Editor's Note: Business analytics is one of the most fundamental and important jobs for business analysts, and the authors share specific ways to learn business analytics. Analyzed in detail the method of decomposing the problem, the relevant content of the prioritization, full of dry goods, let's learn it together, I hope it will be helpful to you.
This series is estimated to have a total of eight serials, this time for business analysis series two: decomposition problems and prioritization in business analysis, the goal is to find solutions and landing order for problems.
When you find that the problem is too big to solve, the solution cannot be agreed, and you do not know the priority of the solution, this sharing can help you, and decomposing the problem is also one of the ways to find out the analysis dimension.
The working methods of this section can be applied to various positions such as consultants, products, operations, and business analysts, but it is recommended to complete the problem definition when using the content of this section, otherwise it may cause a serious waste of time.
First, how to decompose the problem
1. When you need to break down the problem
The decomposition problem is to decompose a problem into its components, so why does the problem need to be decomposed? It's when the problem is too macro, too complex, or uninspired to solve it.
For example: how to make a company's sales rise 3 times this year and keep profits n%,
How to focus on the medical aesthetic industry to find a new opportunity for the company to earn 1 billion yuan in the next 5 years?
What kind of products can we differentiate from our competitors and increase market share?
If sales and profits involve multiple business lines, the comprehensive impact of multiple costs, it is difficult to intuitively and quickly determine the most appropriate solution, you need to decompose the problem layer by layer to find the answer, at this time the decomposition of the problem can help you very well.
2. Break down the benefits of the problem
I previously gave interns a task: How do I let company members watch our daily industry briefings on their own? When this problem was first sent to the intern, he was a little unable to start, and then after decomposing the problem, decomposing it into improving user motivation and reducing reading costs (see the figure above), he began to have the inspiration to solve the problem, and after decomposing it layer by layer, he thought of more solutions.
Through this example, we can find that as long as the problem is decomposed, it will become simpler from complex, and it is easier to generate inspiration to solve the problem.
When the problem definition is completed and the problem is decomposed, it is easy to suffer from the following four major difficulties, namely incomplete thinking, uninspired decomposition, stereotypes, and lack of time, and the following are solutions to these four problems.
1) Problem 1: Incomplete thinking
Example: When a newcomer receives a leader's problem, he will habitually feedback to the leader directly to the problem and start to diverge the solution, or rush to find an answer, think of what to say, think that it is over, so it is easy for the boss to think that you have not thought things clearly or have not considered it well.
The author's personal experience of the case (as shown above), sales fell, the solution party directly informed that there are several types of problems, when everyone does not trust you, it is easy to question your poor thinking. Therefore, when encountering such scenarios, it is recommended that you use the problem tree decomposition method.
Issue Tree Decomposition: There are three keys to using a specific way to break down different components of a problem layer by layer:
- First, focus on a problem subject, and decompose it according to the subject through different angles, such as actions, judgments, standards, components, problems, processes, etc.;
- Second, to ensure that after the problem is decomposed, the elements and elements are independent of each other and are logical exhaustion, this way is called MECE, through this way of logical exhaustion, it is natural to avoid thinking about the problem of not thinking well, because logic has already included everything that should be thought of infinitely;
- Third, that is, the most easily overlooked thing in the use of the issue tree is to ensure that after decomposition, whether it can be well understood, distributed and claimed, or can produce a solution spirit to solve the problem, after all, the purpose of our problem splitting is to better solve the problem, so in the process of splitting, we must constantly ask ourselves "Is this problem easy to understand after decomposition?" Do you understand? Does this task match the company's organizational structure and job responsibilities and distribute it well? Whether the decomposition can give the performer inspiration to solve the problem. ”
Basically any position, any scene can use this method. Here are four examples to help you understand (as shown below):
(1) Case 1: How to let company members read data daily newspapers independently?
