Problem solving is about bridging the gap between where you are and where you want to be. Decision making is about choosing how you want to bridge that gap.
In that sense, we all are problem solvers and decision makers and any improvement in our skills can translate into major leaps for our organizations.
Effective problem solving and decision making are skills that you develop through forming habits. This site gives ideas on how to acquire these habits.
Problem solving is a four-step process that starts with defining the problem (making sure you are not focusing on just a symptom or a less critical problem).
Second, you need to diagnose it; that is, understand its root cause(s), which usually requires you to build a “why” issue tree tree.
Next you need to identify all the potential solutions—using “how” issue trees / decision trees*—before deciding which one(s) you want to implement; a good way to do so is to use a decision matrix.
The final step is to execute the solution(s): convince the rest of your team/boss/client that the one you picked is the right one, implement it, and monitor its effectiveness.
Click on any of the four images on the left to see more about that specific step.
Alternatively, you can read the latest ideas on problem solving a decision making, or you can jump to a specific post by clicking it in the margin on the left. In particular, you may want to have a look at how to be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (MECE) in your thinking. You may also want to read about how to build issue trees / decision trees or how to use logic to improve your thinking and communication.
Decision trees
Perhaps the most important tool in our approach to problem solving is the issue tree, which is like a decision tree, only more complete. A decision tree / issue tree is a graphical breakdown of your key question—the one all-encompassing question that you propose to answer. It is useful to both identify new ideas to answer your key question and organize them so that they only appear once in the problem-solving process; in one word, make your thinking MECE.
The classic example of problem solving in a business context is to answer the question: “how can we increase our profitability?”. Here is a decision tree to help you answer that question.
The value of a decision tree lies in its simplicity. By separating the key question into independent branches, a decision tree simplifies the problem-solving process, explicitly showing all its components and how they relate to one another. But, by laying out the structure of the problem in a graphical way, the tree also provides a road map for the solution process: at any moment in your analysis you can see where your effort contribute to the big picture and identify branches that you might not be addressing.
To be a good problem solver you must be able to see both the big picture and minute details. A decision tree helps you do both these things and, as such, is an invaluable tool in your problem-solving toolbox.
*Up until you include hypotheses, analyses, data sources and/or expected values, issue trees and decision trees are similar. Since we haven’t included these elements in this page, we refer to them a decision trees, which is the term that most people can relate to.