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. How Two Little Kids Schooled Me In Motivation Techniques Part 1 How Two Little Kids Schooled Me In Motivation Techniques Part 1 Remember, I motivate people for a living, but I got a Hard Lession on Motivation Techniques Here! To make it quick. Here's a summary of what I learned -Make them teach themselves -People will take advantage of you if you let them. -Different languages are not always a barrier. How can these Motivation Techniques Translates into Workplace Motivation. I have a useful story for you. I hated babysitting my younger cousins. I love the… 2. One less meeting gets you home in time for dinner Excerpted from The Truth about Getting Your Point Across...and Nothing But the Truth http://www.leadingonedge.com/truth A client of mine absolutely loved to have meetings. Regardless of the topic, if there was some reason for at least two people to have any kind of interaction a meeting got called. Not only were there a lot of meetings but there would almost always be superfluous bodies taking up space in the meeting that had no real reason to be there other than to be 'informed.' Now, if decis… 3. The Myth of the Management Team By Graeme Nichol Every business has problems. That is why the average life span of a large industrial company is 40 years. Some are learning disabilities where companies are not prepared to learn from their mistakes. They insist on doing the same thing every time. Even when problems occur no one examines the cause of the problem. The problem is an embarrassment that should be swept under the rug and forgotten rather than be used as an opportunity to learn. Handling these dilemmas and disabilities is the Manage… 4. 5 Ideas To Leverage The 3 Stages Of Career Development In Your Organization By Dan Strakal In most industrialized nations, the average age a student graduates from high school is 18 years old and the average retirement age is 65 years old – a difference of 47 years. On average, most people work 40 to 50 years of their lives. It is well established that during these 40 to 50 years of employment workers undergo at least three distinct phases in their career development:1. The “Bring It On” Stage2. The “Realistic” Stage3. The “Reinvention” StageThe Bring It On Stage ranges from th… |
||||
