Holistic Problem-Solving: Can't See the Trees for the Forest

theory
#1

I’ve been drawn to the idea of the holistic problem-solving style for a lot of the stories that I’m working on, but it worries me for a couple of reasons:

  • I’ve read on the forums that it is limiting in regard to the audience.
  • It’s supposedly more difficult to write.

It’s either more complicated than I believe because I’m a linear problem solver, or I’m a holistic problem solver and it is as simple as I believe.

Some of the things that pop into my head when I think of holistic problem solving are:

  • There’s more than one way to skin a cat. Don’t you like dogs?
  • Can’t see the forest for the trees. Put the chainsaw down, back away, close your eyes, and listen for a moment.
  • Think outside of the box. It’s recyclable.
  • Shoot the hostage. Take the hostage out of the equation. Who’s really the hostage here?
  • You’re asking the wrong question. But maybe it is the right answer.
  • Think big picture. And then tell me what’s not there.
  • If you can’t bring Muhammed to the mountain, bring the mountain to Muhammad. Let’s go to the beach instead. Mountains are cold.

I often wonder what the difference is between being clever and being holistic. There seems to be some appreciation on the forums for clever problem solving and this is attributed to being a holistic problem solver. But is that true?

  • In Speed, “Whoah, shoot the hostage”… is he clever or is he a holistic thinker?

  • Captain America, he pulls the pin from the bottom of the flagpole. Is he clever or is he doing a bit of holistic thinking?

When talking about holistic problem solving, I feel like the problem solver in question is able to see the Inequity more clearly than a linear problem solver that is laser-focused on the Symptom. And maybe they are able to see through justifications and avoid them.

I am also interested in the idea of poor problem solvers. I’m interested in the Spaceball versions of Holistic and Linear.

I remember seeing a comment by @jhull but I can’t find it now or remember where I saw it. I’m quite sure it was in a thread as opposed to a blog article, and it talked about four different aspects relating to holistic problem-solving. Anyone remember a posting similar to this?

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#2

The below is not original to me, unfortunately I cannot give the author credit because I don’t know where it came from…it just sits on my corkboard, unattributed. If anyone knows let me know so I can scrawl it on my copy.

HOLISTIC PROBLEM-SOLVING

A choice of holistic create a main character whose psychology is based on assessing balance. The holistic Main Character resolves inequities by comparing surpluses to deficiencies. The manner employed in resolving the inequity will involve:

  • creating a surplus where a surplus is desired
  • creating a deficiency where a deficiency is desired
  • creating a surplus so a deficiency is felt elsewhere
  • creating a deficiency so a surplus is felt elsewhere

Through the application of ones own force of, hills and valleys can be created and filled either to directly address the inequity or to create change in the flow of energies that will ultimately come together in a new hill or disperse creating a new valley. Applied, both, to self and others.

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#3

Let’s imagine that we are in the movie Speed and Dennnis Hopper has a hostage. Using these four concepts, pop quiz hotshot, what do you do? Answer for linear as well please.

And let’s imagine we are skinny Steve Rogers and we have to get to the top of the flag pole. Using these four concepts, what do you do? Answer for linear as well please.

#4

Flagpole Steve — Practice makes perfect
surplus for surplus
deficiency for deficiency
surplus for deficiency start at 6:23
deficiency for surplus start at 4:08
Linear


p.s you didn’t give an actual problem to solve for speed.

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#5

I don’t think that’s true at all. In The Bourne Identity, there’s a sequence early in the movie where Jason Bourne (a linear thinker) creates a little chaos and has to escape from the Embassy. He grabs a guard’s walkie-talkie, a map and uses it to guide him away from the incoming officers – ‘if I use this, I can avoid them’. That’s an example of clever linear thinking.

