A3 Principles for Better Problem Solving
Problem-solving is a core activity for many professions. Product managers, scientists, designers, engineers, politicians, … they all try to solve problems within their respective domain. They are faced with a situation that is perceived as a problem and come up with a solution and a plan for transitioning to a better future state.
Product managers do problem-solving on a daily basis and in many ways. The product itself is expected to solve a problem that is worth solving so that customers with this problem consider buying it. Developing such a product comes with a whole bunch of new problems — problems of usability, technical feasibility or business viability. These problems are typically tackled in a team of experts with domain-specific techniques. However, anyone in the team as well as a range of stakeholders need to understand the overarching plan and how the individual activities will help to solve the problem.
Although problem-solving is such as central part of the product management role, many product managers don’t have the techniques in their toolbox to tackle these challenge effectively and efficiently. A couple of years ago, I was introduced to the A3 method by a co-worker and ever since I remain surprised how little attention this approach receives. Although I have to admit that I never really managed to adopt the actual A3 template in my day to day work, I found a lot of value in some of the principles that are baked into the format. These principles can be applied independently of the format. The format might help to start putting them into practice but it is by no means necessary.
If you are a product manager — or in any other problem solving role for that matter — and you haven’t heard of A3 yet, read on and let me introduce the general format and some of it’s underlying principles. Maybe you find it helpful for some of your next problem solving challenges.
The A3 format
A3 is a problem-solving format applied by the Toyota Motor Company from the 1960s as part of the lean management approach and has been introduced to the western management discourse by people such as John Shook with his book “manage to learn”. On the surface, the A3 is a simple template for problem-solving that splits the individual process steps in separate boxes to focus on one step at a time while keeping everything in context when documenting the results. The term A3 refers to the size of the original sheet of paper the template was drawn on. Nowadays, templates tend to be digital and can be printed in any format or edited directly on the computer but the idea of the A3 format was to give some space restrictions; small enough to foster focus and clarity and large enough to provide necessary details.
Different variations of A3 templates exist but all of them share a clear separation between the problem analysis and the potential solutions, connected by a concise definition of the problem to be solved. This corresponds to the double diamond pattern of virtually all problem-solving methods. Then, for either side, the process is further structured into distinct sections. The format reminds you of all the questions that are worth considering throughout the process.
The template starts with simple but fundamental questions such as who is the owner of the problem. It has a section to describe the current situation and what is wrong with this condition. This gap between the target state and the current situation is the problem to be solved. Based on further analysis of the root causes, possible countermeasures and their expected outcomes are proposed. The goal of the A3 is to provide as much clarity about the problem and the potential solutions as possible on a single sheet of paper. This overview is used to discuss the analysis, the potential actions and to get feedback from everyone who is involved within the organization. The format does not stop at the implementation plan — who does what, when, where and how — it also requires you to think one step ahead. How will you eventually know whether or not the plan worked out and if any new issues that were introduced by solving the initial problem? And last but not least, the template helps to capture and share all the learnings that have been made throughout the problem-solving process.
A3 is a convenient tool and in many regards, it is similar to the plethora of canvases that had been introduced in recent years. It is, however, much more than just a template. It is based on a set of principles that go well beyond problem-solving and touch more general aspects of management and leadership. The A3 approach and the books and articles that introduce this method are great to get familiar with these principles. Ultimately, the principles can be applied to any problem-solving approach, no matter which particular format is used.
Standardized storytelling
Being able to tell an engaging story is useful in many situations. If you are seeking input from experts or buy in from stakeholders or even if all that you need is some attention of an executive, probably the only way to succeed is to tell an engaging story. Do the people who are listening know what you are talking about and why? Do they listen at all? Do they understand what you want and why they should care?
Unfortunately good storytelling isn’t that easy, especially if the topic is complex. You might have been deep in the rabbit hole of a complicated problem and after days or weeks of research you understand the tiniest details of the issue. In this situation, it is often hard to step back and put yourself in the shoes of an unprepared listener. You may take things for granted that are entirely unknown to someone new to the problem — or highly controversial to someone who is looking at the issue from a different perspective.
