Insights_rootlinks

Hi there.

This has been been again, glad to have you back.

In the last video I talked about rich pictures, what

they are, why they might be needed and how to

draw them.

I mentioned that one of the outcomes from drawing the

rich picture is to use them as a means of

identifying your own aha moments or insights related to your

understanding of the challenge in front of you.

So now let's take a little bit deeper.

What are these insights?

Yeah, What are, what is an insight exactly?

The definite initiative.

The dictionary is the following.

It's an inner sight or wisdom.

It's the capacity to gain an accurate and deep understanding

of something or someone.

Now these definitions are only a starting point to getting

a little bit of an idea of what insights might

be. But let's go a little bit deeper into examples

of what insights might be.

So let's start with an example of an insight from

our personal lives insights that don't necessarily involve studying and

reading but from living, I remember for example, the first

time I realized that when people act unfairly or meanly,

it is not a reflection of who they are as

a person, but a reflection of how they feel inside

about themselves and perhaps challenging circumstances they are a part

of instead of thinking this is a mean person, I

now think this person is going through some challenging times.

This insight took a while for me to understand.

But when I realized that it was a surprise to

me but perhaps already obvious to others and it changed

the way I looked at situations afterwards.

So an insight comes with a feeling of surprise or

an aha moment and this information changes the way you

understand how or why things are the way they are.

And this was a concept first used by gestalt psychologist

in Austria and Germany starting in the 1920s who are

interested in finding out how people solve problems.

And so they through a series of experiments showed that

problems could be solved through a process of restructuring available

information so that suddenly a new way of understanding emerges.

So they describe this experience to be relevant to solving

a puzzle.

Having idea for invention or the development of a new

scientific concept.

We will use this concept as a way of thinking

about environmental problem solving.

So now I'm gonna take give you another example of

what insight might be in this time, closer maybe to

the challenges that you might be working on.

It's not a puzzle.

Um but it's about a conflict in the real world.

And this is an example from a while ago, while

I was doing my PhD in Singapore, I was working

with the government on the topic of sustainable waste management

and specifically how the country can better deal with organic

waste. So imagine the situation about six million people in

in land area, about 1/6 of Switzerland.

There was only one offshore landfill in the ocean and

it was about to be filled in about 15 years

at the time, most of the trash was being burned

or incinerated, but these facilities were already operating at full

capacity. So Singapore had a problem with trash.

We can say one option that they considered is anaerobic

digestion. This technology is able to take an organic waste

and food waste, which is more than 30% of the

total waste that was being produced and produces biogas that

can be turned into heat and electricity.

And the byproducts was fertilizer and compost.

But here is the real world puzzle.

So there was hundreds of millions of dollars being spent.

What does full support of the government and personnel with

plenty of technical knowledge?

And still after six years, the recycling facility closed down.

Now. The question is why did this happen?

And I came up with three main insights to answer

this question.

First, more than half of the collected waste could not

be recycled because it was poorly separated.

The company had to pay to get rid of this

recyclable waste, which significantly increased operating costs.

The waste was badly separated because a large part of

it came from restaurants and from commercial catering um in

the, from the so called hawker centers.

That's the picture down there.

Um uh the these popular outdoor food courts where most

people ate.

Now the staff there were poorly paid and were not

treated with respect um that it was necessary and therefore

they had little motivation to add an additional burden to

their already difficult jobs without being compensated for it.

They were not incentivized to separate ways and therefore if

you did, and the new recycling facility needed therefore the

support of important stakeholders within the waste industry in order

to succeed.

So that's another additional challenge.

The operators of the new facilities not work with existing

waste collectors started their own independent waste collection activity.

The existing waste collectors actually felt threatened because the new

recycling activity, reduce the waste that were being paid to

transport to the incinerators and landfills.

So their relationship became one of competition rather than collaboration.

And this was not good for the newcomers because the

waste collectors already were in the system control the waste

management um due to long term contracts and and the

and they had a great influence on the waste policy

and the governor.

So the only way that the new company could get

business with the lower prices, leading to a further reduction

of revenue.

Yes. So I mentioned the two reasons above that it

was um possibly failed.

One is the poor separation of waste because the people

within the system were not supported to do so.

And then also that the new players did not take

into account who already had power and influence in the

system. And another reason to the third reason giving you

now that led to the closure of the facility was

that there was no demand for the products from the

plant, even though the managers of the recycling facility assumed

that the products would be wanted, there really wasn't any

market for for the thermal and energy for example, there

was no pipeline infrastructure to connect to the industrial areas

where it could be used.

The price of electricity from the small plant was higher

than the price paid for by the large waste incinerators

for electricity.

So there were not able to get customers to buy

their more expensive electricity and fertilizer compost.

We're not in great demand either, which were the byproducts

of the um of the plant as there are already

enough compost produced from green waste on the island.

And so so those are examples of some insights I

found in my work.

So to find the insights in the system, I had

to read a lot, but more importantly I had to

talk to many people involved in the project and visit

the site myself.

I also spoke with the workers and the others who

had um who had did have already insights in the

system. It was also important to be curious about um

apparently obvious things.

So in my case it was necessary to explore why

something failed.

Even though it should have succeeded at the end of

my research, I had to link all the information together

um and you can already tell that this type of

insight is um different from the insights that you would

get from the personal ones that you would have about

yourself. Um And also those insights required for for solving

a puzzle.

For example how however all these different insights share similar

elements. Finding um An insight requires restructuring what you already

know, practicing practicing seeing the situation from different perspectives and

being curious by asking questions that have no obvious answer

and bringing disparate pieces of information together.