Can we first split the problem into increasing user motivation and reducing user costs, and then observe that this split is independent? Exhaustion? Boosting motivation and reducing the cost of reading in logical independence is also almost exhausted. At this time, I will ask the corresponding person in charge: "At present, do you know what to do?" ”
If he has a little inspiration, or if he himself has begun to speak spontaneously, it means that the split is correct.
Continue to disassemble, such as user motivation can also be dismantled? It can be divided into forward drive and reverse drive from judgment, for example, positive direction may be motivated, reverse may be fear type.
Forward drive:
Apply for some funding, so that everyone is willing to see it,
Through voting, praise the employee who looks at it first or the employee who has a good feedback every day;
Reverse drive:
Let his leaders force employees to watch, if they don't see it, punish him for performance, etc.
You will find that after the problem is split, even if you let an inexperienced person solve the problem, you can quickly find the inspiration to solve the problem. In the process of splitting, you have to make split adjustments according to your project team members to see if the responsibilities are well distributed and easy to understand, if you are the person who performs this matter, you can also constantly observe whether you have the inspiration to solve the problem.
It is the same in action, that is, to reduce the cost of reading, easy to see, easy to read, easy to understand, it is actually through the order of the whole process of receiving information by everyone to split.
The problem tree decomposes the role of the problem: to improve everyone's inspiration, to ensure that tasks can be assigned, to ensure that the thinking is comprehensive, the disadvantage is that it will take a long time
(2) Case 2: How to reduce the index monitoring system of the number of complaints?
If your goal now is to reduce the number of complaints in the short term, you can also use the issue tree decomposition method to decompose. It can be divided into complaints from the component of the amount of complaints, and according to the PRINCIPLE OFE, it is divided into complaints before service and complaints after service.
The complaint before the service is not completed before the arrival of the consultation, check the information or online consultation of this piece of service; The complaint after the service is the complaint about the customer after the arrival of the doctor.
It is also important to confirm whether different departments are responsible for things and whether there are any unclear boundaries. Finally determine whether the members can understand, complete the problem split and start the analysis.
Some junior analysts will forget to consider whether the members really understand when the problem is split step by step, and if this problem occurs after the dismantling, can it be directly assigned to the corresponding team to solve, the analysis is not only to find the problem, but also need to consider whether it can better solve the problem, if the dimension of the analysis involves multiple teams, it is difficult to further solve the problem.
(3) Case 3: Can we do this business?
The issue tree decomposition method is also useful for determining the analytical dimensions
When the boss asked me, can this business be done? Suppose he asks us whether we have entry value and need to simply judge a feasibility and sense of direction, then in fact, this problem can also be split using the issue tree, such as its ceiling is not big, the growth rate is not fast, how the concentration in the competition is, whether I have the chips to enter, and whether we can keep these five major evaluation directions after we go in.
If you need to think about the evaluation dimension of a problem very completely, you can sort out the general logic in this way, and each node can be gradually decomposed through the topic tree, and finally gradually form a perfect analysis scheme.
(4) Case 4: How to invest to make money?
The issue tree is also very suitable for learning something you have not learned, which can greatly improve the depth and efficiency of your learning.
When I don't know how to learn this field, I can also first split the problem according to my own common sense, such as splitting through the investment decision-making process, I need to know what I want to buy, know when to buy, know when to sell, and how much to buy.
Through this simple split, you can clarify which key things you need to learn in the field where you invest and make money, and then choose the corresponding materials according to these nodes to help you learn.
When learning a new thing from 0 to 1, it is highly recommended that you use this method.
If you need to build a knowledge system from zero to one, it is very difficult and time-consuming, but in this way, you use the common sense of the past to build a knowledge system first, and then gradually fill in the iterations, check the gaps and fill in the gaps, you will learn faster and deeper than the average person, because you are through your previous knowledge system, reconstruct and learn new knowledge areas, as long as you supplement your unknown parts.
But if you completely re-learn, a lot of knowledge is not only repeated, but the new knowledge cannot be connected with the past knowledge, which will lead to a very slow learning speed.
