Solving Business Puzzles? First Make Sure All Pieces Are in the Box

There’s a key, often overlooked difference between the traditional jigsaw puzzles we solved as kids (or adults), and the newfangled PC games and mobile apps meant to replace, or at least mimic them. The digital versions always have all their pieces.

No matter how hard you try, when several pieces have gone up and disappeared from a traditional jigsaw puzzle’s box to who-knows-where, it’s simply impossible to ever truly complete the thing. Much less see the whole picture it’s meant to present.

Something similar can occur with business teams and professionals when they engage in creative problem-solving.

Often, it’s the questions that leaders and teams fail to ask in the first place that get them into trouble, according to research from three scholars from Switzerland’s International Institute for Management Development (IMD) detailed in Harvard Business Review. What’s more, these questions don’t come spontaneously. Indeed, they require prompting and conscious effort.

Arnaud Chevalier, the first research author, is a professor of strategy at IMD Business School. Frédéric Dalsace, the second author, is a professor of marketing and strategy at IMD. And Jean-Louis Barsoux, the third, is an IMD term research professor.

Barsoux is also the coauthor of ALIEN Thinking: The Unconventional Path to Breakthrough Ideas. A 2021 book that emphasizes the importance of five thinking patterns—Attention, Levitation, Imagination, Experimentation and Navigation—in leading to a fresh and flexible approach to problem-solving. Including among people such as inventors, scientists, doctors, entrepreneurs and artists.

Strategic questions for business leaders can be grouped into five domains, according to Chevalier, Dalsace and Barsoux: investigative, speculative, productive, interpretive and subjective.

Investigative questions clarify the purpose leaders are facing, the researchers say, including what they want to achieve and what they need to learn to do so.

This part of the process can be fueled by successive “Why?” questions. As in the “Five Whys” developed by engineering managers at Toyota Motor Corporation as a root cause analysis tool during manufacturing. Successively asking “How?” can also help leaders transcend generic solutions and develop more sophisticated alternatives.

Speculative questions, on the other hand, help leaders consider a problem more broadly, according to the researchers. To reframe a problem or explore more-creative solutions, leaders must ask things like “What if…?” and “What else…?”

The global design firm IDEO popularized this approach with its systematic use of the prompt “How might we…?” An approach first coined by the educator, consultant and researcher Min Basadur when he was a manager at P&G to overcome limiting assumptions and jumpstart creative problem-solving.

Productive, or “Now what?” questions help leaders assess the availability of talent, capabilities, time and other resources. Influencing the speed of decision-making, the introduction of initiatives and the pace of growth.

Questions such as “How can we get it done?” “How will we synchronize our actions?” and “How will we measure progress?” can help leaders identify key metrics and milestones—along with possible bottlenecks—to align people and projects, and keep plans on track. They also expose risks, including strains on the organization’s capacity.

Interpretive “So, what…?,” or sensemaking questions enable synthesis. Pushing leaders to continually redefine the core issue. And go beneath the surface to ask “What is this problem really about?” Natural follow-ups to the other types of questions previously mentioned, they draw out the implications of an observation or idea.

And finally, in contrast with the other categories, which deal with the substance of a business challenge, subjective or “What’s unsaid?” questions deal with the personal reservations, frustrations, tensions and hidden agendas within a team or among employees. All things that in turn can push a decision-making process off course.

Team members may be reluctant to explore emotional issues unless a leader provides encouragement and a safe space for discussion, the researchers say. Furthermore, they may fail to share misgivings about an idea simply because no one else is doing so.

Business leaders must therefore invite dissenting views and encourage doubters to share their concerns, according to Chevalier, Dalsace and Barsoux. If they don’t, they risk the consequences of “pluralistic ignorance”—a social dynamic in which people mistakenly others predominantly hold an opinion different from their own.

Now just try and piece something like that one together.