# HUMMBL Problem Patterns Guide
*Pre-defined patterns that map common problem types to recommended mental models*
---
## Overview
Problem Patterns are curated mappings between frequently encountered challenges and the most effective mental models to address them. Each pattern identifies:
- **Pattern Name**: The type of challenge
- **Recommended Transformations**: Which of the 6 core transformations apply
- **Top Models**: The 3 most effective mental models for this pattern
- **Example Scenarios**: Real-world situations where this pattern applies
These patterns provide **fast onboarding** for new users and **proven starting points** for experienced practitioners.
---
## The 6 Problem Patterns
### Pattern 1: Unclear Problem Definition
**Description**: The problem itself is ambiguous, poorly scoped, or symptoms are confused with root causes.
**Recommended Transformation**: **P (Perspective)**
Frame and name what is. Anchor or shift point of view.
**Top Models**:
- **P1 - First Principles Framing**: Reduce to foundational truths
- **P2 - Stakeholder Mapping**: Identify all affected parties
- **P4 - Lens Shifting**: Adopt different interpretive frameworks
**Example Scenarios**:
- "Our product isn't selling" (but unclear if it's pricing, positioning, features, or market)
- Stakeholders describe the same situation in completely different terms
- Team debates solutions before agreeing on the actual problem
- Symptoms (low engagement) confused with causes (poor onboarding)
**How to Apply**:
1. Start with **P1** to strip away assumptions and find foundational truths
2. Use **P2** to map who's involved and their different perspectives
3. Apply **P4** to view the problem through customer, competitor, and future lenses
4. Converge on a clear, shared problem statement before moving to solutions
**Success Indicators**:
- ✅ Problem statement is specific and testable
- ✅ All stakeholders agree on what's actually wrong
- ✅ Root causes distinguished from symptoms
- ✅ Constraints and scope are explicit
---
### Pattern 2: Stuck in Conventional Thinking
**Description**: Team, organization, or individual trapped in incremental thinking. Same ideas recycled. Innovation feels impossible.
**Recommended Transformation**: **IN (Inversion)**
Reverse assumptions. Examine opposites, edges, negations.
**Top Models**:
- **IN1 - Subtractive Thinking**: Remove elements instead of adding
- **IN2 - Premortem Analysis**: Assume failure, work backward
- **IN3 - Problem Reversal**: Solve the inverse problem
**Example Scenarios**:
- Product roadmap is just "more features" with no breakthrough thinking
- Strategy sessions produce predictable, safe ideas
- Team says "we've always done it this way" or "that's impossible here"
- Competitors are disrupting but internal thinking remains incremental
- Innovation workshops generate only minor tweaks to existing approaches
**How to Apply**:
1. Use **IN1** to identify what to remove or stop doing (subtraction often > addition)
2. Run **IN2** premortem: "It's 12 months from now and we failed spectacularly—what happened?"
3. Apply **IN3**: If the problem is "increase revenue," solve "how to minimize revenue" to reveal blind spots
4. Challenge every assumption: flip constraints, invert success criteria
**Success Indicators**:
- ✅ Team generates genuinely novel ideas
- ✅ Sacred cows are questioned
- ✅ "Impossible" ideas are explored seriously
- ✅ Simplification competes with addition
---
### Pattern 3: Need to Assemble Solution
**Description**: Solution requires combining multiple elements, disciplines, or approaches that don't naturally fit together.
**Recommended Transformation**: **CO (Composition)**
Combine elements to create emergent properties.
**Top Models**:
- **CO1 - Building Blocks & Lego Principle**: Combine reusable components
- **CO2 - Cross-Pollination**: Borrow ideas from other domains
- **CO4 - Synthesis & Integration**: Merge opposing or complementary elements
**Example Scenarios**:
- Building a product that needs AI + hardware + service components
- Creating a new business model from existing capabilities
- Bridging multiple departments (engineering + sales + support) for a solution
- Innovating by combining ideas from unrelated industries
- Assembling a team with diverse, non-overlapping skills
**How to Apply**:
1. Start with **CO1** to identify modular components that can be combined
2. Use **CO2** to look at how other industries solve similar problems
3. Apply **CO4** to synthesize seemingly incompatible elements (e.g., premium + accessible)
4. Iterate: combine, test for emergent properties, refine
**Success Indicators**:
- ✅ Solution is greater than sum of parts (emergent properties)
- ✅ Components remain modular and reusable
- ✅ Innovation comes from novel combinations, not just new invention
- ✅ Cross-domain insights are integrated
---
### Pattern 4: Complex System to Understand
**Description**: System is too complex to grasp as a whole. Overwhelmed by interactions, dependencies, and moving parts.
**Recommended Transformation**: **DE (Decomposition)**
Break down complexity into manageable components.
**Top Models**:
- **DE1 - Modular Decomposition**: Break into independent components
- **DE2 - Layered Architecture**: Organize into hierarchical strata
- **DE7 - Abstraction Hierarchies**: Hide complexity behind interfaces
**Example Scenarios**:
- Legacy codebase with no clear structure
- Enterprise organization with unclear responsibilities and overlapping roles
- Market with too many variables to model simultaneously
- Product with feature bloat that nobody understands end-to-end
- Process with so many steps that quality suffers
**How to Apply**:
1. Use **DE1** to identify natural boundaries and create modules
2. Apply **DE2** to organize into layers (infrastructure → services → interface)
3. Use **DE7** to create abstractions that hide lower-level complexity
4. Document interfaces between components clearly
5. Test each component in isolation before integration
**Success Indicators**:
- ✅ Components can be understood independently
- ✅ Changes in one area don't cascade unexpectedly
- ✅ New team members can contribute to specific areas quickly
- ✅ Complexity is managed, not eliminated (it's still there, but organized)
---
### Pattern 5: Feedback or Iteration Issues
**Description**: System doesn't respond well to changes, learning cycles are broken, or iterations aren't improving outcomes.
