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. Why Your Best Employees Don't Deserve To Be Managers You'd think we'd know by now -- just because someone is fantastic at doing something... doesn't mean they're equally as good at managing others to do that same thing. After all, the skill set required to practice a specific profession -- whether it's plumbing, hairdressing, engineering, selling, teaching, accounting or whatever -- is entirely different from the skill set required to manage people. Yet organizations persist in promoting 'doers' into management roles. These promotions come with be… 2. Eight Ways to Motivate Part Time Employees Eight Ways to Motivate Part Time Employeesby Ed Sykes ©2004In most cases, part-time employees present a special challenge when it comes to motivation. They do the “grunt” work, have little career choices, are often focused on other goals outside of your organization (college, hobbies, etc.), and are treated as outsiders by full-time employees. So what’s a manager to do? How do we turn our part-time employees into outstanding employees?The following are eight proven techniques to motivate your p… 3. Boost Your Leadership Skills By Disciplining Yourself In The Way Of The Question Mark By Brent Filson I'm often asked to come in to organizations and give a motivational speech to their employees. I reply that I'm not a motivational speaker. Never have been. Never will be. Don't want to be. I do something else. I teach their people how to become motivational leaders. That's a far more productive endeavor.The concept and application of motivation are misunderstood in most organizations. The motivational industry is based on a fundamental contradiction; because the focus of motivation is… 4. How Managers Can Turn Failures Into Successes By David Krueger MD Although there are real, external reasons for managerial difficulty – including massive reorganization after takeovers and the realities of discrimination due to age, sex, and race – managers fail most often for reasons they themselves create.These reasons include ignoring the application of emotional intelligence, failure to recognize individual motivation to be effective, and a failure to adapt to change and rebound from setbacks. With only slight modifications, the context of the following… |
||||
