SPPA - HOW to perform the method
The first step is made individually, which is of utterly importance in order to avoid biases and other phenomena that hamper our judgement. The individual persons are a cross-section of the whole organization, which gives a good representation from different levels of the organization, and therefore a variety of organizational problems. All problems are examined in order to remove duplicates. The individually found problems can be sent in advance to the facilitator or work shop leader, to save time on the coming work shop.
At the work shop, the individuals that have reported the problems they have seen, are represented. In this second step of SPPA, all the problems found within the organization are presented, and the actual work with connecting all the problems to a big network is started. This is done by starting to ask WHY on the problems, to understand which problems that are causes to other problems.
The third step, also at the work shop, means to connect this network of organizational problems down to the organizational root causes. But, in order to start this step, the work shop participants need to understand the science behind (which also need to be explained to the whole organization at later presentations), i.e., the organizational principles. This means also to explain that the organizational root causes always are unfulfilled science, i.e., that our organizational principles are not fulfilled. This step is the last step of SPPA, and when coming into finding a solution that eliminates the organizational problems, this is where SOSD starts.
It is of course important to continually inform the whole organization about the progress, both the HOW and the WHY. This is preferably made in continual presentations, by colleagues being part of the work shop, but also presentations for bigger parts, or even the whole organization.
Remember that SPPA is a proactive method, and due to its simplicity and little time needed, it can be done continually. By involving the whole organization, it finds problems on all levels within the organization, and by that also finds all the organizational root causes, which means that it is a truly systemic method. The fast feedback gives us the opportunity to change our way of working before it leads to incidents, or before problems are spreading across the organization.
Implications of understanding SPPA
For example; that all the problems the top management sees, are connected to the problems that the organization sees, and that all of them originate from the same root causes. That means that the whole organization need to be involved, both regarding to find the problems and the root causes, and to be able to understand the needed solution, and how that will have impact on the people in the organization. Briefly this means that it is a very bad idea if the top management themselves decides a new strategy, leading to organizational changes or a new method that the organization shall transform to. This in turn implies that we need to twist a great deal on the methods for change management that we have today, since they are agnostic to what we are transforming to. Instead, they need to be integrated in this problem-finding/solving work; to look for the problems, find their root causes, and then the solution of the root causes, even if the change management competence itself of course still is needed.