Welcome
Welcome to the Collaborative Solution Discovery “User’s Handbook” section of this site. If you’re just curious about CSD or want to get a general idea, dip in here, scan the topics and read introductory paragraphs. On the other hand, if you’ve got a hot issue and really need an effective way to get it resolved, then go broad and deep in this material. Either way, maybe you’d like to start with Quick Overview, and then explore as you wish.
A CSD Summary
Briefly, doing CSD involves five aspects. Each of these is more fully developed in the sub-pages to this page.
A Project Orientation
While CSD principles can be worked into any solution-discovery setting, The Muddle Buster recommends that it is best done as a project dedicated to a single issue or problem. The project consists of a core team in concert with the stakeholders, focused only on the identified problem. The core team establishes organization and process that sets up the project, and then executes the project plan leading to solution of the identified problem. The project plan proceeds in phases which build organization, establish process, and then execute solution-discovery to resolve the identified problem.
Engaging Stakeholders
Engaging all stakeholders from the beginning and throughout the entire project is a cardinal principle of CSD. It is the best assurance that a good solution will be discovered and that the solution will enjoy consensus support.
A Logical Solution Search Path
The dual goals of discovering a good solution and establishing consensus support are served by following a logical Solution Search Path (SSP) that asks four key questions. The answers provide the necessary and sufficient basis for achieving the goals.
Formal Methods for Untangling Complexity
Most issues are complex, both the problem and corresponding solution, at a level that exceeds the understanding capacity of the unaided human mind. The remedy is for the project core team to choose and apply the appropriate complexity-untangling tools from a toolbox of well established methods.
Leadership that Empowers and Guides
CSD employs a style of leadership that focuses on empowering the entire project team, together with the stakeholders, to work together without preconception or bias, discovering whatever solution is determined to be best for the issue at hand.
Better, Quicker, Cheaper
CSD, as a deliberate and disciplined process, is the best guarantee of getting to a better solution, more quickly and with less cost. When faced with a serious and urgent problem, those in charge may find it hard to resist the urge to jump directly into crafting a solution, without laying the groundwork of stakeholder engagement, fact gathering, and agreement on the process roadmap. However, without the necessary groundwork in place, a project may start out on a fast-rising path that seems headed toward a quick solution, but at a high risk that that serious process breakdown and delay will occur. Resistance from excluded stakeholders, lack of adequate understanding of the facts about complexity of the problem and its correspondingly complex solution, and inadequate planning that fails to recognize the issues to be encountered along the way, are all likely causes of failure.