Exam 3: Solving Problems Analytically and Creatively

Complacency-Not asking questions. See Table 3.3 for additional information. Also, students should provide an appropriate example for each conceptual block. Mini-Case: The Minivan Story. In the May 30, 1994, edition of Fortune magazine, the story of the minivan was told. In the earlier years of the passenger vans, only hippies seemed to appreciate the attributes of the van. However, in the 1970s, all three U.S. automakers began to study ways to modernize and broaden the appeal of their vans. Listening to customers helped Chrysler avoid two crucial design errors: (1) it rejected the long, wedge-shaped nose design and (2) it rejected the design that placed the engine under a hump in the floor (blocking passage from front to back seats). Also, while Chrysler continued to push for front-wheel drive, both Ford and GM handed responsibility of the minivan to the truck divisions, which continued to focus on rear-wheel drive. GM's problems were compounded by the fact that in 1985 station wagons were a significant part of its sales. In the 1990s, both GM and Ford developed front-wheel drive minivans and neither were housed in the truck division. Learning from their mistakes, both GM and Ford devised a new-product development process. -There are six things one can do to help create more conceptual flexibility. Briefly explain each one.

When evaluating alternatives, one should be concerned solely about meeting organizational goals.

The following statements relate to the rules governing brainstorming: (1) No evaluations of alternatives are generated, (2) Wildest possible ideas are encouraged, (3) Quality takes precedence over quantity, and (4) Do not build on the ideas of others. Which statements are correct?

Your group has agreed to do a skit as part of its presentation to the class. Bob believes a beach skit with everyone wearing swimsuits would liven up the presentation. Someone in the group remarked, "What a stupid idea!" What step in the analytical problem-solving method is violated by this response?

If your boss encourages your team to ask questions and obtain and search for data, she is trying to overcome which conceptual block?

You are asked to list all the possible uses for a Ping-Pong ball. After making the list, by using the technique of subdivision, you should be able to determine many more alternative uses for the Ping-Pong ball.

What should you do if you want to be more creative in your problem solving?

How does subdivision improve problem solving?

