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. Accountability and Mega Projects By Shaun Murphy The past few years have seen an increase in the number of petroleum mega projects being proposed and executed. Record oil prices have given rise to increasingly ambitious and complex international alliances in the energy industry. These large, long term and capital intensive projects carry a great deal of cost and schedule risk which is very challenging to mitigate. We have found that some of this risk can be managed through an emphasis on accountability at all levels of the project organizat… 2. Top Ten Things About Creating a Business Vision By Martin Haworth To visualise where you are going, is deeper and more sensory than anything you have ever done before. And these are the skills of those who are able to create a vision you can really live and breathe. These people... Are FocusedThey are able to visualise in a focused and very clear way what 'perfect' will truly look like in the future.Involve OthersBring others into the contribution, such that they might try things they might never have before.Realise Core StrengthsWhilst being ultra-keen to g… 3. Innovation Management – the power of decision makers By Kal Bishop Creativity can be defined as problem identification and idea generation whilst innovation can be defined as idea selection, development and commercialisation.There are distinct processes that enhance problem identification and idea generation and, similarly, distinct processes that enhance idea selection, development and commercialisation. Whilst there is no sure fire route to commercial success, these processes improve the probability that good ideas will be generated and selected and that in… 4. Managing: New Managers are Usually Too Hard on Themselves By Helen Wilkie Moving from staff into management for the first time is exciting—but it can also be scary.There’s so much you don’t know. Somehow managing looked so easy from the outside, but now that you actually have to do it, you realize it’s more complicated than you thought. Before, you had certain tasks to accomplish and you knew you had the skills to do them. You still have responsibility for those tasks, but now you have to see that the work is done effectively by other people. That’s a whole new … |
||||
