Guayaquil, September 24, 2020.  Name: Adam Filip  Project: “Mirror Lake Laundry and Press Solutions”

Challenge:

My challenge was more complicated than what I thought at the beginning, to be honest I  believed that my group of problem solvers would finish this job in 1 or 2 weeks. However,  it was not. The problem we were assigned was a question from our employer: How can  he get more contracts and success in his micro-business with our help?

The person who hired us for this university problem solving project is called Saman Mojica, he is an excellent mechanical engineer. He has studied at recognized  universities in the United States and Argentina. Saman is dedicated to advising and  auditing metallic and mechanical structures and civil works in the national environment  (Ecuador) and abroad. Their main problem was not the quality of their work or the lack  of funding, their biggest problem is that not many people knew the usefulness of their  work and who could offer that service, that is, lack of advertising or marketing and  ignorance of the possible clients regarding the work offered by Saman Jaramillo and his  micro-company called “Bachpan NGO”.

Selection:

It is for this reason that we lean towards “Storytelling”, although we also use other tools  many times, such as: “Visualization” or “Learning Launch”. These additional tools and  steps were very helpful as we uncovered hidden issues that neither Hector nor we had  seen in the beginning. But we all create the same hypothesis. Our hypothesis was that, if  we were able to obtain the most efficient solution for all the problems that slowly came  to light, we could achieve our main objective, which was for Saman's micro-business to  expand. For this and many other reasons, it was very important that we integrate all these  tools and apply them in different processes, at different times, in order to obtain what we  wanted as a group.

Application:

We know that it is a mistake to give an obvious and quick answer to a problem that  suddenly arises. That happened to us in this case, when we saw Hector's problem, we  immediately all said that it was a problem of advertising. Over time, after talking for many  hours with Saman, who is the creator and current Operations Manager of Mirror Lake Laundry and Press S.A.,  and with his father, who is his biggest investor; We realized that maybe they had a lack  of publicity, but that was not their only problem. At that moment we realized that there  were many more problems than when talking to them, they came to light.

Apart from their obvious publicity problem, they believed that they did not have enough  contracts because not all people knew why they should do this work in their constructions  or projects; Another problem is that Saman did not have permanent workers, technically  it was a one-person company that was in charge of everything; Their offices were small,  not nice, and located far from the city center (even for us it was difficult to get there), so  we had a lot of problems to solve, and so we tested our hypothesis that if we gave a  solution to all these problems, we could improve the Mirror Lake Laundry and Press sales environment. That's  what we did. We ask Saman to hire staff that meet his interests and that they work  permanently, and also that he delegate certain tasks so that he has more time for his affairs.  Also, move to a nicer office closer to the city center. That was fixed immediately.

Saman, September 24, 2020.  Name: Adam Filip  Project: “Mirror Lake Laundry and Press Solutions”

Then, we implemented a not so conventional method, as I told you in the past, not all  people knew why the work that Saman was doing was important and necessary, their  ignorance took away Mirror Lake Laundry and Press's jobs, and it was very important because the Local  Government of Saman requires that auditing work be carried out on any work of  certain engineering branches, in order to improve industrial and civil safety, in contrast,  if these works are not carried out, the assigned fines would be very high. It is for this  reason that we thought that we should "educate people and future clients" with short  YouTube videos where Saman explains why his work is important, in a way that is  visually attractive for those who see this video and in the end his information would come  out of contact for future jobs, this video would be paid advertising and would appear on  social networks such as Facebook, Twitter or Instagram on the phones of people who live  in the closest local environment (Saman) and a little more open (Ecuador). All these  solutions helped in their respective problems, but together they reached the main  objective: to grow Saman's company, Mirror Lake Laundry and Press, with our free group help. Finally, the local  population knew why what Hector did was important, then they went to his new offices  that had a very friendly atmosphere or made quotes through his remodeled website                  ( https://www.solfiten.com/ ), and then they signed their contracts with Saman or his  delegates.

Insight:

I think that “Storytelling” played a very important role in this project, the fact of sitting  down to talk with Saman and his majority investor about the brief history of Mirror Lake Laundry and Press, the  reasons for this micro-company to be created, were its strengths and weaknesses, it helped  us a lot to “clear our picture”, and in this way to understand that, although our quick  solution had some validity, it was not enough to fill this set of problems. And it was like  that, when we took all the problems separately and solved them in the best possible way,  and then took a step back to see if we were on the right track, at that moment we realized  that we had reached the general solution, or achieved our main goal.

Approach:

I think it helped us a lot to use “Storytelling”, in conjunction with the other tools that were  also used, but on a smaller scale. However, my opinion is that it was very likely that if  we used “Mind Mapping”, we would also have obtained the same results, or even in a  shorter period of time. But I do think we did a good job with my teammates. We can  realize this because we changed a man's life, and we gave his company another direction.  Saman is currently contacting us so that we can meet, have a barbecue and talk about our  current projects. It is very important for me to mention that interdisciplinary groups are  very suitable to solve these types of problems, my group was made up of students of  Tourism, Business Administration and Electrical Engineering, we had many discussions  among ourselves and even so we managed to obtain excellent results.