So even though you will have much less time than

I did to do the research, you're rich picture and

the members of your group as well as the stakeholders

and partners who are part of the project that you're

working on can all be resources to help you identify

insights when you are finished making your rich picture for

example talk to each other and ask what was especially

surprising and new to you in particular in the process

of making the rich picture.

This will serve as a good starting point to developing

your own insights.

Mm Yeah.

So at this point you may still have a lingering

question. How do we really recognize when something is an

insight? Well to be honest it takes a lot of

practice and a lot of reflection and it's not an

easy thing to do but I can give you some

starting guidelines.

Um and and it's the start of wisdom when you

can actually start identifying insight.

So please be patient.

It does take time.

So I mentioned these are the characteristic insights um explains

the why or the how they connect the facts.

Um the insights are also connected to a specific time,

place and situation, they're very specific um insights are also

based on observations and facts that that can be traced

back to a source, a credible source but the source

doesn't only need to be papers or scientific information.

It could also include your own experience and insights.

Also they have two very importantly challenge your prior assumptions

um that makes you see something in a new light.

So these can be boiled down to a few questions

you can ask yourself.

So is it accurate?

Is inside accurate?

Where does the insight come from?

And does that something make you go?

Uh huh.

So on the flip side I can also maybe try

to explain what insights are by telling you what they're

not. So what insights are not are that they're not

individual pieces of data or facts that are unexplained even

if they are quote unquote true.

So here's an example and then because but as I

have to tell you why you need to care about

it as well.

Um and then insights are also not opinions, they're not

your assumptions that are unfounded.

So when somebody makes a claim it doesn't mean that

it's an insight especially if you don't know where it

comes from or they're not aware of where it comes

from whoever is saying it.

And the third thing that is not an insight are

generalizations. So, again, even if they are true, so a

generalization about how things work in the world is not

a an insight mostly because you can't actually say that

it's wrong and there's no way to actually refute it.

So you need to ask the question also, how do

we know what this is and where does this information

come from?

Okay, so these three things are not insights, individual pieces

of data opinions and generalizations.

Now, perhaps you still want to know why do we

work with insights when we're dealing with your challenges in

particular? As mentioned, the challenge you're working on are linked

to wicked problems.

These problems have no indisputable definition and have no unanimously

agreed upon solutions because they have to take into account

many different and sometimes conflicting perspectives.

Insights can serve as a starting point for defining a

problem in a way that can be made um easily

understandable to others.

It is there by a foundation for finding relevant solution

to the challenge at hand.

There are two reasons I can give this for this

argument. One, if you can be fully aware of the

insights you start with in problem solving, then you will

be able to make your assumptions explicit um by making

the insights explicit, allows differences of perspectives to be discussed,

which allows you to improve or correct your own understanding

of the problem.

The discussion over what is an insight is a good

way to engage with differences in understanding that will help

you enrich your perspective.

A second reason why we want to gain insights is

that creativity comes from insights, your insight is your particular

way of seeing the world.

If you put your insights in the foreground, you're able

to think and express an original point of view with

this original point of view, you can think of new

problems and therefore new solutions.

Now with insights we can begin to define the problem,

how exactly we will do this, um turn insights into

problems, we'll talk at a later date but what I

want to say now is that defining the right problem?

If you spend all your time trying to solve the

problem perfectly, sorry, if you spend all your time trying

to solve the wrong problem perfectly, you haven't gone very

far defining the right problem comes from having an accurate

impression of how the world actually works, which having the

insight helps us develop.

As Einstein said, the mere formulation of a problem is

far more important than its solution, insights are the gateway

to the right problem.

So from a well defined problem we can start to

think of suitable solutions and to know what a good

solution is, we need to test them by creating prototypes,

then we get a feedback from people who are affected

by these solutions to improve them and to consider what

side effects are solutions might have in the world in

the future.

And when we have our solutions which have been tested

and worked on, we get insights that allow us to

gain an even better insight than before.

In the end we make this iterative cycle and this

is the creative process that allows us to continue to

work and improve ideas and solutions in this way.

We can ensure that ideas actually work in the real

world without insights.

Uh it's difficult to identify the right problem to solve.

The insight helps you to get to that problem that

is relevant to solve.

Mhm Without it, you might still without the inside.

I mean you might still solve problems but these problems

may not be relevant are not original and may not

come from a may not come from critical thinking because

without your insight and might just be a problem that

you have, you have heard others repeat or that others

have told you is important to solve.

While sometimes it is fine to accept the problem that

others have given you to solve, like in math and

physics where the point is to learn how to solve

the problem and you do not need to question if

the problem is right in the first place, that's not

the case with the environmental problem solving in environmental problems.

Problem solving without good problems, the good solution is actually

not possible.

All right, so insights help us to engage with the

complexity that's inherent in environmental problems.

Without access to insights, it would be very tempting to

follow the easier path.

The easier path is to solve the obvious problem, but

you're solution is likely to be wrong.

The path that's harder to follow is traveled by less

number of people.

But it's actually the more important path to travel that

requires insects.

So these steps I've walked you through very quickly are

also the steps of design thinking you'll go forwards and

backwards and forwards again.

These steps don't always go in one direction, so it's

normal sometimes that you do need to go backwards in

order to go forwards again.

And the key to having a good insight at the

end is just to remember to be curious, ask yourself

what is interesting, what is strange, what is surprising, learn

to follow and trust this curiosity that you all already

have. It will lead you to interesting places and things

you need to learn.

So I wish you a fun time ahead even though

it will be intensive and hope to talk to you

all soon.

Thank you

Insights_rootlinks

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