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Today’s prob­lems are rarely sim­ple (even decid­ing what to have for din­ner can gen­er­ate a bewil­der­ing array of options). And many of today’s mar­ket­ing chal­lenges present prob­lems within prob­lems. A lack of vis­i­bil­ity is endemic. See­ing the actual prob­lem is dif­fi­cult let alone find­ing a solution.

Tricky prob­lems are, of course, par for the course for the world’s spooks. And when they are not devel­op­ing nuclear deter­rents in the shape of wrist­watches, they also come up with some pretty nifty approaches to prob­lems in general.

The fol­low­ing is the Phoenix List, an approach devel­oped by the CIA to help agents with cen­tral intel­li­gences pick apart the prob­lems they face. It’s split into two sec­tions, one for the prob­lem, one for what to do about it.

Defin­ing the problem

1. Why is it nec­es­sary to solve the problem?

2. What ben­e­fits will you receive by solv­ing the problem?

3. What is the unknown?

4. What is it you don’t yet understand?

5. What is the infor­ma­tion you have?

6. What isn’t the problem?

7. Is the infor­ma­tion suf­fi­cient? Or is it insuf­fi­cient? Or redun­dant? Or contradictory?

8. Should you draw a dia­gram of the prob­lem? A figure?

9. Where are the bound­aries of the problem?

10. Can you sep­a­rate the var­i­ous parts of the prob­lem? Can you write them down? What are the rela­tion­ships between the parts of the problem?

11. What are the con­stants (things that can’t be changed)?

12. Have you seen the prob­lem before?

13. Have you seen this prob­lem in a slightly dif­fer­ent form?

14. Do you know a related problem?

15. Can you think of a famil­iar prob­lem hav­ing the same or a sim­i­lar unknown?

16. Sup­pose you find a prob­lem related to yours that has already been solved. Can you use it? Can you use its method?

Com­ing up with a plan

1. Can you solve the whole prob­lem? Part of the problem?

2. What would you like the res­o­lu­tion to be? Can you pic­ture it?

3. How much of the unknown can you determine?

4. Can you derive some­thing use­ful from the infor­ma­tion you have?

5. Have you used all the information?

6. Have you taken into account all essen­tial notions in the problem?

7. Can you sep­a­rate the steps in the problem-solving process? Can you deter­mine the cor­rect­ness of each step?

8. What cre­ative think­ing tech­niques can you use to gen­er­ate ideas? How many dif­fer­ent techniques?

9. Can you see the result? How many dif­fer­ent kinds of results can you see?

10. How many dif­fer­ent ways have you tried to solve the problem?

11. What have oth­ers done?

12. Can you intu­itively cre­ate a solu­tion? Can you check the results?

13. What should be done? How should it be done?

14. Where should it be done?

15. Who should do it?

16. What do you need to do at this time?

17. Who will be respon­si­ble for what?

18. Can you use this prob­lem to solve some other problems?

19. What is the unique set of qual­i­ties that makes this prob­lem what it is and none other?

Of course, launch­ing your next prod­uct is unlikely to have the same com­plex­ity as over­throw­ing an unfriendly state or stop­ping Ethan Hunt abseil­ing in and nick­ing your secrets but some of the above might prove useful.

Just remem­ber: you didn’t get it from me.

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