Admiral Kimmel's Failure at Pearl Harbor In the summer of 1941, as relations between the United States and Japan were rapidly deteriorating, Admiral Kimmel, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, received many warnings concerning the imminence of war. During this period, he worked out a plan in collaboration with his staff at Pearl Harbor, which gave priority to training key personnel and supplying basic equipment to U.S. outposts in the Far East. The plan took account of the possibility of a long, hard war with Japan and the difficulties of mobilizing scarce resources in manpower and material. At that time, Admiral Kimmel and his staff were keenly aware of the risks of being unprepared for war with Japan, as well as the high costs and risks involved in preparing for war. They appear to have been relatively optimistic about being able to develop a satisfactory military plan and about having sufficient time in which to implement it. In short, all the conditions were present for vigilance, and it seems likely that this coping pattern characterized their planning activity. During the late fall of 1941, as warnings became increasingly more ominous, a different pattern of coping behavior emerged. Admiral Kimmel and his staff continued to cling to the policy to which they had committed themselves, discounting each fresh warning and failing to note that more and more signs were pointing to Pearl Harbor as a possible target for a surprise air attack. They repeatedly renewed their decision to continue using the available resources primarily for training green sailors and soldiers and for supplying bases close to Japan, rather than instituting an adequate alert that would give priority to defending Pearl Harbor against enemy attack. Knowing that neither their own sector nor the rest of the U.S. military organization was ready for a shooting war, they clung to an unwarranted set of rationalizations. The Japanese, they thought, would not launch an attack against any American possession; and if by some remote chance they decided to do so, it certainly wouldn't be at Pearl Harbor. Admiral Kimmel and his staff acknowledged that Japan could launch a surprise attack in any direction, but remained convinced that it would not be launched in their direction. They saw no reason to change their course. Therefore, they continued to give peacetime weekend leave to the majority of the naval forces in Hawaii and allowed the many warships in the Pacific Fleet to remain anchored at Pearl Harbor, as sitting ducks. Kimmel regularly discussed each warning with members of his staff. At times, he became emotionally aroused and obtained reassurance from the members of his in-group. He shared with them a number of rationalizations that bolstered his decision to ignore the warnings. On November 27, 1941, for example, he received an explicit "war warning" from the chief of naval operations in Washington, which stirred up his concern but did not impel him to take any new protective action. This message was intended as a strong follow-up to an earlier warning, which Kimmel had received only three days earlier, stating that war with Japan was imminent and that "a surprise aggressive movement in any direction, including attack on the Philippines or Guam, is a possibility." The new warning asserted that "an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days" and instructed Kimmel to "execute appropriate defensive deployment" preparatory to carrying out the naval war plan. The threat conveyed by this warning was evidently strong enough to induce Kimmel to engage in prolonged discussion with his staff about what should be done. But their vigilance seems to have been confined to paying careful attention to the way the warning was worded. During the meeting, members of the staff pointed out to Kimmel that Hawaii was not specifically mentioned as a possible target in either of the two war warnings, whereas other places-the Philippines, Malaya, and other remote areas-were explicitly named. Kimmel went along with the interpretation that the ambiguities they had detected in the wording must have meant that Pearl Harbor was not supposed to be regarded as a likely target, even though the message seemed to be saying that it was. The defensive quality that entered into this judgment is revealed by the fact that Kimmel made no effort to use his available channels of communication in Washington to find out what really had been meant. He ended up agreeing with the members of his advisory group that there was no chance of a surprise air attack on Hawaii at that particular time. Because he judged Pearl Harbor not to be vulnerable, Kimmel decided that the limited-alert condition that had been instituted months earlier would be sufficient. He assumed, however, that all U.S. Army units in Hawaii had gone on full alert in response to this war warning, so that antiaircraft and radar units under Army control would be fully activated. But, again, reflecting his defensive lack of interest in carrying out tasks that required acknowledging the threat, Kimmel failed to inquire of Army headquarters exactly what was being done. As a result, he did not discover until after the disaster on December 7 that the Army, too, was on only limited alert, designed exclusively to protect military installations against local sabotage. On December 3, 1941, Kimmel engaged in intensive discussion with two members of his staff upon receiving a fresh warning from naval headquarters in Washington stating that U.S. cryptographers had decoded a secret message from Tokyo to all diplomatic missions in the United States and other countries, ordering them to destroy their secret codes. Kimmel realized that this type of order could mean that Japan was making last-minute preparations before launching an attack against the United States. Again, he and his advisors devoted considerable attention to the exact wording of this new, worrisome warning. They made much of the fact that the dispatch said "most" of the codes but not "all." They concluded that the destruction of the codes should be interpreted as a routine precautionary measure and not as a sign that Japan was planning to attack an American possession. Again, no effort was made to find out from Washington how the intelligence units there interpreted the message. But the lengthy discussions and the close attention paid to the wording of these messages imply that they did succeed in at least temporarily inducing decisional conflict. By December 6, 1941, the day before the attack, Kimmel was aware of a large accumulation of extremely ominous signs. In addition to receiving the official war warnings during the preceding week, he had received a private letter three days earlier from Admiral Stark in Washington stating that both President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull now thought that the Japanese were getting ready to launch a surprise attack. Then, on December 6, Kimmel received another message from Admiral Stark containing emergency war orders pertaining to the destruction of secret and confidential documents in American bases on outlying Pacific islands. On that same day, the FBI in Hawaii informed Kimmel that the local Japanese consulate had been burning its papers for the last two days. Furthermore, Kimmel's chief naval intelligence officer had reported to him that day, as he had on the preceding days, that despite fresh efforts to pick up Japanese naval signal calls, the whereabouts of all six of Japan's aircraft carriers still remained a mystery. (U.S. Naval Combat Intelligence had lost track of the Japanese aircraft carriers in mid-November, when they started to move toward Hawaii for the planned attack on Pearl Harbor.) Although the various warning signs, taken together, clearly indicated that Japan was getting ready to launch an attack against the United States, they remained ambiguous as to exactly where the attack was likely to be. There was also considerable "noise" mixed in with the warning signals, including intelligence reports that huge Japanese naval forces were moving toward Malaya. But, inexplicably, there was a poverty of imagination on the part of Kimmel and his staff with regard to considering the possibility that Pearl Harbor itself might be one of the targets of a Japanese attack. The accumulated warnings, however, were sufficiently impressive to Kimmel to generate considerable concern. On the afternoon of December 6, as he was pondering alternative courses of action, he openly expressed his anxiety to two of his staff officers. He told them he was worried about the safety of the fleet at Pearl Harbor in view of all the disturbing indications that Japan was getting ready for a massive attack somewhere. One member of the staff immediately reassured him that "the Japanese could not possibly be able to proceed in force against Pearl Harbor when they had so much strength concentrated in their Asiatic operations." Another told him that the limited-alert condition he had ordered many weeks earlier would certainly be sufficient and nothing more was needed. "We finally decided," Kimmel subsequently recalled, "that what we had [already] done was still good and we would stick to it." At the end of the discussion, Kimmel "put his worries aside" and went off to a dinner party. Source: Janis, I. L., & Mann, L. (1977). Decision making: A psychological analysis of conflict, choice, and commitment. New York: Free Press. 1977 by the Free Press. Reprinted with the permission of the Free Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster. -If you had to define the problem that caused Pearl Harbor to be unprepared for attack, how would you define the problem? What characteristics do you want in your problem definition?