It just depends on the context. I mentioned in the other thread that Andy in The Devil Wears Prada is hopeless at seeing anything outside of her cause-and-effect logic, which means there’s no way she can see Miranda’s big scheme at the end. Doesn’t mean she’s not clever (she is! She somehow gets the unpublished Harry Potter book and is able to predict what Miranda wants before she even says it!), but that she’s kind of out of her depth when dealing with this intimidating holistic thinker, which was a huge part of what the story wanted to do. They could easily have flipped it the other way and made it so that Andy is looking at the big picture, while Miranda is demanding a more simple route and you’d have the same kind of ‘fish out of water’ conflict they wanted.

Not necessarily. Any changed character will have those built up justifications, holistic or not. That’s not so much a Problem-Solving Style thing as a Resolve thing. A Changed character is blind to the justifications they’ve built up. They have to have them broken down.

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#6

@jassnip When I say pop quiz hotshot, it is in reference to the movie line in Speed. Don’t you remember how they are always asking what if questions to each other in the movie and they would say pop quiz hotshot?

Reeve’s character removes the hostage (his partner) from the equation by shooting him in the leg. I meant, the situation is an armed suspect has a hostage and this puts you at a tactical disadvantage. You are a holistic problem solver, what do you do? Linear?

@jhay I don’t think it is true either. I don’t remember the walkie talkie scene, but I will say it doesn’t seem clever to me. It does seem linear.

Interestingly, when I tried to think of a Holistic problem solver, Blazing Saddles popped into mind. I looked it up and lo and behold.

There’s another movie, which I can’t remember the name of, but here is the scenario:

A kid is delivering his college application to a college. He has no choice but to do it by hand. As they are driving, they are stuck in a long line of cars (because a cop car is in front). There is a fellow behind him in a sports car. So, he slows down and the guy in the sports car is so frustrated, he guns it to pass all the cars.

The police officer sees the man in the sportscar and pulls him over. Then, all the cars stuck behind the cop car were able to speed up. So he had to slow down to speed up. Would you call this holistic problem solving or linear problem-solving?

If I slow down, the sports car will speed up and pass me. If the sports speeds up and passes me, the police car will pull him over. If the police car pulls him over, the cars in front of me will speed up. If the cars in me speed up, I can go faster.

This is still a series of if/then but it seems to feel holistic in a sense. And it is what I would call clever.

#7

You’re presumption that I’ve seen Speed (which I haven’t) is utterly adorable. snork

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#8

Hm. I’m not actually sure. I think I’d need to see the context of the scene, but the way you described that sounds very linear to me. “If I slow down (cause), the guy will speed past (effect). When he speeds past (cause), the cop will see him and pull him over (effect). When he pulls him over (cause), the block will cease to exist (effect). With nothing to block me (cause, I’ll be able to go ahead (effect).”

But it could be a very holistic way to resolve a problem, and you just explained it in a very linear way. I’d have to see the scene.

#9

Noun Verb Direct Object
Noun Verb Prepositional Phrase
Verb Prepositional Phrase Noun

However you choose to express yourself in English, you are doing so linearly. My hypothesis is that the inherently liner nature of the language makes discussing holistic behavior difficult. You’d have to write hundreds of words to capture the one holistic incident in all its sparkling beauty.

And that makes discussing holistic thinking difficult in the context of a forum.

#10

Holistic thinking is just a hard thing to describe, generally. The idea of it is that you’re kind of looking at everything at once, so there’s no way to accurately describe it. I’ve always struggled with explaining it. I can recognise it, but I struggle to present it to other people.

I think my difficulty with Fred’s example could stem from the fact that he’s relating it from memory. If he’s a predominantly-linear thinker (which I’m assuming he is), he could be filtering what is a holistic PS-Style through a linear filter to make it easier to understand (maybe? I’m just hypothesising, I have no scientific basis to back that up).

If you figure out what movie that was, @museful, please let us know!

#11

I’ve noticed this notion as well. Holistic Problem Solving gets discussed as though being a Holistic Problem Solver basically makes you Sherlock Holmes. I’m going to say that’s not accurate because I know a good number of primarily Holistic Problem Solvers and none of them are basically Sherlock Holmes. Same for the Linear Problem Solvers I know. I suspect that Linear problem solving and Holistic problem solving can both lead to cleverness and looking a bit like Sherlock Holmes depending on the context. They can both also probably lead one to looking like…i don’t know, whatever the opposite of Sherlock Holmes is depending on the context.

