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. Virtual Assistants: What Can They Do for You? By Cathy Stucker Are you using your time as effectively as you could? If you are handling routine tasks instead of marketing or providing services to customers, you are leaving profits on the table. A Virtual Assistant (VA) may be just what you need.According to Marla Regan of OrganizedTime.com, a certified Virtual Assistant, you can benefit from using a VA for administrative tasks (such as billing), customer contact (follow up or reminder calls), project work (building or maintaining a client data base), or … 2. Sprituality & The CEO By Nick Arrizza, M.D. When shareholders are breathing down your neck it may feel that talk of incorporating spirituality into one's life and work is nothing short of a nuisance. I would like to suggest and try to show however that in fact introducing what I will later define as a spiritual energy into your life and work will help you to enhance your performance, reduce your stress and improve your health.Let me first start with what I mean by spiritual energy as it may surprise you. Have you ever experienced yourse… 3. Punctuality in Business: What it Says About You By Alicia Smith "Nothing inspires confidence in a business man sooner than punctuality, nor is there any habit which sooner saps his reputation than that of being always behind time." (W. Mathews)Being tardy can be a serious marketing blunder for today’s business owner. From being late to meetings with a colleague or client, to not delivering your product or service on time, tardiness speaks volumes about who you are and how you do business. If you want customers to choose to do business with you, you must… 4. Organizational Culture, Creativity, Innovation By Kal Bishop It can be concluded with great certainty that certain organizational cultures inhibit creativity and innovation whilst others foster it. Some organizations are just better at identifying problems, generating and selecting valuable ideas and developing and commercialising them - this is why those firms tend to maintain competitive advantage and remain leaders in their field.Another way to look at the problem is in terms of blocks. Certain organizations create or enhance blocks that prevent thei… |
||||