The issue tree has three strengths:
- In this way it is easy to find places that others overlook, but have opportunities.
- It's easy to think holistically and exhaustively to come up with new business models and analytical inspirations. In the third year of my work, when I switched to data analysis, through the issue tree, the business knowledge of offline operations was used to establish an analysis index system, and later I found that a lot of data analysis course content was basically the same as my own split indicators, but the names were different, and what I disassembled by myself would be more suitable and practically applied.
- According to historical experience to assist the issue tree to learn, you can greatly improve the learning efficiency, because according to what you will be in the past, build a new knowledge system, compared with starting to learn new knowledge, the speed and efficiency of the two learning is completely different, so when you have just entered an unfamiliar field, it is also recommended that you use the issue tree to build a learning system.
2) Problem 2: No decomposition inspiration
Then to the second question, what if there is no decomposition of inspiration?
Example: When I first entered the medical aesthetic industry, I was asked what feasible directions are for the medical aesthetic referral platform to triple.
Just a month ago, I didn't even understand the professional terms, so where should I start looking for directions? There is also a community next-day retention rate of less than 30%, to improve the retention rate of the need for the program, novice products just took over without ideas what to do?
Decomposing uninspired may be due to your unfamiliar experience with the field. But in fact, there are ways to crack it: the first is to use other people's decomposition frameworks to adjust themselves. The second is to use the experience of peers or business experts, but at this time, we must pay attention to be open to accepting others and not feeling that we are very strong.
(1) Case 1: When you have just entered the industry and do not understand the industry situation, how to quickly sort out all the analysis directions within a week?
At this time, you can think with the help of the map of the industry chain reported by the industry, we are the role of referral in the industrial chain, the downstream is the institution, the upstream is the traffic platform, and the basic service provider provides system services to the industry players, in fact, the opportunity to triple is nothing more than these directions.
According to the issue tree, I would first think:
Three times higher in the medical aesthetic market or three times higher across the medical aesthetic market?
In the medical beauty market, I can observe where I am, from myself to find the direction, such as in the medical beauty market upstream, you can go to build a traffic platform or MCN, others play a comprehensive platform, I may be able to play a vertical platform. The medical aesthetic market can also go downstream to see if it can become an institution or provide services to institutions.
In my medical referral, can we integrate our peers? In what way? If it is cross-market, I can think about relying on the advantages to cross the market, our advantages can find opportunities from the same service, different directions of users, and I can also find opportunities according to the same user, but different directions of service. With the help of the industrial chain map, even if you are not long in the industry, you can quickly find the research inspiration for the direction of the company's growth of three times.
(2) Case 2: If a community has a retention rate of less than 30%, how to find inspiration if you want to improve retention?
I can think with the help of other people's thinking frameworks:
- Think from a positive point of view, by giving users benefits, making users easy to use, making the experience interesting to find inspiration to improve retention,
- Think from the perspective of transfer, by letting the system remind users to come over, or let the author influence users to come, let other platforms promote users to come over
- From the perspective of negation, how to make users have to come, how to let users not come can also stay?
- The idea of trying to disassemble is actually the same as the problem tree decomposition method, taking the process apart to find inspiration
- Finally you can try the brain hole way, the brain hole is not logical. We can find a lot of foreign aid to brainstorm, and we can also use some creative tools to break through our mindset.
Special emphasis: when you are very unfamiliar with a field, in fact, there are many online courses now, such as B station. If you want to get started quickly in a certain field, it is highly recommended that you find an expert online course, and one will quickly help you upgrade your knowledge system to a higher level; The second is to quickly generate a variety of inspirations and solutions.
Let's talk more about the brainstorming session of the brain hole part.
Why brainstorm will it be? It's hard to think of on your own, so you need to brainstorm and host a meeting where people can spark ideas together.
