The Art and Science of Problem Solving (3 Fatal Mistakes We Have Been Making).

Problem solving is both an art and a science. An art in the sense that it involves skillful creative maneuver which can be exclusive to someone's perspective about life and society. A science in that we can adopt a methodical process in identifying and solving problems. I also believe a solution is not a solution until it brings tangible socioeconomic benefits to people. Suffice it to say not understanding and misunderstanding society results in poorly crafted and poorly implemented solutions. It's not a myth that after college many take years unlearning what they learnt and learning what they didn't in order to be useful in industry- we romanticize this experience by calling it graduate training.

Problem solvers carry many titles from doctors, technologists, entrepreneurs, and many forms from hospitals, vendors in the streets and everything in between. So if making money is as simple as identifying and solving a problem, why are 85% of businesses failing? The answer is there is more to it- it's simple but not easy. I have identified just three fatal mistakes we make in solving problems or fulfilling.

1. Solving the wrong problems.

As a kid learning at a village school, I preferred going to school barefooted or with sandals. My parents could afford proper shoes but many other kids could not. As a result it was easier for kids without shoes to run on our way to school. It also meant I missed out on playing football on our way back home. Trust me playing football in the road made the return journey exciting. On the other hand, it meant less or no business for shoe companies. But was it just because we had no money to buy shoes? No! Most traders brought cheaper shoes and we never bought them, the few bought were never worn. But was there no strong business case here for a company to invest in manufacturing cheaper shoes- look, over four thousand shoeless kids? We had become so accustomed to lack so much that we had develop ways to use it to our advantage. Solving problems requires special skills to identify the problem and the cause of the problem? Not only should we ask ourselves what is it people do not have, we should seek to understand why they do not have it? The problem we see is just the result of the real problem.

2. Innovation is not everything.

A modern day e-learning mobile app ($10000 worthy of programming) makes no penny while the ghetto extra-lessons teacher's pocket never runs dry, how ironic. The tech guy appears more sophisticated because they have developed something new. When it doesn't work as planned everyone always resorts to the usual alibi- "the market is just not ready for it yet." Well, the market is always ready for a solution to a real problem and actually pays for it. People buy and pay for valuable solutions not technology or innovation. We often think of solutions or technology out of this world and we give more emphasis to features of our products than true social benefits ordinary street people derive from our solutions. Part of the real problem is usually access to the existing solutions to that problem. Sometimes we don't need to invent anything but rather just give people access to the proven solution. Technology doesn't necessarily need to change people's traditions, behaviors or norms. Instead it takes the shape of the people's daily lives. Technology is a force amplifier not force creator.

3. New is not everything.

One day my mentor asked me who my competitors were and I hastened to say there is noone who is offering a similar solution. I was naïve to believe I was the first to solve that problem. To my surprise he told me that my biggest competitors are the non-doers. By that he meant the worst form of competition for any business is people just choosing not to adopt your solution. That simply means people can afford to do without your solution because it's not valuable enough to make them switch from traditional means. The best way to understand value creation in problem solving is to ask any millenial to spend a day without their phone. Millenials simply can't do without social networks. Real value is not just in creating something that people can do with but rather creating a solution people can't do without. Something that becomes part of their daily lives. Something can be new but that doesn't make it better. Novelty is not everything.

Solving problems has much to do with understanding the core of the problems- Asking why and not what. Then developing the right solution through value creation. Creating value is not enough, we need to master the science and art of transferring value. Part of the puzzle is solving the problem of access. It is imperative for us to consider any existing alternatives before solving any problem. People have been dealing with that problem somehow in the past. To sum it up I will say for every problem in the society there is the real problem(the cause), the problem we see then the challenges or limitations of existing solutions. If we solve the first and the last problem, we complete the puzzle.

Engineering for Community Development: Learning From The Wise Men In the Streets.

What is the difference between the kid at university and the kid back home in the streets? What about the kid in the ghetto and one in the affluent suburbs? Don't get it wrong, it's not going to be one of those usual analogies of how they all eat and go to the toilet, how they will all die one day- remember we will die one day but first we live. Again it's not one of those "most rich people didn't go to college!" So?

From time immemorial, stories of great men and women who broke through certain limits and challenged strong beliefs are told. The likes of Aristotle,Isaac Newton, Albert Einstein, Mother Theresa, Mahatma Gandhi to modern heroes like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Elon Musk(My Favourite). All these stories serve to tell me one thing- history is made from anywhere and anything. From the garages, farms, colleges to the security guards, widows and the elite as well however one thing is common amongst all these stories- there was a profound understanding of a deep human need, followed by corresponding action to solve it.

Many times we get so carried away learning complex methods and systems in school so much that we end up forgetting that we only learn these to solve ordinary problems. We forget that all the math and science starts to make sense and pay when it solves a human need, when it impacts the life of the kid in the street, the farmer in the rural areas. The whole world revolves around problem solving. In fact the universe rewards us ONLY for solving problems! Of all the skills we can ever learn, the most lethal one is problem-solving. Yes, you can learn it!

The whole education system is set up around preparing people to solve daily challenges using the scarce resources available and accessible to us at a given moment. All of society's problems are human problems. I say this to say humans create these problems or they become victims to these problems but which ever way it happens they must learn to solve those problems. Needless to say problems gravitate towards their solution. Problems that we face or know of are the problems we can solve. Yes we can!

One day while presenting my final year project, one senior engineer asked, "what engineering problem are you solving?" I was dump-struck. "That's a societal problem and we are not historians or sociologist!" he exclaimed. I couldn't win the battle of wits so I conceded. But at the back of my mind I was like "well, do we need to solve engineering problems or we need to solve societal or human problems through engineering? Every problem is a human or societal problem. If it's not, it's also not worthy solving." Anyway I had to find an "engineering" problem- a fancy one, you know what I mean- some programmable sensors with lots of automation which noone needs, let alone afford it.

We are not what we study at school. We are simply who we are, kids from the streets, village bumpkins, uptown girls, fatherless children. We are in colleges to learn ways to solve our problems not to learn which problems to solve. We are a reflection of the communities that spawned our passion for learning. Yes a community of architects and engineers- we bulid the Great Zimbabwe with stones and no mortar and the monuments still stand centuries after. No, we hadn't built schools then. Back then the community was the school. It's not about times because our ancestors' architecture still inspires our modern generation. It's the timeless truth about our communities and how they shape our perspective about daily challenges and how they equip us naturally to solve the problems we face.

School or no school, we must learn to solve real problems. All we need is an understanding of those problems and a relentless passion to implement the solutions. There is so much we can learn from our communities. The leads to the solutions are everywhere around us- the ant building an anthill, a desperate farmer chasing warthogs at night by starting a fire, a peasant farmer scaring birds by hanging cassette ribbons around her garden and young graduates changing money in the streets.

The Engineering of societal development is not in complex Fourier and Laplace equations, its in understanding human challenges, analysing existing alternative options, formulating informed processes that solve problems using the minimum available resources. Everyone from the class to the streets can do this because even the most complex things were derived from the simplest of things in the streets.