Thinking & Problem Solving Skills
Today's dynamic business world demands that you make decisions that significantly boost productivity and drive competitive advantage. But how do you know whether a decision will benefit the organization? And how do you know that the decisions are based on rational and statistical reasoning? Explore how to become a dynamic problem solver with the skills to make accurate decisions.
Definitions of Problem Solving
Problem-solving is a set of activities designed to analyze a situation systematically and generate, implement, and evaluate solutions.
Problem Solving is the seeking of solutions to problems that arise in an organization.
A problem is an intricate unsettled question: a source of perplexity, distress, or vexation. The problem-solving process leads to the formulation of decisions intended to resolve the recognized problems.
The problem refers to the existence of a gap between where a person is and where one would like to be. The thought process involved in a person's effort to remove obstacles in the way to achieve the goal state is called problem-solving.
Problem-solving begins with a certain original state called the initial state of a problem. Problem-solving behavior begins with an obstacle or difference between the original or initial state and goal or end state. The goal is desired by the operator in the situation and has some properties defined by the operator to convert the problem state into the goal state.
Benefits of Effective Problem-Solving Skills
- Ability to make decisions more rationally and wisely
- Avoid making wrong decisions
- Avoid a variety of irrational ideas, false assumptions, and other emotions
Approaches to Problem Solving
What are the principles of sound decision making and different decision-making styles? How do you measure the return-on-investment of your decisions? How to make decisions with business partners who might not see the world the same way you do?
There are many approaches to problem-solving, depending on the nature of the problem and the people involved in the problem.
Rational Approach
The rational approach involves clarifying, giving a description of the problem, analyzing causes, identifying alternatives, assessing each alternative, choosing one, implementing it, and evaluating whether the problem was solved or not.
Appreciative Inquiry
This approach asserts that "problems" are often the result of our own perspectives or a phenomenon. For example, if we look at a particular situation as a "problem," then it will become one and we'll probably get very stuck with the "problem". The appreciative inquiry includes identification of our best times about the situation in the past, wishing and thinking about what worked best then, envisioning what we want in the future, and building from our strengths to work toward our vision.
Steps in Problem Solving
In an organizational context, one should adopt rational and creative approaches to problem-solving. Using a problem-solving approach and tools you can achieve the right mindset for problem-solving, can brainstorm alternatives, and analyze the problem using analogies, idea nets, and mind mapping and eventually visualize the best solution to your problem. Given below are generally accepted steps to problem-solving:
1. Identify the problem
Problem identification is undoubtedly the most important and the most difficult step in the process. All subsequent steps will be based on how you define and assess the problem at hand. A problem is a situation or condition of people or the organization that exists but members of the institution consider that undesirable.
2. Exploring the Alternatives
The second step in the problem-solving process is to explore alternative solutions to the problem identified in step 1. In this step one tries to generate and evaluate alternatives by doing brainstorming, taking surveys or facilitating discussions.
3. Selecting an Alternative
The third step in the problem-solving model is to select one of the alternatives. After one has evaluated each alternative, one alternative needs to be selected that would come closest to solving the problem with the most pros and minimum cons.
4. Implementing the Solution
The fourth step involves developing an action plan and implementation by arranging funding, resources, timelines, and target objectives. Resources include people, information (data), and things. The plan should state who will do what and when. And finally, implement the action plan to put the decision in place.
5. Evaluating the Solution
Evaluation means to monitor the progress to establish if the situation has changed and the problem has been resolved. Evaluating the results to declare the success of the alternative deployed.
Related Links
You May Also Like
-
Communication is defined as the process of meaningful interaction between two or more persons with a view to arriving at a common meaning and understanding. There are different types of communication and these are used on different occasions. In this section on communication skills, Technofunc will equip you with the skills most needed in today’s dynamic, demanding workplace.
-
Participative leadership is one of the most effective styles and creates higher productivity, better contributions from group members, and increased group morale. The democratic leadership style consists of the leader sharing the decision-making abilities with group members by promoting the interests of the group members. Learn more about this leadership style and situations when it is effective.
-
Reasons behind Wastage of Time
Under-utilization of time may be due to the faulty system or faults of manager/officer/leader or due to lack of planning. There could be many factors driving the procrastination behavior like system issues, personal work habits, and lack of delegation, personality traits, and bad working habits of the leader, failure to tackle interpersonal conflicts, obstacles, and lack of far-sightedness.
-
Creating Highly Effective Teams
How do we create effective teams? What comes to mind when you think about an effective team? High performing teams exhibit accountability, purpose, cohesiveness, and collaboration. It is a team that works seamlessly as a whole. Everyone brings unique talents and strengths and support each other to bring out the best in everyone. How do you create one?
-
Building Perfect Creative Team
One misconception around creativity is that creative act is essentially solitary. Most of the world's important inventions resulted not from the work of one lone genius, but from collaboration of a team with complementary skills. Managers should build teams with the ideal mix of traits to form a creative group and then establish the conditions that make creativity much more likely to occur.
-
Tips for Effective Time Management
After studying and analyzing how time is spent, why time is wasted, and where time is wasted you need to decide about the changes required for effective utilization of time. For this purpose, a large number of remedial measures can be taken by you. The first and foremost determinant of a planned and purposeful utilization of time is to develop consciousness of the value of time at all levels of the organization. Planning, goal setting, and defining priorities are concerns to addressed immediately.
-
Generating Ideas using Brainstorming
The brainstorming technique was developed by Alex F. Osborn in 1957 and brainstorming means where a team of members generates a large amount of alternative fruitful ideas on a specific problem without any criticism and then evaluates each idea in terms of their pros and cons. Brainstorming techniques fall into four broad categories: visioning, exploring, modifying, and experimenting.
-
Concept & Definition of Stress
Stress is a popular expression used by people in day to day life. Pressures of day to day living sometimes necessitate coping or dealing with them and stretch the body beyond its natural capacity. They are called stressors. Stress is a natural, ongoing dynamic, and interactive process that takes place as people adjust to their environment.
-
Understanding Corporate Strategy
Management outlook and procedures have been revolutionized by more and more innovations over the recent years. It is no longer possible to follow traditional approaches to develop your organization's direction, its management as well its effectiveness. Senior managers need to be good decision-makers. In this section, we introduce concepts for strategy, strategic planning, strategic leadership, their exact meaning and associated terms, and how to use them.
-
All the teams are dynamic in nature and they take time to come together, they form, develop, and grow in stages, over a period of time. Teams go through five progressive stages: Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing and Adjourning. In this article, we want to introduce you to these stages of team development and certain strategies that you can use to help the team grow and develop in each of these stages.
