Issue Resolution

Provides teams with the opportunity to separate ‘noise issues’ from ‘critical issues’, building strategies in the process to bring resolution to outstanding problems.

Affinity Diagram

Why use it?

To allow a team to creatively generate a large number of ideas / issues and then organize and summarize natural groupings among them to understand the essence of a problem and breakthrough solutions.

What does it do?

  • Encourages creativity by everyone on the team at all phases of the process.
  • Encourages ‘ownership’ of results that emerge because the team creates both the detailed input and general results
  • Breaks down longstanding communication barriers
  • Overcomes ‘team paralysis’ which is brought on by an overwhelming array of options and lack of commitment
  • Encourages non-traditional connections among ideas / barriers
  • Allows breakthroughs to emerge naturally, even on long-standing issues

Inter relationship Digraph

Why use it?

To allow a team to systematically identify, analyze, and classify the cause and effect relationships that exist among all critical issues so that key drivers or outcomes can become the heart of an effective solution.

What does it do?

  • Encourages team members to think in multiple directions rather than linearly
  • Explores the cause and effect relationships among all the issues, including the most controversial
  • Allows the key issues to emerge naturally rather than allowing the issues to be forced by a dominant or powerful team member
  • Systematically surfaces the basic assumptions and reasons for disagreements among team members
  • Allows a team to identify root cause (s ) even when credible data doesn’t exist
  • Separates ‘noise’ from key ‘driver’ issues

Radar Chart

Why use it?

To visually show in one graphic, the size of the gaps among a number of both current organization performance areas and ideal performance areas.

What does it do?

  • Makes concentrations of strengths and weaknesses visible
  • Clearly displays the important categories of performance
  • If done well, clearly defines full performance in each category
  • Captures the similar or differing perceptions of all the team members about an organization’s performance associated with an issue