Ali sister guide: in daily work, we often encounter such a situation, some people say things logic is very confused, listed a lot of things, but can not grasp the focus, can not put one thing clearly. This confusion is typical of a lack of structured thinking. Structured thinking is very important, not only in expression, but also in the way we analyze problems. Only with structured thinking can the problem be analyzed in a more comprehensive and profound way.
What is structured thinking?
So what exactly is structured thinking? Simply put, the definition of structured thinking is: logic + routine.
Be logical
Logic means that our structures must be logically related to each other. For example, it makes sense to use the logical order “first, second, third” when you’re speaking, but it’s weird to use “first, second, fourth.” Of course, even if you use “one, two, three”, it doesn’t necessarily mean your content is logical. To make content logical, we need to learn four kinds of logical relationships to organize our thoughts:
1) Deductive (causal) order: the deductive reasoning mode of “major premise, minor premise and conclusion” is deductive order. For example, the classical syllogism: everyone dies, Socrates is human, Socrates dies.
2) Time (step) order: “first, second, third”, “first, second, third”, etc., many time orders are also causal order.
3) Spatial (structural) order: “front end, back end, data”, “Boston, New York, Washington”, divide the whole into parts (break the whole into parts) are all spatial order.
4) Order of importance: for example, “the most important, the second most important, the least important”, etc.
In fact, all logical relationships fall within these four orders. As long as our thoughts and expressions fall within these four logical orders, they are logical; otherwise, they are illogical.
Do things in a certain way
Routines refer to our methodology for solving problems, which is also very important. For example, 5W2H analysis is a very good “routine” that can help us analyze problems. Imagine being able to think about any problem in terms of Why, Who, When, Where, What, How and How much (as shown in the picture below). Is it much more comprehensive than people who do not know this methodology, using point thinking, 5W2H analysis.
For example, we can use 5W2H for problem domain analysis and domain knowledge extraction. The 5W2H model provides guiding constraints, requiring that the extracted domain knowledge must have six elements of the model. It is just like two conversationalists who are conversing with each other. With a definite topic and topic boundary, what was originally a aimless idle conversation becomes a high-level conversation with in-depth communication.
Logic is a kind of ability, while routine is methodology and experience. Logic is the thing of tao, while methodology is the thing of art. Both are important, and only by mastering them can we have better structured thinking.
How to think structurally?
Logic and methodology are the base of structured thinking, so how to carry out structured thinking? There is also a methodology to this, and generally there are two steps, first “center building”, and then “decomposition”.
Establish a center
To establish a center is to define clearly the problem to be solved, to define clearly the goal. It’s the top node of our structure, and it’s a way of thinking that starts with the end. In other words, we need to figure out why first, and then how.
There are two ways to set up a center:
1. Top-down: it applies to situations where the problem is relatively clear. We just need to find the core elements of the problem and then expand it.
2. Bottom-up: When the problem is not clear enough, we need to classify, prune and summarize various messy contents into a center.
The creation of a center is not usually a one-time thing, and the abstraction of the center is adjusted as the understanding of the problem changes. Different levels of abstraction face different breadth of problems. Which level of abstraction is used as the “center” depends on the situation.
For example, in the face of “buggy system” problem, the upward abstraction is “improve code quality”, the downward abstraction is “strengthen testing”, can be used as the center, depending on the problem you are trying to solve.
Structural decomposition
Once the center is determined, we need to build a structure that uses structured thinking to break down the problem. The strategy of decomposition is the four logical orders we mentioned above, namely, deductive, temporal, spatial and degree order.
When doing spatial decomposition, be careful to satisfy the MECE (Mad Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) principle.
For example, if we want to classify clothes according to season and style, they will overlap with each other and cannot be exhausted, which will not satisfy MECE. This classification is illogical.
We can divide them into season: spring and autumn, winter and summer. There are no other seasons outside of these three categories, and this is “not missing.”
Application of structured thinking
How to land a new team?
Imagine a scenario where you’re joining a new company or moving to a new team. How will you land your job as a technical person?
