Looking for the summer

Methodologies and tools for solving complex problems

As I started working on this entry I had to put on jeans and a hoodie for the first time since November when I first came to Broome. OK, I admit, it is still over 20^O C, but has been too easy to get used to the normally searing hot days and nights. And, yes, winter is coming and it is high time to plan my winter holidays which will be summer holidays as I head home to Hungary, Europe, with my two friends, Melinda and Gergő.

The beauty of this exercise is that I have managed to make it mindbogglingly complex by trying to squeeze in as much fun as possible.

The first task was to go through cognitive mapping by collecting and combining data and then visualising information. In practice, it meant to ask the key stakeholders about their plans, choices and preferences. So we used chat and a conference call to find out all about it and realised we had needed to organise and visualise the data due to the complexity of the situation.

First of all, here are my priorities:

1.     spend at least a week with Melinda, my best friend

2.     spend a few days with Gergő, my other good friend

3.     meet my family in Budapest

4.     meet other friends

5.     make it to Lake Balaton with Melinda

6.     attend another friend’s, Adi’s wedding on 11^th July close to Budapest

7.   can be done any time in June/August except 15-22 July and 8-15 August, as I work for a holiday resort and it is the peak season

Melinda’s priorities

1.  get a vacation AT ALL – she works for Unilever (UN:NYSE, www.unilever.com) in Katowice, Poland, as a project manager in the supply chain area and will have a major ‘go live’ on 6^th July (UK) and immediately switching to the next region (DAHC)

2.     meet Gergő and myself

3.     meet her family in Budapest

4.     attend Adi’s wedding on 11^th July

5.   make it to Lake Balaton on the week including the 19^th Aug for the local festival called ZSKP (Gravy & Pickled Onion Sandwich Party, GPOSP)

Gergő’s priorities

1.     see his parents in August in the city of Miskolc when he is allowed to take a week off work

2.     attend Adi’s wedding on 11^th July – he is flying in and out because he is on a really tight schedule: he works for Wrigley (William Wrigley Jr. Company, www.wrigley.com, part of Mars Inc) as an S&OP project lead in Munich, Germany, moving to Guangzhou, China in October

3.     meet Melinda and myself

We agreed to visualise this information in a simple, easy-to-use way, in Excel and share it through Microsoft OneDrive. This allows for modifications, comments and access from anywhere, anytime. And this is where we got with version 1.3:

Possible variations we discussed: project timing changes possible for both Melinda and Gergő at very short notice, ‘no vacation’ decision possible for Melinda.

Obviously, this is not a wicked problem: it is relatively simple. However, the unknown probability of the above factors that are outside the power of either decision makers mean that any decision will be highly risky.

We used group decision making as equals who respect each other and like each other enough to be honest - this enables us to enjoy all the advantages of the situation while minimises the negative effects of groupthink.

The solution we chose is one of subjective expected utility: although due to the simplicity of the problem we didn’t need to draw up an equation, we still needed to visualize the situation to come to a decision. We agreed that we could maximise utility (e.g. seeing each other) by László first joining Melinda in Katowice and then the two go to Hungary, while Gergő needs to change his August vacation period so all could meet. Also, this is a typical case of a decision made with bounded rationality: time and knowledge about certain important events is limited and all of us have distortions in perceiving the realities of the situation. We managed to satisfice: we all get what we wanted (the only exception is that I cannot make it to the wedding) and we will have the opportunity to kill just enough time together.

One interesting aspect of this actual situation was that I realised that while I normally use system 1 thinking processes way too much, adding people to the process slows me down to a healthy level and allows me for digging more deeply into the facts and see through my own biases.

It is a long post, so thank you for reading it all and here is a song about the little village called Balatonszepezd at Lake Balaton, where we plan to party:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9EoNlbB_8c