are variable and you could make a case for
increasing either – it may not be easy, but you could conceivable get more cash
and get more people.
People Money
Time
The one thing that you will NEVER have the option of getting is more time.
There are only 24 hours in a day and only 60 minutes in each hour. This will
never change and you will never be able to borrow from a time bank or store
unused time in your time account. Time is the only truly finite resource!
4.1 Time management techniques and processes

To effectively manage your time, you need to know your own current time
management techniques and processes that you use to manage yourself and
your division/department/section to aid future time management of the section.
Self-management
• Do you ever feel under too much pressure, with too many things to do?
• Do you feel that you are under stress too much of the time?
• Do you ever feel disorganised?
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• Do you sometimes feel that your life is "out of control"?

• Do you sometimes sense a lack of direction or uncertainty about goals?
• Do you have goals, but feel ineffective about meeting them?
• Do you feel guilty about procrastination or ineffectiveness?
• Have you tried various time-management systems that turn out to be
only partially effective?
If you have answered “yes” to any of these questions (let alone all of them!),
then you need to analyse your time management behaviours and habits.
You may have been to countless time management workshops, you may have
read the latest books and articles available on the topic, and you may even
have bought yourself some nifty organisers (now gathering dust in a drawer…);
all to no avail, because you’re still not finding enough time in the day to do all
you’re supposed to do.
Let’s analyse this concept of “supposed” to do:
We clutter our minds with vague promises about what we should do, what we
could do. But there is always more to do than there is time to do it.
Most of the stress that people feel, doesn't come from having too much to do -
it comes from not keeping agreements they've made with themselves.
When you tell yourself you should do something and then don't do it, you
experience self-doubt and frustration.
Research has found a strong correlation between effective time management
behaviours and overall personal happiness.
Unfortunately, the term "time management" creates a false impression of what
a person is able to do. We can only manage ourselves and our use of time.
Therefore, time management is actually self-management. If you want to
manage and organise the priorities in your life, you must learn to manage
yourself and that means managing your thinking and behaviour.
“I got myself into this mess, so it’s up to me to get myself out”
Poor self-management is caused by:

• External forces. Allowing all the pressures from others, demanding
tasks, and routine things to do in your life, dictate what you do.
• Avoidance behaviour and procrastination. Avoiding the really
important things in life because they are unpleasant or overwhelming; or
because you don't know how to do them.
• Poor self-management methods. Keeping "to do" lists that are not
prioritised, that you lose, that don't include the personal or fun things, not
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writing objectives, or not using your lists well are examples of incomplete
methods which will not work! Compulsive over-planning with too much
detail--requiring too much time--also may not work at all.
Good self-management takes work. It took time for you to get yourself into this
situation and it will take time to get out of it.
First, we must look at the decisions we make, as we are all the
sum total of the decisions we make (or fail to make) in our lives.
Some of our present circumstances were consciously created:
we volunteered to take on a project at work because we felt
it could further our careers.
Other situations crept up on us unawares due to our indecision
or lack of assertiveness: we put off making a decision so long
that it became a pressing problem that we were forced to solve immediately.
Because we did not say “no”, we found ourselves on a committee that we did
not want to serve on, or we were made leader of a project for which we really
did not have time.
Of course, there are areas in your life over which you have absolutely no
control: a spouse is suddenly diagnosed with cancer, a flight is delayed due to
bad weather, and there is a massive power failure just when you had planned
to complete that urgent report. Part of effectively applying priority management
is determining what those areas are, accepting them and learning to live with
them.
However, you do have control over the majority of events and situations that
occur. By saying that you are helpless in a situation, you are limiting your ability
to do something about it. Remember, much of what you believe you cannot
control falls into that category only because you have developed habits that
prevent you from taking control.
“If you always do what you’ve always done, then you’ll
always have what you’ve already got”
If we form a habit through repeated effort, then we can also break a habit
through repeated effort. The only difference is that while existing habits may
have been formed subconsciously, new habits require constant, conscious
repetition.
Research has also found that it takes from 21 to 30 days of consistent, spaced
repetition of an activity to eliminate an old habit, or to develop a new one.
Self-management starts with the commitment to change and then applying
the new actions required to form the new habit you want.
Let’s have a look at some of the Self-Management Competencies17 we

should develop:
17
Emotional Competence Inventory - University Edition of UIUC.htm
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1. Emotional Self-Control
This is the ability to keep your impulsive feelings and emotions under control. It
is being able to restrain negative actions when provoked, when faced with
opposition or hostility from others, or when working under pressure.
The person who possesses the competency Emotional Self-Control:
• Deals calmly with stress
• Displays impulse control and restraint
• Stays poised and positive, even in trying moments
How to develop Emotional Self-Control:
• Make a list of all the things that cause you to "lose it" (your triggers).
Create a strategy to prevent these triggers from causing you to lose your
composure and your self-control.
• Reduce your stress through physical activity or other types of conscious
relaxation techniques (yoga, exercise, gardening, taking a bath, etc.)
• Attend a stress management workshop
2. Trustworthiness
This competency can best be described as taking action that is consistent with
what you say and value. It includes communicating intentions, ideas, and
feelings openly and directly and welcoming openness and honesty in others.
You show integrity and take responsibility for your own behaviour and
performance. You build trust through reliability and authenticity.
The person who possesses the competency Trustworthiness:
• Is authentic (°what you see is what you get")
• Takes tough, principled stands, even if they are unpopular
• Confronts unethical action in others
How to develop Trustworthiness:
• Spend some time exploring the values and principles that you feel most
strongly about. Write down the most important ones. Next to each one,
examine whether your behaviour is consistent with these values. Ask
yourself what you would need to do differently in order to live more
genuinely and be true to your beliefs.
• Consider the issues on which you are willing to act against all opposition.
Clarify for yourself what is and is not worth fighting for. If an opportunity
comes up to act on a principle, take it, but be sure you are certain of your
ground.
• Read Principle-Centred Leadership by Stephen Covey
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3. Conscientiousness
This competency is about taking responsibility for your personal performance.
It reflects an underlying drive for being reliable and delivering quality work. You
work in a careful and organized manner, paying attention to detail, following
through on commitments and promises, and building trust through reliability.
The person who possesses the competency Conscientiousness:
• Follows through on commitments
• Is careful in his/her work
• Shows attention to detail
How to develop Conscientiousness:
• Keep a detailed filing system for all monthly bills: telephone, rent, credit
cards, etc.
• Build routine checks into your calendar to ensure adherence to
deadlines, policies, and standards. In the event that you find something
that does not reach the desired standard or that will take much longer
than the time frame given, work through your plan to give the task at
hand more time and effort.
• Read A Passion for Excellence by Tom Peters
4. Adaptability
This is the ability to be flexible and work effectively within a variety of changing
situations and with various individuals and groups. People with this competency
are willing to change their own ideas or perceptions on the basis of new
information or evidence. They are able to alter standard procedures when
necessary, and juggle multiple demands as required.
The person who possesses the competency Adaptability:
• Smoothly juggles multiple demands
• Easily handles shifting priorities and rapid change
• Adapts plans, behaviour, or approaches to fit major changes in situations
How to develop Adaptability:
• Periodically review the processes you or your department has in place.
What are the strengths and weaknesses of each? Is there a better, more
efficient way of approaching things?
• When current strategies are not working, stop what you are doing,
acknowledge that it is not working, and make the necessary adjustment
to your plans, activities, objectives, or behaviour. Be willing to make
some midcourse adjustments when things are not going well or when
situations demand change
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5. Optimism
This competency is about seeing the world as a glass that is "half-full" rather
than "half-empty. This is the ability to see good in others and in the situation at
hand. Threats are viewed merely as opportunities that can be acted upon and
taken advantage of to achieve optimal outcomes.
The person who possesses the competency Optimism:
• Sees opportunities rather than threats
• Has mainly positive expectations about others
• Has hopes that the future will be better than the past
How to develop Optimism:
• For two or three days, make a list of all the threats or adversities you
encountered. Note your responses to them.
For example:
Adversity: You were cut off in traffic. Response: "What a jerk."
Adversity: You got stinging criticism on an important report. Response: "Those
were helpful comments."
Next write down the consequences of each your responses.
For example:
"I fumed all the way to work".
"I reworked my report based on the comments."
Note that when your responses or feelings are pessimistic in nature, positive
activity is curtailed, but when they are positive, positive energy flows. Try to
change your "self-talk" from negative to positive
6. Achievement orientation
This competency shows a concern for working toward a standard of excellence.
This standard may be a personal need to improve your performance over past
accomplishments, to outperform others, or even to surpass the greatest
accomplishment ever achieved.
The person who possesses the competency Achievement Orientation:
• Anticipates obstacles to a goal
• Takes calculated risks
• Sets measurable goals
How to develop Achievement Orientation:
Consider using some projects you are currently working on to practise
Achievement Orientation. Create some moderate risk goals or an innovative
solution for your project. Regularly monitor your progress against your plan.
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Discuss your progress with another person. This will help you understand the
implications of your work and your accomplishment against plan.
• Keep a log of where you demonstrated the behaviours of Achievement
Orientation. At the end of each day or week think about how well you
anticipated obstacles; decide if you took any risks during the course of
your work, and if you made any progress toward your work/personal
goals
7. Initiative
This is the ability to identify a problem, obstacle, or opportunity and take action
on it. People who show initiative are consistently striving to do better, to
experience new challenges and opportunities, and to be held accountable for
their actions and ideas.
The person who possesses the competency Initiative:
• Acts rather than waits
• Seeks information in unusual ways
• Cuts through red tape and bends the rules when necessary
How to develop Initiative:
• Volunteer to be a leader
• Make a list of all the external factors that affect your department (e.g.,
economy, customer needs, and competing institutions). Make a similar
list of all the internal factors affecting your department (e.g., leadership
styles, organisational strategies and goals, political manoeuvring).
Looking at bot lists, identify changes, emerging trends, and opportunities
or problems. Map out in detail the steps you need to take in order to
capitalise on those opportunities or take actions to prevent significant
problems.
Remember that there is a “critical incubation period” when you apply your new
ideas and behaviours.
The first few days are critical, as you nurse your new habits into life, giving them
the attention they need to survive and grow strong. Therefore, in the beginning,
you will be consciously and strictly applying new behaviours, thinking about
what you’re doing and why you’re doing it and afterwards reflecting on the
outcomes and what you can improve.
With the passage of time, the habits you grow become strong and secure. They
take control and you yield to them willingly. As Og Mandino18 says, “I will form
good habits, and become their slave.” Some of us will immediately feel our
hackles rise, as we don’t allow anyone or anything to control us. Well, we allow
poor habits to enslave us and keep us from getting things done.
18
In his book: The Greatest Salesman in the World
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“The chains of habit are too weak to be felt