Focus on a theme, invite everyone in, let everyone put forward the idea of solving the problem, try to encourage imagination, the more the merrier, the more creative, the less marginal the better, the process will be a bit like small talk, creativity may be unconsciously chatted out.
There is a point in this process that needs special attention, that is, we must avoid criticizing other people's creativity, because it is difficult for people to be creative in a repressive environment.
For example, you may have some ideas about this thing, but it may not be mature, but if you say it immediately, someone says, you are not right, you may not want to talk about it, which is also a common scene where creativity is stifled.
The element decomposition and integration method of the brain hole: This method is suitable for finding inspiration on the process, product or service, and the way to use it is to decompose the main elements of the product composition, such as the barbershop decomposing it into haircuts, shampooing, seats, mirrors, queues, prices... and so on, and then quickly let you get creative through the elements.
First of all, you can do some deletion for the elements, eliminate some of the original essential modules, such as the elimination of the aircraft's meals, it becomes a low-cost airline, and the landing is eliminated to become a landing-free, which may immediately increase the paid conversion rate.
You can also try reorganizing elements, such as changing the login order or changing the order of services. You can also try to copy the elements, adding it heavier and stronger, such as strengthening the bicycle seat, the bicycle becomes a multi-seat bicycle, and the air freshener strengthens the freshener, which becomes a refreshing freshener twice as refreshing.
You can also try to optimize or add elements, such as increasing the speed of the broom, and possibly turning the sweep into a vacuum cleaner.
In the end, in the process of using creative tools, you may combine a new thing that is not related to the original goal, and you can use task planning.
What task coordination? It is based on the creation of a new species, to give it a new task, such as innovation for viscose, when accidentally making a non-stick glue, although the sticky firm does not help, non-stick glue can also be used to make Post-it notes.
All the parts that involve brain holes and creativity must be things outside of everyone's thinking, so in the process of using creative tools, we must first use creative tools to break the framework of thinking, and then think about rationality, in order to effectively break through the stereotypes and give birth to creativity.
Take a QB barbershop innovation case:
The elements of the barbershop can be divided into price, tea/coffee, shampoo, massage, blowing, speed, hygiene, after listing these elements, subtraction for shampoo and massage, addition for speed and hygiene, and finally add elements on the basis of elements, QB barbershop was born.
3) Problem three: Mindset
Whether you're executing an issue tree or borrowing from someone else's mental model, mindsets can follow, such as categorizing users.
Dividing users into men and women does not take into account the actual scenarios of LGBT people.
In fact, this is the mindset, people living in society, often can not avoid the use of the past common sense to make business judgments, the following figure is the author's past stereotype case.
There are three common reasons for mindsets (there are many deeper reasons, but here are just a list of the most common at work):
- When decomposing and considering the problem, only think about the plan that you can do, and do not consider that this thing may be something that others can do, this is a problem that a newcomer who has just entered the workplace will often fall into, the reason is that he is afraid of making mistakes or troublesome others, he will unconsciously choose to do only what he can do, and the risk caused is that the work output is limited by your ability and hinders your progress.
- Only do what you want to do, rather than do what you should do, this is the hardest hit area of senior experts, many experts will only be willing to specialize in technology, rather than do simple things that can quickly produce results.
- Decompose only according to the self's insight, rather than going to the knowledgeable people to do it. This is the hardest hit area for smart people, you may feel that you are very strong, you can come up with a way to do it on your own, but these problems may have mature solutions in the industry, you find a person who has worked for a year or two to ask about it can save a lot of time, but may lead to a waste of time due to their pride.
Mindsets often come from the limitations of the self, and often cannot be perceived by themselves, so it is necessary to break through external forces and consciousness in a timely manner.
For example, the brain storms mentioned above, innovative tools, and constantly humbly asking for advice and observing others are all good ways to break the mindset. As long as people are bound to have their own mindsets, but as long as you admit that you have mindsets, you can control the occurrence of mindsets very well. There is a similar truth in investment, when you know that you can never predict the rise and fall, it is included in the trading discipline, but it can have a good profit effect (turtle trading method).
