Unit 6 Assignment:
Scenario:
You are on the mayor’s civic team to consider a community problem. This town of 3,000 people has recently seen a large upswing in population. As the community has grown so has the need for affordable housing for lower income groups, especially since many employees at the plants from the next town away tend to come over to Hitton to live as the town has a good K-12 school. The mayor has convened a group of civic-minded citizens to consider his plan for affordable housing in the form of multiple family dwellings and provides a map concerning the proposed location. The town council has already approved the housing. Your civic team gets together to consider what to do.
The five (5) person team begins:
Ronny: What does the mayor mean by lower income groups anyway? I don’t want any unemployed homeless people hanging around my neighborhood! Are we talking subsidized housing? I don’t want to pay for someone else’s home!
Natalie: Well, I think he wants us to look at housing for retail and physical labor workers as these folks just can’t find any affordable housing these days around here. Somebody who makes $20,000–$30,000 per year cannot afford the $250,000 homes and up that exist in this community. The nearest community with affordable housing is 45 minutes away which is costly in terms of gas, never mind the time commuting.
Carolynn: Exactly Natalie! We need to provide some kind of apartments and small single family housing.
Bart: Well, I don’t know about the location either. I think we need someone to lead the discussion, and I nominate you! (i.e., pointing to you).
You: Well, how does everyone feel about that idea?
Ronny, Natalie, and Carolynn agree that you should lead the discussion.
You: I think we will first need to define the problem here.
Checklist: Based on the scenario, you will go through the steps you might have used to successfully lead the discussion of the citizen’s group above.
- View the town map.
- Define the problem (see problem-solving steps from the Reading) and diagram it using a cause-and-effect diagram(Lumsden et al., 2010, p.188).
In Chapter 7, we developed guidelines for logical cause-and-effect reasoning, and these principles must be applied to problem analysis.
A visual way to track multiple causes and effects is the fishbone diagram (Levinson, 2006). As with the flowchart, the process of constructing a fishbone diagram is almost as helpful to the team as the finished product, because the process helps members think and see relationships among ideas. It’s a good idea to do this together on a flip chart or large board, with all members contributing.
To construct a fishbone diagram, draw a long line—vertical or horizontal— that represents the problem on which you’re working. Then draw diagonals into that line, and label them with the issues relating to the problem. Working in an industrial setting, Ishikawa proposed that all problem analyses have at least four main “bones” to the “fish”—people, machines, materials, and methods. Thus, your college registration fish-bone might have students, departments, resources, and procedures. From the diagonals you then draw shorter lines parallel to the “problem” line, which you label with subordinate issues that affect the larger problems. The fishbone diagram in Figure 8.3 (page 188) maps the causes and effects your task force might find to be associated with the college registration problem.
FIGURE 8.3 |
Fishbone diagram used to analyze a problem of insufficient class availability at college registration
- Use a form of brainwriting to discover some solutions (Thompson, 2014) based on the Discussion and the town map above. Leave your ideas for a while and then come back later and modify or add other ideas on another card or piece of paper. (Provide the brainwriting for 1–2 solutions.)
- Provide the best solution in some detail.
- Provide an informal outline of an implementation plan to pursue the solution proposed to the Mayor.
Access the Assignment rubric.
Provide a 10-slide PowerPoint presentation with your response to the checklist items including an additional title and reference slide. Use 4–5 bulleted points per slide and up to 10 words per bulleted point. Place any additional notes in the notes section below each slide.
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