Here, we can use structured thinking to help us clear our minds and carry out our work in an orderly manner. We need to know that for an enterprise, the core elements are nothing more than business, technology and people, that is to say, these three elements are the center we want to establish. Based on this center, we can further disassemble and form substructures. Then the substructure is analyzed to find coping strategies. Step by step, we were already using structured thinking to solve the problem of how to land a new team.
1. Get familiar with business
1) Understanding the product: Every team has its own product to be responsible for. Applying for a test account to use the product is a good way to get familiar with the product.
2) Understand the process: Any business has its own business process, and the core of business flow is information flow. We can know the information input and output of key nodes through personnel interview. You can draw some lane activity diagrams to clarify the main roles of the system and their interactions.
3) Customer visits: by visiting customers, we can get more first-hand information about the business and get closer to the business and customer demands.
2. Be familiar with technology
1) Understand the system architecture: You can ask the technical staff of the team to introduce their original system design and architecture ideas.
2) Understand the domain model: Look at key core table structures and system apis to quickly understand the domain model of the system.
3) Understand code structure: download system engineering and be familiar with the whole engineering structure and module responsibilities. Starting with one of the most important processes, read the code to see the core execution logic. Make a small requirement, master the relevant process and permissions.
3. Know people
1) Know the organization: Look at the organization tree to get a sense of how the company works and who its Key people are. For example, a typical e-commerce company would include product department, operations Department, Sales department, technology department, HUMAN Resources Department, finance department, legal department, etc.
2) Know the roles: Know what positions are available in the company and what their responsibilities are.
3) Worship the top: Find people who are closely related to your job, such as product and operations. Actively communicate with them, ask them business questions, and communicate. On the one hand, you can build better relationships, and on the other hand, you can learn the business faster.
Create geek culture
I recently moved to a new department, where my boss threw me a proposition: How can I help the tech team build a geek culture?
The heart of the problem is clear. Now, let’s see how I use structured thinking to solve this problem. First we break it down in terms of spatial order, which is to create geek culture, what we can do.
Spatial sequential decomposition
Once we’ve determined what we need to do, we can break it down in chronological order.
Time sequence decomposition
In this way, give the boss a structured dismantling plan in accordance with these two dimensions, and the boss will clearly know your planning and landing strategy.
How to do promotion reporting
The author has been working as a promotion judge in Alibaba for several years, and found that many students lack structured thinking and cannot clearly explain the value and derivation process in the lengthy PPT. In fact, we need some methodology to guide us in our critical presentations.
Next, I’ll focus on two typical problems in a presentation: “itemizing things” and “what’s behind the value.”
1. List things
Take a short list of all the things you’ve done. Maybe you’ve done a lot. But it doesn’t reflect the depth of your thinking and the value you bring to the task. A more structured statement would be: “Ask the question, define the question, analyze the question, solve the question, and finally look to the future.”
This is a classic problem presentation structure, and a problem solving framework recommended by McKinsey.
A similar frame is Zoom in/ Zoom out. When we talk about things, we should be like a movie camera, zooming in from far away and then zooming out from near. Zoom in is to start from the macro background, first let everyone know the background of your event, why is it important? And then go into the details. How did you do that? What problem was solved? What was the thinking behind it? Finally, you Zoom out from the details to the whole, what is the result, what is the customer value, and what is your thinking about the future.
2. Behind the value
It is really important to clarify the value, as the saying goes: if the road is right, it is not afraid of far. If you don’t know the value, it doesn’t matter what you do. However, it’s not enough to just state the value. You’ll look like you’re taking credit for it.
Say, for example, “The risk control system I led helped reduce the company’s bad debt ratio from 5% to 2%.” That’s not enough. You also need to articulate the process and thinking behind value. For this result, the judges might ask:
- Why was it so high before?
- Why can your method be reduced? How is it attributed?
- What specific problems have been solved?
- Can you come up with a formula that others can use to solve these problems in the future?
If you think deeply about these questions and present them properly before the judges ask them. Then you have both an end and a process.
Through these cases, we can see that structured thinking can help us quickly clarify the way to deal with problems and improve work efficiency. Regular exercise of structured thinking can greatly improve our workplace competitiveness, make work orderly, get twice the result with half the effort.
Author: Ali Technology
The original link
This article is the original content of the cloud habitat community, shall not be reproduced without permission.