Innovation and the Phoenix Checklist

The CIA developed the Phoenix Checklist to enable their agents to
think through situations and face all angles.

This is basic a two stage process that initially identifies the
problem and then works through aspects of the solution.

The Problem

• Why is it necessary to solve the problem?

• What benefits would be received by solving the problem?

• What is the unknown?

• What is it you don’t yet understand?

• What is the information you have?

• What isn’t the problem?

• Is the information sufficient? Or is it insufficient? Or
  redundant? Or contradictory?

• Where are the boundaries of the problem? Can you separate the
  various parts of the problem? Can you write them down? What are the
  relationships of the parts of the problem?

• What are the constants (things that can’t be changed) of the
  problem?

• Have you seen this problem before?

• Have you seen this problem in a slightly different form?

• Do you know a related problem?

• Try to think of a familiar problem having the same or a similar
  unknown?

• Suppose you find a problem related to yours that has already been
  solved. Can you use it? Can you use its method?

• Can you restate your problem? How many ways can you restate it?
  More general? More specific? Can the rules be changed?

• What are the best, worst, and most probable cases you can
  imagine?

• After identification of the problem the process focuses on the
  creation of the solution.

• The Plan

• Can you solve the whole problem? Part of the problem?

• What would you like the resolution to be? Can you picture
  it?

• How much of the unknown can you figure?

• Can you derive something useful from the information you
  have?

• Have you used all the information?

• Have you taken into account all essential notions in the
  problem?

• Can you separate the steps in the problem-solving process? Can
  you decide the correctness of each step?

• What creative thinking techniques can use to generate ideas? How
  many techniques?

• Can you see the result? How many kinds of results can you
  see?

• How many different ways have you tried to solve the
  problem?

• Can you intuit the problem? Can you check the result?

• What should be done? How should it be done?

• Where should it be done?

• When should it be done?

• Who should do it?

• What you need to do at this time?

• Who will be responsible for what?

• Can you use this problem to solve some other problem?

• What is the unique set of qualities that makes this problem
  different from another?

• What milestones can best mark your progress?

• How will you know when you are successful?

Pretty neat and I think that if the average person uses this on every
problem (and adds some questions around how much it will cost) you can
have a pretty decent problem solving toolkit.

Ironically if you follow this checklist you are likely to create the
same static solutions over and over and current thinking would challenge
this formula.

So what is the problem here? Why does the problem solving Swiss army
knife – with all its different cuts and blades not solve the real
problem of how to innovate? The basic problem is that innovation
requires us to look at problems differently and while using a formula to
get to an answer may be tempting – we will tend to find the same
solutions over and over. Our knowledge of the problem situation in the
case of innovation is limited and could be undefined when we start. It
is important to judge why we want to innovate and benefits that can be
created by the solution but all of this meta information around the
problem is unlikely to resolve the situation differently than it has
before.

The challenge is that innovation requires us to have the same set of
inputs and come out with a different set of outputs every time – while
being bound by the same laws of the universe.

So then it becomes clear that innovation is not problem solving. But
this is exactly what we tend to do with staff and managers. We ask them
to innovate to solve problems and not to create new solutions. It may
say that these two options are the same but innovation is not problem
solving.

It is thus important to separate innovation, problem solving and
putting in place the plan as 3 interrelated but mutually exclusive
activities.

For innovation I believe that Design Thinking as proposed by Tim
Brown is a workable idea in which the idea is not to pull an idea apart
but to put ideas together The idea is that design is human centered and
must focus on usability. It requires and understanding of culture and
application to create solutions for users. The next step is building so
that we can learn to think through using prototypes. Experiential
solutions are those that are valuable in more than one dimension and
participation allows for parallel processing that make systems more
efficient and valuable.

So while the Phoenix checklist may be a useful checklist for specific
dimensions it does not open up solutions – but aims to classify and
limit the innovation inherent in creating ideas and narrow solutions.
When we start thinking holistically – we can start creating solutions
that are holistic in nature and delivery.

By focusing on systems we can have greater insights.

Systemic thinking increases and decreases directional consistency of
solutions. By understanding the underlying system that has produced a
problem and by designing a viable alternative to replace it with – we
get into “creation thinking”. By then moving with speed of execution to
the ideal – we start building real solutions that have more than a black
box impact – but fundamentally alters the outcome of larger systems.

The idea that this cannot be incremental is very appealing. If you
are going to change direction, then do it so that the system
changes.

Author – Riaan Steenberg