The Cutting Edge: COMPUTING / TECHNOLOGY / INNOVATION : Software That Helps Opposite Sides of Brain Make Decisions
Coming up with new ideas and making effective decisions are not the most common of personal computer tasks. But a pair of nontraditional, business-oriented software programs for Windows-equipped PCs--each appealing to a different side of the brain--are quite good at helping you think.
MindLink Problem Solver ($199, MindLink Software Corp., [800] 253-1844) is clearly aimed at the creative, idea-generating right side of the brain. DecideRight ($99, Avantos Performance Systems, [800] 282-686), which can quickly reduce complex issues into green, yellow or red decision flags, will please the left side of your noggin.
DecideRight is as elegant as it is straightforward, leading you directly into the task of decision-making. But it comes with a built-in assumption that you possess all the information needed to make that decision and just need help evaluating it.
MindLink Problem Solver, by contrast, is built on the premise that you don’t know what you need to know to solve the problem. Instead what you really need are some fresh ideas that the program can help you generate. Although they aren’t companion programs by any means, it would be useful in some cases to put the ideas generated in Problem Solver through the decision-ranking process of DecideRight.
Let’s begin with DecideRight, which is easier to use successfully and probably appeals to a broader audience. You can use it on virtually any kind of decision that can be described in terms of options and criteria, from simple things like which car to buy to more complex issues such as which job applicant to hire.
First, you list the options among which you have to choose: Should you manufacture, say, mountain bikes or racing bikes or tricycles? Then you list the criteria by which the options can be judged, such as availability of materials, labor required, sales potential, profit margin, ability to reuse existing tooling.
The next step is to weight the importance of each criteria, which is done graphically by dragging a pointer along a sliding scale from high to low. Then the program asks you to rate how well each option fulfills each criterion, which you do by dragging a pointer along another rating scale from excellent to poor.
As you might imagine, in the background the program is applying numbers to those scales and calculating an overall weighting to each option. But what you see are a series of green, yellow or red boxes in a table-like depiction that represents the decisions you’ve made.
Once this “baseline” case is entered, you can play with it endlessly in a series of “scenarios” that lets you alter the various weights and see what difference it makes in the outcome. This feature suits the program well to group use in which each member of the group can define his or her own scenario.
The beauty of DecideRight is that it is very easy to understand and use. You don’t have to work with any numbers. And you see the results instantly color-coded in the typical “go, caution or stop” color scheme. Finally, DecideRight generates a well-written report that explains your options, criteria and choices. Although it needs some additional editing to detail the context of the decision and explain the options more thoroughly, the report forms the basis of a strong supporting document to send up the decision-making ladder as needed.
MindLink’s Problem Solver takes a path very different from DecideRight’s straight-line approach. It deliberately leads you far astray from the problem at hand with the notion that when it does bring you back, you will have some new ideas.
As the authors write, “We believe, and many psychologists, educators and theorists believe, the creation of a new idea is brought about through the connection of two or more already existing thoughts.”
Based on techniques licensed from Synectics Inc., a management consulting firm specializing in the process of innovation, this is the circuitous path along which Problem Solver will lead you:
First, you describe the problem in your own words. Then the program leads you through a series of divergent-thinking exercises designed to get your mind outside the problem. Then comes the convergent-thinking phase which focuses your divergent ideas back on to the original problem. Finally you outline the next steps to be taken and create a report summarizing the process.
Along the way, you may develop a number of valuable ideas that don’t bear on the problem at hand. No need to throw them away, however. One feature that distinguishes the corporate edition of Problem Solver is the “Thought Warehouse” where you can catalog ideas by keywords and recall them later for use with other problems.
Though it might sound like something of a game, you have to take Problem Solver seriously to get any benefit from it. That means setting aside an hour or two, making sure you aren’t going to be interrupted, and focusing all your attention on the program even if it seems to make absurd or silly requests of you.
In the divergent- and convergent-thinking phases, you encounter a number of randomly-presented “triggers” that ask you to do certain things like go find an interesting object and bring it back to your desk and let it trigger images, phrases, sounds or feelings. Or you may be asked to imagine that you are someone else, like a World War I fighter pilot, and write what you see and hear and smell.
Those tasks may seem irrelevant to the problem of how to increase company profits in the face of rising costs and a shrinking market. But here’s why its done, according to one of the program’s “help” screens:
“Triggers are techniques and exercises designed to elicit broader or more speculative thinking about a problem. Their purpose is to lead the mind down a path of thinking that the mind would probably not pursue unaided. Once sufficiently down that path, the mind’s natural connection-making tendencies will notice relationships between the new paths and the problem being worked on, and these relationships often form into new ideas for potential solutions.”
A big barrier to fresh thinking is self-censorship, and the program cautions against that tendency in many ways. One bit of advice offered is, “Go ahead and get dirty, criminal, sexy, politically incorrect, absurd. No one is looking. Anyway you can always erase it later.” That’s one reason that this program is meant to be used alone, and privately, even though it has been successfully used in small groups. You really need the freedom to think things that you would not want others to know, especially your co-workers.
