Somewhere in the Fontainbleau forest in France lurks the “Le Toit du Cul de Chien”, a distinctive rock shaped like a dog. Its steepness and roof angle make it a classic to climb. The horizontal roof is the key. Situated about 20 feet off the ground, it requires the climber to be upside down to navigate along with precise movements that are physically demanding. Translated as The Roof of the Dog’s Ass, it is a staple of the bouldering scene.

I first encountered The Roof of the Dog’s Ass when I read Richard Rumelt’s book The Crux. In it, Rumelt makes a powerful case for centering strategy on the crux of the matter; focusing on the key issues at hand that are addressable and where you can make progress. This line of thinking is similar to how Lawrence Freedman described strategy in his book, Strategy: A History. Freedman suggests strategy is best started by focusing on the problem at hand rather than the end state. While there are some cases where working backwards from an end state to the present is possible, navigating from one position to the next is more common, where position is simply your current state of affairs. In the case of the Dog’s Ass, there are a couple of pathways forward, the choice of which is dependent on many factors: the skill of the climber, the equipment used, and the weather.

This pattern of looking for a way to enter into a problem is seen beyond just strategy. In Sudoku, there is the concept of the break-in, which is the initial set of insights, patterns, and constraints that enable one to make progress in solving the puzzle. In chess, evaluating one’s position is just part of the routine, for it is there that future candidate moves suggest themselves. Professional poker players use the concept of hand ranges when playing an opponent. They combine what they know about the player with a range of hands they could have and use that as the starting point.

In all of these cases, you start with the problem at hand and use the information you have in seeking an angle into the problem. You are answering the question of how to get started by decomposing the problem into smaller pieces, a process called chunking. We’ve encountered chunking before when we talked about how the brain stores information into small pieces called chunks, which are then combined to form larger chunks called models. Chunking here is the reverse process. You start with a model of the problem and then break it down into its chunks. In chess for example, you may start with evaluating king safety, the squares you control, your current piece placement, and then pawn structure. By breaking the game down in this fashion, you are able to take what seems like a complicated board and analyze the parts. Once done, you then can reassemble the chunks into an overall evaluation to find the best move. In business, this analysis is often conducted using a SWOT chart outlining Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. It’s all about assessing your current position in a way that allows you to make progress.

A great framework to use is called SCQA, developed by Barbara Minto. We’ve encountered here before. Author of The Pyramid Principle, Minto, while working at the management consulting firm McKinsey, developed the SCQA as part of the book, explaining logic in thinking and writing, creating consistency in work products. SCQA stands for Situation, Complication, Question, and Answer. It provides a useful acronym for positioning yourself in the process.

Situation represent the current state of affairs that are relevant to the problem at hand. It’s the beginning point. In my experience, situations need to have two characteristics. First, they have to be clear. This is not a place for ambiguity. Situations have to be explicitly and precisely defined. Second, the Situation must be the truth. It cannot be a statement of how you would like things to be or how you think they are, it has to be stone cold reality, or as Robert Greene calls it, intense realism. Defining the Situation is a job for System 2, the rational mind. If System 1, our intuitive emotional mind gets involved, we interject our biases into it. System 1 can be used as a guide to make sure the Situation is defined.

Lurking around the Situation is the Complication. The Complication refers to the problem at hand. It is what has caused the Situation to become unstable. This is the Roof of the Dog’s Ass. It is the crux of the matter, the problem at hand. The Complication raises the Question of what to do about the problem which is resolved with the Answer. Essentially you have the context, problem, question, and solution outlined in stepwise fashion. You must start with the Situation in order to understand the Complication. Only then can you properly frame the Question in order to generate the Answer you are seeking.

We can use Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a highly relevant example. If I own a firm delivering business services, the Complication is the rise of AI. The Question is how will AI affect the services I deliver? The question is a deep one because AI could totally revamp how you create and deliver your products. The Answer will direct your investment in AI products, services, and training for the foreseeable future. The starting point is the Situation. Competitively how do I stack up against other companies? How do I create and deliver the services I sell? How do I price them? All of these aspects will likely be affected in the next few years.

Using the SCQA framework provides 2 main benefits in your thinking. First, it gives you a framework to organize your thinking to ensure it is comprehensive. And second, it forces the engagement of System 2. You can use System 1 as a guide (I feel AI will drastically impact how I deliver products, etc.) to guide and prioritize your thinking, however the entire framework is a guide for analysis, the domain of System 2.

To recap, the SCQA provides a handy little framework to organize your thinking. The critical step is in identifying the “Le Toit du Cul de Chien”, the crux of the matter. It is how to get started thinking about the problem at hand and chunking it up into manageable pieces. It is the starting point for your search for the break-in to where you can start making progress. Identifying that point is literally half the battle.