Structured thinking

Published on June 11, 2017

Karthic SrinivasanFollow
Technology Consultant - Cognitive & Intelligent Automation at EY
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I always love structured thinking. It is the process of breaking down a complex

problem into number of fragments and solving them individually thereby reaching
the final solution. Some of the fragments can be completely omitted. They just cling
to increase the complexity of the problem. These unwanted pieces can be spotted
only if the problem is fragmented.

I am going to explain such a complex problem and how I solved it using structured
thinking in this article.

Two days back I received this forward message in Whatsapp :

Break your problem into fragments. Push away the unwanted pieces. Deal with the
main pieces which will definitely be very less in number.

When I saw this message, I just smiled and moved on. But latter I came up with an
idea that Structured thinking can be explained very well with this example. I went
ahead and solved this riddle. So here is my solution:

1. My first step is to take a piece of paper and draw as much as you can. Human
brain (at least my brain) is designed in a way that we understand images quickly and
clearly than words. The family chart which I drew on a paper looked like this :
This chart contains all the information provided in the problem statement ( The
whatsapp message ).

2. Now my favorite part – eliminating unwanted additions to the problem. Here

in this example, everyone to the right of Y G Magendhran are clinging to the
problem, adding complexity. So let them go with all due respect (
Because Rajnikanth is there. Mind it ). After this process, our chart will look like
this :
We have effectively eliminated 7 people out of our model from initial 22 people.

3. More people can still be removed from the model. Spouses who are clinging to
their partners are asked to leave for some time :
4. After 3rd degree of complexity reduction process, our model will look like this :
Some of the personalities are removed and the relationships are changed
accordingly. For example, Balaji is tagged as Father-in-law to Mohanlal. Also Arun
is tagged as Grand son of Gemini Ganesan.

5. According to Indian family protocol, Mohanlal and Y G Magendran can be

considered as brothers as they both call Balaji as “Uncle”. Also Arun becomes
Rekha’s nephew. As Mohanlal and Y G Magendran are brothers now, Arun becomes
Mohanlal’s Son-in-law too. Finally our model got reduced to the final state :
Since Arun is the only linking factor between Mohanlal and Rekha we can clearly
come to a conclusion that Rekha is Mohanlal’s sister. Indian
protocol for relationships are used in this problem.

Takeaways :
I always love problem solving. Structured thinking in my point of view is "Common
sense with some rules". Employers look for structured thinking capability in a
candidate always. They look for how well you structure the problem and solve it but
not how accurate the answer is. Correctness of the answer is not that important but
the way the problem is fragmented. Once you break the problem into pieces you
will get the confidence to solve it easily.