You Are Solving The Wrong Problem
There is some problem you are trying to solve. In your life, at work, in a design. You are probably solving the wrong problem. Paul MacCready, considered to be one of the best mechanical engineers of the 20th century, said it best: “The problem is we don’t understand the problem.”
Story time.
It’s 1959, a time of change. Disney releases their seminal film Sleeping Beauty, Fidel Castro becomes the premier of Cuba, and Eisenhower makes Hawaii an official state. That year, a British industry magnate by the name of Henry Kremer has a vision that leaves a haunting question: Can an airplane fly powered only by the pilot’s body power? Like Da Vinci, Kremer believed it was possible and decided to push his dream into reality. He offered the staggering sum of £50,000 for the first person to build a plane that could fly a figure eight around two markers one half-mile apart. Further, he offered £100,000 for the first person to fly across the channel. In modern US dollars, that’s the equivalent of $1.3 million and $2.5 million. It was the X-Prize of its day.
Paul MacCready holding a “Speed Ring”, a device he invented for competitive glider flying.
Thanks to Alan Kay for turning me on to this story.
A decade went by. Dozens of teams tried and failed to build an airplane that could meet the requirements. It looked impossible. Another decade threatened to go by before our hero, MacCready, decided to get involved. He looked at the problem, how the existing solutions failed, and how people iterated their airplanes. He came to the startling realization that people were solving the wrong problem. “The problem is,” he said, “that we don’t understand the problem.”
MacCready’s insight was that everyone working on solving human-powered flight would spend upwards of a year building an airplane on conjecture and theory without the grounding of empirical tests. Triumphantly, they’d complete their plane and wheel it out for a test flight. Minutes later, a years worth of work would smash into the ground. Even in successful flights, a couple hundred meters later the flight would end with the pilot physically exhausted. With that single new data point, the team would work for another year to rebuild, retest, relearn. Progress was slow for obvious reasons, but that was to be expected in pursuit of such a difficult vision. That’s just how it was.
The problem was the problem. Paul realized that what we needed to be solved was not, in fact, human powered flight. That was a red-herring. The problem was the process itself, and along with it the blind pursuit of a goal without a deeper understanding how to tackle deeply difficult challenges. He came up with a new problem that he set out to solve: how can you build a plane that could be rebuilt in hours not months. And he did. He built a plane with Mylar, aluminum tubing, and wire.
The first airplane didn’t work. It was too flimsy. But, because the problem he set out to solve was creating a plane he could fix in hours, he was able to quickly iterate. Sometimes he would fly three or four different planes in a single day. The rebuild, retest, relearn cycle went from months and years to hours and days.
18 years had passed since Henry Kremer opened his wallet for his vision. Nobody could turn that vision into an airplane. Paul MacCready got involved and changed the understanding of the problem to be solved. Half a year later later, MacCready’s Gossamer Condor flew 2,172 meters to win the prize. A bit over a year after that, the Gossamer Albatross flew across the channel.
What’s the take-away? When you are solving a difficult problem re-ask the problem so that your solution helps you learn faster. Find a faster way to fail, recover, and try again. If the problem you are trying to solve involves creating a magnum opus, you are solving the wrong problem.
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Christina
Aza, thanks for this. It’s the reminder I needed today to step back and look again.
The Future
You should always look back and understand who You became, who you would like to be, what you have done wrong, and what built you to be who you are now.
Russ Nelson
I like the concept of the “wrong problem”. No solution can solve a wrong problem, so when you see someone trying to solve a wrong problem, you have to stop them. I ask “what problem are you trying to solve?” and that gets them realizing that they’ve been solving a wrong problem.
Sam Ng
Love the story about MacCready.
Seems like quite often we lack the critical thinking skills to realise we’re heading down the wrong path until it’s too late. By then we’ve invested so much in the wrong “problem” to solve that we’re blinded by our own mistakes.
I think our impatient culture doesn’t help as we constantly feel the pressure and urge to jump immediately into “solution” mode and spend little time defining the problem.
iş ilanları
Crowdsourcing, game mechanics, and social networking are cool, and applying it to helping someone get and stay healthy? That’s exciting. That’s powerful.
Laurian Gridinoc
Sometimes we address the wrong problem because we don’t actually write down the problem, we write down a partial solution as our problem definition; so we try to complete that solution and not to address the real problem.
Gregory Nicholas
In my humble opinion, applied specifically to healthcare, the volume of smart people putting far too much early attention in patient first, chronic disease management, and thinking it will “solve” healthcare.
