Problem-Solving Success Tip: Use Your Time for Problems that are Truly ImportantLearn Management Articles on management-info.biz. Problem-Solving Success Tip: Use Your Time for Problems that are Truly Important article will help answer your questions on Management Articles.We at management-info.biz specialize in Management Articles. Management Articles at management-info.biz provides the most up to date news and articles. If you have questions please do not hesitate to contact us.
Hard as it may be to walk away once you're aware of it, just because a problem is there doesn't mean you have to solve it. Ask yourself and your colleagues, 'What will happen if we don't solve this problem?' If the answer is, 'not much,' then turn your attention to something more important. If you don't know what will happen, find out before you undertake a problem-solving project. It should be clear to you and everyone else involved that the problem is worth the effort--and expense--to fix it. Quantify the cost of the problem quickly, but as realistically as you can. Include lost opportunity costs as well as real expenses such as staff time to deal with the problem, travel expenses, etc. Use actual costs where you can; estimate where you can't. Then guesstimate what it will cost to analyze and fix it. Write your analysis down, stating all your assumptions explicitly. Get a colleague to verify that your assumptions and estimates are reasonable. Start with a rough 'order of magnitude' estimate. That may be enough to answer the question of whether you should proceed. If it's not clear, especially if the cost to solve it will be high, do a more careful analysis. If it will cost more to fix than to live with the problem, or if the number is even close, perhaps your resources (time, people, money) are better spent on other projects. If you decide to proceed anyway, you can do so with a better understanding of what you're undertaking. On the other hand, if you can demonstrate that the cost of the problem is much higher than the cost of solving it, using estimates based on reasonable assumptions, it will generally be much easier to get the resources you need. You can use your written analysis as a sales tool to help win support for your decision to proceed or not. We have to learn to distinguish those things that are truly important from those that are merely urgent. --Jerry D. Campbell
copyright 2005. Jeanne Sawyer. All Rights Reserved. |
More Articles:1. Money, Motivation, Success and Who? By Barry Maher It was 7:30 on a Saturday morning, and I was setting up to do the opening keynote for the conference. For some reason--I have no idea why--the sound man thought his ten year old daughter would enjoy my presentation. He'd brought her with him to work.Watching her father wiring this and plugging in that, the girl was soon as bored as only a ten year old can be. Eventually, she sauntered over to me."So who are you?" she demanded."I’m Barry Maher."Overwhelmingly unimpressed, she asked, "And w… 2. Why People Resist Us By Rick Maurer There’s a one-word reason most ideas never see the light of day: Resistance.Resistance is often behind the glassy-eyed stares you get following a presentation, the sarcastic put-downs you have to put up with when you describe your vision for a new product or service, and other people’s abrupt departure from the water cooler when you approach, enthusiastic and ready to share an idea. What people are saying to you, either directly or indirectly is, I’ve heard your idea and I don’t get it, I do… 3. Give Yourself a Boss' Day Gift, Part 2: Are You the Position or the Person? By Linda LaPointe Are you the position or the person?Bosses can lose their own identity sometimes. It’s easy. It happens a lot. The results are devastating to both the workers and to the supervisor.When we are the boss, there are many dangers in becoming you the ‘position’ instead of you the ‘person’. There are many reasons why supervisors morph into being the serious, alienated, distracted, unapproachable boss. One is that we want so badly to do a good job, and we think one way to do that is to take the job ve… 4. Problem Solving By Andrew E. Schwartz When problem solving, you may recognize that you were working on a symptom instead of the problem. An analysis of the more clearly defined problem may require an alteration to the objectives or the ideal solution. These reviews and changes are costly in terms of time and effort which emphasizes the need for rigid scrutiny during the initial problem definition to avoid wasted time and effort. Once implementation begins, it is even more difficult to learn that the entire action plan and subseque… |
||||
