I made 2 categories: human vs non human. I put it in four buckets: what he can do about himself(wake up early, eat healthy, go to gym) how other people can help him (ask for tips, get help with tasks) what he can do about the work (prioritize task, time tasks) and what he can do about the surroundings (no clutter, to do list, plan agenda) And then detailed items. It is totally different issue tree than yours. Is it an okay issue tree though? Looking forward to hear!
Hi there! I am confused as to why in the first layer we did not factor in the "feeling overwhelmed" part. Without it, this has become more of a pure "how can the consultant be more productive" problem. Can anyone elaborate on this, please? Thanks
Great content. Quick question: I find the case prompt and the 1st layer contradictory. If the consultant is already feeling overwhelmed, I dont see how "reducing idle time" could be a relevant bucket, ie. if he has so much idle time, then he won't feel overwhelmed. I hope to get more clarity on this!
Hi Bruno - I am enjoying your lectures. Thanks for putting them together in very engaging and interesting format. However, in the above tree on second stage - when I read "Doing Less Tasks" to "Improve productivity when he's working" (without reading the third stage) - it does NOT make sense. If you are asking someone to reduce the number of tasks done, how is it increasing the productivity. I do get that one should do impactful task to increase productivity rather than less impactful task but wording of second stage does not makes sense. Am I missing something?
Hey Soren, great question! I may not have been 100% explicit on my thinking, but what I meant is that since “productivity = useful work / time spent”, doing less tasks will help this consultant spend less time, while not reducing the amount of useful work delivered (depending on task and method to do less of them). This would improve productivity. Now, our friend may choose to actually do less work (at a higher productivity, because he delivers the same amount of useful work spending less time on it) or to fill in the time gap with other useful work (thus delivering more useful work for the same hours). I once worked in a project where I had the idea to outsource ~80% of the tasks that I had to do to other (less costly) people. I could deliver an immense amount of work while not working long hours, so this is an example of this in action (and is actually what managers and partners do!). So I left implicit that they’d fill the time gap with other high value tasks, does this make sense?
@@CraftingCases It does :). I understood that and it made perfect sense esp. if you are watching the video or presenting it live. But, was still wondering if you were to do it differently is there a better way to reword it? Not a big deal, it just came to my mind. I have another question on "children illiteracy case", I will ask through comment on that video. Thanks for quick reply!!
I think a better way to wording it would be "Doing less tasks that don't need to be done so we can do more high value tasks". A bit wordy, so there's a trade off in conciseness and clarity here.
@@CraftingCases This video made me aware of how important it is to define the metric as specifically as possible, (productivity as useful/high impact work). I also did not consider doing less tasks at all because I'm thinking that feels like an inferior strategy that should not be considered at all (like rejecting customers to reduce customer complaints). However if we specifically look for high impact work, then arises low impact work which competes for time and should be done less of. Is it a rule of thumb to define as specifically as possible from the beginning, so we have more chances of splitting the tree into more depth? My definition was just work done/hr (without the "useful" qualifier) P.S i was confused on how can "Lack of work available" be a possible bucket, since being overwhelmed should mean too much work, then I understood it as uneven demand for work throughout the day, having less work in morning causing much more work in the evening.
Hi, thanks for some great content! I was wondering why you have integrated the solutions with the causess? i.e. why wouldn't you split the case into 1. problem tree - to define the issue, then based on what it causing him to be unproductive, create a 2. solution tree --> otherwise isn't it a bit inefficient to suggest solutions to everything without know the actual root cause?
Hey Z K, You're correct in your logic of it being inefficient to suggest solutions before diagnosing the problem, but because the prompt was very explicit in having me look for solutions, that's what I did :)
