Go Out Push!

Problem solving is one of those skills that supposedly distinguishes humans from other animals. Although many creatures can solve problems, and some even use tools, humans are the only creatures that invent new technologies to solve problems.

For example, the problem of getting from point A to point B faster than you can walk. For thousands of years humans could just go anywhere was to walk. Then someone went to a horse, and stayed long enough to realize that the horse ran faster than a person, and could go somewhere very fast. But the solution was not much different than a flea hitching a ride on a cat to go somewhere faster. So this was not a technological solution.

But one day someone decided horses had certain limitations, such as a temper at times, and invented the steam engine, and then the train. These were the technological innovations that created the problem then the problem of trains running on school buses in the railroad crossings.

So with many other examples of solutions to the problems by creating more problems to solve, create the first rule of troubleshooting:

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The solution to a problem will create more new problems.

The best example of the first rule is the car, which was created to replace the horse. We can go much further and faster in the car on a horse, but we had to spend huge amounts of money building better roads for cars, and created a new opportunity for people to cheat each other in the sale and repair of cars.

When faced with a problem to solve, the central issue is to identify all the other problems will be created with the solution. Rarely does anyone do this. Witness the invention of the atomic bomb. The problem to solve in the time of a drop of 2 million tons of bombs on Japan, using the fewest number of aircraft to achieve this goal. Before the bomb, it took 1,000 B-29 to drop 200,000 tons of munitions on a Japanese city. The atomic bomb allowed a plane to do the work of 1000. That was until the thought was in July 1945, when he took the decision to nuke Hiroshima and three Japanese cities.

Little to no account of the atomic bombs that could someday be put into a bag and delivered by Federal Express to a city.

The really competent troubleshooter examine any potential extrapolations of the solution, and identify some new problems to be created with the solution. Done properly, this provision of the problems resulting maintain full troubleshooter job for life, because the solution simply beget other problems to solve.

The problem with having only two seats for the year on computers that leads to the Y2K problem is a spectacular example of solving a big problem and create employment opportunities for people to solve problems resulting from the end of civilization as know it.

Therefore, the second rule of problem solving:
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