We need to first provide tools and technology to critical care / physicians. That’s where smart nimble tech startups can make the most immediate impact to reducing costs and improving quality or care.
But then again, I’m probably incoherent, I did sprinkle meth on my wheaties.
Andrew
In the words of Samuel Beckett:
All of old. Nothing else ever. Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better. Amazing post, and a great read!
Ben
I very much like the idea of “the wrong problem” … especially since it often applies recursively. In this case, not only were people tackling the problem of human-powered flight from the wrong direction, but human-powered flight is (with the benefit of hindsight) itself the wrong problem.
It turns out that pedal-driven airplanes are of no use to anyone, and as soon as proof of concept was achieved all interest evaporated. The hoped-for athletic competition never materialized (which is really too bad, since Airplane Marathon would be an awesome Olympic event). At best, solving the wrong problem sometimes inspires the solution to the right one, in this case maybe solar-powered long-duration autonomous flight.
Dave Richardson
Great article. It’s interesting to note that the key was addressing the process rather than the focusing on the end goal. That insight is applicable to many different fields of endeavor.
Duncan Beevers
Fail fast.
stephen chininis
Aza . . . I loved your post! I invent things and I have taught design for many years. After a while you begin to notice how much time is wasted trying to solve the wrong problems, or the right problem in the wrong way. I have even watched in horror as people first invent a problem that does not really exist and then spend time trying to solve it. A solution without a problem is a lonely thing! I try not to be negative . . . but I always challenge myself and my students to make sure the problem is correctly stated, and worthy of the effort you spend trying to solve it. If the process doesn’t allow you to see then you have to look at it another way. MacCready was a brilliant man. Like solving a maze . . . I suppose you could start at one end and keep getting stuck, but any good maze solver knows that it is better to start in many places, spread out, and look for connections.
Watch this to find out why he tried to win the Kremer Prize in the first place!
http://www.ted.com/talks/paul_maccready_flies_on_solar_wings.html
DanN
But how to test our thoughts?
In my case I have tried for months to receive opinions from specialists found on the web. The ‘answer rate’ is below 0.5%.
So, how to test our ideas?
Susan Linder
Great article.
A few things I’ve picked up in my years consulting (marketing strategy) with major corporations. Here’s some of my first principles to augment the blog story:
Before you begin, define the problem, on paper…from different vantage points. And define what success will look like. (It’s too easy to redefine success as equal to the outcome. )
Be willing to make mistakes. Acknowledge them immediately.
Embrace mistakes. We learn more from mistakes than from successes. Do a post-mortem on them. (We usually don’t dissect our successes, just revel in them.
Sail
Agreed.
We know much more why we fail than success.
Mark
According to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Paul_maccready.jpg that picture is of Paul holding a cross-section of the wing spar.
Also, the phrase “Can an airplane fly powered only by their own body?” doesn’t make sense in English… it is either missing some words, or should be re-worded something like “Can someone fly an airplane powered only by his or her own body?” or “Can an airplane fly powered only by the pilot’s own body?”
just_passing
Interesting take on the design process, fail quick and learn fast
J Dubbs
That’s a great way to look at things – thanks for the reminder :)
SK
A alternative approach to problem solving by restating the problem. Must say that it opens new possibilities to approach your standard problem.
Jonathan Heuer
I’m reminded of the apocryphal story about Thomas Edison and his pursuit of the electric light bulb. When asked how he dealt with some three thousand failures during his effort to build the perfect bulb, he replied that he’d simply found 2,999 ways NOT to build one. Nice story.
Roman Sahakov
Great post, great story. Our minds are boundless all we need is to let it free for imagination.
böcek ilaçlama
Good subject thanx for share.
Alex
Thanks, man. This is both insightful and inspirational.
diyason
Men cry in secret behind closed doors, often called “Men do not cry, ” he becoming enlarged.
Ralph Paul
Asa,
the photo show the cross section of the wing spar. You can clearly recognize the honeycomb. Eric Raymond (Solar Flight) often has a similar piece on display with his Sunseeker.
AeroEnvironment’s approach was special, however today they have the same problem as everybody else — see Global Observer crash.
Andreas
To put it simple: Break down the main problem and choose the best order in which to solve the sub-problems, product- and process-wise.
The main problem was still valid (by no means “wrong”). It had just not been sufficiently analyzed.
Thomas
I don’t think he’s holding a MacCready Ring in the picture. Looks more like a cog or material sample to me.
Thomas
In fact it says on the Wikipedia article: It’s a cross section of a wing spar.
