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When you start to look at a problem, what is the first thing that goes through your mind?

Well, I can certainly tell you what my first thoughts are…..WHY ME????

Don’t get me wrong, I love problem solving but it just gets overwhelming sometimes…especially if it’s going to be done the right way. Now, I don’t claim to be the “all-seeing-eye“ on the subject of problem solving but I do believe that the method I use, works in almost any situation if enough effort is made in attempting to solve the problem at hand.

I like to view a problem as merely an arrangements of words strung together to form a complex sentence. With this nugget in mind, we now have a starting point. We can begin to take apart the complexities surrounding the problem statement by identifying the players involved and what each player’s objective / role / contribution is, to the problem. This way we can look at the problem from multiple angles. The various perspectives give us multiple scenarios to understand, thereafter we can start to eliminate fact from noise.

I like to believe that there is always a logical explanation for what is happening in front of us and finding that logic is getting half way to your solution for any kind of problem. Knowing the reasons for why a problem is a problem will help you identify what’s missing. Potentially the missing gaps offer you clues to what the solution to your problem may be.

Let’s take a bullet point look at problem solving…

Problem solving tips:

• Write a short paragraph or short sentence about what you think the problem is. Identifying the problem statement can be achieved by :
  • Exploring the problem put in front of you as a result of something not going according to plan in a particular process or set of processes.
    • Determine what is the normal view of this process or set of processes?
    • Know for certain what your expectations should be with regards to the outputs of that process or set of processes.
      • Does the current scenario meet the same expectations?
      • What differs from your expectations?
• • What, about the problematic scenario is different from that normal view?
  • That difference from the norm will most likely make up your problem statement.

• Does the problem statement describe multiple phases?
  • Break up the problem statement into its individual parts by identifying the start and stop of the different phases of the problem statement.
  • Link each phase to either a person, a process or a thing that is contributing to that phase of the problem statement.
• Determine whether the person, the process or the thing can be removed or changed to get the scenario back to being normal.
• If the above cannot be removed or changed, think about alternative solutions to alter the direction of the scenario back to its normal state.
  • How do the alternatives change the problem into a working solution?
  • Does the alternatives create new problems?
  • Do you end up with a complete workable and repeatable solution?
• Close out your solution by checking that your problem statement is completely answered by the suggestions made to solve the problem.
  • If new problems arise on the back of some of the suggestions, ensure that you have suggestions readily available on a fix for the new problems.

It is important to understand your environment or the environment that you are thrown into, which impact the scenarios that are problematic. If you are able to properly understand the environment impacting a problem then you will be able to easily identify the factors contributing to a problem. Knowing the contributing factors to a problem is crucial in determining what comes next, which is how do you remove those contributing factors from the equation?

My special piece of advice with regards to problem solving would be that you, Become the logic hunter!