Bart Vanderhaegen explores problem base management and explains how to organize for rapid idea improvement in organisations.
Acknowledgement
“Problem based management” (PBM) is a management approach based on “Critical Rationalism”, the theory of knowledge developed by the philosopher Karl Popper and refined by the physicist David Deutsch. Critical Rationalism explains how knowledge can improve via (i) creative conjectures (guessed explanations that attempt to solve a problem) and (ii) criticisms (arguments for why a solution does not solve the problem). Acknowledgements to Logan Chipkin for the advice and edits.
- The specific role of people and ideas in organizations
“Problem Based Management” starts from a specific role of people and ideas in companies:
- People can impact results via their ideas for choices and action
- People can improve their ideas via correcting mistakes in them (problem solving) and thus impact results even more
Many management approaches hold opposite premises, for example:
- It is not the ideas of people that cause results, it is either luck, circumstances or hard work (the faithful/ mechanical execution of existing ideas) that causes results
- People need to be given the ideas that cause results
- People can not improve their ideas (so that results improve)
The first thing to explain is how ideas can improve, but also what processes actively prevent them from improving. Organizing for problem solving is countering the ways ideas are prevented from improving, thereby generating rapid idea improvement, along with important people and team benefits.
- There is only 1 way in which ideas can improve, and many ways in which they don’t
All ideas – for doing something in a specific way – have consequences when you act upon them: some desired consequences (corresponding to the goal you set) and some undesired (not corresponding to the goal, the “collateral damage”). An idea is capable of achieving a goal when it causes the desired consequences and none of the undesired consequences.
Key points include:
- Ideas improved via problem solving
- Countering processes that arrest idea development
- The people benefits of PBM
Read the full article, Problem based management – PBM, on Google Drive.