NTU Solution Theory and Practice CTPS 7th Project Experience

I will write this Matters for two main purposes:

The first is to record the process of taking CTPS in the second semester of the senior year: from application to admission; from taking classes, carrying out projects, and finally closing the case, which is how to use the CTPS methodology to solve all unfamiliar problems. This helps me to quickly go back and review past examples when I am faced with new and unfamiliar problems again, which helps me get started better.

The second is that by sorting out and clarifying the methods used throughout the semester, it can help me explain the context of the entire method to those who do not know CTPS in the future, and it can also be more systematic and logical for me to mention CTPS in future interviews. .

The following article will be divided into three parts: 1. The motivation and application process of applying for CTPS. 2. Explain how the CTPS curriculum was applied to this semester's project - the expansion of the management space of the Treehouse Company. 3. How did you feel after completing the course; what did CTPS help me and what did it affect me?

1–1. Motivation for applying for CTPS: (1) Cross-field study, in-depth understanding of the management consulting profession (2) Unfamiliar problems are often encountered in chemical industry-university cooperation cases, but there is a lack of a systematic problem-solving logic.

(1) Cross-field learning: the combination of science and engineering and business management skills

I am from the Department of Chemical Engineering, so I have a background in science and engineering. During my four years in college, I enjoyed participating in many extracurricular activities and met many classmates from different departments. In the process of chatting with these people from different departments, it is also a search for myself. I found that I have always been interested in learning in different fields, and I hope that in my future ability, not only have professional knowledge in chemical industry, but also learn other abilities across fields to combine my strengths in science and engineering, so that I can Make yourself more competitive. In the process of getting to know myself, I found that I like getting along with people, I am good at cooperation, I like challenging things, and I can get a sense of accomplishment from them when I finish them. Many friends from the management institute have taken CTPS, and they also told me that it is a challenging and worthwhile course to learn. Just in my senior year, my dream of going abroad for exchange was shattered because of the epidemic, and I had a lot of free time to finish this course in earnest, so I didn’t say anything about applying.

(2) A systematic set of problem-solving logic is required: encounter unfamiliar problems in the industry

During my senior year, I worked with professors in the laboratory on industry-university cooperation projects in some large industrial plants. When solving the difficulties of these large industrial plants, most of them are very unfamiliar and difficult problems, and sometimes even the information on the Internet cannot be found. In the process of solving problems, there is often a lack of complete steps to face these novel problems, and sometimes they are solved by patchwork. This also made me realize that when facing unfamiliar problems, there is a set of key points for solving problems. It is very important to summarize the problems in a systematic way and build solutions. It just so happens that CTPS can give me this opportunity to practice. .

1–2. The process of applying for CTPS: (1) Phase 1 written application (2) Phase 2 interview (3) Application result

(1) The first stage of written application: use STAR and start with the end to help you write your resume

In the first stage of the written application, you need to write a self-introduction, the motivation to apply, and finally an article will be given to you to limit the number of words and focus on the key points. When writing your resume, the most important thing should be to show that you really need this opportunity, and if you are successfully admitted, what ability you have to give back or help the organization that admits you. When applying, it is recommended to use STAR and think about how to write about experiences and motivations with an end in mind.

STAR, as the name suggests, is Situation, task, action, result. When presenting experiences to others, there needs to be a contextual description of what the task is at the moment, and what actions to take to achieve the ultimate goal. Only in this way can the unfamiliar interviewers quickly enter the situation and know who you are and what abilities you have. Most importantly, while incorporating STAR, you want to let your interviewers know that you have these skills they really need!

Begin with the end in mind: This is the core concept of CTPS. I think it will be very helpful for me if I can treat people or work with the end in mind. During the application process, I have to keep thinking about why this interviewer wants to admit me? What is the position of this interviewer, and how should I answer the best answer? What abilities does this company need from me? After thinking about the ultimate goal, At the beginning of setting how to write or describe your own experience and resume, you can hit the heart.

(2) The second stage of the interview: face the interviewer with a positive attitude!

This stage will take 50% of the first stage, in order to be a full-time student who can do the project in the final revision class. Show that you are willing to cooperate, like to meet students in different fields, and willing to accept all challenges; show an optimistic and positive attitude, I believe the interviewer will like you very much!

(3) Interview application results: The acceptance rate is extremely low!

CTPS seems to be getting stronger and stronger. Every year, the number of applicants continues to break through, and the acceptance rate is getting lower and lower. There are also many social people who are already in a good position in the industry to apply. I am very lucky to be admitted to the main course and have the opportunity to do a project!!

