Welcome Message

To the reader, welcome. I welcome you to a blog dedicated to solving problems. The focus here is, for example, not to solve basic math equations, but to suggest solutions for a variety of issues, questions, problems, concerns, and/or opportunities individuals, cultures, organizations, and (more generally) the world is facing. My aim is to remain current, as to not dig up hindsight related conversation, such as an alternative solution to landing on the moon. We won't review historical items and play historical fiction on you here, but we might play with something that has already been "solved". That last word is critical. What does it mean when something is "solved"? My sense is, outside of basic truisms, scientific or other proven facts, there tends to always be incremental improvements being made to prior solutions. A great example in this line of thinking comes from a famous consulting tagline of "build a better mousetrap". Let's examine this statement: 

When the problem of mice invasions and disease spreading came into needing a solution, several ideas were likely proposed. Perhaps the brainstorming session developed a list such as:

- Get a cat to rid our house of mice

- Maybe a pet hawk, they eat mice, right?

- Let them live, our house can be a mouse sanctuary

- Design and build a trap

The latter likely caught some attention, and through the night several ideas came to mind:

- Let's make a live trap, and put the mice back outside

- How about glue traps, then we can catch them and remove them without too much harm

- No, a big bucket with a spinning rod where they will drop in and can't climb out

- What about a small trap that kills them one at a time?

With the last idea came the design stage, from various glue traps to boxes, they landed on a simple spring loaded clamp-like design that was not only effective but inexpensive. Fantastic, problem solved. 

Until, improvements were made upon the design. Today, there are several variations of single hit mouse traps. It's quite possible that over a random happy hour or two, some folks were discussing the origination of the phrase "build a better mousetrap" and took it beyond the sense it is meant to convey, and actually took it as a challenge. With some engineering, testing, and success, new businesses have been built around the improvement of original designs. Some folks refer to this effect as continuous improvement. Ugh, I struggle with this phrase "continuous improvement". Envision yourself running track, when your coach yells for you to run faster. So you respond by picking up the pace. Then, your coach yells again. You increase speed. Then your coach yells again. You find the energy to increase speed even further. But how many iterations can this exchange go? At some point, you can't continually improve. 

To drive this point further, let's say you own a business and you want to cut costs. Ok, cut costs. But how many cuts of cost can you make in the chase for continuous improvement before you simply cannot cut anymore? It then needs to be understood there are bounds in play here. In future posts we will challenge these bounds yes, but we together should not be so bold to suggest we will touch each bound for each item we discuss. As a result, we leave the concept of continuous improvement as more of a reminder to be thrifty and to always be asking the question "could something be improved upon?" Or, in other words, "What more could we do if we just asked The Solutions Department?"