Ale!
Thanks for this good post, so insightful.
Martin Haeberli
Aza,
Nice article! I had the honor of knowing and working with your father a little bit; as I recall the legend, I was somehow involved in how your parents met, as well… :-)
Also, I was lucky enough to know Paul MacReady a little bit, courtesy of Alan Kay. We were teamed up for an afternoon at the Apple Hill music camp retreat Alan occasionally ran, using early Lego robotics prototypes from before the Mindstorms era.
Our assignment: make a simple robot that is a light-follower. We got it running in under an hour; Paul was delighted and amazed that this could be done so readily, and I observed to him that we had really just applied the same process – fail early and often, learn as much as possible from each failure, and apply as much learning as possible before trying again.
Thanks!
Martin
Glynis Ross-Munro
Thanks – I like this. Very much.
I also relate to it. I design interactive custom training and am often accused of doing it too cheaply, or having too wide a focus.
However I learned a lot about instructional design from my father, an IBM training manager who knew about MacCready, and taught focus on the process of design itself, with quick ways to customize within the process (or to fix “ugly babies” as they crept into development).
After a love affair with Phenomenology, various university degrees and many years of experience, it pains me to see people spend weeks and months building complex training programs, only to pilot them and watch them bomb.
Often their solution is to study more content, not more process.
Usually the best content is to spend a day or two going around in a few trucks or hanging out in offices with the people who do the jobs, watching and asking questions. Oh – and taking people to lunch at Chillis and listening.
Even educators need to travel lightly, without the baggage of commitment to a heavy process that will prevent flexible thinking, or the ability lightly to jettison an unengaging exercise, in favor that one that captures attention, fires synapses, grows dendrites….
asdf
he was broke … so he used stuff he could afford to replace easily.
DonE
This reminds me of some of Herbert Simon and William Wimsatt’s work on heuristics and problem solving. Sometimes we need to look at the problem-solving processes we’re using and see if they’re really the ones for the job… if modeling is taking too long, and is too disconnected from reality, maybe we should look at putting together a simplified, empirical test! Good stuff.
GMc
Really great post.
For rhetorical purposes you hammer on MacCready’s quote, “the problem is we don’t yadda yadda …” It’s poetic and it certainly drives the point home, but it’s a little misleading, too. It’s probably worthwhile to note that the problem to be solved usually has to be interesting enough, or carry with it enough incentive, in order to get at the intermediate problems that need to be addressed to achieve the goal at hand. While, yes, MacCready identified and implemented the “right” innovation, I would still argue that human-powered flight (very cool!) and £150,000 in incentives was the right way to frame what really was, after all, the “right” problem.
So, I guess I’d say that in order to get at those truly innovative solutions, identifying problems worth solving, due either to passion, fascination, or curiosity, is key to *that* process.
I was in a guitar seminar with the studio great Tommy Tedesco once, who said, “In order for you to take a gig, you need to consider three things: experience, money, and fun. If there aren’t at least two of those three present, it ain’t worth it.” Arguably, I could say that fun might trump other considerations when you’re talking about something you’re personally passionate about. But I think Tommy was offering a way to identify the right pursuits in a career or passion.
Tim Kelsey
insightful article, something many software engineers should take to heart, particularly in games programming.
Mai Vu
I love your reminder to really look at the right problem to solve. Thank you. Too often we run too fast, listen to little, and assume too much, thus missing the real problem to solve both in our human relationships and in solving mechanical real life problems.
الخيال
الخيال
Kamil Tomšík
yeah, I remember this one from one of Alan Kay talks. He also remarked that by changing problem and making “something easier” possible, you’re also opening doors for challenging something “originally impossible” – because now it’s not so much impossible.
Shailesh Pujara
Thanx… I like it and shared with others too.
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So you like Agile software development?
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I bow to this man…
sebamed
which is the mobile design firm responsible for making the a lot of the mobile experiences you have every day as good as they are. As a side note, the best gift I’ve ever received is having the funds we raised for Massive hit our bank account on the day I turned 27.
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These are features which feel like they are part of Firefox that just happen to be turned off by default.
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I have so big respect for people capable of inventing something..
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Bilim Teknik
what a fabulous idea.
Jeff Wilson
What a great article to explain why R&D takes too much time and consumes too many resources. Simplicity usually equals functionality.
Çeviri Fiyatları
Doing the wrong thing with an extreme care is exactly the quickest path to the desperation. One should translate his/her own talents into success by focusing on the optimum solution.