What is your boss trying to do in terms of creative problem solving if he asks the following questions: Is there anything else we aren't considering as we conceptualize this problem? Is the reverse true? And What past experience is this like?

Admiral Kimmel's Failure at Pearl Harbor In the summer of 1941, as relations between the United States and Japan were rapidly deteriorating, Admiral Kimmel, Commander in Chief of the Pacific Fleet, received many warnings concerning the imminence of war. During this period, he worked out a plan in collaboration with his staff at Pearl Harbor, which gave priority to training key personnel and supplying basic equipment to U.S. outposts in the Far East. The plan took account of the possibility of a long, hard war with Japan and the difficulties of mobilizing scarce resources in manpower and material. At that time, Admiral Kimmel and his staff were keenly aware of the risks of being unprepared for war with Japan, as well as the high costs and risks involved in preparing for war. They appear to have been relatively optimistic about being able to develop a satisfactory military plan and about having sufficient time in which to implement it. In short, all the conditions were present for vigilance, and it seems likely that this coping pattern characterized their planning activity. During the late fall of 1941, as warnings became increasingly more ominous, a different pattern of coping behavior emerged. Admiral Kimmel and his staff continued to cling to the policy to which they had committed themselves, discounting each fresh warning and failing to note that more and more signs were pointing to Pearl Harbor as a possible target for a surprise air attack. They repeatedly renewed their decision to continue using the available resources primarily for training green sailors and soldiers and for supplying bases close to Japan, rather than instituting an adequate alert that would give priority to defending Pearl Harbor against enemy attack. Knowing that neither their own sector nor the rest of the U.S. military organization was ready for a shooting war, they clung to an unwarranted set of rationalizations. The Japanese, they thought, would not launch an attack against any American possession; and if by some remote chance they decided to do so, it certainly wouldn't be at Pearl Harbor. Admiral Kimmel and his staff acknowledged that Japan could launch a surprise attack in any direction, but remained convinced that it would not be launched in their direction. They saw no reason to change their course. Therefore, they continued to give peacetime weekend leave to the majority of the naval forces in Hawaii and allowed the many warships in the Pacific Fleet to remain anchored at Pearl Harbor, as sitting ducks. Kimmel regularly discussed each warning with members of his staff. At times, he became emotionally aroused and obtained reassurance from the members of his in-group. He shared with them a number of rationalizations that bolstered his decision to ignore the warnings. On November 27, 1941, for example, he received an explicit "war warning" from the chief of naval operations in Washington, which stirred up his concern but did not impel him to take any new protective action. This message was intended as a strong follow-up to an earlier warning, which Kimmel had received only three days earlier, stating that war with Japan was imminent and that "a surprise aggressive movement in any direction, including attack on the Philippines or Guam, is a possibility." The new warning asserted that "an aggressive move by Japan is expected within the next few days" and instructed Kimmel to "execute appropriate defensive deployment" preparatory to carrying out the naval war plan. The threat conveyed by this warning was evidently strong enough to induce Kimmel to engage in prolonged discussion with his staff about what should be done. But their vigilance seems to have been confined to paying careful attention to the way the warning was worded. During the meeting, members of the staff pointed out to Kimmel that Hawaii was not specifically mentioned as a possible target in either of the two war warnings, whereas other places-the Philippines, Malaya, and other remote areas-were explicitly named. Kimmel went along with the interpretation that the ambiguities they had detected in the wording must have meant that Pearl Harbor was not supposed to be regarded as a likely target, even though the message seemed to be saying that it was. The defensive quality that entered into this judgment is revealed by the fact that Kimmel made no effort to use his available channels of communication in Washington to find out what really had been meant. He ended up agreeing with the members of his advisory group that there was no chance of a surprise air attack on Hawaii at that particular time. Because he judged Pearl Harbor not to be vulnerable, Kimmel decided that the limited-alert condition that had been instituted months earlier would be