Attribution Analysis is a great method to use when you need to guide your team through the exercise of generating ideas.  In the process, you may challenge some of the assumptions you’ve made about the nature of the problem you are trying to tackle and the realm of possible options you have for solving it. 

Again, I will reference Team Troubleshooter:  How to Find and Fix Team Problems by Dr. Robert Barner for a description of Attribution Analysis:  “With this technique, your team can attack a problem creatively by breaking it down into its components and then brainstorming selectively around each part.  The last section of the technique rearranges these components in unique combinations that generate unexpected solutions”.   

For a simple example of how Attribution Analysis might work, let’s imagine that our team is responsible for ordering a birthday cake for our CEO’s upcoming birthday.  We know that the cake will be made up of the following components: cake flavor, filing, frosting and decoration.  We create a chart for our team to work with during our brainstorming session.

Component Alternative A Alternative B Alternative C Alternative D
Cake Flavor        
Filing        
Frosting        
Decoration        

Now your team can move on to brainstorming all the possibilities for each of these component parts.

Component Alternative A Alternative B Alternative C Alternative D Alternative E
Cake Flavor Chocolate Vanilla Lemon Spice Carrot
Filing Raspberry Mint Orange Caramel Chocolate
Frosting Cream Cheese Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla Caramel Pecan
Decoration/Theme Company Logo Golf Photo of the Team Over The Hill No decorations, just candles

 

Once all the different alternatives have been identified for each component, then a selection can be made.  In the scenario above, let’s say the team selects the following cake for the CEO’s birthday:

Component Alternative A Alternative B Alternative C Alternative D Alternative E
Cake Flavor Chocolate Vanilla Lemon Spice Carrot
Filing Raspberry Mint Orange Caramel Chocolate
Frosting Cream Cheese Chocolate Strawberry Vanilla Caramel Pecan
Decoration/Theme Company Logo Golf Photo of The Team Over The Hill No decorations, just candles

 

Now, this is a very simple example.  But imagine if your team was facing a tough decision about how to handle a daily service outage for a system your entire organization relies on.  You work for a global company, so someone is always using this system – timing the outage “in the middle of the night” is not an option – it is always someone’s business day, somewhere in your global operation. 

Start by getting your team to brainstorm to identify all the possible attributes or categories of exploration related to this particular problem.  Then come up with all the possible options for each category, either as a team, or divided into subgroups with each group responsible for a different category. 

Finally, use all the ideas that have been generated to come up with a solution or a series of partial solutions that might be combined creatively to solve your problem. 

In my next blog, I’ll discuss several different applications of multi-voting in a team problem-solving situation.