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. Planning For Growth By Paul Lemberg Are you planning your business or are you planning your growth? If you are like many high-performing business people, you have an annual ritual to set your plans for the coming twelve months. Some people do it in December, others at weird, miscellaneous times of the year, but most -- me included -- tend to do it the beginning part of the New Year. It doesn’t matter exactly when you do this, but it is important you do it sometime soon. It has been said all the way back to the time of th… 2. Six Sigma Training 101 – Better Management Basics By Dana Schorden What is Six Sigma?Six Sigma is a quality management program that is designed to achieve a “six sigma” level of quality for products. In the mid 1980s, Motorola pioneered Six Sigma and it has since been adopted by many other companies and manufacturers. Service companies also implement Six Sigma strategies to improve customer service and relations. The idea behind Six Sigma is that failures in quality and customer satisfaction occur after the sixth sigma of likelihood in a normal distribution c… 3. People Reading in Real Time By Pat Wiklund We've heard the slogans: career success depends on developing relationships, establish rapport with your colleagues. And do it quickly! No longer is it enough to treat our co-workers the way we would like to be treated. Now we are being challenged to employ the Platinum Corollary to the Golden Rule: do unto others the way they would like to be done unto.But how can you do it? How do you quickly size up a new team member, or an internal customer, and then shape your approach to his s… 4. Top Ten Ways for Managers to Build Rapport through Listening (and more!)* Working with people, whoever they are and at whatever level, requires great relationships. Managers can build rapport easily and quickly and great relationships follow. Team building is accelerated and what follows is a synergy of creative spirit to build great businesses. Here are Ten Ways to start you off building rapport with your people...Pay attention to and look at the speaker.You're building a relationship, so make sure that you help that along by paying attention - and let them see that… |
||||
