I have covered two thinking frameworks in the past. Namely, The Basic Thinking Framework 5W1H and Yin-Yang Thinking Framework – Innovative and Critical.

Here is the third one – Necessary and Sufficient.

We can have the following 4 combinations:

1. not necessary and insufficient – need to find out the influencing factors.
2. necessary and insufficient – the common error committed. e.g. why doesn’t by Quality program brings me more business?
3. not necessary and sufficient – is this possible?
4. necessary and sufficient – the best case.

It is important to classify any factor that affect an outcome into a necessary or a sufficient factor.

The best illustration is given by Herzberg’s  2 Factor Theory on Job satisfaction. He classified factors into two main group of Hygiene and Motivation. Hygiene factors are those that their absence will cause dissatisfaction but their presence will not result in satisfaction. Motivation factors are those that their absence will cause dissatisfaction and their presence will cause satisfaction (Of course, there are critics that say satisfaction does not lead to motivation).

The factors are:

The lesson is that some factor are necessary but insufficient.

We also need to know that too much of a factor will result in less motivation according to the law of decreasing marginal returns. But in some cases, the law of increasing marginal returns will kick in such as the more expensive a product is, the greater the increasing demand!
Here is a chart to show the refinement in our thinking. There is a threshold that the factor need to cross in order to becoming motivating.

Multiple Factors – Vector Thinking

We are not restricted to looking at a single factor, such as price, but a combination of factors, forming a vector, as a competitive advantage against our competitor. If I can’t compete on price, then I must offer my customer some thing else that he also desire or even more, such as timeliness or greater flexibility or greater reliability etc.  Don’t think about just one factor, have a combination of factors to make up a good vector offering.

Lim Liat copyrighted 21 Sep 2011