Four Tips for “Beefing Up” Your Problem-Solving Tool Box – Part Two
This is part two of a four-part guest post contributed by Fred Nickols, Managing Partner of Distance Consulting LLC. All four parts focus on improving your problem solving efforts.
Tip #2: Be clear about all of your goals and objectives
Ultimately, the aim of problem solving is action. To engage in problem solving is to search for a solution. A solution is a course of action that produces the solved state. To actually solve a problem is to implement the solution that has been found and demonstrate that it works. Solving problems requires intervention as well as investigation.
Intervening in complex organizations requires of us that (a) we are clear about all our goals and objectives and that (b) we carefully think through the likely effects of any actions we are contemplating.
Actions taken in an organizational context often “ripple” outward from the point of intervention, sometimes having unforeseen and unintended consequences. Our goals and objectives, therefore, are typically multi-dimensional; that is, we seek to eliminate some conditions, and to achieve others. There also are conditions we seek to preserve or avoid. (See Figure 2, the Goals Grid).
If we don’t want something that already exists, our goal is typically one of eliminating it. If we want something that doesn’t exist, our goal is ordinarily one of achieving it. Four categories of goals and objectives can be derived from the interplay of our perceptions and preferences: Achieve, Preserve, Avoid, and Eliminate.
For any problem situation, it is useful to ask the following questions as a way of clarifying all your goals and objectives:
- What are we trying to achieve?
- What are we trying to preserve?
- What are we trying to avoid?
- What are we trying to eliminate?
These same questions are also useful in examining any contemplated course of action. For example, if you’ve decided to solve the problems with a legacy accounts payable system by replacing it with a popular commercial version, you are well-served by asking the questions above in relation to that new accounts payable system.
Be sure to check back for parts 3 and 4 from Fred Nickols. To read part one, click here.
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