until they are too strong to be broken”
Samuel Johnson
To ensure success when developing a new habit, follow these tips:
• Begin quickly
The best time to start working on a new habit is today. Don’t give in to
the tendency to procrastinate. It might be more convenient to start in a
month’s time, but it will never be more important. Your motivation and
resolve will not be stronger after a month has passed; in fact, they will
probably be weaker. Start now and set a goal to acquire your new habit
in the next 30 days.
• Begin strongly
Commit yourself fully. Commit yourself to positive change by telling
others what you’ve decided to do and by challenging them to keep you
to your commitment. In fact, if you commit yourself to the people most
affected by the old, bad habit, they will probably keep hounding you until
you keep to the new one.
• Allow no exceptions
Remember the incubation period. No matter what might come up in the
next 30 days, don’t allow yourself to slip back into the old behaviour. In
the fragile incubation stage of a new habit, it is disastrous to allow any
exceptions. Six months from now, when the new habit is well ingrained
and strong, it may be permissible to make the odd exception, because it
probably won’t kill the habit; but definitely not now and definitely never if
it’s a habit that still has its roots deep in your subconscious. That is why
an alcoholic can never have that first drink; or an ex-smoker light up a
friend’s cigarette. It’s no good going on a diet, if all you’re thinking about
is what you’re missing and all the chocolates you can have once you’ve
reached your goal weight.
In business, self-management refers to methods, skills, and strategies by
which individuals can effectively direct their own activities toward the
achievement of objectives, and includes goal setting, planning, scheduling, task
tracking, self-evaluation, self-intervention, self-development, etc.; also known
as executive processes (in the context of the processes of execution).
To summarise:
• If we want to manage and organise our priorities, we must first learn to
manage ourselves. This is called self-management.
• We must recognise and accept areas we cannot control; manage those
that we can control.
• Successful self-management is the result of developing good habits.
• It takes 30 days of conscious, spaced repetition of an action to develop
a new habit and eliminate an old one.
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• We need to recognise our weaknesses and develop a plan to build new

habits in those areas.
4.2 Weaknesses in current work processes

If you are frustrated at the end of your working day because you feel as if you’ve
been running on one spot and getting nowhere, then you need to look at the
following productivity problems and identify where you need to improve:
• No clear goals
Running faster doesn’t help if you’re going in the wrong direction!

This is probably the biggest time waster of all. It affects all we do both
professionally and personally. Those who accomplish the most in a day know
exactly what they want to accomplish. Unfortunately, too many of us think that
goals and objectives are yearly things and not daily considerations. This results
in too much time spent on the minor things and not on the things which are
important to our work/lives. Without a specific sense of purpose, it’s impossible
to effectively manage and organise your priorities. Where are you going? Why
did you show up for work today? What is your department’s specific purpose
for existence? Do you know your organisational and departmental mission
statements by heart?
If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll
probably end up somewhere else
• Lack of priorities
The best daily action list ever written is useless and ineffective if the relative
importance of each item on the list has not been established. It’s easy to fall
into the trap of getting many things done, but doing the wrong things.
Rather than doing the most important things first, we tend to work on the things
that are easiest to accomplish, or that we enjoy more, or closer at hand.
If you do not know what’s really important to you or your department, you cannot
make decisions that will make effective use of your time.
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• Attempting to do too much and lack of assertiveness

There’s nothing wrong with the planning and execution of your daily tasks; it’s
just the sheer number of tasks taken on that is overwhelming. Many people
today feel that they have to accomplish everything “yesterday” and don't give
themselves enough time to do things properly. This leads to half-finished
projects and no feeling of achievement.
Alternatively, they don’t say “no” when others try to pass on work to them. The
general rule is: if people can dump their work or problems onto your shoulders,
they will. Some of the most stressed people around lack the skill to 'just say no'
for fear of upsetting people.
Today, don’t try to do 10 things at once. See if
you can do just one thing at once- and give
it your full attention. You’ll be amazed at
how much you’ll get done.
• No daily plan
Beginning your day without a plan of action is a formula for spending all day
doing the wrong things. Anyone and everyone can interrupt your activities with
their requests and assignments.
• Perfectionism
Are you unable to complete and let go of a project or task until it has been done
perfectly? Can you still see room for improvement? Even if you cannot see
anything wrong, do you still have a nagging feeling that you must have
overlooked something? How much time do you waste pursuing perfection?
• Personal disorganisation
No matter how well organised your daily plan, you may be losing valuable time
searching for things that are lost in the mess on your desk, your drawers, even
your car. Look at your desk. If you can see less than 80% of it, you are probably
suffering from “desk stress”. The most effective people work from clear desks.
• Snap decisions
The decision-making process is only as good as the planning preceding it.
Without adequate planning and task typing, there’s the risk of rushing into
disaster.
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• Indecision and procrastination

As with snap decisions, you can see an opportunity pass by due to indecision
and a failure to respond with any action at all. The biggest thief of time is not
decision -making, but decision avoidance. The universal tendency to put off until
tomorrow what should be done today is a major productivity killer at work and
at home. All too often we immerse ourselves in unimportant activities, while the
really important work stays undone. By reducing the amount of procrastinating
that you do, you can substantially increase the amount of active time available
to you.
• Shifting priorities and crisis management

Productivity can be put on hold as neglected situations suddenly become
“urgent”. Management guru Peter Drucker says that "crisis management is
actually the form of management preferred by most managers" The irony is that
actions taken prior to the crisis could have prevented the crisis in the first place.
• Ineffective delegation
The “I can do it better myself” mentality is a leading cause of career burnout
and lost opportunity. Good delegation is considered a key skill in both managers
and leaders. The best managers have an ability to delegate work to staff and
ensure it is done correctly. This is probably the best way of building a team’s
morale and reducing your workload at the same time. The general rule is: if one
of your staff can do it 80% as well as you can, delegate it.
• Interruptions
Your day can be going according to plan, when the telephone rings or a visitor
drops in. The telephone, our greatest communication tool, can be our biggest
enemy to effectiveness if we don't know how to control its hold over us.
The five deadliest words that rob your time are, "Have you got a minute?".
Everyone's the culprit: colleagues, the manager, your peers.
Knowing how to deal with interruptions is one of the best skills you can learn
Interruptions must be eliminated or controlled.
• Meetings
Meetings are where “minutes are kept and hours are wasted.” Studies have
shown that the average manager spends about 17 hours a week in meetings
and about 6 hours in the planning time and untold hours in the follow up. It is
widely acknowledged that about as much of a third of the time spent in meetings
is wasted due to poor meeting management and lack of planning
We will be looking at how to manage these productivity killers or time wasters
now.
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4.3 The top time wasters that impact on the organisation's productivity
One of the most beneficial improvements you can make through time
management is to eliminate time wasters, e.g.:
• Interruptions - telephone
• Interruptions - personal visitors
• Meetings
• Tasks you should have delegated
• Procrastination and indecision
• Acting with incomplete information
• Dealing with team members
• Crisis management (fire fighting)
• Unclear communication
• Inadequate technical knowledge
• Unclear objectives and priorities
• Lack of planning
• Stress and fatigue
• Inability to say "No"
• Desk management and personal disorganisation
There are many things that would waste time in the work environment.
Fortunately, there are strategies you can use to manage your time, be more in
control and reduce stress.
Very often we find ourselves unable to complete tasks, because we have
wasted too much time on other activities.
Time Waster Methods of Attack
Allow time this week to prepare for an event next week. Always
Poor planning make preparations at least one day before any scheduled
event.
Do not go out for coffee, unless it is combined with a meeting.
Coffee breaks Schedule a morning and afternoon break each day and stick to
those times.
Thank them for coming. Make an appointment and ask them to
Drop in visitors return at the scheduled time. Other people will get to know you
mean business too.
Be organised. Keep all related material together in a folder.
Lost
Keep folders neatly in a cabinet or in a special holder on your
information
desk.
Know your own limits of time and ability.
Delegate tasks to others.
Trying to do
too much Say no to extra work if your schedule is already full - if you
manage your time properly your boss will see you are already
doing more work.
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Casual Remain focused on the current task.

conversations Make a date to talk to friends over lunch or after work if it suits.
Be prepared. Prepare the day before an event.
Forgotten tools Allocate time before meetings or travel to check you have
or papers everything required.
Keep a checklist.
Expect unexpected telephone calls! Make it well known that
Unexpected you only receive calls at certain times (say between 9-10am).
telephone Use a standard response - thank them for calling, explain you
calls. are busy and make a convenient time to call them back. Make
return calls at another regular time each day.
Make your workplace a happy, positive, work-conducive
environment. If the lighting is poor, your desk is impossibly
cluttered, or the walls are barren, it can affect your mental
state, which, in turn, affects your energy level.
Take some time to evaluate your office space. Remodel
(lightly) if necessary. Post positive affirmations and reminders
Your work where you’ll be sure to catch a glimpse of them while you’re on
space the phone, or in a meeting.
• Is your office a happy place?
• Do you feel energised or overwhelmed when you walk into
your office in the morning?
• What is something you can do, today, to make your office
more welcoming?
You have to know that no matter how well-planned your days
Learn to be are, things are going to come up and knock everything off your
Flexible plan, from time to time.
That’s okay! It’s part of life. Remember – be flexible!
An important part of balancing time and demands is asking yourself three

questions:
Is it necessary? What is the benefit to my business or myself?
Is it appropriate? Is this the correct time for this to be done?
Is it efficient? Am I really the one who should be doing this?
Learn to Say NO
• Recognise that a desire to please often prevents us from saying no.
• Stick to your plan. If you have a written set of goals and strategies, this gives
you a reason to stick to your course. ("Thanks, but I already have an
investment plan, so you don't need to send me a newsletter about stocks.")
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• When someone persists, repeat your position (slightly differently). ("As I

already said, our policy is to donate to charities that help children only.")
• Make sure you understand exactly what is being asked of you before you
respond. Perhaps the task is more time consuming than you thought.
• Don't try to do everything – others can and will most likely help.
• You have a right to say no. Remember that others may take you for granted
and even lose respect for you if you don't.
• Be polite, but firm in saying no. You only build false hopes with wishy-washy
responses. For instance, the phrase "I'll try to be there" in response to a
party invitation is giving yourself an excuse to avoid a commitment.
• When a superior asks you to do a new urgent task;
• Remind her that you are working on other projects that she has already
identified as top priorities
• Ask for help in deciding where the new task should fall on the list of
priorities
• Ask "What you like to give up in order for me to do this?"
• Point out that you might be able to do everything, but not to the usual
high standards that are expected.
• Some experts recommend keeping your answer short. This way, you can
say no without feeling the need for a lengthy justification. ("I'm sorry, I'm not
available that night.") On the other hand, others say that giving a longer
answer with reasons reinforces your credibility. Let the situation decide.
• Provide suggestions or alternatives to the person who is asking. ("I can't do
the task today, but how about next week," or "How about asking John
instead?")
• When in doubt, it's easier to say no now, then change your mind to a yes
later, rather than the other way around.
When You Have to Say Yes

