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10 Step Process for Effective Business Problem Solving

Posted august 3, 2021 by harriet genever.

When you start a small business or launch a startup, the one thing you can count on is the unexpected. No matter how thoroughly you plan, forecast , and test, problems are bound to arise. This is why as an entrepreneur, you need to know how to solve business problems effectively.

What is problem solving in business?

Problem solving in business relates to establishing processes that mitigate or remove obstacles currently preventing you from reaching strategic goals . These are typically complex issues that create a gap between actual results and your desired outcome. They may be present in a single team, operational process, or throughout your entire organization, typically without an immediate or obvious solution. 

To approach problem solving successfully, you need to establish consistent processes that help you evaluate, explore solutions, prioritize execution, and measure success. In many ways, it should be similar to how you review business performance through a monthly plan review . You work through the same documentation, look for gaps, dig deeper to identify the root cause, and hash out options. Without this process, you simply cannot expect to solve problems efficiently or effectively. 

Why problem solving is important for your business

While some would say problem-solving comes naturally, it’s actually a skill you can grow and refine over time. Problem solving skills will help you and your team tackle critical issues and conflicts as they arise. It starts from the top. You as the business owner or CEO needing to display the type of level-headed problem solving that you expect to see from your employees.

Doing so will help you and your staff quickly deal with issues, establish and refine a problem solving process, turn challenges into opportunities, and generally keep a level head. Now, the best business leaders didn’t just find a magic solution to solve their problems, they built processes and leveraged tools to find success. And you can do the same.

By following this 10-step process, you can develop your problem-solving skills and approach any issue that arises with confidence. 

1. Define the problem

When a problem arises, it can be very easy to jump right into creating a solution. However, if you don’t thoroughly examine what led to the problem in the first place, you may create a strategy that doesn’t actually solve it. You may just be treating the symptoms.

For instance, if you realize that your sales from new customers are dropping, your first inclination might be to rush into putting together a marketing plan to increase exposure. But what if decreasing sales are just a symptom of the real problem? 

When you define the problem, you want to be sure you’re not missing the forest for the trees. If you have a large issue on your hands, you’ll want to look at it from several different angles:

Competition 

Is a competitor’s promotion or pricing affecting your sales? Are there new entrants in your market? How are they marketing their product or business?

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Business model 

Is your business model sustainable? Is it realistic for how fast you want to grow? Should you explore different pricing or cost strategies?

Market factors

How are world events and the nation’s economy affecting your customers and your sales?

Are there any issues affecting your team? Do they have the tools and resources they need to succeed? 

Goal alignment 

Is everyone on your team working toward the same goal ? Have you communicated your short-term and long-term business goals clearly and often?

There are a lot of ways to approach the issue when you’re facing a serious business problem. The key is to make sure you’re getting a full snapshot of what’s going on so you don’t waste money and resources on band-aid solutions. 

Going back to our example, by looking at every facet of your business, you may discover that you’re spending more on advertising than your competitors already. And instead, there’s a communication gap within your team that’s leading to the mishandling of new customers and therefore lost sales. 

If you jumped into fixing the exposure of your brand, you would have been dumping more money into an area you’re already winning. Potentially leading to greater losses as more and more new customers are dropped due to poor internal communication.

This is why it’s so vital that you explore your blind spots and track the problem to its source.

2. Conduct a SWOT analysis

All good businesses solve some sort of problem for customers. What if your particular business problem is actually an opportunity, or even a strength if considered from a different angle? This is when you’d want to conduct a SWOT analysis to determine if that is in fact the case.

SWOT is a great tool for strategic planning and bringing multiple viewpoints to the table when you’re looking at investing resources to solve a problem. This may even be incorporated in your attempts to identify the source of your problem, as it can quickly outline specific strengths and weaknesses of your business. And then by identifying any potential opportunities or threats, you can utilize your findings to kickstart a solution. 

3. Identify multiple solutions with design thinking

As you approach solving your problem, you may want to consider using the design thinking approach . It’s often used by organizations looking to solve big, community-based problems. One of its strengths is that it requires involving a wide range of people in the problem-solving process. Which leads to multiple perspectives and solutions arising.

This approach—applying your company’s skills and expertise to a problem in the market—is the basis for design thinking.

It’s not about finding the most complex problems to solve, but about finding common needs within the organization and in the real world and coming up with solutions that fit those needs. When you’re solving business problems, this applies in the sense that you’re looking for solutions that address underlying issues—you’re looking at the big picture.

4. Conduct market research and customer outreach

Market research and customer outreach aren’t the sorts of things small business owners and startups can do once and then cross off the list. When you’re facing a roadblock, think back to the last time you did some solid market research or took a deep dive into understanding the competitive landscape .

Market research and the insights you get from customer outreach aren’t a silver bullet. Many companies struggle with what they should do with conflicting data points. But it’s worth struggling through and gathering information that can help you better understand your target market . Plus, your customers can be one of the best sources of criticism. It’s actually a gift if you can avoid taking the negatives personally .

The worst thing you can do when you’re facing challenges is isolating yourself from your customers and ignore your competition. So survey your customers. Put together a competitive matrix . 

5. Seek input from your team and your mentors

Don’t do your SWOT analysis or design thinking work by yourself. The freedom to express concerns, opinions, and ideas will allow people in an organization to speak up. Their feedback is going to help you move faster and more efficiently. If you have a team in place, bring them into the discussion. You hired them to be experts in their area; use their expertise to navigate and dig deeper into underlying causes of problems and potential solutions.

If you’re running your business solo, at least bring in a trusted mentor. SCORE offers a free business mentorship program if you don’t already have one. It can also be helpful to connect with a strategic business advisor , especially if business financials aren’t your strongest suit.

Quoting Stephen Covey, who said that “strength lies in differences, not in similarities,” speaking to the importance of diversity when it comes to problem-solving in business. The more diverse a team is , the more often innovative solutions to the problems faced by the organization appear.

In fact, it has been found that groups that show greater diversity were better at solving problems than groups made up specifically of highly skilled problem solvers. So whoever you bring in to help you problem-solve, resist the urge to surround yourself with people who already agree with you about everything.

6. Apply lean planning for nimble execution

So you do your SWOT analysis and your design thinking exercise. You come up with a set of strong, data-driven ideas. But implementing them requires you to adjust your budget, or your strategic plan, or even your understanding of your target market.

Are you willing to change course? Can you quickly make adjustments? Well in order to grow, you can’t be afraid to be nimble . 

By adopting the lean business planning method —the process of revising your business strategy regularly—you’ll be able to shift your strategies more fluidly. You don’t want to change course every week, and you don’t want to fall victim to shiny object thinking. But you can strike a balance that allows you to reduce your business’s risk while keeping your team heading in the right direction.

Along the way, you’ll make strategic decisions that don’t pan out the way you hoped. The best thing you can do is test your ideas and iterate often so you’re not wasting money and resources on things that don’t work. That’s Lean Planning .

7. Model different financial scenarios

When you’re trying to solve a serious business problem, one of the best things you can do is build a few different financial forecasts so you can model different scenarios. You might find that the idea that seemed the strongest will take longer than you thought to reverse a negative financial trend. At the very least you’ll have better insight into the financial impact of moving in a different direction.

The real benefit here is looking at different tactical approaches to the same problem. Maybe instead of increasing sales right now, you’re better off in the long run if you adopt a strategy to reduce churn and retain your best customers. You won’t know unless you model a few different scenarios. You can do this by using spreadsheets, and a tool like LivePlan can make it easier and quicker.

8. Watch your cash flow

While you’re working to solve a challenging business problem, pay particular attention to your cash flow and your cash flow forecast . Understanding when your company is at risk of running out of cash in the bank can help you be proactive. It’s a lot easier to get a line of credit while your financials still look good and healthy, than when you’re one pay period away from ruin.

If you’re dealing with a serious issue, it’s easy to start to get tunnel vision. You’ll benefit from maintaining a little breathing room for your business as you figure out what to do next.

9. Use a decision-making framework

Once you’ve gathered all the information you need, generated a number of ideas, and done some financial modeling, you might still feel uncertain. It’s natural—you’re not a fortune-teller. You’re trying to make the best decision you can with the information you have.

This article offers a really useful approach to making decisions. It starts with putting your options into a matrix like this one:

Use this sort of framework to put everything you’ve learned out on the table. If you’re working with a bigger team, this sort of exercise can also bring the rest of your team to the table so they feel some ownership over the outcome.

10. Identify key metrics to track

How will you know your problem is solved? And not just the symptom—how will you know when you’ve addressed the underlying issues? Before you dive into enacting the solution, make sure you know what success looks like.

Decide on a few key performance indicators . Take a baseline measurement, and set a goal and a timeframe. You’re essentially translating your solution into a plan, complete with milestones and goals. Without these, you’ve simply made a blind decision with no way to track success. You need those goals and milestones to make your plan real .

Problem solving skills to improve

As you and your team work through this process, it’s worth keeping in mind specific problem solving skills you should continue to develop. Bolstering your ability, as well as your team, to solve problems effectively will only make this process more useful and efficient. Here are a few key skills to work on.

Emotional intelligence

It can be very easy to make quick, emotional responses in a time of crisis or when discussing something you’re passionate about. To avoid making assumptions and letting your emotions get the best of you, you need to focus on empathizing with others. This involves understanding your own emotional state, reactions and listening carefully to the responses of your team. The more you’re able to listen carefully, the better you’ll be at asking for and taking advice that actually leads to effective problem solving.

Jumping right into a solution can immediately kill the possibility of solving your problem. Just like when you start a business , you need to do the research into what the problem you’re solving actually is. Luckily, you can embed research into your problem solving by holding active reviews of financial performance and team processes. Simply asking “What? Where? When? How?” can lead to more in-depth explorations of potential issues.

The best thing you can do to grow your research abilities is to encourage and practice curiosity. Look at every problem as an opportunity. Something that may be trouble now, but is worth exploring and finding the right solution. You’ll pick up best practices, useful tools and fine-tune your own research process the more you’re willing to explore.

Brainstorming

Creatively brainstorming with your team is somewhat of an art form. There needs to be a willingness to throw everything at the wall and act as if nothing is a bad idea at the start. This style of collaboration encourages participation without fear of rejection. It also helps outline potential solutions outside of your current scope, that you can refine and turn into realistic action.

Work on breaking down problems and try to give everyone in the room a voice. The more input you allow, the greater potential you have for finding the best solution.

Decisiveness

One thing that can drag out acting upon a potential solution, is being indecisive. If you aren’t willing to state when the final cutoff for deliberation is, you simply won’t take steps quickly enough. This is when having a process for problem solving comes in handy, as it purposefully outlines when you should start taking action.

Work on choosing decision-makers, identify necessary results and be prepared to analyze and adjust if necessary. You don’t have to get it right every time, but taking action at the right time, even if it fails, is almost more vital than never taking a step.  

Stemming off failure, you need to learn to be resilient. Again, no one gets it perfect every single time. There are so many factors in play to consider and sometimes even the most well-thought-out solution doesn’t stick. Instead of being down on yourself or your team, look to separate yourself from the problem and continue to think of it as a puzzle worth solving. Every failure is a learning opportunity and it only helps you further refine and eliminate issues in your strategy.

Problem solving is a process

The key to effective problem-solving in business is the ability to adapt. You can waste a lot of resources on staying the wrong course for too long. So make a plan to reduce your risk now. Think about what you’d do if you were faced with a problem large enough to sink your business. Be as proactive as you can.

Editor’s note: This article was originally published in 2016. It was updated in 2021.

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Harriet Genever

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Why Problem-Solving Skills Are Essential for Leaders in Any Industry

• 17 Jan 2023

Any organization offering a product or service is in the business of solving problems.

Whether providing medical care to address health issues or quick convenience to those hungry for dinner, a business’s purpose is to satisfy customer needs .

In addition to solving customers’ problems, you’ll undoubtedly encounter challenges within your organization as it evolves to meet customer needs. You’re likely to experience growing pains in the form of missed targets, unattained goals, and team disagreements.

Yet, the ubiquity of problems doesn’t have to be discouraging; with the right frameworks and tools, you can build the skills to solve consumers' and your organization’s most challenging issues.

Here’s a primer on problem-solving in business, why it’s important, the skills you need, and how to build them.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Problem-Solving in Business?

Problem-solving is the process of systematically removing barriers that prevent you or others from reaching goals.

Your business removes obstacles in customers’ lives through its products or services, just as you can remove obstacles that keep your team from achieving business goals.

Design Thinking

Design thinking , as described by Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar in the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , is a human-centered , solutions-based approach to problem-solving and innovation. Originally created for product design, design thinking’s use case has evolved . It’s now used to solve internal business problems, too.

The design thinking process has four stages :

• Clarify: Clarify a problem through research and feedback from those impacted.
• Ideate: Armed with new insights, generate as many solutions as possible.
• Develop: Combine and cull your ideas into a short list of viable, feasible, and desirable options before building prototypes (if making physical products) and creating a plan of action (if solving an intangible problem).
• Implement: Execute the strongest idea, ensuring clear communication with all stakeholders about its potential value and deliberate reasoning.

Using this framework, you can generate innovative ideas that wouldn’t have surfaced otherwise.

Creative Problem-Solving

Another, less structured approach to challenges is creative problem-solving , which employs a series of exercises to explore open-ended solutions and develop new perspectives. This is especially useful when a problem’s root cause has yet to be defined.

You can use creative problem-solving tools in design thinking’s “ideate” stage, which include:

• Brainstorming: Instruct everyone to develop as many ideas as possible in an allotted time frame without passing judgment.
• Divergent thinking exercises: Rather than arriving at the same conclusion (convergent thinking), instruct everyone to come up with a unique idea for a given prompt (divergent thinking). This type of exercise helps avoid the tendency to agree with others’ ideas without considering alternatives.
• Alternate worlds: Ask your team to consider how various personas would manage the problem. For instance, how would a pilot approach it? What about a young child? What about a seasoned engineer?

It can be tempting to fall back on how problems have been solved before, especially if they worked well. However, if you’re striving for innovation, relying on existing systems can stunt your company’s growth.

Related: How to Be a More Creative Problem-Solver at Work: 8 Tips

Why Is Problem-Solving Important for Leaders?

While obstacles’ specifics vary between industries, strong problem-solving skills are crucial for leaders in any field.

Whether building a new product or dealing with internal issues, you’re bound to come up against challenges. Having frameworks and tools at your disposal when they arise can turn issues into opportunities.

As a leader, it’s rarely your responsibility to solve a problem single-handedly, so it’s crucial to know how to empower employees to work together to find the best solution.

Your job is to guide them through each step of the framework and set the parameters and prompts within which they can be creative. Then, you can develop a list of ideas together, test the best ones, and implement the chosen solution.

Related: 5 Design Thinking Skills for Business Professionals

4 Problem-Solving Skills All Leaders Need

1. problem framing.

One key skill for any leader is framing problems in a way that makes sense for their organization. Problem framing is defined in Design Thinking and Innovation as determining the scope, context, and perspective of the problem you’re trying to solve.

“Before you begin to generate solutions for your problem, you must always think hard about how you’re going to frame that problem,” Datar says in the course.

For instance, imagine you work for a company that sells children’s sneakers, and sales have plummeted. When framing the problem, consider:

• What is the children’s sneaker market like right now?
• Should we improve the quality of our sneakers?
• Should we assess all children’s footwear?
• Is this a marketing issue for children’s sneakers specifically?
• Is this a bigger issue that impacts how we should market or produce all footwear?

While there’s no one right way to frame a problem, how you do can impact the solutions you generate. It’s imperative to accurately frame problems to align with organizational priorities and ensure your team generates useful ideas for your firm.

To solve a problem, you need to empathize with those impacted by it. Empathy is the ability to understand others’ emotions and experiences. While many believe empathy is a fixed trait, it’s a skill you can strengthen through practice.

When confronted with a problem, consider whom it impacts. Returning to the children’s sneaker example, think of who’s affected:

• Your organization’s employees, because sales are down
• The customers who typically buy your sneakers
• The children who typically wear your sneakers

Empathy is required to get to the problem’s root and consider each group’s perspective. Assuming someone’s perspective often isn’t accurate, so the best way to get that information is by collecting user feedback.

For instance, if you asked customers who typically buy your children’s sneakers why they’ve stopped, they could say, “A new brand of children’s sneakers came onto the market that have soles with more traction. I want my child to be as safe as possible, so I bought those instead.”

When someone shares their feelings and experiences, you have an opportunity to empathize with them. This can yield solutions to their problem that directly address its root and shows you care. In this case, you may design a new line of children’s sneakers with extremely grippy soles for added safety, knowing that’s what your customers care most about.

Related: 3 Effective Methods for Assessing Customer Needs

3. Breaking Cognitive Fixedness

Cognitive fixedness is a state of mind in which you examine situations through the lens of past experiences. This locks you into one mindset rather than allowing you to consider alternative possibilities.

For instance, your cognitive fixedness may make you think rubber is the only material for sneaker treads. What else could you use? Is there a grippier alternative you haven’t considered?

Problem-solving is all about overcoming cognitive fixedness. You not only need to foster this skill in yourself but among your team.

4. Creating a Psychologically Safe Environment

As a leader, it’s your job to create an environment conducive to problem-solving. In a psychologically safe environment, all team members feel comfortable bringing ideas to the table, which are likely influenced by their personal opinions and experiences.

If employees are penalized for “bad” ideas or chastised for questioning long-held procedures and systems, innovation has no place to take root.

By employing the design thinking framework and creative problem-solving exercises, you can foster a setting in which your team feels comfortable sharing ideas and new, innovative solutions can grow.

How to Build Problem-Solving Skills

The most obvious answer to how to build your problem-solving skills is perhaps the most intimidating: You must practice.

Again and again, you’ll encounter challenges, use creative problem-solving tools and design thinking frameworks, and assess results to learn what to do differently next time.

While most of your practice will occur within your organization, you can learn in a lower-stakes setting by taking an online course, such as Design Thinking and Innovation . Datar guides you through each tool and framework, presenting real-world business examples to help you envision how you would approach the same types of problems in your organization.

Are you interested in uncovering innovative solutions for your organization’s business problems? Explore Design Thinking and Innovation —one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses —to learn how to leverage proven frameworks and tools to solve challenges. Not sure which course is right for you? Download our free flowchart .

About the Author

40 problem-solving techniques and processes

All teams and organizations encounter challenges. Approaching those challenges without a structured problem solving process can end up making things worse.

Proven problem solving techniques such as those outlined below can guide your group through a process of identifying problems and challenges , ideating on possible solutions , and then evaluating and implementing the most suitable .

In this post, you'll find problem-solving tools you can use to develop effective solutions. You'll also find some tips for facilitating the problem solving process and solving complex problems.

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What is problem solving?

Problem solving is a process of finding and implementing a solution to a challenge or obstacle. In most contexts, this means going through a problem solving process that begins with identifying the issue, exploring its root causes, ideating and refining possible solutions before implementing and measuring the impact of that solution.

For simple or small problems, it can be tempting to skip straight to implementing what you believe is the right solution. The danger with this approach is that without exploring the true causes of the issue, it might just occur again or your chosen solution may cause other issues.

Particularly in the world of work, good problem solving means using data to back up each step of the process, bringing in new perspectives and effectively measuring the impact of your solution.

Effective problem solving can help ensure that your team or organization is well positioned to overcome challenges, be resilient to change and create innovation. In my experience, problem solving is a combination of skillset, mindset and process, and it’s especially vital for leaders to cultivate this skill.

What is the seven step problem solving process?

A problem solving process is a step-by-step framework from going from discovering a problem all the way through to implementing a solution.

With practice, this framework can become intuitive, and innovative companies tend to have a consistent and ongoing ability to discover and tackle challenges when they come up.

You might see everything from a four step problem solving process through to seven steps. While all these processes cover roughly the same ground, I’ve found a seven step problem solving process is helpful for making all key steps legible.

We’ll outline that process here and then follow with techniques you can use to explore and work on that step of the problem solving process with a group.

The seven-step problem solving process is:

1. Problem identification 

The first stage of any problem solving process is to identify the problem(s) you need to solve. This often looks like using group discussions and activities to help a group surface and effectively articulate the challenges they’re facing and wish to resolve.

Be sure to align with your team on the exact definition and nature of the problem you’re solving. An effective process is one where everyone is pulling in the same direction – ensure clarity and alignment now to help avoid misunderstandings later.

2. Problem analysis and refinement

The process of problem analysis means ensuring that the problem you are seeking to solve is  the   right problem . Choosing the right problem to solve means you are on the right path to creating the right solution.

At this stage, you may look deeper at the problem you identified to try and discover the root cause at the level of people or process. You may also spend some time sourcing data, consulting relevant parties and creating and refining a problem statement.

Problem refinement means adjusting scope or focus of the problem you will be aiming to solve based on what comes up during your analysis. As you analyze data sources, you might discover that the root cause means you need to adjust your problem statement. Alternatively, you might find that your original problem statement is too big to be meaningful approached within your current project.

Remember that the goal of any problem refinement is to help set the stage for effective solution development and deployment. Set the right focus and get buy-in from your team here and you’ll be well positioned to move forward with confidence.

3. Solution generation

Once your group has nailed down the particulars of the problem you wish to solve, you want to encourage a free flow of ideas connecting to solving that problem. This can take the form of problem solving games that encourage creative thinking or techniquess designed to produce working prototypes of possible solutions. 

The key to ensuring the success of this stage of the problem solving process is to encourage quick, creative thinking and create an open space where all ideas are considered. The best solutions can often come from unlikely places and by using problem solving techniques that celebrate invention, you might come up with solution gold. 

4. Solution development

No solution is perfect right out of the gate. It’s important to discuss and develop the solutions your group has come up with over the course of following the previous problem solving steps in order to arrive at the best possible solution. Problem solving games used in this stage involve lots of critical thinking, measuring potential effort and impact, and looking at possible solutions analytically. 

During this stage, you will often ask your team to iterate and improve upon your front-running solutions and develop them further. Remember that problem solving strategies always benefit from a multitude of voices and opinions, and not to let ego get involved when it comes to choosing which solutions to develop and take further.

Finding the best solution is the goal of all problem solving workshops and here is the place to ensure that your solution is well thought out, sufficiently robust and fit for purpose. 

5. Decision making and planning

Nearly there! Once you’ve got a set of possible, you’ll need to make a decision on which to implement. This can be a consensus-based group decision or it might be for a leader or major stakeholder to decide. You’ll find a set of effective decision making methods below.

Once your group has reached consensus and selected a solution, there are some additional actions that also need to be decided upon. You’ll want to work on allocating ownership of the project, figure out who will do what, how the success of the solution will be measured and decide the next course of action.

Set clear accountabilities, actions, timeframes, and follow-ups for your chosen solution. Make these decisions and set clear next-steps in the problem solving workshop so that everyone is aligned and you can move forward effectively as a group. 

Ensuring that you plan for the roll-out of a solution is one of the most important problem solving steps. Without adequate planning or oversight, it can prove impossible to measure success or iterate further if the problem was not solved. 

6. Solution implementation 

This is what we were waiting for! All problem solving processes have the end goal of implementing an effective and impactful solution that your group has confidence in.

Project management and communication skills are key here – your solution may need to adjust when out in the wild or you might discover new challenges along the way. For some solutions, you might also implement a test with a small group and monitor results before rolling it out to an entire company.

You should have a clear owner for your solution who will oversee the plans you made together and help ensure they’re put into place. This person will often coordinate the implementation team and set-up processes to measure the efficacy of your solution too.

7. Solution evaluation 

So you and your team developed a great solution to a problem and have a gut feeling it’s been solved. Work done, right? Wrong. All problem solving strategies benefit from evaluation, consideration, and feedback.

You might find that the solution does not work for everyone, might create new problems, or is potentially so successful that you will want to roll it out to larger teams or as part of other initiatives. 

None of that is possible without taking the time to evaluate the success of the solution you developed in your problem solving model and adjust if necessary.

Remember that the problem solving process is often iterative and it can be common to not solve complex issues on the first try. Even when this is the case, you and your team will have generated learning that will be important for future problem solving workshops or in other parts of the organization. 

It’s also worth underlining how important record keeping is throughout the problem solving process. If a solution didn’t work, you need to have the data and records to see why that was the case. If you go back to the drawing board, notes from the previous workshop can help save time.

What does an effective problem solving process look like?

Every effective problem solving process begins with an agenda . In our experience, a well-structured problem solving workshop is one of the best methods for successfully guiding a group from exploring a problem to implementing a solution.

The format of a workshop ensures that you can get buy-in from your group, encourage free-thinking and solution exploration before making a decision on what to implement following the session.

This Design Sprint 2.0 template is an effective problem solving process from top agency AJ&Smart. It’s a great format for the entire problem solving process, with four-days of workshops designed to surface issues, explore solutions and even test a solution.

Check it for an example of how you might structure and run a problem solving process and feel free to copy and adjust it your needs!

For a shorter process you can run in a single afternoon, this remote problem solving agenda will guide you effectively in just a couple of hours.

Whatever the length of your workshop, by using SessionLab, it’s easy to go from an idea to a complete agenda . Start by dragging and dropping your core problem solving activities into place . Add timings, breaks and necessary materials before sharing your agenda with your colleagues.

The resulting agenda will be your guide to an effective and productive problem solving session that will also help you stay organized on the day!

Complete problem-solving methods

In this section, we’ll look at in-depth problem-solving methods that provide a complete end-to-end process for developing effective solutions. These will help guide your team from the discovery and definition of a problem through to delivering the right solution.

If you’re looking for an all-encompassing method or problem-solving model, these processes are a great place to start. They’ll ask your team to challenge preconceived ideas and adopt a mindset for solving problems more effectively.

Six Thinking Hats

Individual approaches to solving a problem can be very different based on what team or role an individual holds. It can be easy for existing biases or perspectives to find their way into the mix, or for internal politics to direct a conversation.

Six Thinking Hats is a classic method for identifying the problems that need to be solved and enables your team to consider them from different angles, whether that is by focusing on facts and data, creative solutions, or by considering why a particular solution might not work.

Like all problem-solving frameworks, Six Thinking Hats is effective at helping teams remove roadblocks from a conversation or discussion and come to terms with all the aspects necessary to solve complex problems.

The Six Thinking Hats   #creative thinking   #meeting facilitation   #problem solving   #issue resolution   #idea generation   #conflict resolution   The Six Thinking Hats are used by individuals and groups to separate out conflicting styles of thinking. They enable and encourage a group of people to think constructively together in exploring and implementing change, rather than using argument to fight over who is right and who is wrong.

Lightning Decision Jam

Featured courtesy of Jonathan Courtney of AJ&Smart Berlin, Lightning Decision Jam is one of those strategies that should be in every facilitation toolbox. Exploring problems and finding solutions is often creative in nature, though as with any creative process, there is the potential to lose focus and get lost.

Unstructured discussions might get you there in the end, but it’s much more effective to use a method that creates a clear process and team focus.

In Lightning Decision Jam, participants are invited to begin by writing challenges, concerns, or mistakes on post-its without discussing them before then being invited by the moderator to present them to the group.

From there, the team vote on which problems to solve and are guided through steps that will allow them to reframe those problems, create solutions and then decide what to execute on. 

By deciding the problems that need to be solved as a team before moving on, this group process is great for ensuring the whole team is aligned and can take ownership over the next stages. 

Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ)   #action   #decision making   #problem solving   #issue analysis   #innovation   #design   #remote-friendly   It doesn’t matter where you work and what your job role is, if you work with other people together as a team, you will always encounter the same challenges: Unclear goals and miscommunication that cause busy work and overtime Unstructured meetings that leave attendants tired, confused and without clear outcomes. Frustration builds up because internal challenges to productivity are not addressed Sudden changes in priorities lead to a loss of focus and momentum Muddled compromise takes the place of clear decision- making, leaving everybody to come up with their own interpretation. In short, a lack of structure leads to a waste of time and effort, projects that drag on for too long and frustrated, burnt out teams. AJ&Smart has worked with some of the most innovative, productive companies in the world. What sets their teams apart from others is not better tools, bigger talent or more beautiful offices. The secret sauce to becoming a more productive, more creative and happier team is simple: Replace all open discussion or brainstorming with a structured process that leads to more ideas, clearer decisions and better outcomes. When a good process provides guardrails and a clear path to follow, it becomes easier to come up with ideas, make decisions and solve problems. This is why AJ&Smart created Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ). It’s a simple and short, but powerful group exercise that can be run either in-person, in the same room, or remotely with distributed teams.

Problem Definition Process

While problems can be complex, the problem-solving methods you use to identify and solve those problems can often be simple in design. 

By taking the time to truly identify and define a problem before asking the group to reframe the challenge as an opportunity, this method is a great way to enable change.

Begin by identifying a focus question and exploring the ways in which it manifests before splitting into five teams who will each consider the problem using a different method: escape, reversal, exaggeration, distortion or wishful. Teams develop a problem objective and create ideas in line with their method before then feeding them back to the group.

This method is great for enabling in-depth discussions while also creating space for finding creative solutions too!

Problem Definition   #problem solving   #idea generation   #creativity   #online   #remote-friendly   A problem solving technique to define a problem, challenge or opportunity and to generate ideas.

The 5 Whys 

Sometimes, a group needs to go further with their strategies and analyze the root cause at the heart of organizational issues. An RCA or root cause analysis is the process of identifying what is at the heart of business problems or recurring challenges. 

The 5 Whys is a simple and effective method of helping a group go find the root cause of any problem or challenge and conduct analysis that will deliver results. 

By beginning with the creation of a problem statement and going through five stages to refine it, The 5 Whys provides everything you need to truly discover the cause of an issue.

The 5 Whys   #hyperisland   #innovation   This simple and powerful method is useful for getting to the core of a problem or challenge. As the title suggests, the group defines a problems, then asks the question “why” five times, often using the resulting explanation as a starting point for creative problem solving.

World Cafe is a simple but powerful facilitation technique to help bigger groups to focus their energy and attention on solving complex problems.

World Cafe enables this approach by creating a relaxed atmosphere where participants are able to self-organize and explore topics relevant and important to them which are themed around a central problem-solving purpose. Create the right atmosphere by modeling your space after a cafe and after guiding the group through the method, let them take the lead!

Making problem-solving a part of your organization’s culture in the long term can be a difficult undertaking. More approachable formats like World Cafe can be especially effective in bringing people unfamiliar with workshops into the fold. 

World Cafe   #hyperisland   #innovation   #issue analysis   World Café is a simple yet powerful method, originated by Juanita Brown, for enabling meaningful conversations driven completely by participants and the topics that are relevant and important to them. Facilitators create a cafe-style space and provide simple guidelines. Participants then self-organize and explore a set of relevant topics or questions for conversation.

Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)

One of the best approaches is to create a safe space for a group to share and discover practices and behaviors that can help them find their own solutions.

With DAD, you can help a group choose which problems they wish to solve and which approaches they will take to do so. It’s great at helping remove resistance to change and can help get buy-in at every level too!

This process of enabling frontline ownership is great in ensuring follow-through and is one of the methods you will want in your toolbox as a facilitator.

Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)   #idea generation   #liberating structures   #action   #issue analysis   #remote-friendly   DADs make it easy for a group or community to discover practices and behaviors that enable some individuals (without access to special resources and facing the same constraints) to find better solutions than their peers to common problems. These are called positive deviant (PD) behaviors and practices. DADs make it possible for people in the group, unit, or community to discover by themselves these PD practices. DADs also create favorable conditions for stimulating participants’ creativity in spaces where they can feel safe to invent new and more effective practices. Resistance to change evaporates as participants are unleashed to choose freely which practices they will adopt or try and which problems they will tackle. DADs make it possible to achieve frontline ownership of solutions.

Design Sprint 2.0

Want to see how a team can solve big problems and move forward with prototyping and testing solutions in a few days? The Design Sprint 2.0 template from Jake Knapp, author of Sprint, is a complete agenda for a with proven results.

Developing the right agenda can involve difficult but necessary planning. Ensuring all the correct steps are followed can also be stressful or time-consuming depending on your level of experience.

Use this complete 4-day workshop template if you are finding there is no obvious solution to your challenge and want to focus your team around a specific problem that might require a shortcut to launching a minimum viable product or waiting for the organization-wide implementation of a solution.

Open space technology

Open space technology- developed by Harrison Owen – creates a space where large groups are invited to take ownership of their problem solving and lead individual sessions. Open space technology is a great format when you have a great deal of expertise and insight in the room and want to allow for different takes and approaches on a particular theme or problem you need to be solved.

Start by bringing your participants together to align around a central theme and focus their efforts. Explain the ground rules to help guide the problem-solving process and then invite members to identify any issue connecting to the central theme that they are interested in and are prepared to take responsibility for.

Once participants have decided on their approach to the core theme, they write their issue on a piece of paper, announce it to the group, pick a session time and place, and post the paper on the wall. As the wall fills up with sessions, the group is then invited to join the sessions that interest them the most and which they can contribute to, then you’re ready to begin!

Everyone joins the problem-solving group they’ve signed up to, record the discussion and if appropriate, findings can then be shared with the rest of the group afterward.

Open Space Technology   #action plan   #idea generation   #problem solving   #issue analysis   #large group   #online   #remote-friendly   Open Space is a methodology for large groups to create their agenda discerning important topics for discussion, suitable for conferences, community gatherings and whole system facilitation

Techniques to identify and analyze problems

Using a problem-solving method to help a team identify and analyze a problem can be a quick and effective addition to any workshop or meeting.

While further actions are always necessary, you can generate momentum and alignment easily, and these activities are a great place to get started.

We’ve put together this list of techniques to help you and your team with problem identification, analysis, and discussion that sets the foundation for developing effective solutions.

Let’s take a look!

Fishbone Analysis

Organizational or team challenges are rarely simple, and it’s important to remember that one problem can be an indication of something that goes deeper and may require further consideration to be solved.

Fishbone Analysis helps groups to dig deeper and understand the origins of a problem. It’s a great example of a root cause analysis method that is simple for everyone on a team to get their head around. 

Participants in this activity are asked to annotate a diagram of a fish, first adding the problem or issue to be worked on at the head of a fish before then brainstorming the root causes of the problem and adding them as bones on the fish. 

Using abstractions such as a diagram of a fish can really help a team break out of their regular thinking and develop a creative approach.

Fishbone Analysis   #problem solving   ##root cause analysis   #decision making   #online facilitation   A process to help identify and understand the origins of problems, issues or observations.

Problem Tree 

Encouraging visual thinking can be an essential part of many strategies. By simply reframing and clarifying problems, a group can move towards developing a problem solving model that works for them. 

In Problem Tree, groups are asked to first brainstorm a list of problems – these can be design problems, team problems or larger business problems – and then organize them into a hierarchy. The hierarchy could be from most important to least important or abstract to practical, though the key thing with problem solving games that involve this aspect is that your group has some way of managing and sorting all the issues that are raised.

Once you have a list of problems that need to be solved and have organized them accordingly, you’re then well-positioned for the next problem solving steps.

Problem tree   #define intentions   #create   #design   #issue analysis   A problem tree is a tool to clarify the hierarchy of problems addressed by the team within a design project; it represents high level problems or related sublevel problems.

SWOT Analysis

Chances are you’ve heard of the SWOT Analysis before. This problem-solving method focuses on identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is a tried and tested method for both individuals and teams.

Start by creating a desired end state or outcome and bare this in mind – any process solving model is made more effective by knowing what you are moving towards. Create a quadrant made up of the four categories of a SWOT analysis and ask participants to generate ideas based on each of those quadrants.

Once you have those ideas assembled in their quadrants, cluster them together based on their affinity with other ideas. These clusters are then used to facilitate group conversations and move things forward. 

SWOT analysis   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   #meeting facilitation   The SWOT Analysis is a long-standing technique of looking at what we have, with respect to the desired end state, as well as what we could improve on. It gives us an opportunity to gauge approaching opportunities and dangers, and assess the seriousness of the conditions that affect our future. When we understand those conditions, we can influence what comes next.

Agreement-Certainty Matrix

Not every problem-solving approach is right for every challenge, and deciding on the right method for the challenge at hand is a key part of being an effective team.

The Agreement Certainty matrix helps teams align on the nature of the challenges facing them. By sorting problems from simple to chaotic, your team can understand what methods are suitable for each problem and what they can do to ensure effective results. 

If you are already using Liberating Structures techniques as part of your problem-solving strategy, the Agreement-Certainty Matrix can be an invaluable addition to your process. We’ve found it particularly if you are having issues with recurring problems in your organization and want to go deeper in understanding the root cause. 

Agreement-Certainty Matrix   #issue analysis   #liberating structures   #problem solving   You can help individuals or groups avoid the frequent mistake of trying to solve a problem with methods that are not adapted to the nature of their challenge. The combination of two questions makes it possible to easily sort challenges into four categories: simple, complicated, complex , and chaotic .  A problem is simple when it can be solved reliably with practices that are easy to duplicate.  It is complicated when experts are required to devise a sophisticated solution that will yield the desired results predictably.  A problem is complex when there are several valid ways to proceed but outcomes are not predictable in detail.  Chaotic is when the context is too turbulent to identify a path forward.  A loose analogy may be used to describe these differences: simple is like following a recipe, complicated like sending a rocket to the moon, complex like raising a child, and chaotic is like the game “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”  The Liberating Structures Matching Matrix in Chapter 5 can be used as the first step to clarify the nature of a challenge and avoid the mismatches between problems and solutions that are frequently at the root of chronic, recurring problems.

Organizing and charting a team’s progress can be important in ensuring its success. SQUID (Sequential Question and Insight Diagram) is a great model that allows a team to effectively switch between giving questions and answers and develop the skills they need to stay on track throughout the process. 

Begin with two different colored sticky notes – one for questions and one for answers – and with your central topic (the head of the squid) on the board. Ask the group to first come up with a series of questions connected to their best guess of how to approach the topic. Ask the group to come up with answers to those questions, fix them to the board and connect them with a line. After some discussion, go back to question mode by responding to the generated answers or other points on the board.

It’s rewarding to see a diagram grow throughout the exercise, and a completed SQUID can provide a visual resource for future effort and as an example for other teams.

SQUID   #gamestorming   #project planning   #issue analysis   #problem solving   When exploring an information space, it’s important for a group to know where they are at any given time. By using SQUID, a group charts out the territory as they go and can navigate accordingly. SQUID stands for Sequential Question and Insight Diagram.

To continue with our nautical theme, Speed Boat is a short and sweet activity that can help a team quickly identify what employees, clients or service users might have a problem with and analyze what might be standing in the way of achieving a solution.

Methods that allow for a group to make observations, have insights and obtain those eureka moments quickly are invaluable when trying to solve complex problems.

In Speed Boat, the approach is to first consider what anchors and challenges might be holding an organization (or boat) back. Bonus points if you are able to identify any sharks in the water and develop ideas that can also deal with competitors!   

Speed Boat   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   Speedboat is a short and sweet way to identify what your employees or clients don’t like about your product/service or what’s standing in the way of a desired goal.

The Journalistic Six

Some of the most effective ways of solving problems is by encouraging teams to be more inclusive and diverse in their thinking.

Based on the six key questions journalism students are taught to answer in articles and news stories, The Journalistic Six helps create teams to see the whole picture. By using who, what, when, where, why, and how to facilitate the conversation and encourage creative thinking, your team can make sure that the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the are covered exhaustively and thoughtfully. Reporter’s notebook and dictaphone optional.

The Journalistic Six – Who What When Where Why How   #idea generation   #issue analysis   #problem solving   #online   #creative thinking   #remote-friendly   A questioning method for generating, explaining, investigating ideas.

Individual and group perspectives are incredibly important, but what happens if people are set in their minds and need a change of perspective in order to approach a problem more effectively?

Flip It is a method we love because it is both simple to understand and run, and allows groups to understand how their perspectives and biases are formed. 

Participants in Flip It are first invited to consider concerns, issues, or problems from a perspective of fear and write them on a flip chart. Then, the group is asked to consider those same issues from a perspective of hope and flip their understanding.  

No problem and solution is free from existing bias and by changing perspectives with Flip It, you can then develop a problem solving model quickly and effectively.

Flip It!   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   Often, a change in a problem or situation comes simply from a change in our perspectives. Flip It! is a quick game designed to show players that perspectives are made, not born.

LEGO Challenge

Now for an activity that is a little out of the (toy) box. LEGO Serious Play is a facilitation methodology that can be used to improve creative thinking and problem-solving skills. 

The LEGO Challenge includes giving each member of the team an assignment that is hidden from the rest of the group while they create a structure without speaking.

What the LEGO challenge brings to the table is a fun working example of working with stakeholders who might not be on the same page to solve problems. Also, it’s LEGO! Who doesn’t love LEGO! 

LEGO Challenge   #hyperisland   #team   A team-building activity in which groups must work together to build a structure out of LEGO, but each individual has a secret “assignment” which makes the collaborative process more challenging. It emphasizes group communication, leadership dynamics, conflict, cooperation, patience and problem solving strategy.

What, So What, Now What?

If not carefully managed, the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the problem-solving process can actually create more problems and misunderstandings.

The What, So What, Now What? problem-solving activity is designed to help collect insights and move forward while also eliminating the possibility of disagreement when it comes to identifying, clarifying, and analyzing organizational or work problems. 

Facilitation is all about bringing groups together so that might work on a shared goal and the best problem-solving strategies ensure that teams are aligned in purpose, if not initially in opinion or insight.

Throughout the three steps of this game, you give everyone on a team to reflect on a problem by asking what happened, why it is important, and what actions should then be taken. 

This can be a great activity for bringing our individual perceptions about a problem or challenge and contextualizing it in a larger group setting. This is one of the most important problem-solving skills you can bring to your organization.

W³ – What, So What, Now What?   #issue analysis   #innovation   #liberating structures   You can help groups reflect on a shared experience in a way that builds understanding and spurs coordinated action while avoiding unproductive conflict. It is possible for every voice to be heard while simultaneously sifting for insights and shaping new direction. Progressing in stages makes this practical—from collecting facts about What Happened to making sense of these facts with So What and finally to what actions logically follow with Now What . The shared progression eliminates most of the misunderstandings that otherwise fuel disagreements about what to do. Voila!

Journalists  

Problem analysis can be one of the most important and decisive stages of all problem-solving tools. Sometimes, a team can become bogged down in the details and are unable to move forward.

Journalists is an activity that can avoid a group from getting stuck in the problem identification or problem analysis stages of the process.

In Journalists, the group is invited to draft the front page of a fictional newspaper and figure out what stories deserve to be on the cover and what headlines those stories will have. By reframing how your problems and challenges are approached, you can help a team move productively through the process and be better prepared for the steps to follow.

Journalists   #vision   #big picture   #issue analysis   #remote-friendly   This is an exercise to use when the group gets stuck in details and struggles to see the big picture. Also good for defining a vision.

Problem-solving techniques for brainstorming solutions

Now you have the context and background of the problem you are trying to solving, now comes the time to start ideating and thinking about how you’ll solve the issue.

Here, you’ll want to encourage creative, free thinking and speed. Get as many ideas out as possible and explore different perspectives so you have the raw material for the next step.

Looking at a problem from a new angle can be one of the most effective ways of creating an effective solution. TRIZ is a problem-solving tool that asks the group to consider what they must not do in order to solve a challenge.

By reversing the discussion, new topics and taboo subjects often emerge, allowing the group to think more deeply and create ideas that confront the status quo in a safe and meaningful way. If you’re working on a problem that you’ve tried to solve before, TRIZ is a great problem-solving method to help your team get unblocked.

Making Space with TRIZ   #issue analysis   #liberating structures   #issue resolution   You can clear space for innovation by helping a group let go of what it knows (but rarely admits) limits its success and by inviting creative destruction. TRIZ makes it possible to challenge sacred cows safely and encourages heretical thinking. The question “What must we stop doing to make progress on our deepest purpose?” induces seriously fun yet very courageous conversations. Since laughter often erupts, issues that are otherwise taboo get a chance to be aired and confronted. With creative destruction come opportunities for renewal as local action and innovation rush in to fill the vacuum. Whoosh!

Mindspin  

Brainstorming is part of the bread and butter of the problem-solving process and all problem-solving strategies benefit from getting ideas out and challenging a team to generate solutions quickly. 

With Mindspin, participants are encouraged not only to generate ideas but to do so under time constraints and by slamming down cards and passing them on. By doing multiple rounds, your team can begin with a free generation of possible solutions before moving on to developing those solutions and encouraging further ideation. 

This is one of our favorite problem-solving activities and can be great for keeping the energy up throughout the workshop. Remember the importance of helping people become engaged in the process – energizing problem-solving techniques like Mindspin can help ensure your team stays engaged and happy, even when the problems they’re coming together to solve are complex. 

MindSpin   #teampedia   #idea generation   #problem solving   #action   A fast and loud method to enhance brainstorming within a team. Since this activity has more than round ideas that are repetitive can be ruled out leaving more creative and innovative answers to the challenge.

The Creativity Dice

One of the most useful problem solving skills you can teach your team is of approaching challenges with creativity, flexibility, and openness. Games like The Creativity Dice allow teams to overcome the potential hurdle of too much linear thinking and approach the process with a sense of fun and speed. 

In The Creativity Dice, participants are organized around a topic and roll a dice to determine what they will work on for a period of 3 minutes at a time. They might roll a 3 and work on investigating factual information on the chosen topic. They might roll a 1 and work on identifying the specific goals, standards, or criteria for the session.

Encouraging rapid work and iteration while asking participants to be flexible are great skills to cultivate. Having a stage for idea incubation in this game is also important. Moments of pause can help ensure the ideas that are put forward are the most suitable. 

The Creativity Dice   #creativity   #problem solving   #thiagi   #issue analysis   Too much linear thinking is hazardous to creative problem solving. To be creative, you should approach the problem (or the opportunity) from different points of view. You should leave a thought hanging in mid-air and move to another. This skipping around prevents premature closure and lets your brain incubate one line of thought while you consciously pursue another.

Idea and Concept Development

Brainstorming without structure can quickly become chaotic or frustrating. In a problem-solving context, having an ideation framework to follow can help ensure your team is both creative and disciplined.

In this method, you’ll find an idea generation process that encourages your group to brainstorm effectively before developing their ideas and begin clustering them together. By using concepts such as Yes and…, more is more and postponing judgement, you can create the ideal conditions for brainstorming with ease.

Idea & Concept Development   #hyperisland   #innovation   #idea generation   Ideation and Concept Development is a process for groups to work creatively and collaboratively to generate creative ideas. It’s a general approach that can be adapted and customized to suit many different scenarios. It includes basic principles for idea generation and several steps for groups to work with. It also includes steps for idea selection and development.

Problem-solving techniques for developing and refining solutions 

The success of any problem-solving process can be measured by the solutions it produces. After you’ve defined the issue, explored existing ideas, and ideated, it’s time to develop and refine your ideas in order to bring them closer to a solution that actually solves the problem.

Use these problem-solving techniques when you want to help your team think through their ideas and refine them as part of your problem solving process.

Improved Solutions

After a team has successfully identified a problem and come up with a few solutions, it can be tempting to call the work of the problem-solving process complete. That said, the first solution is not necessarily the best, and by including a further review and reflection activity into your problem-solving model, you can ensure your group reaches the best possible result. 

One of a number of problem-solving games from Thiagi Group, Improved Solutions helps you go the extra mile and develop suggested solutions with close consideration and peer review. By supporting the discussion of several problems at once and by shifting team roles throughout, this problem-solving technique is a dynamic way of finding the best solution. 

Improved Solutions   #creativity   #thiagi   #problem solving   #action   #team   You can improve any solution by objectively reviewing its strengths and weaknesses and making suitable adjustments. In this creativity framegame, you improve the solutions to several problems. To maintain objective detachment, you deal with a different problem during each of six rounds and assume different roles (problem owner, consultant, basher, booster, enhancer, and evaluator) during each round. At the conclusion of the activity, each player ends up with two solutions to her problem.

Four Step Sketch

Creative thinking and visual ideation does not need to be confined to the opening stages of your problem-solving strategies. Exercises that include sketching and prototyping on paper can be effective at the solution finding and development stage of the process, and can be great for keeping a team engaged. 

By going from simple notes to a crazy 8s round that involves rapidly sketching 8 variations on their ideas before then producing a final solution sketch, the group is able to iterate quickly and visually. Problem-solving techniques like Four-Step Sketch are great if you have a group of different thinkers and want to change things up from a more textual or discussion-based approach.

Four-Step Sketch   #design sprint   #innovation   #idea generation   #remote-friendly   The four-step sketch is an exercise that helps people to create well-formed concepts through a structured process that includes: Review key information Start design work on paper,  Consider multiple variations , Create a detailed solution . This exercise is preceded by a set of other activities allowing the group to clarify the challenge they want to solve. See how the Four Step Sketch exercise fits into a Design Sprint

Ensuring that everyone in a group is able to contribute to a discussion is vital during any problem solving process. Not only does this ensure all bases are covered, but its then easier to get buy-in and accountability when people have been able to contribute to the process.

1-2-4-All is a tried and tested facilitation technique where participants are asked to first brainstorm on a topic on their own. Next, they discuss and share ideas in a pair before moving into a small group. Those groups are then asked to present the best idea from their discussion to the rest of the team.

This method can be used in many different contexts effectively, though I find it particularly shines in the idea development stage of the process. Giving each participant time to concretize their ideas and develop them in progressively larger groups can create a great space for both innovation and psychological safety.

1-2-4-All   #idea generation   #liberating structures   #issue analysis   With this facilitation technique you can immediately include everyone regardless of how large the group is. You can generate better ideas and more of them faster than ever before. You can tap the know-how and imagination that is distributed widely in places not known in advance. Open, generative conversation unfolds. Ideas and solutions are sifted in rapid fashion. Most importantly, participants own the ideas, so follow-up and implementation is simplified. No buy-in strategies needed! Simple and elegant!

15% Solutions

Some problems are simpler than others and with the right problem-solving activities, you can empower people to take immediate actions that can help create organizational change. 

Part of the liberating structures toolkit, 15% solutions is a problem-solving technique that focuses on finding and implementing solutions quickly. A process of iterating and making small changes quickly can help generate momentum and an appetite for solving complex problems.

Problem-solving strategies can live and die on whether people are onboard. Getting some quick wins is a great way of getting people behind the process.   

It can be extremely empowering for a team to realize that problem-solving techniques can be deployed quickly and easily and delineate between things they can positively impact and those things they cannot change. 

15% Solutions   #action   #liberating structures   #remote-friendly   You can reveal the actions, however small, that everyone can do immediately. At a minimum, these will create momentum, and that may make a BIG difference.  15% Solutions show that there is no reason to wait around, feel powerless, or fearful. They help people pick it up a level. They get individuals and the group to focus on what is within their discretion instead of what they cannot change.  With a very simple question, you can flip the conversation to what can be done and find solutions to big problems that are often distributed widely in places not known in advance. Shifting a few grains of sand may trigger a landslide and change the whole landscape.

Problem-solving techniques for making decisions and planning

After your group is happy with the possible solutions you’ve developed, now comes the time to choose which to implement. There’s more than one way to make a decision and the best option is often dependant on the needs and set-up of your group.

Sometimes, it’s the case that you’ll want to vote as a group on what is likely to be the most impactful solution. Other times, it might be down to a decision maker or major stakeholder to make the final decision. Whatever your process, here’s some techniques you can use to help you make a decision during your problem solving process.

How-Now-Wow Matrix

The problem-solving process is often creative, as complex problems usually require a change of thinking and creative response in order to find the best solutions. While it’s common for the first stages to encourage creative thinking, groups can often gravitate to familiar solutions when it comes to the end of the process. 

When selecting solutions, you don’t want to lose your creative energy! The How-Now-Wow Matrix from Gamestorming is a great problem-solving activity that enables a group to stay creative and think out of the box when it comes to selecting the right solution for a given problem.

Problem-solving techniques that encourage creative thinking and the ideation and selection of new solutions can be the most effective in organisational change. Give the How-Now-Wow Matrix a go, and not just for how pleasant it is to say out loud. 

How-Now-Wow Matrix   #gamestorming   #idea generation   #remote-friendly   When people want to develop new ideas, they most often think out of the box in the brainstorming or divergent phase. However, when it comes to convergence, people often end up picking ideas that are most familiar to them. This is called a ‘creative paradox’ or a ‘creadox’. The How-Now-Wow matrix is an idea selection tool that breaks the creadox by forcing people to weigh each idea on 2 parameters.

Impact and Effort Matrix

All problem-solving techniques hope to not only find solutions to a given problem or challenge but to find the best solution. When it comes to finding a solution, groups are invited to put on their decision-making hats and really think about how a proposed idea would work in practice. 

The Impact and Effort Matrix is one of the problem-solving techniques that fall into this camp, empowering participants to first generate ideas and then categorize them into a 2×2 matrix based on impact and effort.

Activities that invite critical thinking while remaining simple are invaluable. Use the Impact and Effort Matrix to move from ideation and towards evaluating potential solutions before then committing to them. 

Impact and Effort Matrix   #gamestorming   #decision making   #action   #remote-friendly   In this decision-making exercise, possible actions are mapped based on two factors: effort required to implement and potential impact. Categorizing ideas along these lines is a useful technique in decision making, as it obliges contributors to balance and evaluate suggested actions before committing to them.

If you’ve followed each of the problem-solving steps with your group successfully, you should move towards the end of your process with heaps of possible solutions developed with a specific problem in mind. But how do you help a group go from ideation to putting a solution into action? 

Dotmocracy – or Dot Voting -is a tried and tested method of helping a team in the problem-solving process make decisions and put actions in place with a degree of oversight and consensus. 

One of the problem-solving techniques that should be in every facilitator’s toolbox, Dot Voting is fast and effective and can help identify the most popular and best solutions and help bring a group to a decision effectively. 

Dotmocracy   #action   #decision making   #group prioritization   #hyperisland   #remote-friendly   Dotmocracy is a simple method for group prioritization or decision-making. It is not an activity on its own, but a method to use in processes where prioritization or decision-making is the aim. The method supports a group to quickly see which options are most popular or relevant. The options or ideas are written on post-its and stuck up on a wall for the whole group to see. Each person votes for the options they think are the strongest, and that information is used to inform a decision.

Straddling the gap between decision making and planning, MoSCoW is a simple and effective method that allows a group team to easily prioritize a set of possible options.

Use this method in a problem solving process by collecting and summarizing all your possible solutions and then categorize them into 4 sections: “Must have”, “Should have”, “Could have”, or “Would like but won‘t get”.

This method is particularly useful when its less about choosing one possible solution and more about prioritorizing which to do first and which may not fit in the scope of your project. In my experience, complex challenges often require multiple small fixes, and this method can be a great way to move from a pile of things you’d all like to do to a structured plan.

MoSCoW   #define intentions   #create   #design   #action   #remote-friendly   MoSCoW is a method that allows the team to prioritize the different features that they will work on. Features are then categorized into “Must have”, “Should have”, “Could have”, or “Would like but won‘t get”. To be used at the beginning of a timeslot (for example during Sprint planning) and when planning is needed.

When it comes to managing the rollout of a solution, clarity and accountability are key factors in ensuring the success of the project. The RAACI chart is a simple but effective model for setting roles and responsibilities as part of a planning session.

Start by listing each person involved in the project and put them into the following groups in order to make it clear who is responsible for what during the rollout of your solution.

• Responsibility  (Which person and/or team will be taking action?)
• Authority  (At what “point” must the responsible person check in before going further?)
• Accountability  (Who must the responsible person check in with?)
• Consultation  (Who must be consulted by the responsible person before decisions are made?)
• Information  (Who must be informed of decisions, once made?)

Ensure this information is easily accessible and use it to inform who does what and who is looped into discussions and kept up to date.

RAACI   #roles and responsibility   #teamwork   #project management   Clarifying roles and responsibilities, levels of autonomy/latitude in decision making, and levels of engagement among diverse stakeholders.

Problem-solving warm-up activities

All facilitators know that warm-ups and icebreakers are useful for any workshop or group process. Problem-solving workshops are no different.

Use these problem-solving techniques to warm up a group and prepare them for the rest of the process. Activating your group by tapping into some of the top problem-solving skills can be one of the best ways to see great outcomes from your session.

Check-in / Check-out

Solid processes are planned from beginning to end, and the best facilitators know that setting the tone and establishing a safe, open environment can be integral to a successful problem-solving process. Check-in / Check-out is a great way to begin and/or bookend a problem-solving workshop. Checking in to a session emphasizes that everyone will be seen, heard, and expected to contribute. 

If you are running a series of meetings, setting a consistent pattern of checking in and checking out can really help your team get into a groove. We recommend this opening-closing activity for small to medium-sized groups though it can work with large groups if they’re disciplined!

Check-in / Check-out   #team   #opening   #closing   #hyperisland   #remote-friendly   Either checking-in or checking-out is a simple way for a team to open or close a process, symbolically and in a collaborative way. Checking-in/out invites each member in a group to be present, seen and heard, and to express a reflection or a feeling. Checking-in emphasizes presence, focus and group commitment; checking-out emphasizes reflection and symbolic closure.

Doodling Together  

Thinking creatively and not being afraid to make suggestions are important problem-solving skills for any group or team, and warming up by encouraging these behaviors is a great way to start. 

Doodling Together is one of our favorite creative ice breaker games – it’s quick, effective, and fun and can make all following problem-solving steps easier by encouraging a group to collaborate visually. By passing cards and adding additional items as they go, the workshop group gets into a groove of co-creation and idea development that is crucial to finding solutions to problems. 

Doodling Together   #collaboration   #creativity   #teamwork   #fun   #team   #visual methods   #energiser   #icebreaker   #remote-friendly   Create wild, weird and often funny postcards together & establish a group’s creative confidence.

Show and Tell

You might remember some version of Show and Tell from being a kid in school and it’s a great problem-solving activity to kick off a session.

Asking participants to prepare a little something before a workshop by bringing an object for show and tell can help them warm up before the session has even begun! Games that include a physical object can also help encourage early engagement before moving onto more big-picture thinking.

By asking your participants to tell stories about why they chose to bring a particular item to the group, you can help teams see things from new perspectives and see both differences and similarities in the way they approach a topic. Great groundwork for approaching a problem-solving process as a team! 

Show and Tell   #gamestorming   #action   #opening   #meeting facilitation   Show and Tell taps into the power of metaphors to reveal players’ underlying assumptions and associations around a topic The aim of the game is to get a deeper understanding of stakeholders’ perspectives on anything—a new project, an organizational restructuring, a shift in the company’s vision or team dynamic.

Constellations

Who doesn’t love stars? Constellations is a great warm-up activity for any workshop as it gets people up off their feet, energized, and ready to engage in new ways with established topics. It’s also great for showing existing beliefs, biases, and patterns that can come into play as part of your session.

Using warm-up games that help build trust and connection while also allowing for non-verbal responses can be great for easing people into the problem-solving process and encouraging engagement from everyone in the group. Constellations is great in large spaces that allow for movement and is definitely a practical exercise to allow the group to see patterns that are otherwise invisible. 

Constellations   #trust   #connection   #opening   #coaching   #patterns   #system   Individuals express their response to a statement or idea by standing closer or further from a central object. Used with teams to reveal system, hidden patterns, perspectives.

Draw a Tree

Problem-solving games that help raise group awareness through a central, unifying metaphor can be effective ways to warm-up a group in any problem-solving model.

Draw a Tree is a simple warm-up activity you can use in any group and which can provide a quick jolt of energy. Start by asking your participants to draw a tree in just 45 seconds – they can choose whether it will be abstract or realistic. 

Once the timer is up, ask the group how many people included the roots of the tree and use this as a means to discuss how we can ignore important parts of any system simply because they are not visible.

All problem-solving strategies are made more effective by thinking of problems critically and by exposing things that may not normally come to light. Warm-up games like Draw a Tree are great in that they quickly demonstrate some key problem-solving skills in an accessible and effective way.

Draw a Tree   #thiagi   #opening   #perspectives   #remote-friendly   With this game you can raise awarness about being more mindful, and aware of the environment we live in.

Closing activities for a problem-solving process

Each step of the problem-solving workshop benefits from an intelligent deployment of activities, games, and techniques. Bringing your session to an effective close helps ensure that solutions are followed through on and that you also celebrate what has been achieved.

Here are some problem-solving activities you can use to effectively close a workshop or meeting and ensure the great work you’ve done can continue afterward.

One Breath Feedback

Maintaining attention and focus during the closing stages of a problem-solving workshop can be tricky and so being concise when giving feedback can be important. It’s easy to incur “death by feedback” should some team members go on for too long sharing their perspectives in a quick feedback round. 

One Breath Feedback is a great closing activity for workshops. You give everyone an opportunity to provide feedback on what they’ve done but only in the space of a single breath. This keeps feedback short and to the point and means that everyone is encouraged to provide the most important piece of feedback to them. 

One breath feedback   #closing   #feedback   #action   This is a feedback round in just one breath that excels in maintaining attention: each participants is able to speak during just one breath … for most people that’s around 20 to 25 seconds … unless of course you’ve been a deep sea diver in which case you’ll be able to do it for longer.

Who What When Matrix 

Matrices feature as part of many effective problem-solving strategies and with good reason. They are easily recognizable, simple to use, and generate results.

The Who What When Matrix is a great tool to use when closing your problem-solving session by attributing a who, what and when to the actions and solutions you have decided upon. The resulting matrix is a simple, easy-to-follow way of ensuring your team can move forward. 

Great solutions can’t be enacted without action and ownership. Your problem-solving process should include a stage for allocating tasks to individuals or teams and creating a realistic timeframe for those solutions to be implemented or checked out. Use this method to keep the solution implementation process clear and simple for all involved. 

Who/What/When Matrix   #gamestorming   #action   #project planning   With Who/What/When matrix, you can connect people with clear actions they have defined and have committed to.

Response cards

Group discussion can comprise the bulk of most problem-solving activities and by the end of the process, you might find that your team is talked out! 

Providing a means for your team to give feedback with short written notes can ensure everyone is head and can contribute without the need to stand up and talk. Depending on the needs of the group, giving an alternative can help ensure everyone can contribute to your problem-solving model in the way that makes the most sense for them.

Response Cards is a great way to close a workshop if you are looking for a gentle warm-down and want to get some swift discussion around some of the feedback that is raised. 

Response Cards   #debriefing   #closing   #structured sharing   #questions and answers   #thiagi   #action   It can be hard to involve everyone during a closing of a session. Some might stay in the background or get unheard because of louder participants. However, with the use of Response Cards, everyone will be involved in providing feedback or clarify questions at the end of a session.

Tips for effective problem solving

Problem-solving activities are only one part of the puzzle. While a great method can help unlock your team’s ability to solve problems, without a thoughtful approach and strong facilitation the solutions may not be fit for purpose.

Let’s take a look at some problem-solving tips you can apply to any process to help it be a success!

Clearly define the problem

Jumping straight to solutions can be tempting, though without first clearly articulating a problem, the solution might not be the right one. Many of the problem-solving activities below include sections where the problem is explored and clearly defined before moving on.

This is a vital part of the problem-solving process and taking the time to fully define an issue can save time and effort later. A clear definition helps identify irrelevant information and it also ensures that your team sets off on the right track.

Don’t jump to conclusions

It’s easy for groups to exhibit cognitive bias or have preconceived ideas about both problems and potential solutions. Be sure to back up any problem statements or potential solutions with facts, research, and adequate forethought.

The best techniques ask participants to be methodical and challenge preconceived notions. Make sure you give the group enough time and space to collect relevant information and consider the problem in a new way. By approaching the process with a clear, rational mindset, you’ll often find that better solutions are more forthcoming.  

Try different approaches  

Problems come in all shapes and sizes and so too should the methods you use to solve them. If you find that one approach isn’t yielding results and your team isn’t finding different solutions, try mixing it up. You’ll be surprised at how using a new creative activity can unblock your team and generate great solutions.

Don’t take it personally 

Depending on the nature of your team or organizational problems, it’s easy for conversations to get heated. While it’s good for participants to be engaged in the discussions, ensure that emotions don’t run too high and that blame isn’t thrown around while finding solutions.

You’re all in it together, and even if your team or area is seeing problems, that isn’t necessarily a disparagement of you personally. Using facilitation skills to manage group dynamics is one effective method of helping conversations be more constructive.

Get the right people in the room

Your problem-solving method is often only as effective as the group using it. Getting the right people on the job and managing the number of people present is important too!

If the group is too small, you may not get enough different perspectives to effectively solve a problem. If the group is too large, you can go round and round during the ideation stages.

Creating the right group makeup is also important in ensuring you have the necessary expertise and skillset to both identify and follow up on potential solutions. Carefully consider who to include at each stage to help ensure your problem-solving method is followed and positioned for success.

Create psychologically safe spaces for discussion

Identifying a problem accurately also requires that all members of a group are able to contribute their views in an open and safe manner.

It can be tough for people to stand up and contribute if the problems or challenges are emotive or personal in nature. Try and create a psychologically safe space for these kinds of discussions and where possible, create regular opportunities for challenges to be brought up organically.

Document everything

The best solutions can take refinement, iteration, and reflection to come out. Get into a habit of documenting your process in order to keep all the learnings from the session and to allow ideas to mature and develop. Many of the methods below involve the creation of documents or shared resources. Be sure to keep and share these so everyone can benefit from the work done!

Bring a facilitator 

Facilitation is all about making group processes easier. With a subject as potentially emotive and important as problem-solving, having an impartial third party in the form of a facilitator can make all the difference in finding great solutions and keeping the process moving. Consider bringing a facilitator to your problem-solving session to get better results and generate meaningful solutions!

Develop your problem-solving skills

It takes time and practice to be an effective problem solver. While some roles or participants might more naturally gravitate towards problem-solving, it can take development and planning to help everyone create better solutions.

You might develop a training program, run a problem-solving workshop or simply ask your team to practice using the techniques below. Check out our post on problem-solving skills to see how you and your group can develop the right mental process and be more resilient to issues too!

Design a great agenda

Workshops are a great format for solving problems. With the right approach, you can focus a group and help them find the solutions to their own problems. But designing a process can be time-consuming and finding the right activities can be difficult.

Check out our workshop planning guide to level-up your agenda design and start running more effective workshops. Need inspiration? Check out templates designed by expert facilitators to help you kickstart your process!

Save time and effort creating an effective problem solving process

A structured problem solving process is a surefire way of solving tough problems, discovering creative solutions and driving organizational change. But how can you design for successful outcomes?

With SessionLab, it’s easy to design engaging workshops that deliver results. Drag, drop and reorder blocks  to build your agenda. When you make changes or update your agenda, your session  timing   adjusts automatically , saving you time on manual adjustments.

Collaborating with stakeholders or clients? Share your agenda with a single click and collaborate in real-time. No more sending documents back and forth over email.

Explore  how to use SessionLab  to design effective problem solving workshops or  watch this five minute video  to see the planner in action!

Over to you

The problem-solving process can often be as complicated and multifaceted as the problems they are set-up to solve. With the right problem-solving techniques and a mix of exercises designed to guide discussion and generate purposeful ideas, we hope we’ve given you the tools to find the best solutions as simply and easily as possible.

Is there a problem-solving technique that you are missing here? Do you have a favorite activity or method you use when facilitating? Let us know in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you! 

James Smart is Head of Content at SessionLab. He’s also a creative facilitator who has run workshops and designed courses for establishments like the National Centre for Writing, UK. He especially enjoys working with young people and empowering others in their creative practice.

thank you very much for these excellent techniques

Certainly wonderful article, very detailed. Shared!

Your list of techniques for problem solving can be helpfully extended by adding TRIZ to the list of techniques. TRIZ has 40 problem solving techniques derived from methods inventros and patent holders used to get new patents. About 10-12 are general approaches. many organization sponsor classes in TRIZ that are used to solve business problems or general organiztational problems. You can take a look at TRIZ and dwonload a free internet booklet to see if you feel it shound be included per your selection process.

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How to master the seven-step problem-solving process

In this episode of the McKinsey Podcast , Simon London speaks with Charles Conn, CEO of venture-capital firm Oxford Sciences Innovation, and McKinsey senior partner Hugo Sarrazin about the complexities of different problem-solving strategies.

Podcast transcript

Simon London: Hello, and welcome to this episode of the McKinsey Podcast , with me, Simon London. What’s the number-one skill you need to succeed professionally? Salesmanship, perhaps? Or a facility with statistics? Or maybe the ability to communicate crisply and clearly? Many would argue that at the very top of the list comes problem solving: that is, the ability to think through and come up with an optimal course of action to address any complex challenge—in business, in public policy, or indeed in life.

Looked at this way, it’s no surprise that McKinsey takes problem solving very seriously, testing for it during the recruiting process and then honing it, in McKinsey consultants, through immersion in a structured seven-step method. To discuss the art of problem solving, I sat down in California with McKinsey senior partner Hugo Sarrazin and also with Charles Conn. Charles is a former McKinsey partner, entrepreneur, executive, and coauthor of the book Bulletproof Problem Solving: The One Skill That Changes Everything [John Wiley & Sons, 2018].

Charles and Hugo, welcome to the podcast. Thank you for being here.

Hugo Sarrazin: Our pleasure.

Charles Conn: It’s terrific to be here.

Simon London: Problem solving is a really interesting piece of terminology. It could mean so many different things. I have a son who’s a teenage climber. They talk about solving problems. Climbing is problem solving. Charles, when you talk about problem solving, what are you talking about?

Charles Conn: For me, problem solving is the answer to the question “What should I do?” It’s interesting when there’s uncertainty and complexity, and when it’s meaningful because there are consequences. Your son’s climbing is a perfect example. There are consequences, and it’s complicated, and there’s uncertainty—can he make that grab? I think we can apply that same frame almost at any level. You can think about questions like “What town would I like to live in?” or “Should I put solar panels on my roof?”

You might think that’s a funny thing to apply problem solving to, but in my mind it’s not fundamentally different from business problem solving, which answers the question “What should my strategy be?” Or problem solving at the policy level: “How do we combat climate change?” “Should I support the local school bond?” I think these are all part and parcel of the same type of question, “What should I do?”

I’m a big fan of structured problem solving. By following steps, we can more clearly understand what problem it is we’re solving, what are the components of the problem that we’re solving, which components are the most important ones for us to pay attention to, which analytic techniques we should apply to those, and how we can synthesize what we’ve learned back into a compelling story. That’s all it is, at its heart.

I think sometimes when people think about seven steps, they assume that there’s a rigidity to this. That’s not it at all. It’s actually to give you the scope for creativity, which often doesn’t exist when your problem solving is muddled.

Simon London: You were just talking about the seven-step process. That’s what’s written down in the book, but it’s a very McKinsey process as well. Without getting too deep into the weeds, let’s go through the steps, one by one. You were just talking about problem definition as being a particularly important thing to get right first. That’s the first step. Hugo, tell us about that.

Hugo Sarrazin: It is surprising how often people jump past this step and make a bunch of assumptions. The most powerful thing is to step back and ask the basic questions—“What are we trying to solve? What are the constraints that exist? What are the dependencies?” Let’s make those explicit and really push the thinking and defining. At McKinsey, we spend an enormous amount of time in writing that little statement, and the statement, if you’re a logic purist, is great. You debate. “Is it an ‘or’? Is it an ‘and’? What’s the action verb?” Because all these specific words help you get to the heart of what matters.

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Simon London: So this is a concise problem statement.

Hugo Sarrazin: Yeah. It’s not like “Can we grow in Japan?” That’s interesting, but it is “What, specifically, are we trying to uncover in the growth of a product in Japan? Or a segment in Japan? Or a channel in Japan?” When you spend an enormous amount of time, in the first meeting of the different stakeholders, debating this and having different people put forward what they think the problem definition is, you realize that people have completely different views of why they’re here. That, to me, is the most important step.

Charles Conn: I would agree with that. For me, the problem context is critical. When we understand “What are the forces acting upon your decision maker? How quickly is the answer needed? With what precision is the answer needed? Are there areas that are off limits or areas where we would particularly like to find our solution? Is the decision maker open to exploring other areas?” then you not only become more efficient, and move toward what we call the critical path in problem solving, but you also make it so much more likely that you’re not going to waste your time or your decision maker’s time.

How often do especially bright young people run off with half of the idea about what the problem is and start collecting data and start building models—only to discover that they’ve really gone off half-cocked.

Hugo Sarrazin: Yeah.

Charles Conn: And in the wrong direction.

Simon London: OK. So step one—and there is a real art and a structure to it—is define the problem. Step two, Charles?

Charles Conn: My favorite step is step two, which is to use logic trees to disaggregate the problem. Every problem we’re solving has some complexity and some uncertainty in it. The only way that we can really get our team working on the problem is to take the problem apart into logical pieces.

What we find, of course, is that the way to disaggregate the problem often gives you an insight into the answer to the problem quite quickly. I love to do two or three different cuts at it, each one giving a bit of a different insight into what might be going wrong. By doing sensible disaggregations, using logic trees, we can figure out which parts of the problem we should be looking at, and we can assign those different parts to team members.

Simon London: What’s a good example of a logic tree on a sort of ratable problem?

Charles Conn: Maybe the easiest one is the classic profit tree. Almost in every business that I would take a look at, I would start with a profit or return-on-assets tree. In its simplest form, you have the components of revenue, which are price and quantity, and the components of cost, which are cost and quantity. Each of those can be broken out. Cost can be broken into variable cost and fixed cost. The components of price can be broken into what your pricing scheme is. That simple tree often provides insight into what’s going on in a business or what the difference is between that business and the competitors.

If we add the leg, which is “What’s the asset base or investment element?”—so profit divided by assets—then we can ask the question “Is the business using its investments sensibly?” whether that’s in stores or in manufacturing or in transportation assets. I hope we can see just how simple this is, even though we’re describing it in words.

When I went to work with Gordon Moore at the Moore Foundation, the problem that he asked us to look at was “How can we save Pacific salmon?” Now, that sounds like an impossible question, but it was amenable to precisely the same type of disaggregation and allowed us to organize what became a 15-year effort to improve the likelihood of good outcomes for Pacific salmon.

Simon London: Now, is there a danger that your logic tree can be impossibly large? This, I think, brings us onto the third step in the process, which is that you have to prioritize.

Charles Conn: Absolutely. The third step, which we also emphasize, along with good problem definition, is rigorous prioritization—we ask the questions “How important is this lever or this branch of the tree in the overall outcome that we seek to achieve? How much can I move that lever?” Obviously, we try and focus our efforts on ones that have a big impact on the problem and the ones that we have the ability to change. With salmon, ocean conditions turned out to be a big lever, but not one that we could adjust. We focused our attention on fish habitats and fish-harvesting practices, which were big levers that we could affect.

People spend a lot of time arguing about branches that are either not important or that none of us can change. We see it in the public square. When we deal with questions at the policy level—“Should you support the death penalty?” “How do we affect climate change?” “How can we uncover the causes and address homelessness?”—it’s even more important that we’re focusing on levers that are big and movable.

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Simon London: Let’s move swiftly on to step four. You’ve defined your problem, you disaggregate it, you prioritize where you want to analyze—what you want to really look at hard. Then you got to the work plan. Now, what does that mean in practice?

Hugo Sarrazin: Depending on what you’ve prioritized, there are many things you could do. It could be breaking the work among the team members so that people have a clear piece of the work to do. It could be defining the specific analyses that need to get done and executed, and being clear on time lines. There’s always a level-one answer, there’s a level-two answer, there’s a level-three answer. Without being too flippant, I can solve any problem during a good dinner with wine. It won’t have a whole lot of backing.

Simon London: Not going to have a lot of depth to it.

Hugo Sarrazin: No, but it may be useful as a starting point. If the stakes are not that high, that could be OK. If it’s really high stakes, you may need level three and have the whole model validated in three different ways. You need to find a work plan that reflects the level of precision, the time frame you have, and the stakeholders you need to bring along in the exercise.

Charles Conn: I love the way you’ve described that, because, again, some people think of problem solving as a linear thing, but of course what’s critical is that it’s iterative. As you say, you can solve the problem in one day or even one hour.

Charles Conn: We encourage our teams everywhere to do that. We call it the one-day answer or the one-hour answer. In work planning, we’re always iterating. Every time you see a 50-page work plan that stretches out to three months, you know it’s wrong. It will be outmoded very quickly by that learning process that you described. Iterative problem solving is a critical part of this. Sometimes, people think work planning sounds dull, but it isn’t. It’s how we know what’s expected of us and when we need to deliver it and how we’re progressing toward the answer. It’s also the place where we can deal with biases. Bias is a feature of every human decision-making process. If we design our team interactions intelligently, we can avoid the worst sort of biases.

Simon London: Here we’re talking about cognitive biases primarily, right? It’s not that I’m biased against you because of your accent or something. These are the cognitive biases that behavioral sciences have shown we all carry around, things like anchoring, overoptimism—these kinds of things.

Both: Yeah.

Charles Conn: Availability bias is the one that I’m always alert to. You think you’ve seen the problem before, and therefore what’s available is your previous conception of it—and we have to be most careful about that. In any human setting, we also have to be careful about biases that are based on hierarchies, sometimes called sunflower bias. I’m sure, Hugo, with your teams, you make sure that the youngest team members speak first. Not the oldest team members, because it’s easy for people to look at who’s senior and alter their own creative approaches.

Hugo Sarrazin: It’s helpful, at that moment—if someone is asserting a point of view—to ask the question “This was true in what context?” You’re trying to apply something that worked in one context to a different one. That can be deadly if the context has changed, and that’s why organizations struggle to change. You promote all these people because they did something that worked well in the past, and then there’s a disruption in the industry, and they keep doing what got them promoted even though the context has changed.

Simon London: Right. Right.

Hugo Sarrazin: So it’s the same thing in problem solving.

Charles Conn: And it’s why diversity in our teams is so important. It’s one of the best things about the world that we’re in now. We’re likely to have people from different socioeconomic, ethnic, and national backgrounds, each of whom sees problems from a slightly different perspective. It is therefore much more likely that the team will uncover a truly creative and clever approach to problem solving.

Simon London: Let’s move on to step five. You’ve done your work plan. Now you’ve actually got to do the analysis. The thing that strikes me here is that the range of tools that we have at our disposal now, of course, is just huge, particularly with advances in computation, advanced analytics. There’s so many things that you can apply here. Just talk about the analysis stage. How do you pick the right tools?

Charles Conn: For me, the most important thing is that we start with simple heuristics and explanatory statistics before we go off and use the big-gun tools. We need to understand the shape and scope of our problem before we start applying these massive and complex analytical approaches.

Simon London: Would you agree with that?

Hugo Sarrazin: I agree. I think there are so many wonderful heuristics. You need to start there before you go deep into the modeling exercise. There’s an interesting dynamic that’s happening, though. In some cases, for some types of problems, it is even better to set yourself up to maximize your learning. Your problem-solving methodology is test and learn, test and learn, test and learn, and iterate. That is a heuristic in itself, the A/B testing that is used in many parts of the world. So that’s a problem-solving methodology. It’s nothing different. It just uses technology and feedback loops in a fast way. The other one is exploratory data analysis. When you’re dealing with a large-scale problem, and there’s so much data, I can get to the heuristics that Charles was talking about through very clever visualization of data.

You test with your data. You need to set up an environment to do so, but don’t get caught up in neural-network modeling immediately. You’re testing, you’re checking—“Is the data right? Is it sound? Does it make sense?”—before you launch too far.

Simon London: You do hear these ideas—that if you have a big enough data set and enough algorithms, they’re going to find things that you just wouldn’t have spotted, find solutions that maybe you wouldn’t have thought of. Does machine learning sort of revolutionize the problem-solving process? Or are these actually just other tools in the toolbox for structured problem solving?

Charles Conn: It can be revolutionary. There are some areas in which the pattern recognition of large data sets and good algorithms can help us see things that we otherwise couldn’t see. But I do think it’s terribly important we don’t think that this particular technique is a substitute for superb problem solving, starting with good problem definition. Many people use machine learning without understanding algorithms that themselves can have biases built into them. Just as 20 years ago, when we were doing statistical analysis, we knew that we needed good model definition, we still need a good understanding of our algorithms and really good problem definition before we launch off into big data sets and unknown algorithms.

Simon London: Step six. You’ve done your analysis.

Charles Conn: I take six and seven together, and this is the place where young problem solvers often make a mistake. They’ve got their analysis, and they assume that’s the answer, and of course it isn’t the answer. The ability to synthesize the pieces that came out of the analysis and begin to weave those into a story that helps people answer the question “What should I do?” This is back to where we started. If we can’t synthesize, and we can’t tell a story, then our decision maker can’t find the answer to “What should I do?”

Simon London: But, again, these final steps are about motivating people to action, right?

Charles Conn: Yeah.

Simon London: I am slightly torn about the nomenclature of problem solving because it’s on paper, right? Until you motivate people to action, you actually haven’t solved anything.

Charles Conn: I love this question because I think decision-making theory, without a bias to action, is a waste of time. Everything in how I approach this is to help people take action that makes the world better.

Simon London: Hence, these are absolutely critical steps. If you don’t do this well, you’ve just got a bunch of analysis.

Charles Conn: We end up in exactly the same place where we started, which is people speaking across each other, past each other in the public square, rather than actually working together, shoulder to shoulder, to crack these important problems.

Simon London: In the real world, we have a lot of uncertainty—arguably, increasing uncertainty. How do good problem solvers deal with that?

Hugo Sarrazin: At every step of the process. In the problem definition, when you’re defining the context, you need to understand those sources of uncertainty and whether they’re important or not important. It becomes important in the definition of the tree.

You need to think carefully about the branches of the tree that are more certain and less certain as you define them. They don’t have equal weight just because they’ve got equal space on the page. Then, when you’re prioritizing, your prioritization approach may put more emphasis on things that have low probability but huge impact—or, vice versa, may put a lot of priority on things that are very likely and, hopefully, have a reasonable impact. You can introduce that along the way. When you come back to the synthesis, you just need to be nuanced about what you’re understanding, the likelihood.

Often, people lack humility in the way they make their recommendations: “This is the answer.” They’re very precise, and I think we would all be well-served to say, “This is a likely answer under the following sets of conditions” and then make the level of uncertainty clearer, if that is appropriate. It doesn’t mean you’re always in the gray zone; it doesn’t mean you don’t have a point of view. It just means that you can be explicit about the certainty of your answer when you make that recommendation.

Simon London: So it sounds like there is an underlying principle: “Acknowledge and embrace the uncertainty. Don’t pretend that it isn’t there. Be very clear about what the uncertainties are up front, and then build that into every step of the process.”

Hugo Sarrazin: Every step of the process.

Simon London: Yeah. We have just walked through a particular structured methodology for problem solving. But, of course, this is not the only structured methodology for problem solving. One that is also very well-known is design thinking, which comes at things very differently. So, Hugo, I know you have worked with a lot of designers. Just give us a very quick summary. Design thinking—what is it, and how does it relate?

Hugo Sarrazin: It starts with an incredible amount of empathy for the user and uses that to define the problem. It does pause and go out in the wild and spend an enormous amount of time seeing how people interact with objects, seeing the experience they’re getting, seeing the pain points or joy—and uses that to infer and define the problem.

Simon London: Problem definition, but out in the world.

Hugo Sarrazin: With an enormous amount of empathy. There’s a huge emphasis on empathy. Traditional, more classic problem solving is you define the problem based on an understanding of the situation. This one almost presupposes that we don’t know the problem until we go see it. The second thing is you need to come up with multiple scenarios or answers or ideas or concepts, and there’s a lot of divergent thinking initially. That’s slightly different, versus the prioritization, but not for long. Eventually, you need to kind of say, “OK, I’m going to converge again.” Then you go and you bring things back to the customer and get feedback and iterate. Then you rinse and repeat, rinse and repeat. There’s a lot of tactile building, along the way, of prototypes and things like that. It’s very iterative.

Simon London: So, Charles, are these complements or are these alternatives?

Charles Conn: I think they’re entirely complementary, and I think Hugo’s description is perfect. When we do problem definition well in classic problem solving, we are demonstrating the kind of empathy, at the very beginning of our problem, that design thinking asks us to approach. When we ideate—and that’s very similar to the disaggregation, prioritization, and work-planning steps—we do precisely the same thing, and often we use contrasting teams, so that we do have divergent thinking. The best teams allow divergent thinking to bump them off whatever their initial biases in problem solving are. For me, design thinking gives us a constant reminder of creativity, empathy, and the tactile nature of problem solving, but it’s absolutely complementary, not alternative.

Simon London: I think, in a world of cross-functional teams, an interesting question is do people with design-thinking backgrounds really work well together with classical problem solvers? How do you make that chemistry happen?

Hugo Sarrazin: Yeah, it is not easy when people have spent an enormous amount of time seeped in design thinking or user-centric design, whichever word you want to use. If the person who’s applying classic problem-solving methodology is very rigid and mechanical in the way they’re doing it, there could be an enormous amount of tension. If there’s not clarity in the role and not clarity in the process, I think having the two together can be, sometimes, problematic.

The second thing that happens often is that the artifacts the two methodologies try to gravitate toward can be different. Classic problem solving often gravitates toward a model; design thinking migrates toward a prototype. Rather than writing a big deck with all my supporting evidence, they’ll bring an example, a thing, and that feels different. Then you spend your time differently to achieve those two end products, so that’s another source of friction.

Now, I still think it can be an incredibly powerful thing to have the two—if there are the right people with the right mind-set, if there is a team that is explicit about the roles, if we’re clear about the kind of outcomes we are attempting to bring forward. There’s an enormous amount of collaborativeness and respect.

Simon London: But they have to respect each other’s methodology and be prepared to flex, maybe, a little bit, in how this process is going to work.

Hugo Sarrazin: Absolutely.

Simon London: The other area where, it strikes me, there could be a little bit of a different sort of friction is this whole concept of the day-one answer, which is what we were just talking about in classical problem solving. Now, you know that this is probably not going to be your final answer, but that’s how you begin to structure the problem. Whereas I would imagine your design thinkers—no, they’re going off to do their ethnographic research and get out into the field, potentially for a long time, before they come back with at least an initial hypothesis.

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Hugo Sarrazin: That is a great callout, and that’s another difference. Designers typically will like to soak into the situation and avoid converging too quickly. There’s optionality and exploring different options. There’s a strong belief that keeps the solution space wide enough that you can come up with more radical ideas. If there’s a large design team or many designers on the team, and you come on Friday and say, “What’s our week-one answer?” they’re going to struggle. They’re not going to be comfortable, naturally, to give that answer. It doesn’t mean they don’t have an answer; it’s just not where they are in their thinking process.

Simon London: I think we are, sadly, out of time for today. But Charles and Hugo, thank you so much.

Charles Conn: It was a pleasure to be here, Simon.

Hugo Sarrazin: It was a pleasure. Thank you.

Simon London: And thanks, as always, to you, our listeners, for tuning into this episode of the McKinsey Podcast . If you want to learn more about problem solving, you can find the book, Bulletproof Problem Solving: The One Skill That Changes Everything , online or order it through your local bookstore. To learn more about McKinsey, you can of course find us at McKinsey.com.

Charles Conn is CEO of Oxford Sciences Innovation and an alumnus of McKinsey’s Sydney office. Hugo Sarrazin is a senior partner in the Silicon Valley office, where Simon London, a member of McKinsey Publishing, is also based.

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Problem-Solving in Business: PROBLEM-SOLVING STEPS

• ABOUT THIS LIBGUIDE
• PROBLEM-SOLVING DEFINED AND WHY IT IS IMPORTANT
• SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS NEEDED IN PROBLEM-SOLVING
• PROBLEM-SOLVING STEPS
• CASE STUDIES
• MORE HELPFUL RESOURCES

• DEFINE THE PROBLEM
• WHAT COULD POTENTIALLY BE THE CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM?
• CONSIDER VARIOUS SOLUTIONS
• CHOOSE THE BEST SOLUTION
• DECIDE HOW TO MEASURE SUCCESS OF THE CHOSEN SOLUTION
• EVALUATE THE SOLUTION
• CELEBRATE YOUR SUCCESS!

*  Get input from people who are affected by the problem *  Write down opinions and observations of people affected by the problem *  Consider all potential causes of the problem: competition, business model, market factors, team performance, etc. *  If needed, conduct a SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) *  Employ research tools, such as information sources, databases, surveys, and interviews for fact finding, data gathering and analysis, etc.

Strengths *  Robust inorganic growth strategy established cisco as a technology leader *  Steady revenue growth *  Business performance of infrastructure platforms Weaknesses *  Supply Chain Issues Leading to Delays in Order Fulfillments Opportunities *  Poised to benefit from the robust growth in cloud computing market *  Strategic initiatives *  Positive outlook for global IT hardware market Threats *  Product overlapping *  Volatility in the sales to the service provider market *  Intense competitive pressure SOURCE: Cisco Systems, Inc. SWOT Analysis; Date:   October 26, 2020 Porter's Five Forces Threat of New Entrants (effectively, this is “Barriers to Entry”) Competitive Dynamics Supplier Power Buyer Power Threat of Substitutes Competitors Customers/clients Opportunities SOURCE and for additional information on analysis frameworks and more, please go to: STREETOFWALLS Postpone the selection of one solution until several problem-solving alternatives have been proposed. Considering multiple alternatives can significantly enhance the value of your ideal solution. Once you have decided on the "what should be" model, this target standard becomes the basis for developing a road map for investigating alternatives.   and team problem-solving techniques are both useful tools in this stage of problem solving. Many alternative solutions to the problem should be generated before final evaluation. A common mistake in problem solving is that alternatives are evaluated as they are proposed, so the first acceptable solution is chosen, even if it’s not the best fit. If we focus on trying to get the results we want, we miss the potential for learning something new that will allow for real improvement in the problem-solving process. SOURCE:  --  meaning that they are explicitly designed to address the fundamental values or ends of the decision – the “things that matter” or “felt needs”, as defined by the objectives and the evaluation criteria; --  meaning that in developing alternatives for achieving the objectives, the project team has drawn on the best available information about cause and effect relationships and has designed creative and diverse alternatives based on sound analysis; -- meaning that all alternatives are defined to a sufficient and consistent level of detail using logically consistent assumptions, and that a base case against which all alternatives can be compared has been clearly established; --  meaning that poor (dominated) alternatives have been eliminated and those remaining have been iteratively refined to incorporate new ideas and joint gains; --  meaning that individual elements or components of a strategy are combined into complete packages, and that the packages are directly comparable;  --  meaning that they emphasize rather than hide difficult but unavoidable value-based trade-offs and present real choices for decision makers; --   because difficult trade-offs are easier to make and to accept when people believe that a thorough search for good alternatives has been conducted and that the best alternatives are on the table. SOURCE:   / Mission and Values /   will the solution have in the future ?  does the solution bring?   – This is one where you need to strike a balance between tangible and non-tangible ideas in order to get everybody on board. The difference between these categories are that tangible ideas will lead to a financial improvement whilst non-tangible suggestions contain a non-monetary aspect. But this doesn’t mean they are not important, as often this intrinsically contributes a lot to the well-feeling and being of employees. ?  will it take to implement solution ?  in implementing this solution ?  and resources are required? / How much will the solution  ?  (in years) for this investment ?  of the solution ?  will be needed to approve the solution ? is the solution ? It goes without saying that some of these questions may not be applicable to every type of solution you’re considering and should be therefore be used as a generic guide. SOURCE:       How will you know your problem is solved? And not just the symptom -- how will you know when you've addressed the underlying issues? Before you dive into enacting the solution, make sure you know what success looks like. Decide on a few  . Take a baseline measurement, and set a goal and a timeframe. You're essentially translating your solution into a plan, complete with milestones and goals. Without these, you've simply made a blind decision, with no way to track success. You need those  . The key to effective problem-solving in business is the ability to adapt. You can waste a lot of resources on staying the wrong course for too long. So make a plan to reduce your risk now. Think about what you'd do if you were faced with a problem large enough to sink your business. Be as proactive as you be.   SOURCE:  Consider this list of criteria when building out your  SOURCE:    "W hen you first start off trying to solve a problem, the first solutions you come up with are very complex, and most people stop there. But if you keep going, and live with the problem and peel more layers of the onion off, you can often times arrive at some very elegant and simple solutions."  -- Steve Jobs   SOURCE:      ________________ TO FIND SAMPLE SWOT ANALYSES, AND  COMPETITIVE INFORMATION ON COMPANIES AND PRODUCTS   Provides in depth coverage of businesses, including company profiles, industry profiles, products and brands, financial reports, company rankings, histories and full text periodical articles.   Contains industry and market research trends and statistics on many major industries, as well as  company contacts, organizations, and more.   -- Provides access to over 30 databases with citations, abstracts and selected full-text.   Provides in-depth financial information on companies, industry reports, equities, and more. Includes publications: S&P Analysts Handbook, S&P Bond Guide, S&P Corporation Records, S&P Stock Reports, Stovall Sectors.    TO FIND INFORMATION ON MARKETS AND INDUSTRIES   IBISWorld is the largest collection of industry and market research including specialized industries for small business research.   Industry profiles include industry overview, recent developments, business challenges, trends and opportunities, executive insight,call preparation questions, financial and industry ratio's, industry forecast, web links and acronyms.    Market research reports, data, charts, about anything "e":e-commerce, internet, social media, digital, technology use and adoption,online advertising, mobile, marketing, demographics and more. eMarketer aggregates and analyzes research from 1,700+ sources and produces analyst reports, statistics, and and charting features. TO FIND DEMOGRAPHIC INFORMATION   Mergent Intellect is an expansive directory database that includes more than 100 million private US, Canadian and global businesses, more than 6000 US public companies and over 200 million residents and local businesses, with previous addresses and allowing for reverse telephone lookups.    SimplyAnalytics includes thousands of demographic, business, and marketing data variables. **Patrons should read the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy of this resource before searching.** TO FIND ARTICLES ON HUMAN RESOURCES, MANAGEMENT, MARKETING, AND MORE    Provides access to over 30 databases with citations, abstracts and selected full-text. Includes Academic Search Premier, Business Source Complete and other subject-specific resources.    The Business Source Complete database includes full text business journals and magazines, covering all disciplines of business, including marketing, management, accounting, banking, finance and more.  TO FIND GLOBAL INFORMATION   Full-text articles, news, company, industry and market information for emerging market countries around the world.   ___________   Lynda.com, a LinkedIn Company is an online educational site that includes over 5,700 courses (and over 180,000 videos) in popular fields like web design, web development, IT, education/instruction, media production, and business. Experts create and deliver all courses as well as provide supplemental materials like exercise files and relevant work samples. Users will need to create accounts in order to track course progress, create playlists of potential coursework, and keep course notes.   ____________ FOR REVIEWS ON FEE-BASED AND FREE SURVEYS    _________________ Entrepreneurs who changed history  ISBN: 9780744036138 Whether titans of industry, influential business leaders, or creators of history's most recognizable brands, these entrepreneurs had the vision, innovation, and ruthless determination to make their marks on our society in indelible ways.  The Decision Book by Mikael Krogerus; Roman Tschappeler  ISBN: 9780393652376 Publication Date: 2018-05-08 This updated edition of the international bestseller distills into a single volume the fifty best decision-making models used in MBA courses, and elsewhere, that will help you tackle these important questions. In minutes you can become conversant with: The Long Tail * The Maslow Pyramids * SWOT Analysis * The Rubber Band Model * The Prisoner's Dilemma * Cognitive Dissonance * The Eisenhower Matrix * Conflict Resolution * Flow * The Personal Potential Trap * and many more. Stylish and compact, this little book is a powerful asset.  ISBN: 9781633699878 Collect data and build trust. With the rise of data science and machine learning, companies are awash in customer data and powerful new ways to gain insight from that data. Customer Data and Privacy: The Insights You Need from Harvard Business Review brings you today's most essential thinking on customer data and privacy to help you understand the tangled interdependencies and complexities of this evolving issue. The lessons in this book will help you develop strategies that allow your company to be a good steward, collecting, using, and storing customer data responsibly.   ______________                                       << Previous: SKILLS AND QUALIFICATIONS NEEDED IN PROBLEM-SOLVING Next: CASE STUDIES >> Last Updated: Mar 23, 2024 4:47 PM URL: https://libguides.nypl.org/problem_solving_in_business More From Forbes How to identify and solve problems in your business. Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin James Webster, Executive Chairman, ROK Financial . Whether mild or severe, problems occur in businesses all the time. From declining sales to product quality issues to employee challenges, every business faces a unique set of obstacles. It’s important to take a look at your business and identify the potential problems that could be hurting the bottom line. How Effective Problem Solving Can Boost Your Business This is always the most obvious benefit. By optimizing your business process, you’ll be able to offer more quality and quantity in every area, resulting in more goods, services and overall value for your customers. Competitive Advantage Effective problem solving can quickly become a competitive edge. Particularly when you improve your products and services based on your market space. Having the ability to quickly determine what may need fixing in your business (or even issues you’re experiencing in your industry) can give your business competitive advantage in the market. Say, for instance, you and your competitors purchase supplies from the same distributor, but there have been delays in your orders. Finding other distributors that have shorter production cycles would allow you to sell your goods and services faster than your competitors. Customer Satisfaction Addressing customer issues directly is essential to the satisfaction of your patrons allowing you to foster customer loyalty. These positive relationships are needed for long-term growth. How To Identify Problems To Solve In Your Business Gather data and information. You should be collecting relevant data for every aspect of your business cycle. Everything from business performance and customer feedback to financial reports and market trends. In fact, each separate department should have its own KPIs, which are core metrics that reflect performance. It’s also important to solicit feedback—both positive and negative—from your customers. Doing so gives you a direct pulse on your business. It’s not only important to ask for feedback, it’s even more important to respond to it. Make sure you are commenting back on your customer reviews on review websites, trying to reach out to clients to rectify any issues and thanking them for leaving their feedback. Analyze Patterns And Trends Examine your collected data for patterns and recurring themes. Identifying common issues helps pinpoint problem areas that require attention. Conduct A SWOT Analysis Perform a SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) analysis to learn more about your internal and external factors. Depending on the complexity of your business, you may consider performing multiple SWOT analyses for each of your departments. We construct a SWOT analysis on a yearly basis during our executive retreats. This allows the leadership team to come together and truly look at the business as a whole to identify areas of needed focus and highlight areas of success. This exercise usually sparks additional ideas from the team, and we’re able to come up with new initiatives for the upcoming year. Use The ‘Five Whys’ Method One of our favorite techniques here at ROK is the simple yet effective “Five Whys” method. It involves gathering a team and repeatedly asking “why” (typically five times) to uncover the root cause of a problem. We love this method because it’s simple. Making your problem solving too complex can make it difficult to gather input from your staff or patrons. Next Steps Once You’ve Identified Your Problems Determine where you want your business to go. Having a clear vision of the best possible business cycle for your company is always the first step in problem solving. This lets you make the best decisions for long-term and short-term growth based on what’s happening in the present. Prioritize And Plan Not all problems are created equal. In fact, some issues aren’t worth being solved at all. That’s where your instincts need to jump in. It’s important to prepare your list of tasks you need to accomplish and prioritize them in order of importance. Once your task list is set in place, you can begin planning how you will execute the list. One thing every successful leader does is delegate. This may be hard to do at first, but you’ll never get up that mountain alone. Delegating some of your tasks can help you cross items off your list and allow you to focus on big-picture ideas. Empower Your Team To Solve Problems Similarly, put a team in place that can assist with decision making. Setting your team up for success and giving them power to make decisions on the fly, or long term, can help solve problems quickly in your business. To solve problems efficiently, you’ll need to let go of the reins a bit. Prepare To Pivot, If Needed Being agile in business is the key to success. Things will be thrown your way you did not prepare for or oftentimes didn’t anticipate encountering. It’s important that you and your team are able to pivot and change with the times. For example, when Covid hit, many businesses failed because they were unable to adapt to the new normal. Did your brick-and-mortar business turn digital overnight, or were you unable to make the necessary changes to provide your goods and services to your clients? Having the ability to make changes when necessary allows your business to adapt quickly to ever-changing environments. Measure Your Progress All the data and metrics in the world mean nothing if you don’t use them. It’s imperative that you are constantly looking at your progress and that data. Something my team and I have done at our weekly meetings is to do a quick check-in on our KPIs. This is done regularly to ensure we’re meeting our targets and to quickly identify areas that may need to be improved throughout the sales cycle instead at the end of the month or quarter. Looking at your numbers regularly gives you a true pulse on your business, and allows you to make better educated decisions. Do you need to increase leads or sales? Are you seeing customers fall off at a certain point? These are questions that can be answered quickly if you are constantly looking at your metrics. Forbes Finance Council is an invitation-only organization for executives in successful accounting, financial planning and wealth management firms. Do I qualify? Editorial Standards Reprints & Permissions SUGGESTED TOPICS The Magazine Newsletters Managing Yourself Managing Teams Work-life Balance The Big Idea Data & Visuals Reading Lists Case Selections HBR Learning Topic Feeds Account Settings Email Preferences Are You Solving the Right Problem? Dwayne Spradlin Most firms aren’t, and that undermines their innovation efforts. Reprint: R1209F The rigor with which a problem is defined is the most important factor in finding a good solution. Many organizations, however, are not proficient at articulating their problems and identifying which ones are crucial to their strategies. They may even be trying to solve the wrong problems—missing opportunities and wasting resources in the process. The key is to ask the right questions. The author describes a process that his firm, InnoCentive, has used to help clients define and articulate business, technical, social, and policy challenges and then present them to an online community of more than 250,000 solvers. The four-step process consists of asking a series of questions and using the answers to create a problem statement that will elicit novel ideas from an array of experts. Establish the need for a solution. What is the basic need? Who will benefit from a solution? Justify the need. Why should your organization attempt to solve this problem? Is it aligned with your strategy? If a solution is found, who will implement it? Contextualize the problem. What have you and others already tried? Are there internal and external constraints to implementing a solution? Write the problem statement. What requirements must a solution meet? What language should you use to describe the problem? How will you evaluate solutions and measure success? EnterpriseWorks/VITA, a nonprofit organization, used this process to find a low-cost, lightweight, and convenient product that expands access to clean drinking water in the developing world. “If I were given one hour to save the planet, I would spend 59 minutes defining the problem and one minute resolving it,” Albert Einstein said. DS Dwayne Spradlin is the president and CEO of InnoCentive , an online marketplace that connects organizations with freelance problem solvers in a multitude of fields. He is a coauthor, with Alpheus Bingham, of The Open Innovation Marketplace: Creating Value in the Challenge Driven Enterprise (FT Press, 2011). Partner Center 7 Examples of Problem-Solving Scenarios in the Workplace (With Solutions) What is problem-solving anyway, problem-solving scenario #1: tight deadlines and heavy workload. Problem-solving Scenario #2: Handling a Product Launch Problem-solving Scenario #3: Internal Conflicts in the Team Problem-solving scenario #4: team not meeting targets, problem-solving scenario #5: team facing high turnover, problem-solving scenario #6: team member facing discrimination, problem-solving scenario #7: new manager unable to motivate a team, building an effective problem-solving framework, wrapping up, frequently asked questions for managers. Other Related Blogs Problem-Solving Scenarios for Managers Talk to the team members: John begins by asking what’s holding them back. Based on their responses, he realizes that he needs to delegate better. Immediately, John schedules meetings to  clarify each member’s expectations , priorities, and roles and ensure everyone is on the same page. He also makes a note to work on his delegation skills. Plan things: John creates a project timeline or task list that outlines the deadlines and deliverables for each team member and shares this with the team to ensure that everyone is aware of what is expected of them. Support the team: The team sits together to establish regular check-ins or progress updates to ensure members can ask questions or raise concerns. Problem-solving Scenario # 2 : Handling a Product Launch Review and redraw plans:  Emily revisited the project plan and identified areas where the team could reduce the scope or prioritize features to meet the budget constraints. Go for alternatives:  The team then explored alternative resources or suppliers to find cost-effective options. Are there any underutilized resources, equipment, or personnel from other projects or departments that can be temporarily assigned to this project? Moreover, they revisited their suppliers and negotiated further. Outsourcing parts of the project:  Emily considered outsourcing some project functions to external contractors or freelancers. Eventually, they outsourced the marketing to another team and continued working on the core features. Upgrade the available capacity:  Emily and her team invested in upskilling the present workforce with additional skills. It allowed some team members to explore exciting areas and supplemented the team. Get both sides onboard: Taylor begins the conflict resolution process by talking to both team members. She recognizes the issue and first goes into individual discussions with both. Later, she sets up a meeting for both to share their perspectives. Mediation:  In the next step, the manager encourages the two team members to talk to each other and resolve the conflict independently. Taylor describes how the optimal contribution can look different for different team members. Additionally, she encourages them to be more open and collaborative so that they understand what the other one does. Preventing mistakes again:  The team holds a meeting to discuss the issue and allow other team members to express their thoughts and feelings. By not hiding the problem that happened in front of everyone, Taylor acknowledges the issues and shows that she cares about the things happening inside the team. Further, by discussing and sharing, they can build a healthy relationship to prevent similar issues in the future.  Use formal tools: Lastly, they establish clear guidelines and expectations for behavior and communication within the team to prevent future conflicts. Training and coaching are also added to help team members improve their communication and conflict-resolution skills. Discussions with the Sales Representatives: Donna starts by having one-on-one conversations with each team member to understand their perspectives on why the targets are not being met. After gathering insights from personal discussions, Donna calls for a team meeting. During the session, she allows team members to share their experiences, challenges, and suggestions openly.  Analysis of Sales Process: Donna conducts a detailed sales process analysis, from lead generation to closing deals. She identifies bottlenecks and areas where the team might be facing difficulties. This analysis helps her pinpoint specific stages that need improvement.  Setting Realistic Targets: Donna understands that overly ambitious targets might be demotivating. She collaborates with her team to develop more achievable yet challenging sales targets based on their current performance and market conditions. She organizes training sessions and workshops to help team members develop the necessary skills and knowledge to excel.  Recognition and Incentives: Donna introduces a recognition program and incentives for meeting and exceeding targets to motivate the team. This helps boost morale and encourages healthy competition within the team. She closely monitors the team’s progress toward the revised targets.  Conduct Exit Interviews:  As the stream of resignation continues, Neil adopts a realistic approach and starts by attempting to understand the issues his former team members face. He conducts exit interviews with the people leaving and tries to determine what’s wrong.  Understand the current team:  In the next step, Neil tries to learn the perspectives of staying people. Through surveys and conversations, he lists the good parts of working in his team and emphasizes them. He also finds the challenges and works on reducing them.  Change and adapt to employee needs:  These conversations help Neil enable a better work environment to help him contain turnover and attract top talent. Moving forward, he ensures that pay is competitive and work is aligned with the employee’s goals. He also involves stakeholders to create development and growth opportunities for his team. Be approachable and open: Erica first ensures she can gather all the details from the team members. She provides them with a safe space and comfort to express their concern and ensures that action will be taken. She supports the targeted team members, such as access to counselling or other resources. Adopt and follow an official policy: Developing and enforcing anti-discrimination policies that clearly state the organization’s commitment to diversity and inclusion is the first step to creating a safe workplace. Erica refers to the policy and takes immediate action accordingly, including a thorough investigation. Reiterating commitment and goals: Providing diversity and inclusion training to all team members to help them understand the impact of discrimination and how to prevent it is essential to create a safe workplace. Erica ensures that the team members are aware of the provisions, the DEI goals set by the organization, and  Connect with the team: Andrew starts by conducting one-on-one meetings with team members to understand their personal and professional goals, challenges, and strengths. Observing team dynamics and identifying any issues or obstacles hindering motivation and productivity also helps. Involving team members in the process: Seeking feedback from team members on what motivates them and what they want to see from their manager to feel more inspired. Enabling and empowering: Offering opportunities for growth and development, such as training, mentoring, or leadership roles, helped Andrew contribute to his team’s development.  Take help from Merlin: Andrew reached out to Merlin, the AI chatbot of Risely, to get tips whenever he got stuck. Merlin sought details about his issues and shared some tips to help out Andrew. Here is what it looked like:  Develop a problem-solving process: To get problem-solving right for multiple scenarios repeatedly, the key is to remember and set a problem-solving approach that works across the board. A wide-ranged problem-solving process that begins with identification and concludes at the resolution helps managers navigate various challenges the profession throws us.  Learn to identify problems: The key to solving problems is placing them at the right moment. If you let some problems pester for long, they can become more significant issues for the teams. Hence, building the understanding to identify issues is essential for managers. Think from multiple perspectives: As a problem-solver, you must care for various parties and stakeholders. Thus, thinking from numerous perspectives and considering ideas from a broad spectrum of people is a core skill.  Consistently work on skills: Like other managerial skills, problem-solving skills need constant practice and review. Over time, your skills can become more robust with the help of assessments and toolkits. Tools like Risely can help you with resources and constant guidance to overcome managerial challenges. Check out Risely today to start reaching your true potential. Suprabha Sharma Suprabha, a versatile professional who blends expertise in human resources and psychology, bridges the divide between people management and personal growth with her novel perspectives at Risely. Her experience as a human resource professional has empowered her to visualize practical solutions for frequent managerial challenges that form the pivot of her writings. How well do you perform in different problem-solving scenarios? Learn more about your problem-solving skills with the help of a free assessment now. What are some problem-solving scenarios? What are problem scenarios, what is one example of problem-solving. 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Problem-solving in business is defined as implementing processes that reduce or remove obstacles that are preventing you or others from accomplishing operational and strategic business goals. In business, a problem is a situation that creates a gap between the desired and actual outcomes. In addition, a true problem typically does not have an immediately obvious resolution. Business problem-solving works best when it is approached through a consistent system in which individuals: Identify and define the problem Prioritize the problem based on size, potential impact, and urgency Complete a root-cause analysis Develop a variety of possible solutions Evaluate possible solutions and decide which is most effective Plan and implement the solution Why Is Problem-Solving Important in Business? Understanding the importance of problem-solving skills in the workplace will help you develop as a leader. Problem-solving skills will help you resolve critical issues and conflicts that you come across. Problem-solving is a valued skill in the workplace because it allows you to: Apply a standard problem-solving system to all challenges Find the root causes of problems Quickly deal with short-term business interruptions Form plans to deal with long-term problems and improve the organization See challenges as opportunities Keep your cool during challenges How Do You Solve Business Problems Effectively? There are many different problem-solving strategies, but most can be broken into general steps. Here is a six-step method for business problem solving: 1) Identify the Details of the Problem: Gather enough information to accurately define the problem. This can include data on procedures being used, employee actions, relevant workplace rules, and so on. Write down the specific outcome that is needed, but don’t assume what the solution should be. Use the Five Whys: When assessing a problem, a common strategy is to ask “why” five times. First, ask why the problem occurred. Then, take the answer and ask “why” again, and so on. The intention is to help you get down to the root cause of the problem so you can directly target that core issue with your solution. 2) Creatively Brainstorm Solutions:   State every solution you can think of. Write them down. Seek input from those who possess in-depth knowledge of or experience with the problem you’re trying to solve. These insights will provide you with valuable perspectives you can transform into tangible and impactful solutions. 3) Evaluate Solutions and Make a Decision:   Assess the feasibility of each solution. Is the deadline realistic? Are there readily available resources you can leverage to successfully implement the solution? What is the return on investment of each solution? If necessary, come up with alternative solutions or adjust the initial ones you brainstormed in step 2. 4) Make a Decision: Finally, make a firm decision on one solution. This final solution should clearly address the root cause of the problem. Perform a SWOT Analysis: You can use a SWOT analysis to help you decide on the best solution. A SWOT analysis involves identifying the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats linked to a specific decision. With this framework, your team can assess a decision from various angles, thereby gaining a holistic view of it. 5) Take Action:   Write up a detailed plan. This involves developing a comprehensive roadmap that outlines the steps required to implement your solution. The steps should specify milestones, deadlines, roles, and how to obtain the necessary approvals. To ensure accountability, your entire team should have access to this action plan. Each team member should be able to track and share their progress with the group. 6) Gather and Share Feedback: Problem-solving is not a “set it and forget it” process. It’s a dynamic journey that necessitates ongoing attention, deliberation, and refinement to achieve optimal results. Thus, periodic feedback is critical in validating whether the chosen solution creates the desired impact. It allows key stakeholders to check in and make any necessary changes. What Are Problem-Solving Skills? Problem-solving skills are specific procedures that can be used to complete one or more of the six general steps of problem-solving (discussed above). Here are five important examples: Using Emotional Intelligence: You’ll solve problems more calmly when you learn to recognize your own emotional patterns and to empathize with and guide the emotions of others. Avoid knee-jerk responses and making assumptions. Researching Problems: An effective solution requires an accurate description of the problem. Define simple problems using quick research methods such as asking, “What? Where? When? and How much?.” Difficult problems require more in-depth research, such as data exploration, surveys, and interviews. Creative Brainstorming: When brainstorming with a group, encourage idea creation by listening attentively to everyone, and recognizing everyone’s unique contributions. Logical Reasoning: Develop standard logical steps for analyzing possible solutions to problems. Study and apply ideas about logical fallacies, deductive reasoning, and other areas of analytical thought. Decisiveness: Use an agreed-upon system for choosing a solution, which can include assigning pros and cons to solutions, identifying mandatory results, getting feedback about solutions, choosing the decision-maker(s), and finishing or repeating the process. How Can You Improve Your Problem-Solving Skills? Learning how to solve business problems takes time and effort. Though some people appear to have been born with superior problem-solving skills, great problem-solvers usually have taken the time to refine their abilities. You can develop high-level skills for solving problems too, through the following methods: Ask and Listen: Don’t expect to solve every problem alone. Ask for advice, and listen to it carefully. Practice Curiosity: Any time you’re involved in solving a problem, practice researching and defining the problem just a little longer than you would naturally. Break Down Problems: Whenever possible, break large problems into their smallest units. Then, search for solutions to one unit at a time. Don’t Label Yourself Negatively: Don’t allow a problem to mean something negative about you personally. Separate yourself from it. Look at it objectively and be part of the solution. Enhance Your Problem-Solving Skills with CMOE Problem-solving skills in business are not developed overnight. Developing then takes ongoing practice and the right guidance to get right. We encourage you to leverage CMOE’s Problem-Solving and Decision Making in the Workplace workshop to further develop your skills. We’ll help you identify new ways to solve problems methodically so you can create greater impact. Clients We’ve Worked With Contact form. Need More Information? Please fill out the following form and we will be in contact with you with more information. " * " indicates required fields As Featured In: The Better Business Bureau has determined that CMOE meets accreditation standards. These standards verify that CMOE’s product quality and competence enhance customer trust and confidence. ©2024 Center for Management & Organization Effectiveness. All rights reserved. Starting a Business Growing a Business Small Business Guide Business News Science & Technology Money & Finance For Subscribers Write for Entrepreneur Tips White Papers Entrepreneur Store United States Asia Pacific Middle East South Africa Copyright © 2024 Entrepreneur Media, LLC All rights reserved. Entrepreneur® and its related marks are registered trademarks of Entrepreneur Media LLC 5 Steps to Creatively Solving Business Problems Being able to innovate is crucial to success. We show you how. By Scott Miker Edited by Chelsea Brown Apr 16, 2022 Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own. Being creative in a business environment comes easy for some, but for most of us, it is challenging to come up with innovative and unique solutions to our most pressing problems . It's typically easy to see why a problem occurred or even suggest what everyone else should do to solve the problem. But when it's our responsibility to address the issue, that's when things get complicated. We often see unlimited options and analyze the consequences of each choice. We see an uphill battle with uncertain outcomes. Howver, we can overcome the fear of the unknown and hone in on the best available option. We can get creative. And the good news is that if being creative isn't innate for you, there are specific action steps to choosing a path forward. 1. Define the box Everyone knows the concept of thinking outside the box , but at the same token, we all have boundaries to operate within. We can't use an endless supply of resources or completely change the rules of business. In other words, sometimes we need to be able to solve problems within the box, staying grounded in reality. The first step is to outline the boundaries of the situation and our control over it. Define the problem. Develop the scope. See the limitations you have so you know where you can operate. This will give you an idea of what is possible and start to reveal options for resolution. Related: Focusing on Your Perfect Business Plan Actually Holds You Back 2. Come up with ideas This is the brainstorming step, where we get to throw out a bunch of half-baked ideas to see what has legs. The more ideas, the better at this point of the process. This isn't the critical point where we evaluate the options. Instead of trying to see which options are best, we want volume. I used to teach an audio engineering course on MIDI technology , but the tech also spilled over to other areas. I had an exercise where students would think of different ways to utilize it, but they couldn't have it relate to music or audio production. They all thought it was strange at first, but by giving them a framework for the problem, they were able to come up with some interesting ideas. The goal is to generate multiple answers. The crazier, the better. Some came up with the idea to use the technology to control lights in a home. Some said they could use it train their dog to do tricks by playing dog-whistle sounds. This exercise underscored how developing numerous creative ideas helps sharpen our ability to solve any problem. Related: A Four-Step Approach That Will Make Your Business Profitable 3. Narrow ideas down At this step, we want to shed ideas that require incredible resources or just seem too far-fetched. Seeing obvious holes in an idea means that too much work would have to go into the solution to make it effective. We aren't looking to eliminate all options. We aren't even disregarding all bad options. The key is to narrow them down, not find the perfect option. We want the ones that seem to have the best odds of solving the problem with minimal consequences to the business. Once you have a short list of ideas that could work, you are ready to move on to the next step. 4. List the pros and cons Every solution will have positives and negatives. There is no perfect option. By listing the various pros and cons , we can get a clearer picture of each, and see how it impacts other areas of the business, maaking it easier to identify the incidentals and offshoots from deploying each strategy. From there, think about the total system. How would this impact other areas? What ripple could this potentially create? 5. Choose between a bunch of bad options I've used these five steps many times in my career. By this step, I've often still been left with several options. But after evaluating each one, clear and costly ramifications would emerge. Maybe it required reducing our margins to get the product sold. Maybe it was ramping up production or delaying other initiatives, or even mean reducing staff or investing in new technology . Related: 3 Reasons Entrepreneurs Struggle When Building Business Systems This is where the great leaders separate themselves from the average leaders. This is where the tough decisions are made. But this is also where you get to control your fate. Instead of searching for a perfect choice, choose between a bunch of bad options. All options will seem flawed at this stage. If a perfect option existed, you would have uncovered it earlier in the process and gone forward with implementing it. Move forward to do everything possible to maximize the pros and limit the destruction from the cons. By following these five steps, your ability to come up with creative business solutions will expand. When a problem emerges, you will immediately define the box you're operating within and start thinking of options and be able to identify pros and cons to guide you towards the best option, even if it is flawed. The more I use this process, the easier it is and the more valuable it becomes, helping to avoid analysis paralysis or short-sighted decisions that backfires, so hopefully you'll keep them front of mind. Author, Speaker, Business Operations Professional Want to be an Entrepreneur Leadership Network contributor? Apply now to join. Editor's Pick Red Arrow Exclusive: Kevin O'Leary Is Launching a New Agency With the Founder of Shazam — Here's Why He Says It's a Game Changer Lock Younger Generations Want to Retire By 60. Their Strategy Is a Win-Win for Everyone. These Are the AI Skills You Should Learn Right Now, According to the World's Youngest Self-Made Billionaire Lock I Worked at Google for 14 Years — Here's What I Had to Unlearn When I Started My Own Company Lock New Research Reveals How Much Money Most Side Hustles Make in 1 Month — and the Number Might Surprise You Celebrities Are Collaborating on Iconic Meals With Popular Fast-Food Chains — Did Your Favorite Make the Cut? 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How to Find the Right Programmers: A Brief Guideline for Startup Founders For startup founders under a plethora of challenges like timing, investors and changing market demand, it is extremely hard to hire programmers who can deliver. Successfully copied link AI ASSISTANTS Upmetrics AI Your go-to AI-powered business assistant AI Writing Assist Write, translate, and refine your text with AI AI Financial Assist Automated forecasts and AI recommendations TOP FEATURES AI Business Plan Generator Create business plans faster with AI Financial Forecasting Make accurate financial forecasts faster INTEGRATIONS QuickBooks Sync and compare with your QuickBooks data Strategic Planning Develop actionable strategic plans on-the-go AI Pitch Deck Generator Use AI to generate your investor deck Xero Sync and compare with your Xero data See how easy it is to plan your business with Upmetrics: Take a Tour  → AI-powered business planning software Very useful business plan software connected to AI. 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Reviews See why customers love Upmetrics Customer Success Stories Read our customer success stories Blogs Latest business planning tips and strategies Strategic Planning Templates Ready-to-use strategic plan templates Business Plan Course A step-by-step business planning course Help Center Help & guides to plan your business Ebooks & Guides A free resource hub on business planning Business Tools Free business tools to help you grow 4 Proven Techniques For Effective Business Problem Solving Free Business Problem Statement Templates Aayushi Mistry December 18, 2023 There are several fundamentals on which your business stands, remains stable, and soars at the heights for you. These fundamentals are Research and Development of your product and services, Marketing along with market analysis and implementations, sales, accounts, customer support, and human resources. These fundamentals remain the same regardless of the size of your company. Ideally, for your company to run smoothly, all the fundamentals must remain in balance. However, more often than not, the real scenario is far away from the ideal. As problems arise every day, your business needs new optimizations every day. And it is within these problems that you will actually find the job of having a business. In any way, it is very important for you to look at your operations and make them as error-free as possible. But, how to do that? Well, this is what this blog post is all about-Actionable steps to business problem-solving . So Firstly, You Have to Determine What Is the Actual Problem? Running a company is not easy. Hundreds of things come at you from all different directions. In that case, a lot of time, you might not even realize that there is any problem. So when you see that everything is not the way it is supposed to be. Find out the actual problem. There could be a problem in any of the fundamental aspects that we discussed above. Moreover, A lot of times, it is possible to have problems in multiple areas of business. And knowing the area of the problem is the first and most important step toward solving the problem. And then, understand the seriousness of the problem? At times, the problem at hand requires a solution. But you might not need to act on it immediately. It is so much like a dent in your ship. But other times, the problems might thrash right under your ship. And it becomes so severe that you need to work on it immediately. If not, the problem might just sink your entire business. Some of such severe problems include not having adequate funds, improper marketing, and sales strategy, not enough human resources, shortage of technology, improper leadership, and more. However, at the end of the day, you get to decide on the severity of the problem. Apply proper damage control Once you figure out the seriousness of the problem, think about what you can do immediately. A few problems may not have an instant solution. But they can definitely have instant damage control. So, by the time you reach the root of your problem and bring the solution, apply the appropriate damage control. And solve problems from the very root A lot of time, a problem is not just the bits that appear on the surface. In fact, it has a deeper end than we could think of. So, every time you find a problem, give it an analytical approach. Give it a helicopter view and find out the factors contributing to your problem. Doing so will help you solve the problem from its deepest point. And along with that, will also help you streamline other operations affecting it. To Identify The Problem, Here Are a Few Techniques You Can Implement. Apply SWOT analysis SWOT analysis stands for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats. A lot of times, companies use this model for competitive analysis . But it can also give you insights into the operations and management of your company. It helps you figure out the strong points and weak points of every operation of all the departments. Similarly, it always helps you pinpoint your weakness and threats. And most often, the problem in your company is underlined with weakness and probable threats. And to identify it and look deeply at it, SWOT analysis could be your best tool. Want to create a SWOT Analysis for your Business? Craft a powerful SWOT Analysis in just minutes using our user-friendly and free online SWOT Analysis Generator Tool! Conduct Market Research You surely pay a lot of your time and effort to make your operations smooth. But a lot of the time, your problem is outside your office. That’s because the market keeps changing all the time. The reason for the change could be anything including competitors, the change in demand and supply, recession or economic boom, or anything! The market is unpredictable and it can change at any moment. Sometimes the change is obvious and sometimes it is out of the blue. But even the most minute change can shake the very fundamentals of your business. In that case, you need to keep conducting market research and analysis . So you can steer the growth of your company strategically. And along with that, it will also help you to identify the problem and solve it. Refer Case Studies A lot of companies like to document their previous problems and their solutions. And it is not a bad idea. But it can also be overwhelming and hence, most companies do not prefer to do it. But there are a lot of business journals online and offline that document some of the most challenging problems and breakthroughs. In fact, there are different journals and magazines for different areas of business. And being a business person, it is always a good idea to catch up with those journals and magazines. It gives you a different perspective on the problems that you have at hand. Moreover, it might even encourage you to do things differently to avoid certain problems. Furthermore, it is always good to be informed about the business world in general. Discuss with your team and mentors While it is true that a team of like-minded people helps you smooth your office operations. But sometimes, it takes the differences that make you look for your solutions differently. And that’s how your teammates can help you out. And usually, mentors are more experienced. They have generally seen the more perplexing scenario in the business and in the market. And you could surely rely on their judgment to solve problems. The goal is to solve your problems quickly and efficiently. And if taking advice from your teammates, peers, and mentors can accelerate the process then you must always consider it. Be creative No matter the problem or situation, it is always a good idea to think out of the box. It not only forces you to have unique solutions. But also, puts you in distinct positions which you can leverage to take your business to new heights. Along with that, you also find ways to optimize your finances and resources, like using employee templates to improve your workflow. After all, problem-solving in business is all about creativity and implementation. And while you make a point to look at the solutions creatively, make sure you have more than one approach to it. This way will have multiple backs up plans if you get stuck. Track the progress All your thoughtful, well-discussed, creative solutions won’t be enough if you do not analyze and optimize them. So, when you come up with solutions, make sustainable plans to analyze them. While following the above-mentioned steps, 4 Effective Problem-Solving Techniques: Six thinking hats. Six Thinking Hats focuses on identifying the problems and their solutions from different perspectives. It involves consulting with team members from different departments and ranks. And that’s how you get a complete overview of the situations and their solutions. It involves data research and analysis as well as creative brainstorming. This problem-solving technique opens space for different ideas and removes roadblocks from a solution. Lightning Decision Jam Lightning Decision Jam is one of the most important problem-solving strategies. The problem-solving process requires more of a creative upfront. It does not only set things right but allows you to have fun along the way. In this problem-solving technique, you invite a few qualified people from your team and discuss a certain problem. These people put their problems and their probable solutions on a sheet of paper without any discussion. One by one, they present it to the host and discuss it collectively. After which the priority of the solution is then decided by a collective vote and the solution is put into execution accordingly. The best advantages of this technique are: Your entire team is in alignment with the problem, the solution, and the implementation. Everyone on the team has a divided responsibility. Everyone on the team takes accountability for each other. Hence, the result of the implied solution is seen clearly. The 5 Why’s This problem-solving technique not only goes as deep as the problem but is at the heart of the organization. It aligns with your vision, mission, and your practices to achieve it. It is highly effective in helping a group to find the root cause of any problem or challenge and conduct root cause analysis that will deliver results. By beginning with the creation of a problem statement and going through five stages to refine it into a root cause problem statement, The 5 Whys provides everything you need to guide a group through a root cause analysis with ease. World Cafe is a powerful problem-solving technique that directs your team’s attention to solving complex problems. This problem-solving technique enables this approach by creating a relaxed atmosphere. The participants self-organize and explore relevant topics for problem-solving purposes. Build your Business Plan Faster with step-by-step Guidance & AI Assistance. About the Author Since childhood, I was in awe of the magic that words bring. But while studying computer science in college, my world turned upside down. I found my calling in being a copywriter and I plunged into a world of words. Since then, there is no looking back. Even today, nothing excites me to find out the wonders the words can bring! Related Articles Business Problem Statement Explained with Examples What is SWOT Analysis & How to Conduct it Writing a Business Plan Confidentiality Statement Reach your goals with accurate planning. No Risk – Cancel at Any Time – 15 Day Money Back Guarantee Breadcrumbs Section. Click here to navigate to respective pages. DOI link for Solutions Get Citation There are some events in life that are inevitable, and the emergence of problems in the workplace is one. Solutions sets out to provide remedies that are accessible, practical, meaningful, and final. Well organized, and referenced to specific operations, this book provides troubleshooting and other assistance, and serves as an encyclopedic reference for answers to organizational problems for managers and practitioners. All the functional activities and operations of organizations are included, so that almost any problem or issue that may occur will be addressed in one or more chapters. Readers will be able to quickly locate, understand and use a specific tool or technique to solve a problem. The different tools available are described, or a single most useful tool indicated. The tool is then explained in depth with an example of how it can be used. The strengths and weaknesses of individual tools are identified and there are suggestions for further help. Solutions is essential for anyone wanting to learn the basics of business problem solving and those who might know the basics but want to expand their understanding. TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter 1 | 18  pages, problems and decision making, chapter 2 | 16  pages, optimizing decision making and avoiding pitfalls, chapter 3 | 18  pages, chapter 4 | 22  pages, communications, chapter 5 | 18  pages, chapter 6 | 24  pages, developing organizational design and culture, chapter 7 | 24  pages, human resource management, chapter 8 | 20  pages, marketing and promotion, chapter 9 | 16  pages, competitors and competitive intelligence, chapter 10 | 20  pages, chapter 11 | 18  pages, identifying and serving customers, chapter 12 | 16  pages, operations management, chapter 13 | 16  pages, distribution and supply, chapter 14 | 24  pages, project and process management, chapter 15 | 20  pages, chapter 16 | 18  pages, finance, budgeting and cash flow, chapter 17 | 26  pages, organizational preformance, chapter 18 | 18  pages, government and legal issues, chapter 19 | 20  pages, websites and information technology. Privacy Policy Terms & Conditions Cookie Policy Taylor & Francis Online Taylor & Francis Group Students/Researchers Librarians/Institutions Connect with us Registered in England & Wales No. 3099067 5 Howick Place | London | SW1P 1WG © 2024 Informa UK Limited Most Common Business Problems and How to Solve Them In the ever-evolving world of business, challenges are an inevitable part of the journey. Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, you’re likely to encounter a variety of hurdles along the way. This article explores some of the most common business problems and offers practical solutions to help you navigate them successfully. 1. Cash Flow Issues Problem: One of the most prevalent issues that businesses face is cash flow problems. This occurs when a company has more expenses than revenue, leading to financial instability. Solution: To combat cash flow issues, consider the following strategies: Create a detailed cash flow forecast to anticipate and plan for future financial needs. Negotiate favourable payment terms with suppliers to improve working capital. Explore alternative funding sources, such as loans or investors, to inject cash into the business when needed. 2. Lack of Market Differentiation Problem: In a competitive marketplace, it can be challenging to stand out from the crowd. Many businesses struggle with differentiating themselves from their competitors. Solution: To set your business apart, focus on: Identifying your unique selling proposition (USP) and communicating it clearly to your target audience. Conducting thorough market research to understand your customers’ needs and preferences. Continuously innovating and adapting your products or services to meet changing market demands. 3. Ineffective Marketing Problem: Without effective marketing, even the best products or services may go unnoticed. Many businesses struggle with marketing their offerings effectively. Solution: To enhance your marketing efforts : Develop a comprehensive marketing strategy that includes digital marketing, social media, and traditional advertising channels. Invest in content marketing to establish your business as an industry authority. Utilise data analytics to track and optimise your marketing campaigns for better results. 4. Employee Productivity and Retention Problem: Maintaining a motivated and productive workforce is essential for business success. High turnover rates and unmotivated employees can be detrimental. Solution: To improve employee productivity and retention: Offer competitive compensation and benefits packages. Provide ongoing training and opportunities for skill development. Foster a positive company culture that values teamwork, communication, and work-life balance. 5. Scaling Challenges Problem: Expanding a business can be both exciting and daunting. Many businesses struggle with scaling operations effectively. Solution: To navigate the challenges of scaling: Develop a scalable business plan that outlines growth strategies and resource allocation. Invest in technology and infrastructure to support expansion. Monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) to ensure growth remains sustainable. 6. Regulatory and Compliance Issues Problem: Navigating the complex landscape of regulations and compliance requirements can be a significant challenge for businesses, especially in highly regulated industries. Solution: To stay compliant and avoid legal issues : Stay updated on industry-specific regulations and compliance standards. Consult with legal and regulatory experts to ensure adherence to all requirements. Implement robust internal controls and documentation processes. 7. Customer Acquisition and Retention Problem: Acquiring new customers and retaining existing ones is an ongoing struggle for many businesses, especially in competitive markets. Solution: To boost customer acquisition and retention: Develop a customer-centric approach that focuses on providing exceptional experiences. Implement loyalty programs and incentives to reward loyal customers. Utilise customer feedback to continuously improve products and services. In the dynamic world of business, challenges are par for the course. However, with the right strategies and a proactive mindset, these common problems can be effectively addressed and overcome. By focusing on financial management, differentiation, marketing, employee engagement, scalability, compliance, and customer relationships, you can navigate the business landscape with confidence. Remember, every challenge presents an opportunity for growth and improvement, making your business more resilient and successful in the long run. 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What to Do If an Accident Occurs During Your Business Trip Understanding Field Sobriety Tests in California Unique Considerations for Military Service Members and Personal Injury in Florida 7 Ways to Identify How a Product or Service Solves Customers’ Problems How do you identify how a product or service solves customers’ problems? In this article, we share 7 strategies that will help your product team do just that. You will also learn how to tackle your customers’ pain points effectively. Let’s dive right in! To be successful, your product needs to offer a solution to a real problem. Be the painkiller, not a vitamin. Otherwise, there’s a risk it becomes redundant, and customers ditch it. To gather qualitative insights on how your product addresses customer pain points , conduct one-on-one interviews. Conduct regular and contextual in-app surveys to collect both quantitative and qualitative feedback at scale. Examine user behavior and product usage data to identify popular features and areas of friction in the user experience. Analyze customer reviews on external platforms to uncover product strengths and weaknesses. Leverage insights from customer-facing teams and analyze support communications to understand user sentiment and recurring issues. Study rival offerings to compare problem-solving approaches and identify potential gaps in your own product. Gather and assess user suggestions while focusing on underlying problems rather than specific feature requests . Invest in ongoing customer research to stay abreast of evolving needs and market changes. Incorporate user feedback into the development process. Create customer journey maps to pinpoint and address pain points at various stages. Develop personalized user onboarding processes to educate customers about relevant features and drive their adoption. Userpilot is a product growth platform. Book a demo to see how it can help you diagnose customer problems and develop impactful solutions. Try Userpilot and Take Your Product Growth to the Next Level 14 Day Trial No Credit Card Required Why is it important to solve your customers’ biggest challenges? Which is more important, painkillers or vitamins? Of course, painkillers. To succeed, your product needs to be a painkiller. It needs to solve genuine customer problems and bring positive change to customers’ lives. That’s when they’re happy to pay for it, contributing to your revenue and driving growth. Don’t get me wrong: vitamins have their place too. But as nice-to-haves, they’re the first to be cut from the shopping list when the budget gets tight because their impact isn’t as tangible as that of painkillers. 7 ways to identify how your product solves customer problems How do you know that your product is the kickass painkiller you want it it be? Here’s an overview of 7 tactics to implement into your product and customer discovery process. 1. Interview customers to fully understand if their pain point is resolved Interviews give you a chance to gather qualitative data straight from your customers. They’re flexible, and you can follow up on ideas they bring up. In your interviews, focus on customer pain points and how your product tackles them. Encourage your customers to share their stories: why they chose the product, how they use it, and how it’s made their lives better. 💡 Pro tip: Use product analytics to identify the most successful product users and invite them to the interview with an in-app message . 2. Trigger surveys to capture customer sentiment at scale The biggest interview downside? They’re difficult to scale, so if you want to gather lots of feedback, use in-app surveys instead. There are two approaches here: Run regular surveys, say every 3-4 months, to track overall satisfaction trends. Trigger contextual surveys to gather targeted feedback from specific users, for example, just after they’ve used the new feature you’re rolling out . Use them both. In the survey, include a mix of closed-ended and open-ended questions to capture both quantitative and qualitative insights. 💡 Pro tip: Segment customers based on their feedback and follow up with interviews. Use behavior analytics to understand the reasons for their satisfaction (or dissatisfaction ). 3. Analyze product usage data for friction and drop-offs Analytics can give you various insights about how well the product satisfies users’ needs . For example, feature usage data can reveal which features users find most valuable and which of them the least. But don’t pull the plug on the features that customers don’t use just yet. Try to understand why they’re underutilized. For example, conduct path and heatmap analysis to identify friction in the user experience that could be responsible for low feature adoption. And use the insights to optimize the onboarding flows that enable it. 💡 Pro tip: Before you analyze user behavior in depth, use funnel analysis to find the drop-off points . 4. Monitor customer reviews on third-party sites Customer reviews on third-party sites like G2 or Capterra are another source of feedback on how well your product solves the problem. And it’s not just about the stars. They give you a general idea of how well you’re doing but don’t really improve your understanding of your product’s strengths and weaknesses. So roll up your sleeves and dig into the qualitative responses . Look for recurring patterns that shed light on where your product shines and where it’s lacking. 💡 Pro tip: Ploughing through qualitative responses is a pain, so feed them into an AI chatbot , like Claude or ChatGPT, and prompt it to analyze it for patterns. 5. Review customer support interactions Your sales, marketing, customer service , and customer success colleagues can offer valuable insights into how well your product or service meets customers’ needs . Why? They interact with your customers and clients daily and have access to lots of anecdotal data. For example, which features customers value and which are lacking in your product. You can extract additional insights by analyzing their phone call transcripts (use AI again) and support tickets to gauge customer sentiment and identify issues that undermine the positive customer experience. 💡 Pro tip: Compile a monthly voice of the customer report summarizing key themes from support interactions, including top issues, requests, and positive feedback. 6. Analyze competitors to understand their approach to solving problems Analyzing your competitors’s offerings can reveal a lot about your own product and how well it meets customer demands. In your competitor analysis, focus on the features they offer and try to identify the problems they solve. Does your product solve the same problems as well? If yes, how do their solutions compare to yours? If not, is there a better way to solve the problem? 💡 Pro tip: Look for features and solutions that your rivals have copied from you. If your competitors are copying from you, you must be doing something well. 7. Track and evaluate feature requests to identify target market needs Gathering and analyzing feature requests seems like a no-brainer. If the customers need something, they will tell you, right? Yes, in many instances, it works. But here’s the catch: Customers don’t necessarily know what’s the best solution to their problem. More often than not, they ask for features that other products offer. Satisfying such requests will help you achieve feature parity with your competitors but won’t give you the edge. Solution? Just like with competitor analysis, first understand the nature of the problem and then search for innovative solutions. And before you do this, make sure the problems are aligned with your product vision . You can’t solve all the problems in the world! 💡 Pro tip: To collect customer requests , use a feedback widget embedded in your resource center. How to successfully address your customers’ pain points? Let’s wrap up by looking at 4 strategies that will help you ensure that your product successfully tackles customer problems. Conduct customer research routinely Customer research isn’t limited to the early stages of the product development process when you’re looking for a business idea. Customer needs and the competitive landscape constantly evolve, and you need to stay on top of the shifts, so make it an ongoing process. Integrate customer feedback into product development One way to keep tabs on evolving customer needs is by embedding feedback loops in the development process. Conduct regular surveys, continuously interview customers, and monitor their activity on 3rd party platforms to gauge their satisfaction levels and identify opportunities for improvement. And then act on the insights. Map out the customer journey to resolve pain points at various stages To make sure you address customer pain points consistently, create customer journey maps . Start by breaking down the customer journey into stages and identify key touchpoints and user actions. For each touchpoint, list the pain points that customers face. This will give you a clear view of the challenges to address and help you prioritize . Create onboarding flows to educate customers about your features No matter how innovative your product is, it won’t solve customer problems if they don’t know how to use the fancy features. The solution? Personalized onboarding experiences that help them discover relevant functionality and prompt repeated use until their adoption. Start with onboarding checklists to activate the core functionality and use interactive walkthroughs to teach them how to use more complex functionality. Customers who read your blog, attend a webinar or visit your landing page look for products or services that solve specific problems. Your ability to diagnose those problems and find solutions determines the chances of your product’s long-term success. If you offer them a potent painkiller, the odds are they’ll keep using it. Give them vitamins, and they will ditch you as soon as the novelty wears off or budgets get tight. If you’d like to see how Userpilot can help you identify customer problems and find solutions, book the demo! Leave a comment Cancel reply Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. Get The Insights! The fastest way to learn about Product Growth,Management & Trends. The coolest way to learn about Product Growth, Management & Trends. Delivered fresh to your inbox, weekly. The fastest way to learn about Product Growth, Management & Trends. You might also be interested in ... Mastering the product design process: a step-by-step guide to success. Aazar Ali Shad 7 Ways to Identify How a Product or Service Solves Customers' Problems Saffa Faisal 11 Product Strategy Examples For SaaS Web site design and development STO Solutions is a full-service website design and development company with a wide range of services including web page design, custom programming, Joomla, WordPress, and the Magento and Opencart E-commerce platforms. Whether you need a complex, new project or a simple site update, our team will provide you with excellent work and prompt service Mobile Application development We build native, hybrid, and cross-platform apps that run on all major operating systems such as iOS and Android. Our powerful, highly-usable mobile apps solve business problems, attract users, and reinforce your brand. 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Skip to primary navigation Skip to main content Traveling to Russia and beyond The Palaces and Gardens of Peterhof, a must-go site in St. Petersburg Last Updated on January 6, 2024 by Irena Domingo The Peterhof complex consists of a set of palaces and gardens that are in the Gulf of Finland (about 30 kilometers west of St. Petersburg) and until 1917 were the residence of the czars. They are known as the “Russian Versailles” and are an UNESCO World Heritage site. If you travel to St. Petersburg, this visit is a must-do. In this article I’ll explain you what to look for, how to get there and how to buy tickets online to avoid lines. I'm going to talk about ... Introduction Palaces and museums, gardens and fountains, 2. the services in peterhof complex, arriving by land to peterhof, arriving by sea to peterhof, 4. purchasing tickets online to avoid lines. If you are travelling to St. Petersburg, a visit you can’t miss is  Peterhof , known as the “Russian Versailles”, which consists of a series of palaces and gardens that were the residence of the czars. In this article I will try to explain what to see in this complex, how to get there (since it is located about 30 kilometers from St. Petersburg), where to eat and how to buy tickets online to avoid lines in the summer season . About Irena Domingo Hello, my name is Irena. I was born in Russia in 1974 during the Soviet era. I worked as a Russian teacher and as a translator and interpreter for the past 30 years. One of my main hobbies is traveling. I started this blog with one aim: to create the most comprehensive guide ever written for traveling to Russia and beyond. Author of the Russia Guidebook 2024 (PDF) Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | Russiable Community Leave a comment… If you have any comments, questions or concerns about the article you just read, join the Russiable Community to get answers or to leave your opinions or comments. Discover more Program System for Solving Problems of Monitoring Social and Economic Development of Saint-Petersburg Conference paper First Online: 21 April 2016 Cite this conference paper Oleg Korolev 6 , Vladimir Parfenov 7 & Semyon Potryasaev 6 , 7   Part of the book series: Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing ((AISC,volume 466)) Included in the following conference series: Computer Science On-line Conference 875 Accesses One of the ways of modeling to be used is so called ‘visual modeling’. In turn, there are many visual approaches, and only one of them is to apply algorithmic networks. The paper gives a short introduction of the algorithmic network approach and the Cognitron system is based on this approach. Further, the article describes the algorithmic model “Development Evaluation of the Information Society” and the corresponding algorithmic networks, created based on the method of development evaluation of the information society in Saint-Petersburg, developed in St. Petersburg Information and Analytical Center. The program system for working with the model is described, which consists of the Cognitron-Service program and the Cognitron system. This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access. Access this chapter Institutional subscriptions Similar content being viewed by others “Nodes of Problems” as a Component of the Smart Technology of City Monitoring as a Dynamic System The Application of Social Network Analysis: Case of Smart Roofing Information Systems for Processes Maintenance in Socio-communication and Resource Networks of the Smart Cities Arnott, D.: Decision support systems evolution: framework, case study and research agenda. Eur. J. Inf. Syst. 13 (4), 247–259 (2004) Article   Google Scholar   Intelligent Systems in Cybernetics and Automation Theory. In: Proceedings of the 4th Computer Science On-line Conference 2015 (CSOC2015), Vol 2: Intelligent Systems in Cybernetics and Automation Theory. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol. 348 (2015) Google Scholar   Michailov, V.V., Marley, V.E., Korolev, O.F.: The Algorithmic Networks and Their Use: Schoolbook, 2nd edn., ext.—SPb.: SPbSUAI, 136p (2012) Korolev, O., Morozov, V.: The modelling automation system Cognintron. Logistics and supply chain management: German-Russian perspectives. In: Ivanov, D., Lukinskiy, V., Sokolov, B., Kaeschel, J. (eds.) Proceedings of the 5th German-Russian Logistics Workshop DR-LOG 2010 in St. Petersburg, May 2010. pp. 363–368 Korolev, O., Raguinia, E.A.D.: The algorithmic networks for total cost ownership (TCO) and return on Investment (ROI) calculation. Logistics and supply chain management: modern trends in Germany and Russia. In: Proceedings of the 4th German-Russian Logistics Workshop DR-LOG 2009 in Cottbus, May 2009. pp. 363–368 Korolev, O.F.: The syntax of graphical construction of algorithmic networks. The information technologies and intellectual methods. Issue 3—SPb.: SPIIRAS, pp. 112–131 (1999) Download references Acknowledgements The research described in this paper is partially supported by the Russian Foundation for Basic Research (grants 15-07-08391, 15-08-08459, 16-07-00779, 16-08-00510, 16-08-01277, 16-57-00172-Bel_a), grant 074-U01 (ITMO University), project 6.1.1 (Peter the Great St. Petersburg Polytechnic University) supported by Government of Russian Federation, Program STC of Union State “Monitoring-SG” (project 1.4.1-1), The Russian Science Foundation (project 16-19-00199), Department of nanotechnologies and information technologies of the RAS (project 2.11), state research 0073–2014–0009, 0073–2015–0007. Author information Authors and affiliations. St. Petersburg Institute of Informatics and Automation, Russian Academy of Sciences (SPIIRAS), St. Petersburg, Russia Oleg Korolev & Semyon Potryasaev Saint Petersburg National Research University of Information Technologies, Mechanics and Optics (ITMO), St. Petersburg, Russia Vladimir Parfenov & Semyon Potryasaev You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar Corresponding author Correspondence to Oleg Korolev . Editor information Editors and affiliations. Faculty of Applied Informatics, Tomas Bata University in Zlín, Zlín, Czech Republic Radek Silhavy Roman Senkerik Zuzana Kominkova Oplatkova Petr Silhavy Zdenka Prokopova Rights and permissions Reprints and permissions Copyright information © 2016 Springer International Publishing Switzerland About this paper Cite this paper. Korolev, O., Parfenov, V., Potryasaev, S. (2016). Program System for Solving Problems of Monitoring Social and Economic Development of Saint-Petersburg. In: Silhavy, R., Senkerik, R., Oplatkova, Z.K., Silhavy, P., Prokopova, Z. (eds) Automation Control Theory Perspectives in Intelligent Systems. CSOC 2016. Advances in Intelligent Systems and Computing, vol 466. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33389-2_33 Download citation DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33389-2_33 Published : 21 April 2016 Publisher Name : Springer, Cham Print ISBN : 978-3-319-33387-8 Online ISBN : 978-3-319-33389-2 eBook Packages : Engineering Engineering (R0) Share this paper Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content: Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative Publish with us Policies and ethics Find a journal Track your research 264 IMAGES 7 Steps to Problem Solving Problem solving infographic 10 steps concept Vector Image Problem-Solving Strategies: Definition and 5 Techniques to Try 5 Problem Solving Strategies to Become a Better Problem Solver Making Your Best Business: How to Approach ANY Problem Problem Solving Aid Mind Map Flowchart, Business Concept Stock COMMENTS 10 Step Process for Effective Business Problem Solving Navigate uncertainty with a 10-step process for effective business problem solving. Learn to develop problem-solving skills to approach issues with confidence. How to Solve Problems How to Solve Problems. To bring the best ideas forward, teams must build psychological safety. Teams today aren't just asked to execute tasks: They're called upon to solve problems. You'd ... 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These leaders learn to adopt a particularly open and curious mindset, and adhere to a systematic process for cracking even the most inscrutable problems. They're terrific problem solvers under any conditions. 15 Tips To Become A Proactive Business Problem-Solver While every business has problems, the solutions that you use to solve these issues is what really matters. As a working professional, it can be easy to react rather than prepare for the ... How to master the seven-step problem-solving process Structured problem solving strategies can be used to address almost any complex challenge in business or public policy. Problem-Solving in Business: PROBLEM-SOLVING STEPS Problem-Solving in Business: PROBLEM-SOLVING STEPS This guide is designed to help you approach your business problem-solving process in a systematic way through information sources that can help you understand your situation more clearly and provide a distinct direction towards the appropriate solution. How To Identify And Solve Problems In Your Business It's important to take a look at your business and identify the potential problems that could be hurting the bottom line. Are You Solving the Right Problem? Reprint: R1209F The rigor with which a problem is defined is the most important factor in finding a good solution. Many organizations, however, are not proficient at articulating their problems ... 7 Examples of Problem-Solving Scenarios in the Workplace (With Solutions) Looking to enhance your problem-solving skills? Our blog provides problem-solving scenarios and tips for managers to navigate challenges. What Is Problem Solving in Business? Problem-solving in business is defined as implementing processes that reduce or remove obstacles that are preventing you or others from accomplishing operational and strategic business goals. In business, a problem is a situation that creates a gap between the desired and actual outcomes. 5 Steps to Creatively Solving Business Problems Being creative in a business environment comes easy for some, but for most of us, it is challenging to come up with innovative and unique solutions to our most pressing problems. 11 Common Business Problems and How You Can Solve Them Learn about business problems by reviewing 11 common business problems, which can help you develop solutions and plans to mitigate these problems. 4 Effective Business Problem Solving Techniques Discover the key techniques for effective business problem-solving with our comprehensive guide. Learn how to identify problems, and implement solutions. Solutions Solutions sets out to provide remedies that are accessible, practical, meaningful, and final. Well organized, and referenced to specific operations, this book provides troubleshooting and other assistance, and serves as an encyclopedic reference for answers to organizational problems for managers and practitioners. Most Common Business Problems and How to Solve Them In the ever-evolving world of business, challenges are an inevitable part of the journey. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, you're likely to encounter a variety of hurdles along the way. This article explores some of the most common business problems and offers practical solutions to help you navigate them successfully. Boost Problem-Solving in Business Coaching with Creativity Enhance business coaching skills with creativity for better problem-solving and innovative solutions in today's dynamic market. 7 Ways to Identify How a Product or Service Solves Customers' Problems And before you do this, make sure the problems are aligned with your product vision. You can't solve all the problems in the world! 💡 Pro tip: To collect customer requests, use a feedback widget embedded in your resource center. How to identify how a product or service solves customers' problems: collect feature requests. STO Solutions, Inc STO Solutions is a full-service website design and development company with a wide range of services including web page design, custom programming, Joomla, WordPress, and the Magento and Opencart E-commerce platforms. Whether you need a complex, new project or a simple site update, our team will provide you with excellent work and prompt service. Peterhof Palace The Peterhof Palace (Russian: Петерго́ф, romanized: Petergóf, IPA: [pʲɪtʲɪrˈɡof], [1]) (an emulation of early modern Dutch "Pieterhof", meaning "Pieter's Court") [2] is a series of palaces and gardens located in Petergof, Saint Petersburg, Russia, commissioned by Peter the Great as a direct response to the Palace of Versailles ... The Palaces of Peterhof, a must-go site in St. Petersburg Peterhof (Russian Петергоф or Петергоф, Petergof) is a town within the Petrodvortsovy district in St. Petersburg, at the shore of the Gulf of Finland, located about 30 kilometers west of St. Petersburg. This small town is famous because in it you will find the palaces and gardens of Peterhof, created by order of Peter the Great. Program System for Solving Problems of Monitoring Social and ... As for the solution of problems related to the determination of baseline values in certain areas of socio-economic development of St. Petersburg it was decided to use a method of solution based on the inverse function, the algorithmic model "Development Evaluation of the Information Society" was divided into parts, which were implemented ... assignment essay homework paper report resume review speech