Problem Solving

High performance teams demonstrate mental agility in their willingness to approach problems from different viewpoints and to hold and work on opposing ideas until identifying the best solution.[1] High performing teams adopt the practice of using different perspectives in their critical thinking.[1]

Teams that practice critical thinking and reflect on it will broaden their capabilities for tackling complex problems—difficult to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, or changing requirements.[1]

Understand the Situation

As a leader, you need to know both how to do this well yourself, and importantly, how to influence others as they go through their own decision making to support your goals.

This is also called cognition thinking. Here the decision maker, whether it is you or someone you are trying to influence, takes in the raw data and tries to make sense of it, develop a conceptual framework or structure, and form a mental picture of the situation. This by default must be the first step in the sequence of decision-making. When trying to persuade others, do not forget that they have to go through this stage too before they can agree with your proposed alternative.

Relevant parameters are considered

  • Who?

  • What?

  • When?

  • Where?

  • Why?

  • How much?

Clarifying questions are the best tool for helping others through this phase of the decision making process. Humans need to spend the largest percentage of their decision-making cycle time in this stage. To short circuit this causes resistance later. Think of a time when someone tried to push you towards their best solution before you had time to understand the parameters of the situation.

List Concerns (make them visible) [1]

  • What bothers us?

  • What problems, choices, or actions do we need to make? Separate and Clarify (address one at a time)

  • What do we mean by…​?

  • What specific thing…​?

  • How do we know…​? Set Priority (to choose which concern to work on first)

  • Which concerns do we have the power to affect?

  • How serious is each concern?

  • When would resolution become difficult, expensive, impossible, or pointless?

  • Which concern is growing most?

Plan Next Steps [1]

  • Do we have a problem—a gap between what should be happening and what is actually happening?

  • Is the cause known?

  • Do we need to know the cause?

  • Do we need to make a choice?

  • Do we have an action to plan?

Setting Priorities

Objectives:

  • Spend your time and the time of others on what’s important.

  • Quickly zero in on the critical few and puts the trivial many aside.

  • Quickly sense what will help or hinder accomplishing a goal.

  • Eliminate roadblocks.

  • Create focus.

Feeling overwhelmed? Drowning in decisions that must be acted upon immediately? Setting priorities is the solution.

Sense of priority and budgeting of effort are basics. Without both there will be confusion and wasted effort. Decisions are not often narrowly defined, as in "Do I choose A or B?" Leaders make decisions when they establish priorities and determine what is important, when they supervise or when they choose someone for an effort.

You must set priorities. If you give your employees a list of things to do and say "They’re all important," you may be trying to say something about urgency. But the message you actually send is "I can’t decide which of these are most important, so I’ll just lean on you and see what happens." Sometimes all alternatives may appear equally good (or equally bad) and that any decision will be equally right (or equally wrong). Situations like that may tempt you to sit on the fence, to make no decision and let things work themselves out. Occasionally that may be appropriate; remember that decision making involves judgment, knowing whether to decide.

More often, things left to themselves go from bad to worse. Entropy affects life too, not just in engineered systems. In such situations, the decision you make may be less important than simply deciding to do something. Leaders must have the personal courage to say which tasks are more important than others.

In the absence of a clear priority, you must set one; not everything can be a top priority, and you can’t make progress without making decisions.

The process is only a framework that helps you make a plan and act. Success depends on your ability to apply your skills. Leaders also make decisions when they evaluate employee performance. The decision communicates your standards. Looking an employee in the eye and making a necessary correction is a supervisor hallmark.

Stephen Covey provides an excellent concept about setting priorities as follows.

Urgent Not Urgent

Important

  • Crises

  • Pressing Problems Deadline-driven projects

  • meetings

  • reports

  • Preparation

  • Prevention

  • Planning

  • Relationship building

  • Values clarification

Not Important

  • Needless interruptions

  • Unnecessary reports

  • Unimportant meetings, phone calls, mail, email

  • Other people’s minor issues

  • Trivia

  • Busywork

  • Irrelevant phone calls, mail, email

  • Time wasters

  • “Escape” activities

  • Internet

Layout the Problem

Define the Problem

What is the real cause of your concern? How does the situation differ from the ideal? An accurate problem definition is a key to solving the problem. Problems contain their own solutions if accurately stated.

To define the problem, compare the present situation to the expected condition.

Ask yourself: "What are the circumstances right now, and how would I want things to be, ideally?" Try to define any problem as something:

  • Specific: Think of the problem as one particular thing. If you worry about conditions that are vague and general, you will have no way to change those conditions.

  • Measurable: Decide on the size, extent, scope, length, dimensions, duration, of the problem. If your problem can’t be measured, it is probably too vague and general to be solved.

  • Achievable: Potentially solvable. Keep the problem small enough so that it is within your power to solve. Don’t let the problem take on aspects with which you cannot deal.

  • Compatible: Is your organization mandated to deal with this problem? Define the problem as something that falls within the mission of your work unit.

Analyze the Problem

Search for causes. If you can identify a range of causes, you can find the key causes that will reward your efforts at change. Examine factors such as people, processes, supplies.

Generate Potential Alternatives that Address Causation

People tend to spend slightly less time in this stage of decision making than in cognition. Developing options is also called divergent thinking.

This stage of the decision-making cycle explores possibilities and does NOT exclude.

Reach out to people, groups, or other resources who can offer different points of view on how to solve the problem. Get as broad a range of potential solutions before making decisions as time allows.

Use group Brainstorming to help the process of generating options and solutions.

Ask “what if…​?” questions. Say “Let’s consider…​” The goal is an imaginary light bulb lighting up above the decision maker’s head.

Select the Best Alternative

This final stage of the decision-making cycle involves convergent thinking to zero in on the best choice. This stage involves risk and opportunity assessment. When persuading others, remember that this is the third step in the cycle and that if people spend the most time in understanding, and then a little less time in generating options, then this stage of the decision making cycle takes the least amount of time.

Compare the merits (value proposition) of each potential solution. Solutions should be "filtered" by various criteria such as practicality, cost effectiveness, acceptability, etc. In selecting one solution, don’t throw out other potential solutions. They may come in handy in other contexts.

Decide which option is best. What values underly each option? What are the decision criteria to make a selection among the alternatives? What are the consequences of each alternative? Get factual data to evaluate each alternative. Use a decision-making grid or matrix to make decisions involving a number of alternatives and criteria. How much time is available? If time is short, decide based on personal knowledge and experience. What is the IRR target? What is the ROI.

Don’t jump to conclusions and grab at "easy" solutions to your problem. Make sure you understand all of the possible solutions that you have time to consider. Suspend judgment until you can examine all your options. Dealing with Paradox – can act in ways that seem contradictory; is very flexible and adaptable when facing tough calls; can combine seeming opposites like being compassionately tough, stand up for self without trampling others, set strong but flexible standards; can act differently depending upon the situation; is seen as balanced despite the conflicting demands of the situation.

1. Kepner Tregoe
1. U.S. Army Leadership Development Manual, FM 6-22

Updated on 27 Nov 2019

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