**Recommended Transformation**: **RE (Recursion)**
Apply patterns at multiple scales and iterations.
**Top Models**:
- **RE1 - Iterative Refinement**: Successive approximation toward target
- **RE2 - Recursive Application**: Apply same pattern at multiple scales
- **RE3 - Self-Similarity & Fractals**: Recognize repeating patterns
**Example Scenarios**:
- Product launches with no feedback mechanism to improve next version
- Organization makes decisions without learning from past outcomes
- Process improvement efforts don't compound over time
- Team keeps making the same mistakes (no learning loop)
- Scaling challenges: what worked at 10 people fails at 100
**How to Apply**:
1. Establish **RE1** tight feedback loops: measure → learn → adjust → repeat
2. Use **RE2** to apply successful patterns across scales (team → department → organization)
3. Identify **RE3** self-similar patterns to predict behavior at different scales
4. Create deliberate learning cycles with retrospectives
5. Build compounding improvements (each iteration informed by previous)
**Success Indicators**:
- ✅ Feedback cycles are fast and actionable
- ✅ Learning compounds over time
- ✅ Same patterns successfully applied at different scales
- ✅ Team explicitly reflects and adapts
---
### Pattern 6: Strategic or Coordination Challenge
**Description**: Multiple actors, incentives, or systems need to align. Game theory, ecosystem thinking, or meta-level analysis required.
**Recommended Transformation**: **SY (Meta-Systems)**
Understand rules, patterns, and systems governing systems.
**Top Models**:
- **SY1 - Feedback Loops & Causality**: Map reinforcing and balancing dynamics
- **SY2 - Incentive Design & Mechanism Design**: Align incentives with goals
- **SY19 - Ecosystem Thinking**: Model interdependent actors
**Example Scenarios**:
- Market with conflicting incentives (short-term vs long-term)
- Multi-sided platform struggling to balance different user types
- Partnership where incentives aren't aligned
- Organization where departments optimize locally but harm global outcomes
- Industry transformation requiring coordination across competitors
**How to Apply**:
1. Map **SY1** feedback loops: where do reinforcing/balancing cycles exist?
2. Use **SY2** to design incentives that align individual and system goals
3. Apply **SY19** to model the entire ecosystem and interdependencies
4. Identify leverage points where small changes cascade
5. Design coordination mechanisms (standards, protocols, shared metrics)
**Success Indicators**:
- ✅ Incentives are aligned across actors
- ✅ System-level outcomes improve (not just local optimization)
- ✅ Coordination mechanisms work at scale
- ✅ Unintended consequences are anticipated and mitigated
---
## Using Problem Patterns with the MCP Server
### Quick Pattern Lookup
```json
{
"tool": "search_problem_patterns",
"arguments": {
"query": "innovation"
}
}
```
Returns: Pattern 2 (Stuck in Conventional Thinking) with top models.
### Get Recommended Models
```json
{
"tool": "recommend_models",
"arguments": {
"problem": "Our team keeps repeating the same mistakes with no improvement"
}
}
```
Returns: Pattern 5 (Feedback or Iteration Issues) with RE transformation models.
---
## Pattern Selection Guide
**Not sure which pattern applies?** Ask these questions:
| Question | If YES → Pattern |
|----------|------------------|
| Do we even agree on what the problem is? | Pattern 1: Unclear Problem Definition |
| Are we stuck with the same old ideas? | Pattern 2: Stuck in Conventional Thinking |
| Do we need to combine multiple things? | Pattern 3: Need to Assemble Solution |
| Is the system too complex to understand? | Pattern 4: Complex System to Understand |
| Are we not learning/improving? | Pattern 5: Feedback or Iteration Issues |
| Do we need to coordinate multiple actors? | Pattern 6: Strategic or Coordination Challenge |
**Pro tip**: Most real problems touch multiple patterns. Start with the most acute one, then layer in others.
---
## Pattern Combinations
Common pattern sequences for complex challenges:
### Wicked Problems
1. **Pattern 1** (Unclear) → Define the problem
2. **Pattern 4** (Complex) → Break it down
3. **Pattern 2** (Conventional) → Generate novel approaches
4. **Pattern 3** (Assemble) → Combine into solution
### Organizational Transformation
1. **Pattern 4** (Complex) → Understand current state
2. **Pattern 6** (Strategic) → Align incentives
3. **Pattern 5** (Feedback) → Create learning loops
4. **Pattern 1** (Unclear) → Clarify vision repeatedly
### Product Innovation
1. **Pattern 2** (Conventional) → Break out of incrementalism
2. **Pattern 3** (Assemble) → Combine novel elements
3. **Pattern 5** (Feedback) → Iterate based on learning
4. **Pattern 6** (Strategic) → Design ecosystem fit
---
## Beyond the Patterns
These 6 patterns are **starting points**, not exhaustive. As you work with the HUMMBL Base120 framework:
- You'll discover your own common patterns
- Patterns will blur and overlap
- New patterns will emerge from experience
The goal is not rigid categorization—it's **faster pattern recognition** so you can apply the right mental models quickly.
---
## Contributing
Found a new pattern or want to improve these descriptions? See [CONTRIBUTING.md](../CONTRIBUTING.md) for how to submit feedback.
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*Problem patterns are validated against 22 months of framework development and 140 chaos tests. They represent common, repeatable starting points—not universal rules.*
