I used to work with a very smart guy who had a talent for distilling complicated problems. A framework he often used was: What would you have to believe? (At this point he would stride purposefully towards a whiteboard, pen in hand).
It is pretty flexible, and works forwards and backwards (understanding the past, trying to anticipate the future).
I have often come back to it, so much so that a) I did that terrible business thing of making it an acronym (WWYHTB) and b) I forgot that it was not a widely known acronym, and used it somewhere other than my notebook scribblings. Needless to say I was met with confusion; there is something slightly embarrassing about explaining a string of random letters you just made up, as if the reader should have naturally inferred its meaning.
So I suppose I would like to future-proof myself against a similar mistake by documenting it here on the internet. WWYHTB for this to catch on?
AZF 