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. Workplace Violence: The Bullying Factor A lot has been written about the workplace bully and so my approach will deal with the assessment and analytical process of workplace violence. During my years as a Postal Inspector on a Workplace Violence Interdiction Team in New York, I quickly gained an appreciation for the value of determining the 'root causes' or 'contributing factors' of incidents of Bullying and Bully Tactics. In all of the assessments conducted involving bullying behavior 'root causes' and 'contributing factors' enabled … 2. Resistance - How to Handle It By Alan Fairweather Do you ever meet with resistance from other people - I bet you do! It might be a customer, a colleague, a member of your team or even someone in your personal life. Dealing with resistance or objections is one of the biggest challenges faced by business people; so let's consider why we get resistance and how we can handle it. I'm going to talk about customer contacts but the same rules apply whether it's a colleague or even someone in your personal life.Well there's good news and bad news - fi… 3. Breaking the Growth Barriers in the IT and Software Sectors There's nothing automatic about corporate growth, particularly in the information technology industry; 'build it and they will come' is a myth. In the real world there is either a structured, process-driven growth cycle, or stagnation — and stagnation IS automatic. Inherent to growth cycles are barriers, real-world business challenges that put some software companies out of business and spur others on to break through those barriers to higher levels of success. Overcoming those barriers is the … 4. Get Angry And Then Get Results PERMISSION TO REPUBLISH: This article may be republished in newsletters and on web sites provided attribution is provided to the author, and it appears with the included copyright, resource box and live web site link. Email notice of intent to publish is appreciated but not required: mail to: brent@actionleadership.comWord count: 510Summary: Many leadership situations are emotionally-charged, with leaders often being the targets of people's anger. As a leader, you must deal with that anger in wa… |
||||