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#12

“Holistic thinking is just a hard thing to describe, generally.” When I used to work in cybersecurity, I had to do quite a lot of holistic thinking on a daily basis. I often found that I knew something before I knew how to put it into words.

#13

Notice, I didn’t try and describe holistic answers to @museful 's problem. I went straight for pictures/video. :stuck_out_tongue:

I really want to see the scene where skinny Steve Rogers, goes to stripper class to learn to climb a pole—the right way. Bwahahahaha!

#14

That movie launched careers (some of which are winding down)! Is it that old? I just looked for the emoji with a walking stick… :santa:

I’m not sure either. Yes, it is very linear my description. But more like a ricocheting bullet. I’d be interested in knowing some of the specific actions in Blazing Saddles (for instance) that show that make Bart a holistic problem solver. I certainly remember him being clever (I haven’t seen it in many years!).

I have no idea what kind of problem solver that I am. I like to know the details of an incident. I grew up most of my childhood in a single mother home. Because of this, I don’t have a lot of trouble understanding holistic problem-solving. I think. I don’t have a problem understanding linear problem solving either.

Sometimes, taking a pin and popping a balloon is the best solution to a problem. And sometimes, because of myriad factors, another solution is required. I’m very good at seeing the big picture.

Holistic problem solving isn’t magic, touchy-feely or whatever. I look at linear problem solving as a shortcut. Just like the givens that we accept as truth in our lives… they probably aren’t true in all contexts or situations. But they work well enough most of the time.

I think that a master of holistic problem-solving has the potential to be correct in their approach more often. It is more precise, but harder to wield.

I’m trying to think of the movie. I am quite sure that I saw it in the 80’s or 90’s (that narrows it down!). I don’t think that it is Orange County. I am almost sure that it is older than Orange County. I’ll keep thinking about it. Youtube searches have gotten me nowhere.

Bear in mind, there might be more to that scene. The man behind them was driving a sports car. He was impatient. He was honking his horn. He deserved it a bit. I also think that the boy might have been delivering the application for the girl… I don’t know. So many years ago.

For me, the primary difference between holistic and linear problem solving is macro vs. micro. System vs. component. Ecosystem vs. organism.

#15

Think of Holistic thinking as two different types of pattern matching.

One is selecting a tree as being the solution in a forrest of problems because it is the intuitive answer.

The other is using intuition for seeing many of the possible solution trees in a forrest based on seeing just one problematic tree.

Either way, a holistic problems solver does this by getting the settings right to produce that result.

For example, a holistic problem solver sees a noiesy environment and thinks how can I quiet the group so we can start brainstorming.

Another example would be, a holistic problem solver speaks to a group of mothers who all claim the same child is theirs and threatens to kill the child to get more information about who the mother really is by reading their responses.

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#16

By some of the definitions bandied about this could still be cause and effect. We would still be making the assumption that the mother would care. Something we are accepting as truth. But something in her nature might contraindicate this assumption.

I guess it makes me wonder if cause and effect should just be limited to linear problem solving. I think perhaps not.

I’m going to post a situation that I would consider holistic understanding later after class. I said earlier that I understood big picture. I meant to say that I understood people’s motivations holistically.

#17

Based on my very limited understanding, I believe cause and effect should belong to both linear and holistic. Else wise, holistic is purely random, possibly insane, and not at all useful.
But holistic is where you take probabilities and add them together in parallel. Linear is where you take probabilities and add them together in serial.

Holistic is like lock picking. It isn’t enough to strike a pin. You have to strike the right pins and not strike the wrong pins in order for the lock to be picked. Each time you strike a pin is a cause and effect, but it is the right causes and effects happening simultaneously that makes the magic happen. You could figure out which pins to strike linearly, but that could take trying every possible combination. A professional locksmith will find the right pins a lot fsster using holistic techniques such as known vulnerabilities with the specific model of lock, etc.