Let's share the causes and ways to break down stereotypes. The following picture is a picture that I like very much, and this picture is a good way to illustrate the formation and removal of stereotypes.
For example, if I can make achievements immediately when I first start working, I will feel that I am very strong at the moment, and I may fall into the giant baby period at this time.
That is, the period when you don't know what you don't know, when you can't perceive that you don't know, when I'm still very arrogant and complacent, and I can't listen to anything others say, and this is also the most serious stage of mindset. At this stage, someone may hint at your ignorance, but also because of arrogance, you are unable to detect or unwilling to admit it.
Until the old road does not work, and you begin to encounter major setbacks, you will enter the self-confidence collapse zone, at this time, you will have no confidence in the place where you were originally very confident, fall into a period of great sadness and self-doubt, and fall into the valley of despair.
When the collapse reaches a certain stage, the wound slowly scabs, and begins to enter the period of growth and self-confidence reconstruction, which is the weakest period of thinking, and begins to gradually absorb external suggestions and gradually rebuild self-confidence.
When he grew to the point where he thought he was about to reach a master, the pride came out again, and then he began to reincarnate into the giant infant period, and the cycle began again.
A little insight:
I think the cycle of thinking is very similar to the reincarnation mentioned in Buddhism. What is reincarnation?
It is because people have greed, anger, delusion, and doubt, but society will not change because of you, so it is easy for you to suffer similar pain in a certain attachment, which is why people live so painfully. To break the cycle of samsara, we are actually working on three things, namely the clear mind, the seeing nature, and the imprinting of the mind.
Clear heart: is to give yourself a chance to collapse, enhance your awareness, society will not change because of you, but in the process of life, society will produce all kinds of small things to wake you up, if you have not been aware and corrected, small things will accumulate more will form a huge pain, clear heart is to enhance the awareness so that you can feel these small discomfort, rather than unconscious until the accumulation of great pain to torture you.
Seeing Sex: After the collapse, you will find that the society is different from what you think, and you can still perceive the root cause of your own difference with society.
Imprint: When you know that you are different, you can let go of attachment, have an epiphany, and accept and change yourself. After printing the heart, you can further enhance the ability to improve the clear mind, and so on, and so on, and finally slowly put yourself down.
Why is this happening from data analysis? Because in the process of analyzing and finding analytical ideas, the mindset will completely limit you to find more objective solutions, but if you understand the process of the birth of the mindset and accept the existence of human nature, you can prevent it, but you will not fall into pain.
4) Problem 4: Lack of time, inspiration
When you are quite familiar with the problem, in the case of a lack of time, you can try the hypothesis tree for a faster argument.
For example, customer service work orders accumulate more, to think of a solution, but because the management of this business has been a period of time, the cause of the backlog has been known, the time is very urgent, do not need to think of things so complete, directly solve (as shown in the figure below).
If you start to lead people, your subordinates feel that the problem is very clear, just start to do it, then how do you quickly judge whether he is clear?
You can also use a hypothesis tree to verify that it is clear. The trick is to ask him a few more whys, to see if the conditions he answers are sufficient to support why
But there are two conditions for the use of the hypothesis tree, one is that you are familiar with the problem, and the other is that there is logical support for the hypothetical answer, you can start to go straight to the subject, but when you are faced with unfamiliar business, do not use the hypothesis tree, otherwise you can't even judge whether the hypothesis supports the problem.
Trapped in the future, it is often the past self, trapped in your past, is the obsession of human nature, people can not put down, just waiting for society to knock, continue to reincarnate pain.
This incident reminds everyone that if you have begun to integrate the problem of defining and decomposing the problem into your work, and you perform more and more times, you will find that the obsession that limits your definition and decomposition often comes from the self, and your obsession will be repeatedly beaten in the process of advancing the project, and then reincarnated and painful.