2–1. CTPS Course: Next, I will introduce what exactly CTPS is used for? How to use it in the project? I will talk about the things in the course next, and illustrate it with my actual project case.

(1) What is CTPS learning? A six-step methodology for solving unfamiliar problems

CTPS, CRITICAL THINKING & PROBLEM SOLVING, Chinese is the theory and practice of problem solving. To put it simply, management consulting companies usually have their own set of problem-solving methodology, which may have many steps or a few steps, and the relatively famous one is McKinsey's 7 steps to solve problems! Mr. Sherman put him in McKinsey's After waiting, and the results of subsequent work, the six-step methodology of CTPS has been completed, and it is more focused on verifying the effectiveness and efficiency and whether the action plan can be actually implemented.

Our four-month-long courses and projects this semester revolve around the progress of these six steps.

(2) Course application of CTPS: In fact, cooperate with the owner to carry out the project, and the goal is to propose a practical and effective action plan within four months!

There are 48 full-time students, and they are divided into groups of six and eight groups. Each group will have its own owner's project. The hard-working teaching assistants contacted various companies last semester and finally connected the line. The six members of the group are completely composed of different departments, four women and two men, including chemical engineering (me), finance, business management, industrial management, economics, and life biography. Our project is to help the short-term space rental company of the small tree house to expand their management space.

2–2–1 . CTPS Step 1: Define the problem: At the beginning of the project, collect important information about the owner’s company, and conduct owner interviews with the questions raised by the owner to gain a deeper understanding of the owner’s needs, preferences and limitations

Before starting the project, you must first understand what the goal of this project is, so that you can keep thinking from the perspective of the end as the beginning, and whether what you are doing now is ON TRACK! After understanding the goal of the project, start Define the problem. Defining the problem is usually divided into two steps, the first is to collect the FACTPACK related to the problem; the second is to use the prepared FACTPACK in the first owner interview to further understand the owner's preferences and limitations. The third step, based on the above data collection, establish a question form belonging to the project,

(1) Make FACTPACK: Collect background knowledge about the project

The first step, in CTPS, we will first collect the background knowledge of the owner company, understand the context of the entire industry, and think about the problems that the entire industry may face from the perspective of the owner. Taking the tree house as an example, we need to collect the background and related knowledge of the space rental industry.

(2) Conduct owner interviews: seize the first opportunity to build mutual trust with owners!

The second step is to prepare the owner interview outline and ask questions related to the project during the owner interview. The first interview with the owner is very important! This is the first opportunity to establish a good relationship with the owner. If you can prepare properly and think about the problem very thoughtfully, you can digest the problem as soon as the owner responds, and When inquiring more deeply, the owner will think that you are a very professional task force. When the owner can win the trust of the team, this is undoubtedly the greatest help in the entire project process.

(3) According to the above two points, establish a question form, the more carefully written, the better

In the third step, when creating a problem form, the content usually includes: project objectives, project background, decision makers and stakeholders, owner's program preferences and limitations, and so on. When writing a good question form, the most important thing is to determine the goals of the project, because all actions are based on completing the goals. Through the owner interview, we can clearly understand the owner's preferences, and we can try our best to avoid unnecessary actions. In the end, the owner does not accept it at all.

2–2–2 . CTPS Step 2: Ideation & Screening Ideas: The core concept of solving problems in CTPS is not to find the root cause of unfamiliar problems, but to directly seek solutions and verify the effects and benefits of the solutions , landing

(1) The purpose of the idea: There are too many root causes of unfamiliar problems, and it is impossible to catch them one by one and find the right remedy. It is effective to directly think about how to effectively solve the problem.

(2) Idea: The deduction tree is a combination of MECE and action ideas.

After defining the problem, we establish the goals that need to be achieved. And as soon as we have goals, we start to think, which IDEAs can effectively help us achieve our goals? At this point, when the group starts to think about IDEA, there are usually a lot of messy ideas, but there is no system and no logic. Therefore, using the deduction tree, the possibility of solving the goal can be divided into many levels through the method of MECE. The layers are logical, and the possible solutions are slowly arranged from large to small, and the last few layers will be output. possible ideas.

What is MECE? MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE AND COLLECTIVELY EXHAUSTIVE, Chinese means independent and completely exhausted. Examining your deduction tree with MECE, you can confirm that the branches at each level do not overlap each other, and that all possibilities add up to meet the overall goal.