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#18

There was an incident with a teacher at my school. Let me try and set the scene for this story.

Every day, a female Indian teacher would show up at the windows of the teacher’s office and she would ask for a jar of pickles that were on her friend’s (a Filipino teacher’s) desk. Later in the day, she would return them.

This particular day, she had already asked for the pickles. The window had been left open.

Later in the day, she jokingly mentioned that the school hand recently created a brochure for the school and put only four white teachers within its pages. She made a point to joke about it but mentioned that it was unfair because she had been at the school longer.

This female Indian teacher often flirted with many of the other teachers. Perhaps her way of showing affection or feeling it.

This same day, the Indian teacher flirted with the American teacher pretty suggestively. Something about heating him up. He responded with, “yeah, only you can cool me down.” His intention was to be suggestive and trying to hint “cooling him down” would be something naughty.

The Indian teacher read this as a rejection of her flirting and her. That hurt her. He intended to reciprocate the flirting but the wording allows for alternate interpretations. For him it meant, yes please. For her it meant, no thanks.

The same day, the American teacher was quoting a movie. The movie is called “Blast from the Past.” The teacher in question quoted the line “A negro. My lucky stars!” The scene is quite funny if you have seen the movie. If you haven’t, that word could always hurt some feelings.

The same day that the American teacher had quoted the movie, he received a text from the Indian teacher. She said that it wasn’t nice to talk behind peoples backs.

Also, the American teacher heard another Filipino teacher in the office walk out of the office and say, “time for the negros to get back to work.” This was done as an aside. Loud enough to be heard, but not too loud. The level of volume where you think that you have heard it, but you instinctively say “what?”

He was confused. I’m pretty good at understanding people’s motivations.

So I said, here’s what happened.

The Indian teacher has a habit of coming to the window each day to ask for the jar of pickles, then she would return them every day through the same window. She asked me because I am by the window.

That day, she had asked for the pickles, but she had never returned them. The window had been left open from the asking.

She had heard the quote from the movie when she was returning the pickles and made an assumption that the comment was directed at teachers in the school that were not “white.” Maybe she would not have made that assumption if she hadn’t been hurt by the actions of the school or hadn’t felt rejected by the American teacher.

Here you have many different forces in play. This is what I see as using a holistic/big picture to evaluate a problem and create a solution.

The American’s solution was to explain the scenario step by step. He told her why he said this: because he was quoting a movie. The reason that he was quoting the movie: because a conversation in the office was going on about the Russian cold war and we ended up talking about the movie because of its relationship to this. He explained step by step, in a linear fashion, how the quote came up. He also said that the quote was not directed at any of the teachers in the school nor was did he intend any harm with the response to her flirting.

She doesn’t come into this office anymore. She doesn’t ever ask for the pickles anymore. Nothing.

My point about justifications and all that is you can easily say that the problem was miscommunication… and the American teacher tried to eliminate the problem of miscommunication linearly.

However, the true problem was hidden under these layers of other problems. The true problem was how the Indian teacher felt due to the relationships in her orbit: with the school and the teacher.

Probably, to fix the problem, it wouldn’t be so much about explaining something as much as it would be about reaffirming the relationship. Making the Indian teacher feel safe, appreciated, loved, whatever.

Men will generally say… what? I didn’t say anything wrong and I shouldn’t be punished for this mess. It is ridiculous. A woman might say, I’m sorry or I understand. Or you have every right to be angry. I’m angry too!

I have an ability to see this web of cause and effect. I don’t think that it is linear in its nature. It is big picture, but it is still logical.

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#19

It is more than “just an assumption” since the mother is attempting to claim said children; (whether or not she cares about the children) she cares about something to do with them enough to try and claim them. If she gave no effs, she wouldn’t be trying to claim them in the first place.

#20

I agree.

For me, holistic is just macro and linear is micro in terms of evaluation.

I think problem-solving has to do with depth of evaluation. It doesn’t really have to do with the action taken in fixing the problem. You can’t really say an action is holistic. The understanding can be holistic.