8/10/2019 Chapter 9 Issue Formulation and Problem Structuring http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/chapter-9-issue-formulation-and-problem-structuring 1/33 9 Issue formulation and problem structuring Everything is vague to a degree you do not realize till you have tried to make it precise. (Bertrand Russell) 9.1 Introduction The decision analysis process cycles through stages of divergent and convergent thinking. Initially DMs need to think broadly – divergently – about the issues in front of them; indeed, they need to identify a com- prehensive list of the issues lest they solve the wrong or a poorly perceived problem. Later they need to converge on one or more decision models that capture their understanding of the problem. In this chapter we discuss several tools that can facilitate divergent thinking. All analysis, problem solving and decision making has to be sensitive to context, both internal and external. For groups and organisations, this has been captured in the concept of appreciation – namely that neither a group nor an organisation can understand itself and its context simply through events, its structures and activities; it also needs to understand the ideas, world views and imperatives that shape it; and it must appreciate all these aspects to be able to take appropriate decisions (Lewis, 1991). DMs have to maintain, revise and reflect upon the ideas and notions that shape their and their organisation’s understanding of self and their environment. Thus, within the formulation phase of a cycle of decision making (figure 3.6), one of the first things that DMs have to do is to discuss and explore context, setting boundaries for their decision. In this chapter, we explore ways in which such discussion can be catalysed and supported. We must emphasise at the outset that there is no ‘right’ way to formulate and solve a problem. School mathematics can leave us with a belief that all problems can be turned into a model and then solved to give a unique, correct answer. In straightforward, repetitive contexts arising in the known 266
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Chapter 9 Issue Formulation and Problem Structuring
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8/10/2019 Chapter 9 Issue Formulation and Problem Structuring
Three humble shoemakers brainstorming will make a great statesman. (Chinese proverb)
How does the process of problem formulation begin? The easiest way
to begin is simply to ask the open question: what are the issues and
concerns that are drawing your attention? As the discussion flows in
answer to this question, the key points can be noted down in a list or,
perhaps, a number of lists: external factors, opportunities, threats,
constraints and any other categories that arise naturally in the discus-
sion. If one is working with a group, it is often useful to write each
point on a Post-it and stick it to a board. This allows one to construct
lists and groups of related concepts as the discussion continues. Com-puter software also exists to help; and with technologies such as inter-
active whiteboards or group decision support rooms, this is becoming
more usable.
This process can be made more effective by using formal brain-
storming1 techniques, which seek to generate ideas in a manner that
overcomes intra- and interpersonal barriers to creativity (Rickards,
1999). The simplest approaches to brainstorming do little more than we
suggested above – ask the participants to list uncritically all the issuesthat seem relevant to the general problem they face – but there are
many variants, all of which introduce more structure to the process to
catalyse thinking without biasing perspectives. The key point is to be
spontaneous and non-evaluative: no participant is allowed to comment
on the contributions of others. The sole aim is to generate ideas for later
consideration.
We mentioned computer software. It is instructive to note its potential
benefits in the brainstorming processes. In conventional brainstorming,
the objective is to produce a stream of ideas. The ideas are of value in
themselves, because they list the potential components of a model or an
analysis. The stream of ideas is also of value, however, because it
stimulates the thinking of others in the group. As one member suggests
something, it may catalyse a thought in another, who then suggests a
further idea, which in turn catalyses the thinking of other members.
Good brainstorming does not just draw out what is there, it catalyses
1 We debated whether to avoid the term brainstorming , which some see as offensive to epilepsy sufferers. It is still used in much mainstream management, however. Our apologies if this doescause offence.
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group during an open brainstorming session, when facilitated positively,
can help the members see where the others are ‘coming from’ and begin
the process of mutual understanding.
Brainstorming draws out ‘top of the head’ ideas from DMs, sparking
one idea off another; but there is no guarantee that it draws out all the
ideas they need, and neither does it help organise them. There are a much
broader range of techniques of varying degrees of formality that seek to
pull out and arrange the issues and concerns informatively. These are the
techniques that are known variously as soft-modelling, soft systems or soft
OR. We consider six categories:
checklists;
simple two-dimensional plots;
trees and networks; management and other models;
rich pictures; and
scenario planning.
We include two topics not often considered as methods of soft modelling:
management models and scenario planning. In the management literature
(ten Have et al ., 2003), the term ‘model’ tends to be used to refer to a
graphical aide-memoire that captures the factors and interactions that can
be important in determining some economic or organisational behaviour.