For example, our group's project is to help the tree house expand its management space. We divide it according to the process of space management, which can be divided into: 1. To increase the number of management pings, we need to increase the number of venue owners involved. 2. After increasing the number of venue owners, we also need to increase the proportion of applications; 3. To increase the number of applications After the ratio, it is necessary to increase the final signing success rate to be considered a real conversion success. These three steps are set step by step according to the main process of joining, which conforms to the multiplication in MECE, and will not miss other possibilities. This is how the deduction tree develops layer by layer. At the fourth or fifth layer at the end, the solution usually comes out after the separation is fine enough.

(3) Screening ideas: pruning the deduction tree, fast screening and slow selection

The main purpose of screening ideas is to quickly select ideas with high opportunities from a large number of ideas from the deduction tree, and to analyze the effect and benefit of these ideas in the future, so as to avoid wasting too much time on indirect ideas. The four major indicators for screening ideas are mainly the four indicators that will be used for effect benefit analysis and landing conditions for ideas in the future. Here, we use preliminary screening to delete obvious impossible ideas. Although it seems that you can reject it when you build the deduction tree, why not do it? Because when building a deduction tree is to let everyone brainstorm, you should not reject any idea, even if it is a very imaginative idea, maybe Great idea to extend!

(4) Special case

In the screening process, it is divided into the first screening of the team and the second screening of the owner. Usually, the second screening of the owner will eliminate a lot of ideas, because the owner may delete some difficult ideas due to the company's human resources and resources. But the point is to be very clear about the reason why the company deleted the idea!! Sometimes they just don't want to spend too much cost, but sometimes the owner may only consider the cost without thinking about it. If it brings great benefits, is it these costs? In fact, it is worth spending? I think this is where the team can create an impact. In the future, collect evidence or information to prove that the owner's consideration is wrong, and the owner will view you differently from now on!

2–2–3 . CTPS Step 3: Prove Effect: Effect is defined as whether the goal we want to do can be most directly achieved using this action plan.

To verify whether the action plan is effective, most of it can be conducted through the dialogue with the owner, so that the owner can intuitively screen out the ideas that have the opportunity. In effective screening, it should be a little more forgiving. After passing the effective screening stage, a benefit analysis needs to be performed, and action plans that are effective but not very beneficial can be quickly deleted.

2–2–4 . CTPS Step 4: Prove the Benefit: This should be the trickiest part of the CTPS Step 6. To convince a business owner to use your course of action, money must be the most important thing a company cares about. Whether the input cost can be exchanged for corresponding enough REWARD, and it must be proved that this value can indeed be created for the company in the future to convince and accept the owner.

(1) Demonstration of benefits: comparison of cost and recovery benefits, ROI is a commonly used criterion

How to tell a good story, and this good story is supported by solid economic data, this action plan is an important factor in determining the success of this project for the company, willing to invest the cost in the upfront in exchange for the future reward. The standard used to measure whether it is beneficial is usually determined by ROI. ROI represents that the capital invested in the early stage of this action plan is the denominator, and its future convertible benefits are the numerator. ROI needs to be greater than 1 to be considered beneficial. However, in fact, it is not necessary to use ROI to convince the owner. As long as the owner can clearly express and convince the owner, the investment cost is relatively low but there is a chance to get a good remuneration, or the investment cost is high but the guarantee is high. I believe the owner is very good. chance to be persuaded.

(2) Prove the benefits: A/B TEST or DOE TEST is required to compare the most effective action plans. (Benefits are not so easy to calculate and prove!)

Taking this group's project as an example, we propose to optimize the official website's joining form (to match the owner's preference for high-quality venue owners), and carry out FB placement of keyword advertisements to attract venue owners to fill in the form. The cost to be calculated at this time is that FB needs to be placed How much advertising can attract the most people to fill in the order. When calculating the recycling benefits, it is necessary to calculate the conversion rate of these venue owners based on the results of recycling, and how much benefit it can bring to the company in the end. Sometimes the data is very difficult to quantify, and even the Fermi method can only be used to estimate the possible benefits!

2–2–5 . CTPS Step 5: Landing Analysis: To verify the benefits and convince the owner, the last thing is to consider the problem of landing. Landing is the most critical part of the entire action plan, because there will be real benefits to come back, and nothing needs to be discussed before that!

Therefore, before considering whether the action plan is effective, we must also attach great importance to its implementation! The effectiveness and implementation should be considered at the same time, and neither is indispensable. If it is easy to land, I believe it is also an important factor to convince the owner, and it is easier to be accepted. For example, the group's proposal to use the joining form with advertisements to attract venue owners to fill in the form is relatively low-cost and easy to implement for the owners, which can persuade the owners to adopt it in terms of landing conditions!