I found the poster below in one of my kid’s classroom in elementary school. It provides a simple template for a narrative that makes it easy to organize your thoughts and structure a storyline. Using the A3 to structure communication isn’t much different from the technique of this poster. Being able to follow the structure of the A3 makes it a lot easier to organize your thoughts and prepare a meaningful storyline. The template will remind you to find a common ground to start from, to separate the facts from personal assumptions, to provide reasoning for conclusions and your proposed measures.
Separating the different elements of your argument and making explicit statements about how they relate to each other, not only improves your communication, it also helps to follow up on feedback and deal with disagreement. Does someone’s objection pertain to the current situation or the problem you have stated? Did you miss important facts from a certain stakeholder perspective and how would they change the picture? Do you have to provide further evidence for the situation as you have described it? Is someone challenging your analysis or the underlying data or the conclusions and countermeasures that you have drawn from that analysis?
Being able to discuss elements of your thinking individually also allows you to see where you need to strive for agreement (i.e. the facts and figures), where it is important to reach alignment (the problem definition) and where consent might be enough to proceed (e.g. some controversial countermeasures you proposed).
Following the A3 structure — or any similar structure for that matter — helps you to better communicate your point. The beauty of a common format is that it makes your audience better listeners too. Once a certain structure is known and expected by everyone, it is easy to point out what is missing. Hence, every time you present your thinking you will get a lot more valuable feedback. If you are interested in structured communication (and thinking) beyond the A3 approach, Barbara Minto wrote an excellent book, called the Pyramid Principle, that introduces a technique that can be applied to all kinds of written and verbal communication.
Deep analysis, simple
Obviously, any problem of decent complexity requires proper analysis before thinking about potential solutions. Often enough this is a matter of self-discipline more than anything else. The situation seems to be obvious, everyone knows about the apparent root causes. It seems to be clear what needs to be done. Unless it’s done — and fails to solve the issue. A3 does not require any particular analysis approach or technique but it does not provide one either. Instead, you will find references to five whys, fishbone, six sigma, and other tools and frameworks. If you are not familiar with any of these, you will do whatever you usually do when analyzing a problem — and that might be totally fine — or you have to find additional resources to get started.
The point is, the way you do the analysis is not important at all. Important is that you don’t stop at the surface and really try to dig deep into the problem to discover the root causes. Don’t trust easy answers and don’t jump to early conclusions. It might save you some time now but this is insignificant in comparison with the wasted effort you might put into solutions that turn out to be without any effect. Ideally, the tools you use for analysis are the simplest things you can do to get beyond the obvious so that you can focus on the real issue rather than coping with the idiosyncrasies of a particular method. Asking why again and again is pretty simple, for example.
The one thing A3 is pretty clear about is where to find the most valuable insights. If your analysis is limited to crunching numbers and doing secondary research, chances are you will never even come close to the actual issue. The proverbial advice you will find across the A3 literature is to “go to the Gemba”, the actual place where value creation happens. A3 was created by Toyota as part of the Toyota Production System, so the problems discussed were often production problems — quality issues with a certain component, or production velocity that was below the expectations — and consequently going to the Gemba was often referring to the production floor. It might be obvious from today’s point of view since user-centered design has been around for decades now. Keep in mind though that the A3 method dates back to the early 60s and for the average manager, leaving their clean office in order to observe and talk to factory workers probably wasn’t the norm.
Your domain might be very different from a 60s production plant, still, it might pay off to think twice about the value creation and the actual place and people who do the work. Most value chains involve a couple of different actors and an issue that comes up in one part of the chain, let’s say in a place where a customer interacts with your system, might have its root cause at a very different place, e.g. in some back office function or in customer service, way before it manifests in the interaction of the customer. Observing and talking to your users or customers is important and probably an established part of your development process, it might not be enough though. Keep on doing your user research but apply the same rigor to analyze internal processes and how they are handled by actual people.
Proposed actions instead of final solutions
The ultimate goal of any problem-solving exercise is to close a gap between the current condition and the state that is actually desired. This gap is the problem and the left side of the A3 documents is entirely dedicated to this problem space. The reason for doing all the analysis is to come up with a solution to solve the issue once and for all. Unfortunately, for all but the most trivial problems, the reality is usually way more complex. More often than not, a single fix won’t suffice to solve the issue. A potential solution might tackle the root cause of the problem but requires too much effort or takes too long to implement so that additional intermediate actions are needed. A certain measure might resolve a particular issue with the current situation but maybe not all of it. The solution might also introduce side effects, new problems that have to be addressed with follow-up activities. These consequences might be known beforehand or they might come as a surprise when everyone was thinking the job had already been done. Taking this messy reality into account, the A3 format assumes a set of countermeasures rather than a final solution to a problem.
The A3 method encourages set-based decision making. The goal of working on the right side of the template is to explore a range of potential countermeasures, not to find the one, best solution but to explore and evaluate the entire solution space. Usually, a potential countermeasure will require some additional analysis to check for feasibility and viability. Some actions might need to be implemented to a certain extent only to be able to access the real cost and benefit. As for the entire A3 approach, this is not a one-time effort where you present and execute your findings but an iterative process. The purpose of the A3 template is to document the current state of the solution space, including all the countermeasures that had been taken into consideration but had been dismissed for any reason. Whenever you talk to other people about the issue and how you go about solving it, these rejected ideas will come up again and again. Making it transparent to everyone, why these options have been dismissed might save you a lot of time.
Distinguishing failure from success might not be possible right away. Even though a countermeasure looks promising immediately after it has been implemented, it might turn out to be a failure in the long run. Or the initial change you had observed was only coincidentally and had nothing to do with the particular action. To that end, follow-ups such as regular reviews should be defined and executed to re-evaluate the success of certain actions. Again, the list of countermeasures but also the plan and follow-up section help you to keep track of and communicate the different actions and their respective results. Obviously, this is an iterative exercise, as the results of your reviews might shed a different light on the previously proposed countermeasures and force you to change course or even start over entirely.
Ownership and decision power
Although the notion of authority in a Japanse corporate in general and specifically the hierarchical structure of Toyota at the time the A3 method was developed is pretty different from what we know or expect in today’s work environments, the method provides an interesting perspective on decision power.
A typical problem, not only in the work environment but in life in general, is not necessarily that the wrong decisions are made but that no decisions are made at all. Doing nothing prevents errors, and this is convenient, but it also prevents any positive outcome. Decisions are postponed until the very last moment so that eventually they need to be made in a rush and chances increase that not the best but the least controversial or least risky option will be chosen. Hierarchy is probably the simplest way to make sure that decisions are made, it doesn’t mean that the best decision is made though. Someone up in the hierarchy does not necessarily know all the facts and details or have the relevant experience for that particular decision.
In this case, decision power is often delegated upfront to someone more knowledgeable or with more time to dig into the details. This isn’t necessarily the best approach either. The more complex the problem at hand and the more stakeholders involved the more difficult it gets to even decide on who should be authorized to decide. Because now it’s not about a specific proposal but about granting authority with unknown consequences, stakes are high and politics take over. Again, decisions are stalled.
In A3, ownership for an A3 does not imply authority to decide on the solution or the actions to solve the problem. Authority isn’t delegated to the A3 owner upfront. Instead, owning the A3 comes with the responsibility that decisions are made. The difference should be obvious. It is no longer about making the decision but preparing a smooth decision-making process with all the stakeholders involved and all the facts and figures available for everyone to review. All the analysis and the concise problem-solving documentation is there to enable the organization to make informed decisions based on a shared understanding of what is known and what is not.
Once all the facts and opinions are on the table, the specific decision to be made often turns out to be less controversial than anticipated — or at least the expected outcome and the potential risks are much better defined. And since the owner of the A3 not only gained all the expertise in preparing the proposal but shares his or her expertise with everyone in the A3, it is much easier to accept this person as the legitimate authority for this specific decision and to follow the proposal. The concept is called pull-based authority. Authority isn’t granted upfront, it is pulled when it is needed, i.e. when the decision needs to be made, on-demand and just-in-time.
Give it a try
A standardized structure for deep analysis and for communicating the results in a compelling story, a focus on multiple countermeasures instead of a single solution, and a decision process based on a shared understanding of the facts and hypotheses are good arguments for giving the A3 method a try the next time you are facing a problem-solving challenge. However, if for whatever reason, the specific format doesn’t work for you, many other templates will have the same benefits, if you use them with the described principles in mind. As always, inspect and adapt as you see fit, to make it part of your personal toolbox. Good luck and feel free to share your experience and recommendations in the comments.
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