Decompositional thinking to solve big problems!

As humans, when faced with big problems, the majority of people get a foggy brain! We can’t see how this “perceived” huge problem can be overcome, we become overwhelmed and once that happens, it’s hard to figure a way out. Through my years of experience as a leader of Technical and Change teams, I’ve guided many of my direct reports on how to break things down into systematic groupings to help focus on smaller sequenced components that when put together solve the big problem. The trick is not to panic, take a moment, understand the bigger picture and figure out what is immediately necessary to act on and what can follow next, a bit like the famous “keep calm don’t panic” quote. Applying this lens simplifies the whole problem into a plan of attack, removes analysis paralysis and allows you to incrementally solve the sum of all components. This is particularly useful when dealing with IT related incidents as well as complex or big scale projects. During incidents I’ve seen panic set in, the want to solve it immediately but not really knowing what to look at first, calming the room down and decomposing the problem has always resulted in service being back up and running quicker than jumping into panic solution mode which the majority of time causes further issues. The same can be said for big or complex programmes or projects, replatforming and regulatory ones are probably more prone to panic, perhaps because of the underlaying reason for it (i.e. out of support applications or perceived complexity in how to apply the regulatory requirements). However; having been there and done it many times (not just at work but also outside of work) any problem and every day problems can be broken down into small digestible pieces, those pieces can then be prioritised and incrementally delivered. Trust yourself, try something different, break it down, build something big, no problem.