Sometimes, saying no is simply unavoidable. Here are some techniques to use:
• Tell the person you can agree to their request this time, but ask how the two
of you might plan better for the next time.
• Tell them yes, but take control by saying you'll come back to them with a
timetable. For instance, say, "I expect I'll be able to do that for you by the end
of the week."
• Put a tough condition on your agreement. "If it would only take an hour, I'd
be able to help, but I can't give you more than that."
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Plan to eliminate or manage time wasters in the team

Examples:
Potential Problem Contingency Plans
Insist on prompt delivery
Delivery Delays
Plan in advance – make sure there is adequate time
Return materials to suppliers
Materials do not meet Possibly change suppliers
specifications Write penalty clauses into contracts in terms of.
quality, quantity and timeous supply
Speak to under-achiever in private.
Outline performance /behaviour that is not meetings
standards and ask for peoples contribution to
Poor staff performance
solution of problem.
Discuss ideas, agree on steps and determine follow
up date.
Establish reason for absence
Staff Absenteeism
If problem persists take disciplinary action.
Get parties involved in conflict together.
Explain why conflict is of concern.
Ask each party individually to describe issues.
Staff Conflict Ask for suggestions and resolve the situation.
Be impartial and fair.
Come to an agreement on steps to be taken and
arrange follow up.
Staff abuse of Ensure staff are aware of company policy
company time and
property Discipline staff
Obsolete equipment Budget to replace equipment

New equipment Train staff on new equipment
Budget to replace equipment or hire, lease or borrow
Lack of equipment
equipment
Equipment inadequate
Upgrade equipment
for task
Equipment
Ensure equipment is maintained/serviced regularly
malfunctions
Equipment could be Discontinue use of machinery until correct safety
unsafe precautions are in place.
When we draw up an efficient work plan for a team, we must ensure that we
have a back-up or contingency plan for all the possible aspects that could go
wrong. Time spent planning for these are never wasted, as there will inevitably
be something that goes wrong with even the most perfect plan.
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4.4 The external forces that affect time utilisation

There are five major external forces that affect companies today. They operate
outside of any specific organisation and companies are, for the most part, at
their mercy. Are these forces hindering or enhancing your time management
right now?
The general economy
Economic factors include the nature and direction of the national economy in
which a company does business. For international entities, it includes the global
economy. We know that consumption is affected by the wealth of the
population, and business people must plan accordingly. Some major
considerations include the availability of credit and the amount of disposable
income in a given market. Both inflation and interest rates and a given country's
GDP are other economic factors that can hinder or help your company’s
profitability.
In times of economic recession, such as the world is currently clawing its way
out of, businesses are under pressure to produce more at a cheaper price to
stay competitive. This means that you and your team are required to work
harder with fewer resources to produce more. Invariably, this leads to human
and equipment fatigue, which leads to breakdowns and reworks and loss of
time; i.e. ineffective time management.
Social Beliefs and Attitudes

Humans are conditioned to respond to different stimuli in unique ways. Whether
it is through the general culture, family units, education, or religion, we are
trained to react positively to certain things and negatively to others. Society
imposes beliefs, attitudes, and lifestyles that are adopted by the masses. These
attitudes change frequently as people make an effort to accommodate the
demands placed on them by the world around them. As they do, demand for
certain styles of clothing, technological devices, leisure activities, and other
products/services increase while demand for other alternatives fades away.
In the context of your team and its use of time, this could impact in the following
ways:
• If the demand for your products/ services increases, you are required to
produce more, very often with the same resources, as companies are
reluctant to lay out money until they are sure the demand is a sustained
one.
• On the other hand, if the demand for your products/ services decreases,
you could find your company laying off staff and expecting a small, core
team to perform at the same level as before. Retrenchments often lead
to a drop in morale in the remaining staff and lowered productivity, which
translates into ineffective time utilisation, as already discussed.
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Politics
Political factors include the legal and regulatory issues that control industries
and individual businesses. There are several issues to consider here including
fair-trade decisions, antitrust laws, taxes, wages, and other government
activities designed to protect different classes within society.
A strong trade union culture in South Africa results in periodic strikes and loss
of time and productivity, as well as time lost due to repairs necessitated by the
destruction of property that usually accompanies industrial action in this
country.
Technology
Technology continues to improve at an exponential rate. The best companies
stay on top of technological changes and use them to get more work done in a
shorter period of time. New devices, strategies, and techniques can help
businesses stay ahead of the competition and avoid obsolescence.
Of course, if your company does not stay abreast of technological advances, or
uses old technology that tends to break down, it can impact on the effectiveness
of the team and lose valuable time to ineffective, time-consuming methods, or
maintenance “down-time”.
Ecology
This concept refers to how humans interact with the physical environment. More
than ever before, the world at large is concerned with pollution and the loss of
habitat and biodiversity. This has ramifications for companies in nearly every
industry and has even spawned "green" products and businesses.
As companies are forced to be more environmentally aware, processes have
to change to ensure that the environment is not negatively impacted; for
example, the recycling of paper, glass and plastic necessitates separating the
garbage into appropriate containers; old oil cannot just be poured down a drain.
The new processes take time and a change in behaviour.
Class Activity 8: Identify time management profiles

Workbook
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Understand the principles of time management

There are various principles of time management, such as:
• Planning
• Prioritising tasks
• Delegation
• Balance aspects of life
The key to successful time management is planning and then protecting the
planned time. People who say that they have no time do not plan, or fail to
protect planned time. If you plan what to do and when, and then stick to it, then
you will have time.
Planning is a proactive way to manage your days. To plan is to outline a course

of action to achieve an intended result.
Even if you think you can’t possibly take the time required each day to plan,
we’re here to tell you that you can’t afford NOT to plan. By spending time
planning, you actually have time added to your day.
Experts agree that, when properly utilised, a mere 15 minutes of planning can
actually control your entire day. This means that, for 1/4 of an hour, 8 hours can
be controlled – those aren’t bad odds!
DuPont conducted time-effectiveness studies, which support the theory that for
every one minute spent planning, the time required in order to complete a
project is usually reduced by three or four minutes. This may not seem like a
lot, but consider your larger tasks. For every 4 hours you spend planning, for
example, you’d save up to 16 hours (that’s two full work days) on the completion
time of the task.
Benefits of Planning
Planning, overall, makes things we want to happen actually happen. If you don’t
plan, how can you be sure everything will be completed, and that it will be
completed in a timely, effective, and measurable manner? It’s simple – you
can’t.
By planning, you increase your likelihood of success, you decrease the chance
of becoming overwhelmed by the unknown, and you can celebrate the steps as
you complete them – giving you a great sense of accomplishment, and renewed
energy.
Many people who don’t plan say they’re too overwhelmed with the tasks ahead
of them, to actually write them all down. Instead, they find themselves dreading
the numerous projects on their plate, and spending more time running around
in a disorganised frenzy, than using their time wisely.
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In planning, remember “The Seven Questions”:

Which? Why? Where? When? Who? What? How?
These will help you determine your vision and objectives.
Reasons for planning:

• Risks to life or health
• Risks to status, career or employment
• Problems of lack of resources
• Risks of wasting limited resources, whether money, time or power
• The risk to your self-esteem if you fail
• Planning to Reduce Crises
• Help us handle everyday events and responsibilities
• Prepare us for managing unexpected events
• Provide a course to follow as we pursue our personal and professional
goals.
• Planning also helps us to build margins into our lives, giving us that extra
time we need in a crunch.
Planning is the process by which you determine whether you should attempt
the task, work out the most effective way of reaching your target, and prepare
to overcome unexpected difficulties with adequate resources. It is the start of
the process by which you turn empty dreams into achievements. It helps you to
avoid the trap of working extremely hard but achieving little.
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Devising a suitable plan for the effective attainment of goals:

This means that you have to determine in advance what it is that you want to
do and how you will do it. You, therefore need to know:
• Why must the work be done?
• What work must be done?
• Who is going to do the work?
• What is needed to do the work? For example; raw materials, packaging
etc.
• How will the success of the work be measured? For example, what are
the standards for quality, quantity and cost?
• By when must the work be completed?
In order to plan effectively all factors that may have an influence on the
implementation of the plan should be taken into consideration,
• Time necessary to execute the plan
(a) Is there a time limit?
(b) How long will it take to execute the plan?
(c) Is enough time available?
(d) Can I save time?
• Finances
(a) How much will it cost to execute the plan?
(b) Has provision been made in the budget?
(c) What can be done to economise?
• Manpower
(a) How many people should be involved in the execution of the plan?
(b) Are the available persons able or have they been trained to execute the
plan?
(c) How can manpower be saved?
(d) How can available manpower be optimally utilised?
• Change
(a) Will the situation change in the near future?
(b) And if so, to what extent?
(c) How will this affect the execution of my plans?
(d) What alternative goals must I determine?
• Approval
(a) Does my supervisor agree with the plans?
(b) Do the plans fit in with current policy and legal requirements and
restrictions?
(c) Are the plans to the benefit of all concerned?
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4.5 The 80/20 principle in identifying key tasks (The Pareto Principle )
In 1906, an Italian economist by the name of Vilfredo Pareto created a
mathematical formula describing the unequal distribution of wealth he observed
and measured in his country: Pareto observed that roughly twenty percent of
the people controlled or owned eighty percent of the wealth. In the late 1940s,
Dr. Joseph M. Juran, a Quality Management pioneer, attributed the 80/20 Rule
to Pareto, calling it Pareto's Principle.
After Pareto made his observation about unequal wealth distribution and
published his findings and formula, many others (in both science and business)
observed similar phenomena in their own areas of expertise. Working in the US
in the 1930s-1940s, Dr. Juran recognised a universal principle he called “the
vital few and trivial many.” In one of his early papers, a lack of precision on
Juran's part made it appear as though he was applying Pareto's observations
about economics to other areas of study. From that point on, the name
“Pareto's Principal” stuck, perhaps because it may have sounded better than
“Juran's Principle”. The American Society for Quality has proposed renaming
the Pareto Principle the “Juran Principle” because its universal application
makes it one of the most useful concepts and tools of modern-day
management.
Regardless of the naming origins, Dr. Juran's “vital few and trivial many”
observation (the principle that 20 percent of a set is generally responsible for
80 percent of a related result), became known as Pareto's Principle or the 80/20
Rule.
The 80/20 Rule means that in any set of things (workers, customers, etc.)
a few (20 percent) are vital and many (80 percent) are considered trivial.
In Pareto's case, he found that roughly 20 percent of the people in his country
dominated with 80 percent of the wealth. In Juran's initial work, he identified 20
percent of product defects causing 80 percent of product problems. It’s well
known by Project Managers that 20 percent of work (usually the first 10 percent
and the last 10 percent) consume 80 percent of the time and resources. You
can apply the 80/20 Rule to almost anything, from the science of management
to the sciences of the physical world around us.
You know that 20 percent of your inventory on hand occupies 80 percent of your
warehouse space. Similarly, 80 percent of your inventory line items come from
20 percent of your vendors. At the same time, it’s likely that 80 percent of your
revenue will be the result of sales made by 20 percent of your sales staff. And
20 percent of your workers will cause 80 percent of your problems, while
another 20 percent of your personnel will deliver 80 percent of your entire
production. The formula appears to work in both directions.
The value of the Pareto Principle in time management is in reminding us to stay
focused on the “20 percent that matters”. Of all the tasks performed throughout
the day, one could say (based on Pareto’s Principle) that only 20 percent really
matter. Those tasks in the 20 percent very likely will produce 80 percent of our
results. Thus, it’s critical that we identify and focus on those things.
When the activities surrounding the “crisis of the day” begin to eat up precious
time, remind yourself of the critical 20 percent you need to focus on. If anything
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in the list of activities and action items has to fall by the wayside, left undone in
other words, be sure it isn’t listed in that critical 20 percent.
Pareto's Principle should serve as a reminder to us to stay focused on investing
80 percent of our time and energy on the 20 percent of work that’s really
important. It’s not just important to “work hard” and “work smart”, but also to
work smart on the right things.
Here’s a (sometimes light-hearted) look at “Paretoisms” from jmotil@csun.edu:

• 20% of the people (youth) cause 80% of the auto accidents
• 20% of the people (youth/ poor) smoke 80 percent of the cigarettes.
• 20% of the people (poor mainly) buy 80% of the lottery tickets
• 20% of the population is responsible for 80% of the pollution
• 80% of the cost of a building is spent on 20% of the structure
• 80% of the firearms are used by 20% of the people
• 80% of the resources of a library are used by 20% of the population
• 80% of the web surfing is done by 20% of the population
• 20% of the web sites account for 80% of the hits
• 20% of the companies control 80% of the action
• 20% of the employees (managers) control 80% of the employees
(workers)
• 80% of the cars have 20% of their seats occupied
• 80% of the employees spend 20% of their time surfing the web
• 80% of the surfing is done on 20% of the web sites
• 20% of the people pay 80 % of the taxes
• 80% of the highway accidents occur along 20% of the path travelled
(near home)
• 80% of the household accidents occur in 20% of the places in the home
(kitchens)
• 80% of the cell phone calls are made by 20% of the population
• 20% of my fingers do 80% of my typing
• 20% of your slacking off, affects 80% of the outcome
• 80% of the tools are used 20% of the time
• 20% of the tools are used 80% of the time
As we determine the best use of our time at any given moment, we must think
about the effects of the 80/20 rule and how it impacts our productivity and,
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therefore, the decisions we make about what to do and how much time to
devote to each task.
Remember, to apply the 80/20 rule to managing your priorities, you must remind
yourself that 20% of the activities on your list are going to produce 80% of the
results. So you must constantly be asking yourself, “Which activities are the 20-
percenters?”
You have heard that 80% of a job is completed in 20% of the time. Another
application in a non-planning environment is that 80% of the effort tends to
achieve 20% of the results. By thinking and planning we can reverse this to
20% of the effort achieving 80% of the results. We may even decide that it is
more efficient not to attempt the remaining work at all!
Priorities and the 80/20 Rule

Setting priorities is a necessary part of achieving success. Some experts have
said that by setting priorities, you can be 80% effective by achieving just 20%
of your goals. Simply stated, if you have a list of ten items, and you complete
only two of them, you can still be 80% effective.
However, it’s important that you concentrate on your most important tasks, in
order to feel most effective. Use the Pareto principle to identify where to focus
your efforts in order to achieve the most outcomes
You can be 80% effective

Achieving 20% of your goals
And get 100% satisfaction from your job.
4.6 Delegation as a means of utilising time and human resources

Delegation will always be one of the most important management skills and one
of the easiest to get wrong. Good delegation saves you time, develops your
people, grooms a successor, and motivates. Bad delegation will cause you
frustration, de-motivates and confuses the other person, and fails to achieve
the task itself. Here are the simple steps to follow if you want to get delegation
right, and the seven levels of delegation freedom you can offer.
SMARTER - is a quick checklist for proper delegation.

Specific,
Measurable,
Agreed,
Realistic,
Time bound,
Exciting and
Recorded
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Delegation isn't just a matter of telling someone else what to do. There is a wide
range of varying freedom that you can present on or give the other person.
The more experienced and reliable the person that you are delegating to is,
then the more freedom you can give.
The more critical the task then the more cautious you need to be about
extending a lot of freedom, especially if your job or reputation depends on
getting a good result.
People use many excuses for not delegating. Their reasons are usually
unfounded. You'll get more done through delegation if you assume that the
opposite of the following statements is true:
• I could do it better myself.
• I don't know if I can trust her to do it.
• He isn't qualified to do it.
• She doesn't want any added responsibilities.
• I don't have the time to show anyone how to do it.
• There is no one else to delegate to.
• He already has enough to do.
• I don't want to give up this task because I like doing it.
• I'm the only person who knows how to do this.
• She messed up last time, so I'm not giving her anything else to do.
Assume that most people want added responsibilities (don't you?). Assume
they are keen to learn. Recognise that the short term training investment will
pay off in the long term.
Look around. Even though you're not the boss, there are people who will help
you if you approach them in the right way.
What to Delegate
1. Don't delegate what you can eliminate. If you shouldn't be doing an activity,
then perhaps you shouldn't be giving the activity away to others. Eliminate
it.
2. Delegate routine activities, even though you don't want to:
• Fact-finding assignments
• Preparation of rough drafts of reports
• Problem analysis and suggested actions
• Collection of data for reports
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• Photocopying, printing, collating

• Data entry
3. Delegate things that aren't part of your core competency. For small
businesses, these include accounting, web site design, deliveries, hardware
upkeep, software help, graphic design, travel arrangements, patenting, legal
issues and even HR functions such as payroll.
4. Some things you can't delegate:
• performance reviews,
• discipline,
• firing.
5. Create a plan to delegate. Don't give out assignments haphazardly.
6. Invest short term time in training to gain a long term increase in
productivity.
7. Others may end up doing a better job than you can or finding new ways to
complete a task.
8. Delegate, don't abdicate. Someone else can do the task, but you're still
responsible for the completion of it, and for managing the delegation
process.
4.7 Prioritising
Priorities are your objectives ranked in order of importance. Priorities can either
have the characteristic of having long-range importance or short-range urgency.
Priorities of long-range importance are priorities that will have an important
effect once they are accomplished. For example, your priority might be to go
back to school to fulfil the educational requirements to accomplish the goal of
getting a promotion. This priority is of long-range importance. A priority of short-
range urgency is something that, no matter how important it is, must be done
immediately. For example, today is the last day for you to make a reservation
to attend the company picnic. This priority must be given special attention today,
but is not of great importance long-term.
Importance of priorities in time management

Priorities are important in time management because when you identify your
priorities, you know how you should spend your energy. You might have a list
of tasks that are all very important to you, but until you prioritise those tasks,
you’ll have difficulty knowing which task you should complete first. According to
the Pareto principle, 20 percent of the time you spend on your tasks will produce
80 percent of the results. Therefore, it’s important that you identify your priorities
accurately. Priorities give your time direction. Once you know your priorities,
you can schedule your day to accommodate those priorities. For example, you
should choose to work on your top ranked priorities during your productivity
cycle.
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Prioritise the identified key activities, you need to categorise the activities / tasks
into one of the four categories as illustrated below.
Setting priorities for you and your team

• List tasks for the day - At the beginning of the day, record on your to-do
list all the tasks you need to accomplish before the end of the day.
• Ask yourself whether you want or need to accomplish certain tasks -

Priorities include both tasks you need to accomplish and tasks you want to
accomplish. You should distinguish between what priorities, that if left
undone will cause detrimental after effects, and what priorities you would
like to do because they are personally important to you. An example of an
urgent priority, or one you need to accomplish, is finishing a report you are
writing that you should turn in to your boss by the end of the day. An example
of a not-so-urgent priority, or one you want to accomplish, is making
photocopies for personal documentation purposes.
• Rank tasks in order of importance and record all information and

documentation to complete the task - After you have listed your tasks
and distinguished which tasks are urgent priorities and which are not-so-
urgent priorities, you should prioritise your list. Usually, tasks you need to
accomplish should be listed as your top priorities while tasks you want to
accomplish should be lower on your list.
• Match priorities with those of the organisation - Be sure that your

priorities are in alliance with the priorities of your company. For example,
your first priority might be to create a plan to keep overtime down to a
minimum while your company’s current priority is to meet a rapidly
approaching deadline that might require employees to work overtime. To
avoid mismatching priorities, make sure you keep yourself updated by your
manager as to what your company’s current goals and priorities are.
• Schedule top ranked priorities during productivity cycles - After you

have prioritised your list, you might want to modify the order in which you
choose to start working on your priorities. For example, you might not want
to attack your most challenging priority first thing in the morning if you have
a tendency to feel tired and non-productive. You might choose to attack
some of the more routine priorities you have instead and wait to accomplish
your challenging priorities until the afternoon, which you might have
determined as your most productive time of day.
Using Task Typing to prioritise