sufficient. He assumed, however, that all U.S. Army units in Hawaii had gone on full alert in response to this war warning, so that antiaircraft and radar units under Army control would be fully activated. But, again, reflecting his defensive lack of interest in carrying out tasks that required acknowledging the threat, Kimmel failed to inquire of Army headquarters exactly what was being done. As a result, he did not discover until after the disaster on December 7 that the Army, too, was on only limited alert, designed exclusively to protect military installations against local sabotage. On December 3, 1941, Kimmel engaged in intensive discussion with two members of his staff upon receiving a fresh warning from naval headquarters in Washington stating that U.S. cryptographers had decoded a secret message from Tokyo to all diplomatic missions in the United States and other countries, ordering them to destroy their secret codes. Kimmel realized that this type of order could mean that Japan was making last-minute preparations before launching an attack against the United States. Again, he and his advisors devoted considerable attention to the exact wording of this new, worrisome warning. They made much of the fact that the dispatch said "most" of the codes but not "all." They concluded that the destruction of the codes should be interpreted as a routine precautionary measure and not as a sign that Japan was planning to attack an American possession. Again, no effort was made to find out from Washington how the intelligence units there interpreted the message. But the lengthy discussions and the close attention paid to the wording of these messages imply that they did succeed in at least temporarily inducing decisional conflict. By December 6, 1941, the day before the attack, Kimmel was aware of a large accumulation of extremely ominous signs. In addition to receiving the official war warnings during the preceding week, he had received a private letter three days earlier from Admiral Stark in Washington stating that both President Roosevelt and Secretary of State Hull now thought that the Japanese were getting ready to launch a surprise attack. Then, on December 6, Kimmel received another message from Admiral Stark containing emergency war orders pertaining to the destruction of secret and confidential documents in American bases on outlying Pacific islands. On that same day, the FBI in Hawaii informed Kimmel that the local Japanese consulate had been burning its papers for the last two days. Furthermore, Kimmel's chief naval intelligence officer had reported to him that day, as he had on the preceding days, that despite fresh efforts to pick up Japanese naval signal calls, the whereabouts of all six of Japan's aircraft carriers still remained a mystery. (U.S. Naval Combat Intelligence had lost track of the Japanese aircraft carriers in mid-November, when they started to move toward Hawaii for the planned attack on Pearl Harbor.) Although the various warning signs, taken together, clearly indicated that Japan was getting ready to launch an attack against the United States, they remained ambiguous as to exactly where the attack was likely to be. There was also considerable "noise" mixed in with the warning signals, including intelligence reports that huge Japanese naval forces were moving toward Malaya. But, inexplicably, there was a poverty of imagination on the part of Kimmel and his staff with regard to considering the possibility that Pearl Harbor itself might be one of the targets of a Japanese attack. The accumulated warnings, however, were sufficiently impressive to Kimmel to generate considerable concern. On the afternoon of December 6, as he was pondering alternative courses of action, he openly expressed his anxiety to two of his staff officers. He told them he was worried about the safety of the fleet at Pearl Harbor in view of all the disturbing indications that Japan was getting ready for a massive attack somewhere. One member of the staff immediately reassured him that "the Japanese could not possibly be able to proceed in force against Pearl Harbor when they had so much strength concentrated in their Asiatic operations." Another told him that the limited-alert condition he had ordered many weeks earlier would certainly be sufficient and nothing more was needed. "We finally decided," Kimmel subsequently recalled, "that what we had [already] done was still good and we would stick to it." At the end of the discussion, Kimmel "put his worries aside" and went off to a dinner party. Source: Janis, I. L., & Mann, L. (1977). Decision making: A psychological analysis of conflict, choice, and commitment. New York: Free Press. 1977 by the Free Press. Reprinted with the permission of the Free Press, an imprint of Simon and Schuster. -In the information given to Kimmel about possible attack, what themes and commonalities did Kimmel and his advisors miss? What block does ignoring commonalities relate to? How can this block be overcome?