2–2–6 . CTPS Step 6: Convince the Owner: In CTPS, use the story line of the pyramid to make a brief, so that the entire brief can clearly express the goal from top to bottom, and it is very logical to explain the use of What action plan to solve, and explain the effect, benefit, and implementation.

In CTPS, I learned a very important ability: presentation skills. For almost the last month at the end of the semester, the group was thinking about how to present the presentation better. Interestingly, the presentation of the consultative briefing was completely different from the briefings that had been done in the polytechnics in the past. The point of a consultative briefing is to lay out the story line you want to tell before making a report: clearly state the goals, background, solutions, the effects, benefits and implementation that you can bring to the owner, and what you can do for the owner. A place to add value. The most important thing is that everything should be based on the principle of having the greatest impact on the owner and bringing the most INSIGHT. So review this course of action with the end in mind at all times. That's why we can spend a whole month working on an entire brief. When building a storyline, think about how to convince the owner whether these materials and arguments will have the greatest impact. Once it is slightly bad, it will be cut off and rewritten. This kind of practice has allowed me to make great progress in the logic of making briefings and reporting on stage.

3. CTPS influences on me: (1) Principles of thinking about things: impact, start with the end in mind, empathy (2) Communication and teamwork (3) Presentation skills (4) Growth mindset

I think the above picture sums up everything I learned at CTPS.

(1) The principle of thinking about things: impact, start with the end, and think in a different position

This should apply throughout life! Not just management consultants. When you're trying to convince someone to accept something, the most important thing is to create shock. Let this person find something you never thought about and surprise you: how can you think so! Therefore, while creating an impact, we need a lot of data and data to support our views, and when collecting these data, we can I need to start with the end in mind to see if what I'm doing is in line with what I want to achieve. The final empathy is to think about things from the perspective of different people. When the person you want to persuade is the owner, of course, you have to look at the whole situation from the perspective of the boss and think about whether this change is beneficial to the company. When the person being persuaded finds out that you are on the same level as him or even taller than him, this is the best time to persuade.

I think starting with the end in mind also applies to setting goals in life. If you think about what you want to be and what you want to be in the next few decades, you will be better able to know what you should do now, what job you should find and what to do, and you will not feel that life seems meaningless.

(2) Communication and teamwork

In the CTPS course, I dealt with all the human beings (mostly from the business school) from different departments, and most of them are completely different from my life circle. I really enjoyed the feeling of an agile team working during this period. A very important part is that when the team members meet for the first time, everyone opens up their hearts and expresses their preferred work style and work style; they also express their liking for the appearance of the team members and their minefields. I think this kind of communication is very helpful for everyone to get into the situation as soon as they start working together, which reduces a lot of the break-in period. The most important thing is that a good team needs to speak directly and be able to jump out to support when a member is temporarily busy, so that everyone supports and helps each other, which can promote the harmony of the team.

In terms of communication, I also discussed under different heads of different departments. I feel that I am getting more and more smooth, and I am very happy to accept the advice of the team members. I have also practiced the logic of speaking and the ability to express clearly in many owners' meetings and teacher meetings, and of course I can make more progress!

(3) Briefing ability

In the CTPS course, I played the role of on-stage presentations and chairing the owners' meeting for many times, so in fact, there were many opportunities to present the group results generously to the audience, and to be able to compete with the owners on a straight ball and hope to be in the owner's meeting. Continue to create opportunities for impact and INSIGHT. The source of achievement in CTPS is that when we find a cool INSIGHT and present it to the owners, they will give an expression of admiration and let them have an updated idea of the whole action plan.

It is also very useful to understand how to use the pyramid consultative briefing. I feel that after learning the pyramid consultative briefing, when I go back to the previous reports, I will feel why it is so unstructured XD.

(4) Growth mindset

During the learning process of CTPS, I also felt the growth mindset that the teacher constantly conveyed to us. For example, in the face of various challenges, we should actively face them, and continue to work hard to find opportunities for answers. Through continuous efforts to improve one's ability, talent is not always fixed. The teacher also told us that when looking for a job in the future, we should look for a job that can give us more choices when looking for the next job, instead of choosing a high-paying job. I think CTPS has made me more sure that I am a person who is willing to accept challenges and novel things, and I will continue to use a growth mindset to face anything and everyone in the future (I hope I can do it hahaha and work hard). Finally, I would like to thank the teachers, teaching assistants, team members and classmates. It is only with the participation of everyone that this great course has been created. I look forward to continuing to help more people in the future!