A complementary approach to the urgency/importance grid is to allocate a letter
to each type of task; this is also known as ‘Task Typing’.
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Type A tasks are those that are important and urgent.
Type B tasks are those that are either important or urgent, but not both. This
category will therefore cover two sections of the grid as shown.
Type C tasks are those that neither important nor urgent, but routine.
The flowchart shown represents a quick and simple way of classifying each
type of task. When it comes to scheduling tasks into your working day, the
following guidelines should be borne in mind.
A-tasks. Try to complete a few of these urgent and important tasks each day.
B-tasks. These are likely to represent the majority of your work and should take
up most of your day.
C-tasks. These low-priority tasks should be fitted into your schedule, as time
allows.
Is the task Do you need to Take

urgent and complete it immediate A
important? today? action
Allocate time
to complete it
Is the task Does it have a
urgent or definite
important? deadline?
B
Set a realistic
deadline for it
Is the task Save the task

necessary? for a quiet time C
Discard
4.8 The principle of balance between the various aspects of one's life
You need to create a sense of balance between the various aspects of your life
as depicted in the Cycle of Life below and of work.
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Health & Sprituality

Fitness
Leisure & Fun Self-development
Relationships &
Home & Family
Communication
Career
This principle is often called total “lebensraum” (German: loosely translated as

“life space”). You need to ensure that you create a balance between working
time, leisure time, “me”-time and family time. It is important to plan for leisure
time outside of work to spend with your family or friends. Spending time away
from work ensures that you can focus 100% again when you return to the office.
Is It Really Necessary?
An important part of balancing time and demands is asking yourself three
questions:
1. Is it necessary? What is the benefit to my business or myself?
2. Is it appropriate? Is this the correct time for this to be done?
3. Is it efficient? Am I really the one who should be doing this?
Working long hours and taking work home can harm the natural balance you
should have in your life. By learning to manage your time, you can do things
you want to do instead of spending all your time on work responsibilities.
Class Activity 9: Understand the principles of time

management
Workbook
Learner Guide
Module 4
Draw up time efficient work plans to carry out department / division work
functions
Creating an overall time management plan for your business unit enables you
to see both major and minor tasks you want to accomplish. By creating an
overall time management plan, you can more easily determine which areas of
your work you tend to neglect and in which areas you tend to spend too much
time.
Since an overall time management plan requires you to write down daily, weekly
and monthly goals and priorities, you are better able to determine how you
should schedule each day when you need to accomplish long-term goals.
Having an overall time management plan minimises your stress, helps you
balance your life, increases your productivity, identifies your priorities, and helps
you accomplish your goals.
• Commit your plans to paper - Committing your plan to paper is a crucial

part of time management. Writing down your plan, diminishes the likelihood
that you’ll forget important details. Keeping your plan visible also serves as
a constant reminder and motivator for your staff. It’s virtually impossible to
prioritise effectively for the long term if you do not write down all your tasks
and goals. Writing them down enables you to visually select which should
be top priorities and which could be left until more urgent goals are
accomplished.
• Keep track of time - Keeping track of how you and your staff spend time
lets you see how you manage your time and the time in your business unit
now. By looking at how you spend your days, weeks, and months, you’ll be
able to determine what is and is not working about your current time
management plan. Keeping track of time spent allows you to realise what
you need to change to ensure the productivity of your team and to meet
deadlines.
• Create your ideal schedule - Part of learning how to manage time is

knowing exactly what you want to accomplish with the time and resources
available to you. Creating an ideal schedule enables you to see how your
team could spend their time if your plan for the day was successfully
achieved.
• Modify your current schedule - Once you know what your ideal schedule
is, look at your current schedule and note how they differ. Are you achieving
what you set out to do? Are you over-scheduling yourself and your team?
Are you sure you have enough resources? Are you missing deadlines? You
should analyse your schedule to determine how you can better modify it to
adhere to your ideal schedule.
Learner Guide
Module 4
How to draw up a schedule

According to James P. Lewis, author of The Project Manager’s Desk Reference,
scheduling is “finding ways to parallel as many activities as possible to
complete projects in minimum times.”
The antonyms (opposites) of scheduling are: disorder, disorganise. Therefore,
the outcome of not scheduling is disorder and disorganisation!
In addition to assigning dates to activities, scheduling is intended to match the
resources of equipment, materials and labour with work tasks over time.
Good scheduling can eliminate problems due to bottlenecks, facilitate the timely
procurement of necessary materials, and otherwise ensure the completion of
an action plan as soon as possible.
In contrast, poor scheduling can result in considerable waste, as resources and
equipment wait for the availability of needed resources or the completion of
preceding tasks.
Therefore, the purpose of scheduling is to assign a duration to activities and
sequence them in a logical order in order to complete a project in the shortest
possible time, using the least amount of resources possible.
There are two important concepts that you will have to take into account when
scheduling your time frames and deadlines; namely duration and deadline.
When scheduling you will look at each task critically and then estimate how long
it is going to take to complete; i.e. its time frame or duration.
This is important because tasks sometimes have to be completed in a particular
order- they are dependent upon each other.
Precedence relations between activities signify that the activities must take
place in a particular sequence. For example, design drawings cannot be
checked before they are drawn.
Dependencies:
Suppose you have a list of 10 fairly big tasks that have to be done before the
end of the week.
One approach is to do them in any order, in other words, without any planning
at all. We have all probably experienced the utter chaos and waste of time that
results from that scenario!
Or perhaps one task must be done before you can do another. This would be
called a logical dependency, with the second task depending on the
completion of the first one. Therefore, a logical dependency exists when a task
cannot start until a preceding one is completed.
But perhaps you want a particular job finished by Monday afternoon, so you
have to do it before you do the other things. This establishes a priority
relationship between the other tasks and the task you want to do. Therefore,
Learner Guide
Module 4
a priority relationship exists when someone important, like a client, wants one
task done before something else, but no logical dependency exists.
If there is no priority or logical sequence relating tasks to each other, then they
could all be done at the same time, except that you only have two hands.
This is called a resource dependency between the tasks. The advantage of
resource dependencies is that they can be resolved by getting someone to help
you, i.e. more resources. With logical dependencies, on the other hand, the
second task cannot be done until the first is completed. You could, of course
get help on the first task to speed up the process.
If you want to know the absolute minimum amount of time required to complete
a project, you would parallel all tasks that can be logically done that way, and
logically sequence the others.
In other words, assume that your to-do list of 10 tasks has only two that are
logically sequenced. You have estimated that one task will take two days to
complete and the other task will take only one day. In series they will therefore
need three days to complete.
If none of the remaining tasks will take more than three days, and they could all
be done in parallel with the other two tasks, all ten tasks could be finished by
the end of three days. Of course, you would need at least nine people to do all
10 tasks! Nevertheless, this is the quickest way of getting them all done.
With unlimited resources, you will need three days to do the work, but with only
one person working on all the tasks, you will need at least five days.
According to Lewis, the problem with all estimates is that the only way that one
will ever know if they are correct is to actually do the tasks and time them.
Furthermore, the same task can take 4 hours one week and 4 hours and 15
minutes the next. All activities vary in duration from time to time and from person
to person.
This normal variation is natural and must be accepted, which implies that the
only way we can ever consider project dates to be precise is to vary the effort
applied in order to finish each task in the specified calendar time (deadline).
Did you know?

The original meaning of “deadline” was a boundary line in a prison that
prisoners could cross only at the risk of being shot!
Gantt chart (also refer to LP5)

Taking its name from early project management innovator Henry L. Gantt, the
basic Gantt chart is an easy way to document schedules. It is a horizontal-bar
schedule showing activity start, duration, and completion. It shows the
connection between events and the calendar, and provides a graphical
analogue of the activity duration.
Learner Guide
Module 4
The Gantt schedule can illustrate the relationship between work activities
having duration, events without duration that indicate a significant completion,
and milestones that represent major achievements or decision points. Various
annotations can be used to communicate the progress of the project effort
compared to the baseline plan, as well to depict in a graphical way areas where
there are modified expectations from the baseline plan.
Once a Gantt schedule has been established for a project, progress should be
periodically plotted against the baseline schedule. If different functional areas
are involved in a project, each area may need its own detailed schedules to
support the project master schedule. In such cases it is important that working
schedules be linked to a common master schedule in a way that they can be
easily updated. Each activity or event on the schedule should have a
responsible individual assigned, so there is clear ownership and so schedule
status can be updated without a lot of fuss.
4.9 The organisation's objectives in terms of work to be done

When creating a time management plan for the business unit, it’s very important
to align your goals with those of the company. If you do not already know your
company’s priorities, you should make an appointment with your boss to talk
about your company’s long-term goals. For example, you might ask your boss
whether your company has a mission statement and if you can have a copy. If
your company does not have a mission statement, your supervisor should be
able to provide you with a general outline of the company’s goals and priorities.
It’s important that you align your priorities with those of the company so that you
can create a time management plan that allows you to accomplish goals that
are important not only to you but also to your organisation. If your team is
working hard to accomplish goals you consider of top priority, but those goals
are not top priority to your company, they might become frustrated and
unmotivated when they do not receive the recognition they believe they
deserve.
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4.10 The objectives are translated into work plans

When creating your time management plan, you should follow these steps:
Step 1: Identify goals - The goals you set for your team should have a
deadline, be challenging, achievable, and specific. Goals should be aligned with
the goals of the company. You should write down all of your long-range and
short-range goals and prioritise them.
Step 2: Determine objectives to meet your goals - Once you have identified
your goals, it’s important to create objectives to meet those goals. Write down
each goal and determine the best way to accomplish it. For example, your goal
might be to improve the productivity in your department, but your objectives for
that goal might be to research the needs of your employees and to take a
seminar on how to improve productivity.
Step 3: Create a strategy - Once you have identified your goals and the
objectives of those goals, you need to create a strategy. Write down all possible
ways to accomplish your goals. Determine who needs to be involved in the
implementation of your plan to achieve these goals, as well as what tools you’ll
need. Determine how much time each possible strategy will take you and
choose the best strategy after discussing it with others involved.
Step 4: Implement the strategy - After you have chosen the best strategy,
decide when you should implement it by determining where your goals fit in to
your list of priorities. Gather all tools, talk with the others involved in your plan,
and implement it by delegating tasks you can delegate and ensuring that each
team member understands what is expected of them.
Step 5: Re-evaluate and re-prioritise when necessary - From time to time it

may be necessary to reconsider priorities within the team and re-prioritise.
Business is dynamic and as a manager it is your responsibility to ensure that in
order to meet operational requirements your time management plan is flexible
enough to meet new challenges head-on.
Setting SMART Goals