According to the authors of the text, one reason why most people have difficulty solving problems creatively is because they think of creativity simply as generating new ideas.

Complacency-Not asking questions. See Table 3.3 for additional information. Also, students should provide an appropriate example for each conceptual block. Mini-Case: The Minivan Story. In the May 30, 1994, edition of Fortune magazine, the story of the minivan was told. In the earlier years of the passenger vans, only hippies seemed to appreciate the attributes of the van. However, in the 1970s, all three U.S. automakers began to study ways to modernize and broaden the appeal of their vans. Listening to customers helped Chrysler avoid two crucial design errors: (1) it rejected the long, wedge-shaped nose design and (2) it rejected the design that placed the engine under a hump in the floor (blocking passage from front to back seats). Also, while Chrysler continued to push for front-wheel drive, both Ford and GM handed responsibility of the minivan to the truck divisions, which continued to focus on rear-wheel drive. GM's problems were compounded by the fact that in 1985 station wagons were a significant part of its sales. In the 1990s, both GM and Ford developed front-wheel drive minivans and neither were housed in the truck division. Learning from their mistakes, both GM and Ford devised a new-product development process. -Explain specific techniques related to defining problems and generating alternatives that can enhance the creative problem-solving process.

Making inappropriate assumptions that inhibit problem solutions is an example of the conceptual block of compression.

What is accomplished by implementing a solution incrementally with a "small-wins" strategy?

A common problem in managerial decision making is that alternative solutions to problems are evaluated as they are proposed.

Complacency-Not asking questions. See Table 3.3 for additional information. Also, students should provide an appropriate example for each conceptual block. Mini-Case: The Minivan Story. In the May 30, 1994, edition of Fortune magazine, the story of the minivan was told. In the earlier years of the passenger vans, only hippies seemed to appreciate the attributes of the van. However, in the 1970s, all three U.S. automakers began to study ways to modernize and broaden the appeal of their vans. Listening to customers helped Chrysler avoid two crucial design errors: (1) it rejected the long, wedge-shaped nose design and (2) it rejected the design that placed the engine under a hump in the floor (blocking passage from front to back seats). Also, while Chrysler continued to push for front-wheel drive, both Ford and GM handed responsibility of the minivan to the truck divisions, which continued to focus on rear-wheel drive. GM's problems were compounded by the fact that in 1985 station wagons were a significant part of its sales. In the 1990s, both GM and Ford developed front-wheel drive minivans and neither were housed in the truck division. Learning from their mistakes, both GM and Ford devised a new-product development process. -Compare and contrast the key management principles that focus on fostering innovativeness and creative problem solving with the management principles that focus on analytical problem solving.

If your boss said, "Managing people is like playing a game of chess," he would most likely be exemplifying what?

Which of the following is the most appropriate approach to creativity when incremental changes and tightening up processes are necessary?

The problem is that sales are low. The sales manager accepted responsibility and said it was his fault that sales were low. Thus, he proposed offering rebates next month to stimulate sales. Rebates have never been offered in the company before, and the impact rebates may have on sales in the future is unknown. Other alternatives have been offered. Should this rebate idea be implemented as-is?