This entry is part of a multi-post case study. We’ve developed a how issue tree about how we can close negotiations with our cable providers on time. The result was a set of hypotheses about how to proceed, and we now have several alternatives….
This entry is part of a multi-post case study. You’ve identified your problem. You’ve uncovered its root causes by building a why tree and by testing hypotheses. So you’ve covered the first two steps of the problem-solving process. Next, you need to identify solutions. This requires you to…
This entry is part of a multi-post case study. So we’ve developed our why tree: we’ve identified all the potential reasons why we’re having our problem and we’ve organized these reasons in such a fashion that they only appear once…
This entry is part of a multi-post case study. An effective way to become better problem-solvers is to use cases, so I’ll post problems that we have solved in my class so we can review them. (These are all real…
In business communication, your primary objective is to transfer information effectively. This is done best by expressing your main idea first. Here we’ll talk about presentations, but the concepts are equally applicable to emails, voicemails, memos and all other means…
The first step in the problem solving process is to identify precisely the problem you want to solve. That entails synthesizing the relevant information. Building a problem identification card can help you do so. We already discussed in another entry the…
To solve your problem you need to identify various possible answers, compare them, and select the one that, on balance, is best. In other words, you need to ask, how should I solve this problem? But focus too quickly on…
When confronting a challenging problem, we tend to think that we know what the problem is and we move straight into “solving mode,” what my colleague Albrecht Enders calls jumping to solution. However, for complex problems, this perceived problem seldom…