The more defined our goals are the more likely you are to achieve them.
Nebulous, fuzzy goals are difficult to achieve. If you cannot define it, how do
you know when you have achieved it?
Goals should be SMART:

S: specific: Is the goal is defined so I know when I have achieved it?
M: measurable: Is the goal, or its achievement, quantifiable?
A: achievable: Is achieving the goal even possible?
R: relevant: Is achieving the goal important to me?
T: time bound: Does the goal have a timeframe attached to it?
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As a manager, it is important that you set department / group / team goals.
Examples of SMART goals

• Increase sales by 12% by the end of October 2004
• Reduce accounts receivable from 60 days to 50 days by 30 June 2003
• Reduce debugging time by 50% by 31 January 2004
Goals vs. Results

Anyone who has accomplished great things has achieved the results at a price!
Their achievements were paid for with the currency of dedication and
consistency! The biggest factor in achieving an objective is not goal setting.
While it is important to have clear, measurable and realistic goals, there is
another factor which is even more important.
Unrealistic Goals
A barrier to productivity in many people’s days are, expecting too much of
themselves by:
• Taking on too much
• Expecting perfection of themselves
• Keeping a disorganised workspace
• Managing too many other people’s crises
• Succumbing to the “If I want it done right, I have to do it myself” myth
• Allowing interruptions, and meetings to run their days
Identify the Results You Want to Achieve

Goals are a subset of the type of result you want to achieve. If you change the
result - your goals must change. The biggest mistake made is defining the goals
before you are clear about what result you wanted. This is like beginning to
drive your car before deciding where you want to go!
You may use a checklist such as the following to help you to identify the results
you want for your team, section, division or department:
1. What is the result I want?
2. Why is this important to me? Why do I really want this? What will
it mean once I've achieved it?
3. With whom can I share goals with and get positive support and
realistic feedback? Who or what can assist me in achieving my
goals?
4. What am I prepared to learn and change to ensure the
successful realisation of my goals/result?
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Module 4
5. What are the major milestones that I will need to complete on the
way to achieving this goal/result?
6. Plan main milestones and tasks to achieve the required result.
7. Visualise: prior to undertaking any task, take one or two minutes
to get associated with why this task is important to the overall
result I am to accomplish.
8. Tracking your progress is essential. Keep track of progress daily.
Track everything, including delays, distractions, etc. This will let
you know if you are moving closer toward the overall result.
9. Learn. Change your approach: if you are not getting what you
want, learn from the feedback. Find a mentor to guide you
through to completion. Continue to change your approach until
you get your desired result.
10. Celebrate, review and summarise: reward yourself upon
completion of your goals and/or result. Review notes, change
your plan and create a system.
Aligning, Anchoring and Linking your Goals

Goals are easier to achieve if they are aligned with outside forces.
• What happens if your goal is not aligned with company goals? At

worst, you could get fired. At best, your department performs poorly or you
are seen as a disappointment.
• What happens if your goal is aligned with company goals? Your

department succeeds, you are seen as supporting the company and your
department is seen as a major contributing force in the organisation.
• Anchoring your Goals

It is important that your gaols are anchored to your inner forces and values. If
you do not value the achievement of your goal, or the achievement of your goals
goes against your values and principles, your goal will be difficult to achieve.
• Linking your Goals

Achieving a goal is easier if it is linked to another one of your goals. You may
find that several of your goals may link together nicely; by working on one, you
can easily work on several. Even more powerful is linking your goal to another
person’s or department’s goal.
Translate the objectives into work plans

Planning is the process by which you determine whether you should attempt
the task, work out the most effective way of reaching your target, and prepare
to overcome unexpected difficulties with adequate resources. It is the start of
the process by which you turn empty dreams into achievements. It helps you to
avoid the trap of working extremely hard but achieving little.
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1. Establish clear objectives - Goals need to be set with the employees, not
for the employees. Goals should be aligned with the strategic corporate
direction in mind. Involve the employees in determining SMART goals:
Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, Time based
2. Collect data - In order to discover the best means of ultimately achieving

his or her objectives, the manager should try to gather together as much
relevant information on the topic as possible.
• What factors have a bearing on these objectives?
• Which data cannot be used?
• What organisational constraints or limitations exist?
3. Examine alternative possibilities - Try using a brainstorming session to:

• Generate a selection of new ideas.
• Examine and explore these ideas in detail.
4. Select the course to be adopted - Use your definition of the criteria or

standards for the project in order to assist you in this step.
• Identify the “Must Haves” as opposed to the “Nice to Haves”.
5. Programme and schedule - The first stage in the planning process is to

identify the key actions that need to be performed in order to achieve the
goal of the plan. If these actions are large and complex, reduce them down
to a number of smaller key actions.
For each of these identified key tasks:

• plan how they will be achieved,
• work out the time that will be required to complete the tasks
• identify the resources that will are required to be allocated to complete
the task
• use the Pareto principle to identify where to focus your efforts in order to
achieve the most outcomes
• Identify and include persons to whom tasks can be delegated in the plan
• Create plans to eliminate and/or manage time wasters in the department
/ division / section
• Prioritise tasks in terms of urgency and importance for the department /
division / section / organisation
There are 6 key questions you should ask yourself when you start to
programme and schedule your project:
• What must be done?
• Why must is be done
• Where must it be done?
• When must it be done?
• How is it to be done?
• Who is going to do it?
Learner Guide
Module 4
Objectiv Standar By How Deadlin

Actions How Where
es d whom much e date
Specify Specify Specify Specify Specify Specify Specify Specify
the goal what output, who how the where the cost when
or end must be time, must actions the of
result done to cost, execute are to actions actions
achieve quality. the be are to in rands
the actions execute be and
objectiv d. execute cents
es d value
6. Implement the plan - This is the most important phase in your entire
planning process. The most brilliantly thought-out plans will amount to no
more than dreams or wishful thinking if they cannot be carried out properly
and objective achieved. Remember that:
• Plans do NOT make thing happen – PEOPLE do!
7. Review the plan on an ongoing basis - The ability to review the results
of your plan regularly and reasonably often is a major tool in your attempt
to learn to plan and manage more effectively. Ongoing review is an integral
and vital part of the planning process because it gives management the
opportunity to measure the performance to date and apply remedial action
when and where this proves to be necessary.
4.11 The key activities required to complete a specific project

You need to identify the key activities required to complete a specific project
and all tasks and work procedures need to be analysed and assigned to a
specific time frame.
Organising the tasks

Step 1 - Obtain the necessary information - All the data gathered and
assimilated in the planning phase, including any other information necessary to
do the organising as effectively as possible. The objectives and requirements
of the policy should be clearly stated. Take note of the contents of any plans
already composed and anything facilitating them for example programmes,
schedules, budgets, standards, etc. In this way a clear reflection of the activities
to be organised can be obtained.
Step 2 - Identify and analyse the activities - The activities to be undertaken

to implement the plans involved and accomplish the set objectives must be
accurately determined. These activities have to be planned in detail in order to
determine their precise nature and extent.
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Step 3 - The division of the activities in meaningful units - Equal or related

activities must be classified in groups according to some criterion in order to
establish manageable units. If this is not done it may result in different people
performing the same task in different places in the organisation.
Step 4 - The division of the activities of the units into meaningful tasks -
Task division must be accurate in order to determine how many and what type
of persons are needed to do the work. A number of vacancies are created within
each section, for example, accountant, bookkeeper, correspondence clerk,
typist, etc. Meaningful task division requires the pursuance of specific aims, for
example each task or part of a task must keep one-person busy fill-time, each
task must consist of equal or related parts, the consequences of task
specialisation must be utilised as far as possible, the different tasks must fit into
and adjust to each other as to make cooperation and logical succession in the
performance of tasks possible, and the content of the task must enhance work
satisfaction as far as possible.
Step 5 - The allocation of power and responsibilities and the

establishment of healthy relationships - The power and responsibilities
related to each job as well as the relationship between jobs and sections must
be accurately determined.
Step 6 - The provision of all requirements and the introduction of all the
arrangements - The organisational procedure is completed when everything is
ready for the “start”, i.e. the work. It must also be ensured that all the necessities
such as raw material, parts, equipment, tools, plans, procedures, etc. will be
available. Lastly the people who have to start the work, have to be informed
timeously.
4.12 Identify persons to whom tasks can be delegated

To implement time efficient work plans, you need to:
• Identify persons to whom tasks can be delegated and include this
“assignment” in the plan
• Use delegation correctly as a tool by when applicable to get the work
done
• Place emphasis on proactive measures such as efficient information
flow, efficient meeting planning and management and administrative
procedures in the daily work processes of the
department/division/section to minimise time wasting
• Implement plans once all involved are informed of their roles, duties and
functions
• Monitor progress with work plans on an on-going basis and amendments
are made where necessary
Learner Guide
Module 4
Delegation isn't just a matter of telling someone else what to do. There is a wide
range of varying freedom that you can confer on the other person.
he more experienced and reliable they are then the more freedom you can
give.
The more critical the task then the more cautious you need to be about
extending a lot of freedom, especially if your job or reputation depends on
getting a good result.
Skill Specific Measures Agreed Realistic Timings Comments

or Task (standards (Is it?) (Is it?) (start / or Actions
Ability (What is and finish (follow-up
Area the task or parameters) dates) notes)
objective?) Attach
Attach details if
details if appropriate
appropriate
The Steps of Successful Delegation