2
Not only can these models act as checklists, and so be discussed further in
the next section, but they can also introduce other benefits and pointers to
good forms of strategy. Scenario planning is important in that it catalyses
creative thinking about possible futures.
The key thing to remember when using any of these techniques is not to
apply them too rigidly. They are tools to help DMs think – or, rather, to get
them thinking. Thus their role is to stimulate, not constrain, discussion. In
developing any particular soft representation of the issues, any differences
of judgement between DMs will stimulate discussion and enhance
understanding. For example, disagreement about the potential influence of
a stakeholder can prompt clarification of exactly what options are available
to him or her, and what effects these would have. Note further that these
discussions should not be thought of in isolation. Thinking about and
discussing the roles of stakeholder can, for instance, provide insight into
DMs’ own objectives or key uncertainties.
2 Might it be that management models tend to be graphical and qualitative because managementis mainly concerned with the complex domain in the cynefin model?
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there are bystanders , who have neither power nor a stake. It should be
remembered, however, that they may become more involved in the future,
so it might be wise to monitor the bystander groups.One way of developing such plots and also using the process to structure
group discussions is as follows.
(1). The axes are drawn on a blank flip chart. Meanwhile, DMs, working
individually, note down their first thoughts on the identity of
stakeholders on Post-its, maybe five each.
(2). They then stick the labels in what they think the most appropriate
position is on the chart.
(3). The group then examines the resulting plot, noting differences andagreements between the placement of the same stakeholders by
different individuals. Discussion of the differences typically leads to
revisions of opinion and a growing shared understanding among the
group.
Alternatively, instead of asking each DM to work individually and locate a
few stakeholders on the plot, the DA may lead a quick brainstorming session
to identify stakeholders and then, guided by open discussion and evaluation
between the group members, locate each stakeholder on the plot. Either way,the process is catalytic, in that it draws out from the group the identities
PowerStakeholders
Stake
Context setters (loose cannons ) Players
Influence Manage interaction
Monitor Meet responsibilities to
Bystanders Victims/
beneficiaries
Figure 9.1 Stakeholder identification
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of potential stakeholders and their importance in the analysis. It is also
worth noting that stakeholder involvement and power varies over time, so it
is important to revisit the analysis every so often, noting any changes and
considering the implications of these for current or future actions. Case
vignette 9.1 shows an example of a stakeholder plot that was developed in a
training exercise. For further discussion, see Ackermann and Eden (2003)and Bryson (2004).
Case vignette 9.1 Stakeholder plot developed in a training exercise based around
a hypothetical scenario
PowerStakeholders
Stake
Other media
Sunday Clarion
ICRF
Nationalasthma
compaign
Producercompany
GPs
Parents
Patient
groups
Asthmaticchildren
Generalpublic
The example of a stakeholder plot shown above is part of one developed in a training
exercise within the United Kingdom’s Department of Health on health risk manage-
ment (Bennett et al ., 1999). The hypothetical scenario concerned some evidence
from an epidemiological study, carried out by the Imperial Cancer Research FundCICRF), that suggested but did not demonstrate with statistical significance that there
was a possible increased risk of laryngeal cancer within groups of asthmatic children
who were taking a particular drug for their asthma. The balance of risks was still in
favour of maintaining the children’s treatment with the drug, since asthma itself is a life-
threatening condition if left uncontrolled. Health managers in the Department of Health
were considering their possible strategies for advising the public without creating a
‘health scare’. A complicating factor was that one Sunday newspaper was known to be
aware of the issues and might place the information in the public domain independ-
ently of the Department of Health. Hence the actual underlying decision problemconcerned the timing and tenor of any government press release.
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[A] model may also represent people’s beliefs or opinions, rather than some relatively objective
reality. These models, though not objective creations, enable people to explore one another’sideas in a way that is impossible if those concepts remain as mental models. (Mike Pidd)
Trees and networks seek to elicit, display and stimulate discussion of
the relationships between concepts. The simplest networks are trees or
hierarchies – for instance, attribute hierarchies. This simple structure
provides a pictorial breakdown of an overall value into its component
factors, connecting higher-level value concepts with sub-values. We dis-
cussed how they may be developed in section 7.3, and we do not repeat
that discussion here. We simply note that developing an attribute tree is aprocess that catalyses discussion about values and objectives, and one that
helps overcome DMs’ tendencies not to articulate or completely overlook
their objectives (Bond et al ., 2008).
Decision trees provide another example: they show the relationships – in
this case, contingencies – between events and potential actions. Textbooks
usually introduce decision trees alongside the quantitative analysis of
Bayesian modelling (section 8.5). They have great value in exploring and
summarising the underlying structure of a decision, however. In fact,
Wells (1982) complained that, as an analyst, he seldom got the professional
satisfaction of developing a quantitative decision analysis. Once he had
worked with DMs to develop a decision tree, the insight they obtained
from seeing the contingencies clearly was sufficient for them to proceed to
a decision. Carrigan et al . (2004) show how structuring medical infor-
mation in terms of a decision tree increased understanding of the problem
and the available treatment options, as well as leading people to feel more
informed about their treatment decision. French et al . (2005b) also provide
an example of decision trees being used qualitatively in problem structuring.In the same way, drawing an influence diagram without immediately
adding and analysing probabilities and utilities is another method of
exploring and summarising a problem, this time from the perspective of
influence or causality (Daellenbach and McNickle, 2005).
Mindmaps
Mindmaps are among the simplest of plots that connect and associateideas (Buzan, 2005; Buzan and Buzan, 1994). Their very simplicity makes
them transparent and intuitive. Since memory is associative, mindmaps
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– ask whether the business is worth more to someone else; and
– turnaround.
Key issues:
– how feasible is the turnaround?
– how to stabilise, buy time?
It should be emphasised that the strategy space method does not give
definitive prescriptions of strategy. In keeping with the spirit of this
chapter, it offers suggestions of issues that strategy should address. It offers
another set of prompts to shape thinking.
9.7 Rich picture diagrams
A picture is worth a thousand words. (Anonymous)
Soft systems methodology emphasises the value of rich pictures . These seek
to explore and summarise issues more pictorially than the methods we have
discussed so far. They can be extremely intuitive and can also compress a lot
of information into a single picture. Rich pictures can be very useful in
forming a backdrop to subsequent analysis, acting as an aide-memoire to
allow the group of DMs continually to refer back and check that it is
addressing all the relevant issues. Figure 9.7 shows a rich picture diagramthat arose during a training programme (French et al ., 2005), which was
part of a programme to instil better issue formulation skills in crisis
management teams (Bennett et al ., 1999). During this, a hypothetical3
scenario was used to help articulate discussions of crisis management and
public risk communication. A summary of the scenario is as follows.
The UK FSA has just received information from the Italian authorities about a
risk of pesticide contamination in plum tomato products. Three weeks ago
routine testing discovered residues of a prohibited pesticide, known as CGB.Subsequent tests identified residues of a number of permitted pesticides
that exceed levels currently permitted by a factor of two and found further
contamination with CGB. Extensive investigation discovered that, during the
drought that had affected much of southern Europe the previous summer,
several canning plants reduced the quantity of water used in washing plum
tomatoes; and several failed to wash the tomatoes at all. The problem also seems
to have been compounded by criminal fraud. Many farmers were approached a
3
The fact that this scenario is hypothetical needs to be emphasised. To our knowledge, no risk event of this kind has ever occurred. For hypothetical scenarios to evoke any realistic thoughtsand reactions, they need to have some connection with the real world. Thus we refer to theUnited Kingdom’s Food Standards Agency (FSA) and to Italy.
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year ago by a supplier offering pesticides at a quarter of the normal price. The
supplier claimed that he was reducing stocks in advance of an impending EU
directive, which would reduce the maximum permitted residue levels for
many pesticides to such low levels that it would be impossible to use them in
future food production. In fact, the pesticides were a very dilute industrialpesticide, CGB, that had never been licensed for agricultural use because of a link
with cancer. Fortunately, the dilution was so great that the CGB residue levels in
processed plum tomatoes are very slight. Italian police have so far been unable to
trace the supplier, who vanished once the pesticides had been distributed in bulk
to farmers and cash payments taken. All remaining stocks at farms of the
pesticide have been confiscated. The Italian authorities have coordinated an
extensive testing programme on canned plum tomatoes and other processed
foods incorporating tomatoes over the past two weeks and the scale of the
problem has become apparent. Roughly 6 per cent of Italian tomato production
has been affected. Much of the production is for domestic use, but a sizeableproportion is exported. Accordingly, the Italian authorities are now notifying
EU countries and other countries to which exports are made.
The rich picture diagram in figure 9.7 captures the key aspects of the
scenario. Given that the description that we actually gave the participants
?
?
Illegalpesticides
Cancerrisk
Sold to Italiantomato farmers
Summerdrought
Contaminatedtomatoes
Perhaps othercrops
How much in UK
food chain?
Scale of health risk?
Tell the public?
Distributed overEurope
Processed foods
Figure 9.7 Rich picture representing the hypothetical scenario of a tomato health scare
Source: French et al . ( 2005 ).
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See also Chen and Lee (2003) for discussion of DSSs that may draw out
mental models.
9.11 Exercises and questions for discussion(1). Imagine that you are on the common room committee of a hall of
residence. The committee is investigating the possibility of organ-
ising regular party nights in a cellar in the hall that lies close to the
hall’s boundary with a housing estate and infant school. Draw up
an outline attribute tree and stakeholder plot for analysing the
issues. You should explain why at least four of the attributes might
be important to the committee and the reasoning behind the
positioning of at least five of the stakeholders.(2). Your son starts senior school next year and you live five miles from the
school concerned. There are bus routes to the school that pass close to
your house, but require a change at the transport interchange in your
town. There is no school bus service per se. Half a mile from your house,
on the other side of a major road, there is a tram stop that offers a direct
route to the school concerned. Your own route to work passes within a
mile and half of the school and would add twenty minutes to your
journey in the rush-hour traffic. Your partner also has a car but travels towork in the opposite direction. Several families in your road also have
children at the same school, though you are friends with only one of
them and they always use public transport for environmental reasons.
Formulate the issues facing you in choosing a routing for your child to go
to school.
(3). In the following hypothetical scenario, imagine that you are a board
member of the confectionary company that produces the chocolate bars
concerned.
Two days ago there was an article in the press about a cluster of skin cancers
that had been found at an adhesives factory. The adhesive firm is one of your
suppliers providing the glue to seal the wrappers of some of your chocolate
bars.
The cluster came to light in a general trade union survey of workers’
health. The factory was chosen as one of ten from various industries for a
ten-year longitudinal study undertaken by a university biostatistics
department. The study found that the rate of skin cancer at the factory was
significantly raised ( p -value 0.015) by a factor of three over normal inci-
dence. The Health and Safety Executive has begun investigations and it isfairly clear that the cause is poor discipline in wearing protective clothing at
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the plant. The workers seem to have been scrupulous in wearing masks,
because they wrongly assumed that the only hazard was the risk from
vapours. They have been less careful in wearing gloves all the time, however,
and keeping their sleeves rolled down in the hot atmosphere. It is thought
that this lack of rigour in the safety culture is the cause.Yesterday one tabloid newspaper carried an exclusive: ‘Choc-Bar
Wrappers Cancer Fear!’ They have discovered an industrial chemist, Bruce
Highman, who used to work at the adhesives factory until a year ago. Dr
Highman learnt of the cluster of skin cancers from the press reports the day
beforehand. He had been arguing for greater expenditure on safety before he
left the firm. Knowing that the adhesives are used in sealing food, including
your company’s chocolate bars, he is warning of a risk to the public. The
carcinogenic power of the adhesive concerned, argues the chemist, is likely to
be enhanced in the presence of phenylanaline, which is found in chocolate.
Imagine young children licking their chocolate bar with the wrapper rolleddown . . . To illustrate the idea the tabloid story had a photo of a cheeky,
chubby-faced toddler sucking a well-known chocolate bar.
A lot of public concern has arisen, fanned by a discussion on morning
television at which Dr Highman made his claims again. A family doctor,
who was doing a medical slot, did argue on air to the chemist that the
suggestion was at the very least hypothetical and there was very little like-
lihood of a risk, and was countered with: ‘They said that about mad cow
disease.’ It should be noted that the chemist’s demeanour was calm and
persuasive. He did not look like a crank.
Rapid enquiries and calculations, in your company, in industry bodiessuch as the Food and Drink Federation and at the Department of Health,
have discovered the following.
The carcinogenic risk from exposure to the sort of quantities of
adhesive applied to a chocolate bar wrapper is negligible. Over 100,000
wrappers would have to rubbed on a person’s arm to create the same
exposure as that received by a worker in the adhesives factory. The ‘phenylanaline’ effect of chocolate on the adhesive is thought to be
far-fetched, to say the least.
The chocolate bar used in the newspaper photo does not use the adhesiveconcerned. Nonetheless, about 40 per cent of the United Kingdom’s
chocolates and other sweets are wrapped using this adhesive.
Over the past twenty-four hours the media have given a lot of attention
to the story. Several eminent food scientists, cancer experts and industrial
chemists have been interviewed on radio and TV, and all have discounted
any risk to the public.
Unfortunately, late yesterday the media discovered that a further case of
skin cancer at the factory had been diagnosed. The person concerned has
issued a press release to the effect that the adhesives company had floutedall health and safety regulations in the interests of profit and that he would
be taking legal action for compensation. All the morning’s press have
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