Ohio Design Build
nope but i think worlmer can solve this problem perfectly
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good idea, i like it
ptc
Interesting post and thanks for sharing. Some things in here I have not thought about before.Thanks for making such a cool post which is really very well written.
Ona
Awesome items you built here.
August Mohr
Thanks for this story. It reminds me a LOT of Gutenberg.
Contrary to “common knowledge”, Gutenberg did not invent the printing press any more than Henry Ford invented the automobile. Nor did he invent movable type. He certainly did not invent the paper and ink that I heard him given credit for by a keynote speaker at an annual Society for Technical Communications conference.
The whole process of printing already existed, but each piece of type was hand-carved, making the type itself the most expensive part of the process. Gutenberg was a silversmith and his invention was a reusable mold with interchangeable faces that let the type be cast instead carved. He turned the most expensive task into the cheapest. With CAST type, the number of pieces you had was no longer the bottleneck, you could choose your pieces from a veritable FOUNTAIN of type — “font” in French.
That’s the parallel with your story about Paul MacCready. He changed the most time consuming part of the project, the rebuilding, into the fastest and cheapest, and thereby changed everything.
And that’s what have done several times in digital publishing projects: I have automated what had been the bottleneck to totally change the nature of the workflow. If you’re interested in talking about this, I have several soapboxes that I can step up onto.
Mark
Excellent piece! (And you mean ‘later’ not ‘latter’!)
Gopal Veera
Although, I generally agree with the approach of “Fail often and early and learn quickly”, it often leads to a temptation to solving a problem without forethought. This is more of a BRUTE-FORCE approach to solving a problem. One of the comments pointed to Edison’s 2,999 failures in inventing the light bulb. Tesla who was Edison’s contemporary and protege turned competitor often criticized Edison’s methods for not having the theoritical basis. He thought that they were crude, rudimentary and inefficient. It is common knowledge that both of these inventors were embroiled in now the legendary DC vs AC battle and for obvious reasons such critique of Edison should be taken with a grain of salt. However, Tesla’s basic argument does have some merit’s. The BRUTE-FORCE approach is probably a good approach when solving a BLACK-BOX problem in a vacuum.
I suppose Tesla’s point was to change the recipe from
BUILD > TEST > OBSERVE > FAIL > EVALUATE > MODIFY > RE-TEST
to
RESEARCH > THEORIZE > BUILD > TEST > OBSERVE > FAIL > COMPARE WITH CONTEMPORARY KNOWLEDGE > UPDATE THEORY > MODIFY > RE-TEST
Spelling Nazi
s/latter/later
Sahil
being a computer engineer, i can totally relate to you. I should write some code, then debug that code and not like writing the whole code first and then spend a long time finding the bugs….awesome post
Allen
Agree: The point with fail early and fail often is that it is a total radical upending of the way we generally think about working on projects, particularly projects where the goal we want to achieve has never been done (at least not in our knowledge).
PM Hut
Hi Aza,
This reminds of the Agile approach, which is iterative by nature, create, get customer feedback, and then enhance based on that customer feedback.
For the records, many project managers think that the Agile approach is wrong as projects never get finished.
Eric Goodenough
This is a great article about the context of design. Most people tend to attack the problem in the wrong context. MacCready backed out a bit from the initial design problem and looked at it from a macro point of view. The process was effecting the outcome negatively. He then went to solve the problem of the process, which then lead him to solve the initial problem.
Great book on context and design by Christopher Alexander called A Pattern Language”
Sail
Very impressive. Helps me a lot in reviewing my/organization’s status.
The quick iterative fail-learn cycle is well known in software development, but looks forgotten in machine industry.
Carte 3DS
This is surely impressive, think before you leap, I learn a lot from it.
ptc
I like your articles very much.you have a quite exceptional view.
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i read out your blog.that’s really awesome to solve the wrong problem.that is place where we can solve our wrong problem.thanks to shere with us.
Metin2
The first airplane didn’t work. It was too flimsy. But, because the problem he set out to solve was creating a plane he could fix in hours, he was able to quickly iterate
Sergey
Thanks a lot! Very actual theme for me. As additional, read articles about problems solving – http://manprogress.com/en/methods/solve-problems.html
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Thanks a lot! Very actual theme for me. As addition, recommend to read article “Problems solving” – http://manprogress.com/en/methods/solve-problems.html
zwodnik
Thanks for this story.
Raf Val
what was the speed ring for?
Tiny Pink
nice story, I remember the national geographic story on this when I was a kid
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