Focus model is the refinement of McKinsey's methods and processes in the business field for many years. The purpose is to standardize the process of solving various business problems. You can clean up blind spots in the early stage of the project and step on unnecessary pits less. This paper attempts to explain how this tool plays a role in Internet education from the perspective of teaching and products.
Defining a problem is to determine the true meaning and root of the problem. There are generally two reasons:
In the stage of defining the problem, we need to find the problem's proposer, understand their understanding and views on the problem in detail, and find the core of the problem that needs to be solved. This stage determines the direction and scope of future work, which is very important. If the direction is wrong, all the work behind will be meaningless.
What needs to be added is that the definition of the problem is not final. With the increase of information and the suggestions of relevant people, the problem needs to be adjusted repeatedly.
MECE principle
After the problem is determined, it needs to be decomposed by MECE principle. Mece (exclusive collective exhaustion) means being independent of each other and completely exhausted. The essence is to decompose a seemingly unsolvable big problem into a solvable small problem. For example, when encountering problems, the following decomposition is mutually independent and completely exhausted:
28 principles
After disassembling the problem, you will find many possibilities. We should use the 28 principle and grasp the key factors. That is, 80% of the problems are caused by only 20% of the reasons. Giving priority to solving these 20% can solve the problem efficiently. For example, the user feedback said that my app always flashed back, and the technology should do something quickly. There are many reasons for flashback, and it is very time-consuming to solve them one by one. It is much more efficient to give priority to solving the flashback of 80% users with the 28 principle.
Hypothesis and verification
After the problem is disassembled, we need to put forward the hypothesis that causes the problem. This is a way to improve efficiency. For example, if you go to the hospital and tell the doctor that you have a headache, the doctor will assume that the cause may be A/B/C/D, corresponding to four indicators respectively, and then let the patient check. Instead of: you have a general examination first, and I didn't know the cause of your headache until I read the examination report.
After putting forward the hypothesis, we should also put forward the conditions that can confirm or falsify the hypothesis. For example, after adding after-class exercises, memorizing words and other learning contents to the course content, it is assumed that the learning effect of students can be improved. Then the condition to test the hypothesis can be: the average score of the class final exam is at least x percentage points higher than that of the class without new learning content. If this condition is not met, it proves that students' learning effect cannot be improved.
Hypothesis and verification are commonly used methods in scientific research. McKinsey has moved them to the commercial field, simplifying many specifications, but the core has not changed:
After defining the problem, it is necessary to plan and allocate the workload, which is the same as WBS (Work Breakdown Structure) in project management. Including content analysis plan and process plan. Here is an example:
For the decomposition of work, it is necessary to determine the granularity of decomposition according to the complexity of the project and the running-in degree of the team. For the new team, the more detailed the management, the better, so as to identify the risks and difficulties in the process in advance and make a good response plan. The more detailed the work, the more clearly you can know your job responsibilities. For the team that has worked together, it is enough to disassemble it to a level that everyone can understand.
In the planning stage, it is necessary to clarify the method of testing hypotheses. Because the method of testing hypothesis directly determines the workload and time. For example, comparing the learning data of two classes, one class has rich learning content, and the other class has only courseware to verify whether it has an impact on students' learning effect. Whether the time range is 1 week or 1 month directly affects the time of the final project summary report.
There are two ways to collect information:
Search materials
The more information, the better. As shown in the figure below, the amount of information helps to solve the problem:
The data is collected as follows:
interview
Interview is a big topic in the field of user research. You can refer to UX books. Respondents can be questioners and related personnel, and can also be professionals in the industry. The basic principles of the interview are as follows:
In addition, don't wait for all the data to be collected before making an analysis. A more efficient method is to collect information, summarize it to form a temporary conclusion, and then constantly adjust and revise the conclusion according to the increase of information.
So what principle?
For the conclusion, we should use the way of so what to make clear what influence the conclusion has on the whole problem. take for example
Impact of evaluation conclusion on all parties of the project.
This link is the key to whether the project can be supported. For example, it can be proved by data that if the learning content is increased, the completion rate of students can be increased by x%, but the participants in the project are more concerned about how to directly improve the sales level. Allocating manpower to improve learning content will lead to shortage of manpower and decline in sales, so "learning content should be increased" is a meaningless conclusion. However, if the conclusion is: increasing learning content can increase the renewal rate of students by x% and increase sales by xxx million yuan. Then the project participants have the motivation to do it.
Therefore, we must consider whether the conclusion meets the demands of all parties in the project. Only with the support of all parties can the project be successfully completed.
Summary and refinement are embodied in the project plan (report). The structure of the project plan should not be inductive, but deductive. Try to compare the following two ways of writing:
Obviously, deductive thinking is more suitable for the structure of project plan/report. This is McKinsey's golden pyramid principle:
In addition to gold and pyramid principles, the report must also conform to the elevator principle: that is, there must be a core point that can be proved through simple discussion. According to legend, it was because the report made by a project was very long, and the other boss was in a hurry to have a meeting, so he had to take the elevator to listen to the plan. As a result, the project fell through because he couldn't make it clear. Since then, the "elevator principle" has been established. Oh dear.
Focus model is essentially a set of workflow and methods, which can not replace the process of thinking. Above this method, what is needed is such a kind of people: they can use this method to actively solve problems encountered in their work; Their understanding of the problem is neither superficial nor profound, and their knowledge structure is "sufficient" rather than "profound"; They are better at discovering and integrating knowledge than storing it. They are good at "learning" and are experts in solving problems.
The output of the focus model is a set of planning schemes. This is not the end of the project, but the beginning. This plan is not perfect. In the subsequent implementation process, it is necessary to adjust the plan and change the direction at any time according to the external environment to ensure the consistency of the big goals and be closer to the operation mode of lean entrepreneurship. Therefore, planning depends on focus and implementation depends on lean entrepreneurship, which is the core of educational technology methodology. (I will write a special article about lean entrepreneurship in the future)
In the F stage of the focus model, many ready-made business analysis tools can be used, such as SWOT, brainstorming, logical tree and so on. The essence of these tools, like the focus model, is a kind of tool and method, which can ensure the integrity of thinking, but can't replace thinking itself. Starting from this article, I will update the tool articles in the business and work fields to encourage each other.