What To Do If Your Mazda Turns Into A Pterodactyl

 

When I saw ProjectManagement.com’s theme for June, Problem Solving/Wicked Problems, I asked myself what, exactly, makes a given problem “wicked,” by which I assumed to mean “excessively difficult,” as opposed to a problem that goes away if you pour water on it, as in The Wizard of Oz. I think the answer lies in the specific problem’s novelty: problems that are easy to address and correct may not have started out that way, but, once a workable solution was developed and demonstrated, subsequent appearances of said problem were readily addressed with a known remedy. Problems without precedent are a different matter. I remember seeing a definition of intelligence that asserted that true intelligence lay in the ability to encounter a novel situation or problem, recognize how it is similar to an analogous, previously-encountered difficulty, and providing a response that is either consistent with the previously-observed remedy, or the opposite of a previously-attempted but failed response. If you need to drive to work, and your Mazda automobile won’t start, and you recall that a Honda Accord of similar vintage had occasional battery problems, a suitable remedy might be to get a jump from a neighbor. If, however, your Mazda has somehow transformed itself into a large pterodactyl, seeking a pair of jumper cables would have to be considered a sub-optimal response.

Meanwhile, Back In The PM Robot World…

This aspect of truly difficult problems is one of the things that gives me hope that we PMs won’t be replaced by robots, at least not in the near future. Robots are essentially mobile computers, and computers (in 2021, anyway) aren’t that good at nuance, or recognizing analogous situations. Yes, I’m aware of the concept of Fuzzy Logic, where certain parameters do not have to be precisely stated or met in order to illicit a specific response, but this characteristic is a long way away from an ability to address unusual or unique problems. Interestingly, one of the definitions of the word “robot” refers to humans who behave in an automatic, reflexive fashion, which brings me back to the PM Robot world. I have worked with my share of PM robots (going by the latter definition), people utterly convinced that the solution to the problems they are facing is fully documented in procedures, the PMBOK Guide®, or even ProjectManagement.com blogs, and only awaits discovery. For these people, deviating from an approved template approach to PM problems represents some form of heresy, an unacceptable bending of the rules, automatically exposing its perpetrators as ignorant or incapable.

My take is more aligned with the Pareto Principle, this derivative being that, yeah, around 80% of the problems most PMs face has been dealt with before (“What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun.”[i]). As for the other 20%, most of that set has also been encountered previously, it’s just that the most appropriate way to approach said problem hasn’t been agreed to, or documented, rendering it effectively unique. As for the residual, now we’re talking about the truly singular problem, in need of some sort of problem-solving technique.

Unfortunately, many problem-solving techniques don’t necessarily perform well in the PM world. Mazda is said to have engaged in an extensive trial-and-error approach to finding a suitable material to make its rotary engines’ rotor apex seals, resulting in hundreds of ruined engine casings before a suitable apex seal was discovered. But that was for an engineering process project, meaning that, once the apex seal problem was resolved, its “answer” could be replicated over and over. Most PMs, by definition, face work that is itself unique, aimed at delivering a product or service over a set period of time with a known quantity of resources. The trial-and-error approach, depending on the number of parameters being evaluated in combination, can take a very long time, and burn through many resources. Indeed, the team of engineers working the rotor seal problem at Mazda gained the reputation for wasting money that could have been better spent on other projects.[ii] Another problem-solving technique, using the process of elimination to discover a suitable technical approach from among a known set of alternatives, has the same time-and-resource-consuming issues.

So, what do you do if your Mazda has turned into a pterodactyl? Catch it, and sell it (it’s yours, after all, assuming you owned the car from whence it came). A living pterodactyl is, no doubt, worth millions, meaning you probably won’t have to drive to work for some time. Catching it shouldn’t be that big of a deal, as average adult pterodactyls were about the size of a large seagull. Now, if your car has turned into a Pteranodon, which could have a wingspan of over seven meters, that’s an entirely different problem.

But fetching a set of jumper cables is still not the solution.

[i] Ecclesiates 1:9

[ii] Retrieved from https://www.mazda.com/en/innovation/stories/rotary/newfrontier/ on June 14, 2021.