Problem Solving and Boxing
Amateur and Professional Boxing
In amateur boxing, there are just three bouts whereas in professional fight bouts could easily go beyond 10. (The longest flight in the history went for110 bouts but that's an outlier). In amateur boxing, it is all about the scoring point. You win the bout based on points and you win the fight based on bouts. So we will see more of quicker and straighter shots such as the jab and cross rather than trying big-ticket shots like hooks and punches with knock-out power. In the professional game, even if you are lagging in the beginning you can win the game if you could knock down your opponents.
Each bout is of 2 to 3 minutes. So you have only 6-9mins to fight and win the bout and for that, you have to throw a lot of quick strikes to pick up points. Whereas a pro game is roughly for 30 to 40 min (exclude the outliers; the longest fight is of 7 hours wheres shortest one was of just 20 seconds) and you have time to pace your game. It means you have to be a very good planner for the game.
On a similar note, in problem-solving either we are eliminating a special (or assignable) cause or a common (or chorionic) cause. The tools, approach, duration...everything is different in both the type of problem-solving. The Kaizen way of improvement combines both the approaches - shotgun approach for special causes (low hanging fruits) as well as the sniper approach (project by project approach) for common causes.
Problems are solved every day in the industry, however, more often than not, reaction is either on symptoms (jumping to solution) or on any cause which is not validated as a root cause.
Any problem-solving approach without addressing the root cause is like a fight between an amateur and a professional. Whenever he (amateur) gets hit, his hands go where it hurts and then his opponents (pro) hits him somewhere else.
Practically this is observed that root cause finding exercise of problems generally starts with biased solution which are already in someone's mind and amateurs may not have much say ..ll
Very nice
Very true! Once you focus on the root cause, you can be creative enough to explore the alternatives. In industry it is the win-win solution (both for industry as well as the customer) that works in the long term, unlike boxing where one strategizes to win to make the other lose.
How often do we still see that people find the (so called) root cause while the solution(remedy) is already identified, as soon as problem happened! Despite understanding the power of RCA, the tendency to quick fix the problem is still much prevalent. And then we keep complaining of multiple problems keep hitting us everyday! We make ourselves getting sucked in the vicious circle.
Amateurs begin problem solving without even understanding the problem.