2. Prioritization
There are two main reasons why prioritization is needed after decomposing the problem, first, resources are limited and need to be concentrated, and second, the criteria for judging prioritization are sometimes very complicated, especially when it comes to multiple roles with different views, it is difficult to reach an agreement, resulting in the inability to directly rank.
When using the technique of prioritization, people should not simply think that it is just a matter of ranking who does what is done first and what is done later, and the real value is not in the result, but through the process, the views and opinions of multiple people are objectively and effectively agreed.
For example, like the product department, how to decide what project to do first and then what project to do, what criteria to use to judge who does it first and then do it, and will not let the team members think that you are dictatorial and complain, then introduce everyone into the prioritization process, jointly create dimensions and vote scores, you can effectively let the members reach an agreement and achieve the effect of objective decision-making.
There are three common scenarios for prioritization, one of which is when there are many projects and need to decide who comes first, the second is when everyone needs to make a decision on an important matter, but it is deadlocked, and the third is when they have no decision-making power and need to guide multiple decision-makers to make decisions.
1. There are four concerns about using prioritization
- Develop uniform scoring dimensions and confirm the importance (weight) of each dimension, both of which need to be agreed upon with decision makers.
- Introduce multiple perspectives for scoring, sometimes decision makers do not necessarily fully understand the business, in order to avoid decision-making mistakes, you can introduce business experts to score and improve objectivity.
- The scoring process should not pay too much attention to details, because the purpose of sorting is to quickly reach consensus, and sometimes it is more meaningful to grasp the general direction of rapid decision-making than to be stalemated, and it is not the most important thing to compete for who is right and who is wrong at this meeting, and it is necessary to leave some room for others.
- Be prepared for risks, all the sorting done now may adjust your original arrangement, for example, you are doing a business now, and have done it for a long time, investing a lot of costs, but now the market environment shows that a business is already in decline, can you go to the hero to stop the project. Shouting stop is actually very difficult, it corresponds to the problem of people's sunk costs, what is sunk costs? To take the simplest example: if you buy a movie ticket to go in and watch a movie, you see a bad movie, but you have watched it for ten minutes, but because you have spent money, most of the time you will continue to watch it.
Case study: Using the ICE method for product prioritization (Impact Impact, Confidence Confidence, Ease Ease Difficulty).
Once the product scenarios are listed, prioritization can begin.
- Step 1: Identify evaluation dimensions such as the scope of impact, the ease with which self-confidence is, and agree with the decision maker and relevant stakeholders.
- Step 2: Scoring, at this time, the business experience required for plan A, plan B, and plan C is different from common sense. At this time, you can introduce an expert role to score, otherwise a good project may be cut by people who do not understand business.
- Step 3: Execute the scheme according to the sorting results, the process is simple.
The core spirit is three:
- You have to agree with everyone;
- You have to bring in people who understand this to score;
- It is necessary to have the determination of a strong man to break his wrist and make decisions according to the objective situation.
2. Let's elaborate on how to determine the scoring dimensions
First, you can first see if the company has experts who know the evaluation dimension, if there is a direct promotion, if you are familiar with the business, you can first reach an agreement with the decision-maker.
The second situation is when you are not familiar with the business yourself and the company does not have other experts who know how to evaluate. At this time, you can find peer experts to learn from, refer to the articles, books or courses of knowledgeable experts, and then cooperate with the way the problem is split to gradually clarify the dimension.
For example, when I select stocks, I learn from the stock selection logic of value investment to find low valuations, high growth rates, and high margins of safety. For example, when I determine product priorities, I can learn from the ICE method used by product experts, which are the scope of influence, self-confidence and difficulty.
Finally, we should pay attention to the selection of dimensions not too much, try to find the most important 20% of the dimensions that affect the results of 80% (the rule of two and eight), if there are too many dimensions, although it may improve the accuracy, but it will make everyone's manual scoring process very painful, and at the same time have little impact on the results of the sorting.
Let's talk about how to vote and score, divided into simple version and professional version.