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 Do Your Job Candidates See You? By Eric Garner Have you ever wondered how you come across to the candidates you interview? Here are 9 interviewer types. Work out which is most like you and you’ll know just what your candidates go through at interview.1. The Stickler. The Stickler is someone who likes to plan the interview down to the last detail. He or she believes there is a right way to interview. Once they work it out, they’ll stick to that format every time. Interviews with Sticklers tend to be highly structured, formal, polite, and bu… 2. … 3. Communicating with Case Studies:Provide Value By Robert Abbott A few weeks ago, a couple of colleagues and I discussed a new business idea. But, we had trouble expressing how this new business would provide value.And, out of our discussions came the idea of writing a case study. If you're not familiar with them, case studies are histories of business initiatives.They're like articles, but they put the reader into the shoes of a person making a difficult decision. Other professions also use case studies; you've probably heard of medical case studies, f… 4. Infighting Labor VS Corporate Executives, Who Started It? By Lance Winslow It seems like whenever we open the financial news we see the unions suing a company or going on strike, claiming the company is cheating them, over working them, unsafe work place, not enough benefits, low pay or messing with their pensions. Then they say that the company executives get paid too much. The company then says that the employees do work slow down, want money the company needs to operate, expand or pay in dividends to keep shareholders from dumping the stock.There is so much infigh… |
||||
