In my last post, I shared with you our discovery of the Fractal (Repeating Patterns) Phenomenon.
Challenging situations are made of repeating patterns.
It turns out that, although these patterns are easy to see once you’ve found them, they’re not so easy to find in the first place.
This post shares the first two tricks to finding those repeating patterns in your – or any – challenging situation.
Once you start looking for patterns, you quickly discover that where you hadn’t seen any before, there are loads of them, hiding in plain sight. It’s very definitely a “can’t see the wood for the trees” thing, until you see them.
In fact, there are so many patterns that it’s difficult to know which are useful and which aren’t.
The first trick: A Simple Strategy Pattern
The first trick is to realise that it’s a lot easier to find something that’s invisible to us (until we see it) if we know what type or shape of pattern we’re looking for. The type or shape of pattern serves as a template – a filter – that makes the pattern easier to see.
It took me a while to work out what pattern to look for, but in hindsight it’s pretty obvious: it’s the repeating pattern across the models in the foundational methodologies: Theory of Constraints (TOC), Theory of Inventive Problem-Solving (TRIZ) etc, Advanced Systematic Inventive Thinking (ASIT), Systems Dynamics (SD), Systems Thinking (ST), Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP), Neuro-Associative Conditioning (NAC) etc .
This repeating pattern comprises three parts:
It’s called the Goal|Problem|Solution (or GPS) Pattern. (This isn’t the only interesting pattern, but it will do for now. It’s probably the most valuable one to start with.)
The fascinating – though obvious in hindsight – thing, is that this pattern underlies nearly everything in dramatic improvement, strategy development, problem solving and innovation.
It not just the pattern across the small set of foundational methodologies that my thinking was based upon, but is inherent to every other methodology I’ve come across since. More about this later.
The GPS is a simple strategy fractal – or strategy model, if you prefer. It’s very simple but deceptively powerful, even if you don’t use it as a pattern-finder.
The power of the GPS, even without finding patterns
Just being clear on what outcome we’re after; what’s preventing us from securing it and; how to overcome that barrier, has a huge impact on our ability to get the outcomes we want.
In fact, being clear and aligned on any one of these three elements will improve our chances of success significantly. Nail all three and the chances of success are exponentially better.
So even if we don’t look for patterns, and do nothing more than reach agreement on these three things, we’re heaps better off than if we don’t.
Beware the trap of thinking that you’ve got this covered, merely because it seems simple and straightforward. If you can’t spit out a five to ten word phrase on each of the entities in the model, without having to think carefully, you haven’t really nailed it.
And if your team can’t do the same, or don’t come up with the identical answer to everyone else’s, you’re bluffing yourself – and needlessly throwing opportunity away every hour you spend not nailing it!
The GPS by itself, was not enough
Discovering the GPS Pattern (actually an early version of it) was exciting but it took me quite a while – years – to realise its full significance.
At the initial point, I was more concerned that, although we now had a template for making finding and articulating patterns a lot easier, it still wasn’t really that easy – and took quite a bit of time and effort.
We needed something simpler and easier. Some sort of step-by-step process. This led to the second trick – and pointed the way to the real breakthrough.
The second trick: Find the GPS Pattern, element-by-element
Although having a template to help you find repeating patterns makes it way, way easier, it’s still no trivial task. Our brains are just not that good at seeing new multi-part patterns.
The second trick is to realise that we don’t have to find all of the parts of the pattern (goal, problem and solution, in this case) simultaneously. We can actually find them sequentially.
And, although it’s not essential to find them in G>P>S order, it is a lot easier to do it in that order when you start out.
The basic idea is to:
- Look for the single goal pattern that is common to all stakeholders: immediately and into the future.
- Then look for the single problem pattern that plagues all stakeholders: immediately and into the future.
- Finally, look for a solution pattern to the problem pattern: and make sure that it will solve the problem and secure the goal for all stakeholders: immediately and into the future.
Give it a try on your situation, if you like – some people find it easier than others. But don’t sweat it too hard – or assess the validity of what we’ve covered so far on the basis of how easy you find it.
The really cool bits – that make finding patterns really easy – are yet to come!
The next post is the key one in this chapter of my journey. Don’t miss it.
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