Tools for Problem Solving (you don't need to follow links as they will often not be active...)

1. How can we make better decisions?

Managers are Paid to Make Decisions. Obviously, the best managers are those who consistently make good decisions.

How do these successful managers make good decisions? Experience and training are important, but good managers also use decision-making tools that have been developed because they can help define a problem, they can also help develop alternative solutions, and they can help choose the alternative to try first.

2. Decision Making Tools

Decision Tree Helps define the problem and the path to a solution. Read more about Decision Trees HERE.

Cost-Benefit Analysis Does the solution make sense from a financial standpoint? Sure, we can solve the problem, but can we bankrupt the company in the process? Read more HERE.

Drill Down Breaking Problems into Manageable parts. Read HERE.

Cause and Effect Diagrams Identifying the Likely Causes of problems. Read HERE.

Six Thinking Hats Looking at the problem from multiple points of view. Read HERE.

SWOT Analyzing your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats. Read HERE.

PERT Charts Also called Critical Path Analysis. Read HERE.

3. Group Decision Making

I stated in the last lesson that in the process of problem solving, two heads are better than one, meaning that the more people you can involve in the problem solving process, the better (potentially) the solution.

There are, however, advantages and disadvantages to the use of participatory decision making.

Advantages:

Broader perspective for problem definition and analysis.

More knowledge, facts, and alternatives can be evaluated.

Discussion clarifies ambiguous problems and reduces uncertainty about alternatives.

Participation fosters member satisfaction and support for decision.

Disadvantages:

Time-consuming; wasted resources if used for easy decisions.

Compromise decisions may satisfy no one.

GroupThink; group norms may reduce dissent and opinion diversity.

No clear focus for decision responsibility.

4. How to Encourage Creative Thinking

Most of our discussion on creative problem solving has centered on the process and tools that can help in the process.

The process works best when we can draw out the greatest amount of creativity from those involved.

We make a big assumption, however, that the process and tools will stimulate the greatest amount of creativity from participants, and this isnt always true.

OUR RESPONSIBILITIY AS MANAGERS IS TO STIMULATE AND ENCOURAGE CREATIVE THINKING IN OUR ORGANIZATION.

One of the first things we, as managers, can do is to find and hire creative thinkers. Look at page 131 of your text for Characteristics of Creative People.

5. How to Build an Innovative Culture

Once we have an organization with creative people, our task as managers is to build innovation and creativity into the corporate culture.

Your text talks about five stages of creativity, and this site HERE explains more fully the main stages.

As a supervisor in an organization, it is your responsibility to encourage out of the box creativity by following some simple rules:

Suspend your own judgment.

Tolerate a reasonable amount of failure.

Supervise carefully be there to help rather than direct.

Offer constructive (positive) criticism.

Tolerate some different behaviors.

6. Final Thoughts on Creative Problem Solving

As managers, we must realize that without creative thought and the ability to make changes rapidly, our company or organization will fail, or at least perform less well than others in the marketplace.

It is critical to our success, then that we:

Create an environment where innovation and creativity are valued.

Develop tools for creativity, and make them available to all.

Attract and hire the most creative people we can find.

Make our culture one that welcomes being different in the pursuit of excellence.

Q: -1 For your first post describe a problem you had to solve at work, school, home or with friends and tell us if you used any of the problem solving techniques in the problem solving lecture above. Which technique in the lecture on problem solving do you think you could have tried had you known about it and why?