1. Define the task - Confirm in your own mind that the task is suitable to be
delegated. Does it meet the criteria for delegating?
2. Select the individual - What are your reasons for delegating to this person?
What are they going to get out of it? What are you going to get out of it?
3. Assess ability and training needs - Is the other person capable of doing
the task? Do they understand what needs to be done? If not, you can't
delegate.
4. Explain the reasons - You must explain why the job or responsibility is
being delegated. And why to that person? What is its importance and
relevance? Where does it fit in the overall scheme of things?
5. State required results - What must be achieved? Clarify understanding by

getting feedback from the other person. How will the task be measured?
Make sure they know how you intend to decide that the job is being
successfully done.
6. Consider resources required - Discuss and agree what is required to get

the job done. Consider people, location, premises, equipment, money,
materials, other related activities and services.
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7. Agree deadlines - When must the job be finished? Or if an ongoing duty,

when are the review dates? When are the reports due? And if the task is
complex and has parts or stages, what are the priorities?
At this point you may need to confirm understanding with the other person
of the previous points, getting ideas and interpretation. As well as showing
you that the job can be done, this helps to reinforce commitment. Methods
of checking and controlling must be agreed with the other person. Failing to
agree this in advance will cause this monitoring to seem like interference or
lack of trust.
8. Support and communicate - Think about whom else needs to know what's
going on, and inform them. Involve the other person in considering this so
they can see beyond the issue at hand. Do not leave the person to inform
your own peers of their new responsibility. Warn the person about any
awkward matters of politics or protocol. Inform your own boss if the task is
important, and of sufficient profile.
9. Feedback on results - It is essential to let the person know how they are
doing, and whether they have achieved their aims. If not, you must review
with them why things did not go to plan, and deal with the problems. You
must absorb the consequences of failure, and pass on the credit for
success.
4.13 Plan to eliminate and/or manage time wasters

You should prepare for the following obstacles when creating a time
management plan for your team:
• Interruptions. Allow time for unexpected interruptions. If you don’t allow for
unexpected interruptions such as unexpected meetings, you can become
frustrated and fall behind schedule. Interruptions can be stressful and too
much stress leads to decreased productivity for the team.
• Projects taking longer than anticipated. Overestimate the time it’ll take
you to finish a project. You might encounter unforeseen problems with a
project or find that a project is more demanding than you initially thought. If
you plan extra time for projects, you’ll be able to stay on schedule and avoid
overloading yourself and the resources available to you.
• Crises. A crisis has the potential to divert you and your team from your
priorities. Fortunately, creating a time management plan that accounts for
possible mishaps can stop a crisis from happening in the first place. When
creating your time management plan, include potential problems you might
encounter and prioritise them. Then, develop steps to prevent crises or at
least to limit their consequences.
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Module 4
4.14 Prioritise tasks in terms of urgency and importance

You need to prioritise your tasks in terms of urgency and importance for the
department/division/section/organisation.
"The urgent problems are seldom the important ones."

Dwight D. Eisenhower
Using the Urgency / Importance Grid to prioritise

Urgent Less Urgent
I II
Important
III IV
Less Important
Quadrant I: Important and Urgent

E.g. crises, pressing problems, deadline-driven projects, some meetings,
customer requests, some phone calls, etc. There are potential problems that
may occur when you spend most of your time working on tasks or activities in
this quadrant:
• You are always in reaction mode
• The squeaky wheel / issue gets attention
• You will miss opportunities and it is exhausting
How to reduce the amount of time we spend in Quadrant 1:

• View activities or issues from a bigger perspective
• Review your time log for clues on “reoccurring crises” which can be
planned for
• Plan for potential problems and actually reduce the number of problems
• Fix the problem, not the symptom
Quadrant II: Important but not as Urgent

E.g. planning, relationship building, coaching, delegating, following up,
performance evaluations, learning, etc. Many of us probably find our goals in
this quadrant – important activities, but not as urgent as some of the crises we
find ourselves in day in and day out.
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How do we increase the amount of time we spend in Quadrant II where we

usually find our goals?
• Force ourselves to plan
• Set aside a period of the day to accomplish these tasks
• Reward ourselves for doing this work
• Do it NOW
The activities in Quadrant II represent some of the most important things to us.
Yet we rarely get to them. Why? These are the things that if we did them
superbly would have significant positive results in our departments. (Pareto
principle)
Quadrant III and Quadrant IV: Less Important

E.g. some phone calls, drop in visitors, mail, some meetings, escape activities,
sacred cows, etc. If you find that much of your day is spend in Quadrants III
and IV, you may not have established goals for yourself. You may have a sense
that you are not accomplishing anything, yet you may not be able to describe
why you are feeling that way.
Cure:
• Set some SMART goals for you and your team. Identify what is
important and then devote your energy to achievement of that goal.
Use Common Sense

While this ranking system serves as a very effective guideline, that is exactly
what they are – guidelines. These guidelines must be tempered with common
sense. Let’s say you have a 2-minute phone call to make, and it’s A-5 on the
list. But, your party is only in the office until 9 a.m. Common sense will dictate
that you go ahead and make that call first.
Rule Breakers
Sometimes, things are presented to you at midday, and automatically receive
an A1 on your list.
• Something you’ve never done before. You may need to do research to
figure out how much time/energy will be required to complete this project.
• The boss’s project. Something that ranks A1 on your boss’s agenda will
usually rank the same on yours.
• A high-visibility or high risk task or project.
Class Activity 10: Draw up time efficient work plans to carry

out department/division work functions
Workbook
Learner Guide
Module 4
Implement time efficient work plans

According to Webster’s Dictionary, a plan is “a method of doing something” or
a procedure. It is “a detailed program of action” or a goal/ objective. It’s “an
orderly arrangement of the parts of an overall design or objective.”
Sounds like work, doesn’t it? In fact, you may say that you don’t have time to
plan. The fact is, you don’t have time not to plan. Studies have shown that for
every one minute spent planning, the time required to complete an activity is
reduced by three to four minutes. If you spend ten minutes on planning, you
can reduce completion time by 30 to 40 minutes. If you spend an hour on
planning, you can save 3 to 4 hours and so on… When properly used, 15
minutes of planning can effectively control your time for a whole day.
So, don’t ask, “How much time should I spend planning?” Rather ask yourself,
“How much time do I want to have?”
If you have a plan:
• You will not have to make an unscheduled stop to put in petrol (your tank
is always at least half full)
• You will not leave essential tools or equipment at home
• You will not have to make two trips to the same place
If someone comes to you with an urgent task and says, “We have only ten
minutes to …”, you will say, “Fine, let’s take three minutes to plan.”
Planning gets things done. Effective planning ensures completion of your
priorities
• Planning promotes job and career advancement. If you had a
vacancy and had to choose between a wonderful person with no clear
sense of direction and someone who is continually “planning the work
and working the plan”, who would you go for? Enough said!
• Planning provides the framework for decision-making. With a well-
thought out plan, you can make quick decisions, even when crises arise.
• Planning reduces crises. Even though we can plan for unforeseen
events to a certain extent, based on past experience, we cannot
eliminate all crises, only reduce them. We cannot anticipate the absence
of a key employee due to a personal emergency, but if we plan
effectively, we will know that we can’t always expect 100% availability
and therefore we will plan around that possibility.
• Planning gives direction. It channels our energy and turns it into
productivity.
So now that you have drawn up your plan, it’s time to implement it!
Learner Guide
Module 4
4.15 Use delegation correctly

Make sure the standards and the outcome of a task that is to be delegated are
clear. What needs to be done, when should it be finished and to what degree of
quality or detail?
• Delegate the objective, not the procedure. Outline the desired results,
not the methodology.
• Ask people to provide progress reports. Set interim deadlines to see how
things are going.
• Delegate to the right person. Don't always give tasks to the strongest,
most experienced or first available person.
• Spread delegation around and give people new experiences as part of
their training.
• Obtain feedback from employees to ensure they feel they're being
treated appropriately. A simple "How's it going with that new project?"
might be all that's needed.
• Be sure to delegate the authority along with the responsibility. Don't
make people come back to you for too many minor approvals.
• Trust people to do well and don't look over their shoulders or check up
with them along the way, unless they ask.
• Be prepared to trade short term errors for long term results.
• When you finish giving instructions, don’t ask, "What else do you need
to get started?" They'll tell you.
• Give praise and feedback at the end of the project, and additional
responsibilities
4.16 Take proactive measures

Time wasting can be minimised by taking proactive measures to ensure
efficiency in:
• Information flow
• Meeting planning
• Management procedures
• Administrative procedures
Control paper flow

Control the flow of paper coming in by having a specific place for it, such as a
basket labelled “in” or simply a designated spot where it starts when it enters
your office.
Learner Guide
Module 4
You should, of course, also have a spot, basket, etc. labelled “out”, as the paper
needs to move (flow).
Time and motion experts say that paper should flow across the desk: from left
to right if you’re right-handed and from right to left if you’re left-handed.
The diagram19 below shows a desk for a right-handed person:
To summarise:
• Create a block of time during non-prime hours to handle paperwork.
Schedule this in your planner and stick to it.
• Sort through and handle the papers in your in-basket no more than twice
a day.
• Never handle a piece of paper more than once if you can help it. Avoid
the "I'll just put this here for now" habit.
• Throw away previous drafts. They serve no purpose.
• Actions you must take on receiving documents: a) sort them according
to urgency, b) highlight important aspects and c) attach relevant files or
information.
• Ask subordinates to submit recommendations along with important
reports. Nothing should be sent to you without a summary or indicated
action.
• Limit the length of letters, recommendations, responses, meeting
requests and other correspondence to one page.
• Ask people if reports they prepare (or you prepare) are really necessary.
Prepare them only when needed, not as a regular routine.
• Don't keep copies of all your requests to others, unless there are legal
or personnel reasons to do so.
• Do something with every piece of paper that reaches you and put it in its
proper place not just back on the pile.
• Handle routine requests or tasks immediately whenever you can.
• Cut back on sending memos. Use a phone call instead.
19 Prioritize Organize- The Art of Getting It Done, p.117

Learner Guide
Module 4
• Reduce the number of memos you keep. After all, memos are primarily
for short-term information. Record the information you need and toss the
memo.
• Don't keep business cards tucked away in a drawer. Enter them on a
contact manager database, and then throw out the card.
• Create different file folders:
- Reading files for long reports and magazines. If you read
everything when it arrives, you will never get through your in-
basket.
- Personal file for those inter-office jokes you want to keep (but will
probably never look at again)
- Training file for useful items on personal or professional
development
- Supplier file for information on products and services
- Files for each subordinate for items to pass on or discuss
- Invoices to pay
- Upcoming events to attend
- One folder for each subordinate and for your manager
- One for each major project you're working on
Manage meetings
A typical mid-level manager may spend as much as 25-30% of his/her work day
in meetings of one kind or another. Yet, in surveys, managers continually point
out “meetings” as the biggest time waster on the job.
All good (effective) meetings have the following in common:

• A purpose that all participants know and understand
• An agenda organised to achieve the above purpose
• The people invited to the meeting, need to be there; either as
contributors, or to gain something from it
• The meeting is briskly chaired
• The meeting sticks to the agenda
• The meeting accomplishes the work goal with no wasted time or
motion
• Visual presentations are used when possible
• Visuals are clear, sharp and colourful
• Participants understand their roles
Learner Guide
Module 4
• Participants come prepared

• Participants make positive contributions
• The chair summarises what has been accomplished
• There is an organised post-meeting follow-up
Bad meetings, on the other hand, have the following in common:

• Too many
• Too long
• Agendas contain too much
• Compete with other meetings
• Too many people at the meeting
• Wrong people at the meeting
• People who should be there are not
• Poorly planned
• Called for the sake of calling a meeting
• No clear agenda
• Poor chairship
• End without reaching a conclusion
• Participants are unprepared
% of executives who are "bothered a lot" by various meeting

dynamics20:
Factor % bothered a lot
People drifting off subject 83

Participants' lack of 77
preparation 74
Questionable effectiveness 67
People not listening 62
People's wordiness 60
Length of time taken 51
People not participating 41
Emotional outbursts
20
Survey conducted by Pace Productivity
Learner Guide
Module 4
Is this meeting absolutely necessary?

This is the first question we should ask ourselves whenever we get the impulse
or feel compelled to call a meeting. We must make sure that we do not just call
a meeting because it’s expected. Or, if it is a requirement of the job to have a
meeting before the shift starts, then it is our responsibility to prepare properly
for that meeting.
If there is no particularly important or pressing information to be conveyed for
the day, then we must address an issue that needs to be dealt with, but
needs only a couple of minutes to do so.
Here are some questions we need to ask ourselves:
• What is the purpose of this meeting?
If you can’t write a single sentence stating a precise and limited objective for
the meeting, don’t call it, or get a purpose! An unfocused meeting is a waste of
everyone’s precious time.
As you have learnt in previous modules), you have to start off by defining your
goal or objective. This applies to every aspect of your work (and other areas
of your life, too!)
What do you want to achieve with this meeting? Write your purpose statement
down when planning the meeting.
Is this the right time?

• Are the time and circumstances right?
- Is the situation ripe for discussion?
- Is all the information needed available?
Again, depending on the format and purpose of the meeting, you may decide
to call a meeting when more information is available, or when certain pressing
issues need to be discussed immediately.
Of course, for some, the early morning, pre-shift meeting is not the best time,
but that is why you, as the convener and chair, need to ensure that the meeting
follows an agenda and covers topics of concern and interest to the workers and
the organisation.
Who knows, people might start looking forward to your meetings!
• What will happen if I don’t call a meeting?

If the answer is “nothing”, then there is no reason for a meeting, but if a decision
will be delayed, or vital information won’t get to those who need it, there is a
good reason to have a meeting.
The answer could also be “disciplinary action”, because it is company policy
that every supervisor has a meeting at a certain time with a certain group of
people.
Learner Guide
Module 4
• What alternatives do I have?

Will a phone call or memo serve the same purpose? Do the people I need to
contact have access to phones and e-mail facilities? Or is this an instance
where I need to have face-to-face contact?
Meeting alternatives include:
- Personal executive action
- Written communication
- Individual telephone conversations
- Conference telephone calls
4.17 Inform all involved of their roles, duties and functions

It is important that staff are clear on what their duties and tasks include. Every
person must know precisely what his duties and responsibilities are and s/he
must have sufficient authority to do his/her job. Staff will acquire more self-
confidence in performing their tasks if they know exactly what to do. They can
also be held accountable for delivery.
This includes having an up-to-date list of duties available for each of your
employees. So that you:
• Allocate the right tasks to the right people.
• Can get the acceptance and agreement from the people who have to
do the work
• Can build an effective team that supports the results to be achieved.
• Ensure work is not duplicated
• Identify what the staff member has to do and what is expected of
him/her. Clearly outline areas of responsibility (from the job
description).
• Inform staff to what level they can make decisions.
• Ensure that the job is seen to be both interesting and worthwhile.
• S/he must also know what his/her relation to the other workers is and to
what degree co-operation and interaction can take place.
The Responsibility Assignment Matrix (RAM) is a management tool that

indicates who or which department will be responsible for which activity or task.
The purpose of the RAM is to determine clear responsibility for completing all
the tasks of the project.
• Who has the right skills, ability, experience and time
• Who has the best access to the relevant information
Learner Guide
Module 4
• Which department has the best facilities

• Who is commitment is critical for project success
Work Breakdown Structure Responsibility Assignment Matrix

Task Duration Other dependant tasks Name 1 Name 2 Name 3 Name 4
4.18 Monitor progress with work plans and make amendments where
necessary
Once the planning process is under way, review sessions should be conducted
at every stage of the plan.
Possible causes of limited success

• Circumstances beyond the manager’s control.
Questions that should be raised in situations of this kind include:
• Could I not have foreseen these circumstances 4 to 6 months ago?
• Which indicators did I ignore?
• Circumstances within the manager’s control.

In this case, possible questions include:
• Were there factors within my control, such as recruiting staff and training
them, which I ignored or performed without the necessary dedication?
• Did the failure lie within my powers as an implementer – the person
responsible for ensuring that the correct procedures were followed?
• Insufficient motivation.
In this situation, the manger could ask himself the following questions:
• Did I formulate or agree to objectives that I had no real intention of
attaining?
• Because objectives are so demanding, did the difficulties involved reveal
my lack of motivation?
• Insufficient skill in setting objectives.

Ask yourself:
• Did the lack of a deadline or measurements explain my lack of success?
Learner Guide
Module 4
Class Activity 11: Implement time efficient work plans

Workbook
Reflection
Individually, complete the formative activity in your Learner
Workbook
Facilitator Observation Checklist

The facilitator will provide you with feedback about your
participation during the class activities in your Learner Workbook
Learner Guide
Module 4
Learner Guide
Summative Assessment Guidelines
Summative Assessment
You are required to complete a number of summative assessment activities in
your Learner Portfolio of Evidence Guide. The Learner Portfolio of Evidence
Guide will guide you as to what you are required to do:
• Complete all the required administration documents and submit all the
required documentation, such as a certified copy of your ID, a copy of
your CV and relevant certificates of achievement:
• Learner personal information form
• Pre-assessment preparation sheet
• Assessment plan document
• Declaration of authenticity form
• Appeals procedure declaration form
• Place your complete Learner Workbook (with the completed Class
Activities) in the specified place in the Learner Portfolio of Evidence
Guide.
• Complete the Knowledge Questions under the guidance of your
facilitator:
Knowledge Questions
Individually, complete this summative activity in your Learner
Portfolio of Evidence Guide
• Complete the other summative assessment activities in your workplace:
Practical Activities
Summative Project
Logbook
Learner Guide
Summative Assessment Guidelines
Once you have completed all the summative activities in your Learner Portfolio
of Evidence Guide, complete the Assessment Activities Checklist to ensure that
you have submitted all the required evidence for your portfolio, before
submitting your portfolio for assessment.
Learner Guide
References
References and Further Reading

• Smit, PJ & GJ de J Cronjé (eds). 1999. Management Principles. Juta &
Co. Ltd.
• http://home.developmentgateway.org for information on business
environments
• Vertigo Interactive Design, 2002, ‘Problem solving’, viewed 14 December
2005, http://www.vis-it.com/application.asp#problem.
• Information on problem-solving techniques retrieved from:
http://www.mindtools.com
• Information on creativity retrieved from: www.brainstorming.co.uk
• http://www.tbs-sct.gc.ca/pubs_pol/dcgpubs/riskmanagement/rm-riv1-
eng.asp#_Toc456673609
• http://www.management-issues.com/2009/3/5/opinion/20th-century-
managers-inhibit-21st-century-work.asp
• Bittel, Lester R. & John W. Newstrom. 1990. What every supervisor
should know. 6th ed. Gregg Division: McGraw-Hill Publishing Company
• Clark, Jonathan and Susan. 1992. Prioritize Organize- The Art of Getting
It Done. National Press Publications
• Smit PJ & GJ De J Cronjé. 1999. Management Principles. 2nd Edition.
Cape Town: Juta
• http://www.getmoredone.com
• http://www.mindtools.com
• http://ezinearticles.com/?Five-External-Forces-That-Affect-Sales-and-
Marketing-Success&id=1831835
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Business Analysis Support Practice

LP4: Manage an innovative environment

and team Learner Guide

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2.2 Analyse own unit in relation to the features of an environment

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Programme LP4: Manage an innovative environment and team

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Programme entry level requirements

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• Summative Assessment: The NQF’s objective is to create

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Learning map (delivery structure)

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• Understand and apply various creative thinking techniques

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Creative thinking and problem solving techniques

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1.1 Creative thinking techniques (also see LP6 Mod5)

Creative thinking techniques and their application

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Programmed, logical or convergent thinking recognises that our brains are

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Developments of products occur much more rapidly using these deliberate

Each type of approach has its strength. Logical, disciplined thinking is

Divergent or creative thinking involves opening up your mind to find new

Creative thinking is all about merging two previously unrelated or unmerged

Extract a concept or principle from the stimulus and reuse it

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Take a part of the stimulus (e.g. a feature, a process, a physical section, a

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When the stimulus is a question, do the following:

Technique 1: Thought experiments

Thought experiments are designed to:

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Example: Matchstick problem

Technique 2: Challenge facts

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Rule 2: Encourage wild and exaggerated ideas

Rule 3: Quantity counts at this stage, not quality

Rule 5: Every person and every idea has equal worth

Principles behind brainstorming5

Principles relating to Rule 1: Withholding judgment

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Principles relating to Rule 3: Quantity counts at this stage, not quality

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Brainstorming by yourself without the need for a group

How to brainstorm by yourself

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Possible problems with Brainstorming

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Technique 4: Mind maps

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associations and ideas from it in order to arrive at a large number of different

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The disadvantages of standard notes:

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Mind maps use pictures:

Mind maps harness the full range of your cortical skills: