Wouldn’t it be easier if there were no problems to solve? And if there were, you’d just walk past by them as if they don’t exist at all? Wish that were true! (Un)fortunately, problems do exist and we solve them to make us happier, richer, eat better food, and more blonde women. The following list contains the 7 most important problem solving techniques you will need to tackle your everyday. One of them even makes you wear hats (but just imaginary, unfortunately…).
7 Problem Solving Techniques
1st Principle Thinking
It’s the latest craze. Ever since Elon spoke about using this principle (which has been around for quite a while) I think even the grocery stand seller started using it to increase his sales. But there is a more important reason for that and that’s because the 1st principle thinking technique makes you get down to the fundamental truth of the problem by examining every single assumption you have about the problem. After you realize that every assumption is wrong, then you’re left with a blank sheet where you can create new knowledge from scratch.
Effectively Taken From Medium
Six Thinking Hats
In other words, to solve problems and challenges every single team member would wear an imaginary hat that will represent a different perspective on problem-solving: Facts, Feelings, Control, Creativity, Positive, Negative – and would attack the problem from that particular perspective. It’s a great method because, as it’s mentioned in Chanty, it gives teams the ability to switch perspectives easily (something that individuals would have trouble doing).
Effectively Taken From Chanty
The 5 Why’s
It is probably one of the most widely used techniques, the 5 why’s is as simple as it sounds. You just ask 5 questions that start with “why” to get to the root cause of the issue at hand. It’s powerful because it’s simple and it makes you ask questions (and as we know asking questions is the only way to find answers right?).
Effectively Taken From I Six Sigma
Failure Mode
In essence, Failure Mode encompasses all the ways a process might experience failure. The beauty of this technique is that it will identify and deal with each process failure before the process is put into action.
Effectively Taken From Quality-One
The Wanderer
One of our favorites. How many times we’ve been engulfed by a problem so much that we just said fuck it and went off to do something else? And then when you completely forget about the problem and just go about your day, the solution dawns on you in the most unlikely of places. This is thanks to the Wanderer Technique, where you first think about the problem, and then go about your regular day, completely forgetting about it (consciously). You’ve already asked all the questions you would have needed answering, and you continue working. When you least expect it, the answer that solves the problem appears.
Effectively Taken From Business 2 Community
Barriers to Reproductive Thinking
The first time I read the headline, I was like what? Reproductive? Bring it on! But then it just turned out to be a Gestalt technique to solve problems. In short, solving a problem by using past experience and reproducing that experience to solve the current problem. Boring.
Effectively Taken From Wrike
Cause and Effect Analysis
Or popularly called the Fishbone Diagram, the cause and effect analysis is effective because it allows a problem solver to branch out all possible factors that might have caused the problem to appear in the first place. Then you get a birds-eye perspective on things, and it’s much easier to see what contributes to what, and how anything affects everything else.
Effectively Taken From Careerizma
Cheers,
That’s all on the problem solving techniques. If you’re looking for more articles to help you solve various business problems:
