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. Using the Six-Sigma Methodology to Improve Wafer Fab Productivity By Jason Foster As a result of consolidation of operations and significantly increased production requirements, Intersil's main Fab was facing bottlenecks in supply versus demand. Intersil enlisted Tefen USA first to support identifying the Fab bottleneck, and then to develop a comprehensive roadmap for capacity and cycle time improvements. A team composed of Tefen USA and Intersil members conducted a short assessment to confirm that the Photo area was the bottleneck, and then initiated an aggressive and focu… 2. Key Employees Can and Will Leave Your Business, are You Prepared? By Justin Woolich Very few businesses can claim to be prepared for the loss of key employees. Quite often it is an unexpected and unplanned for event that causes quite a bit of disruption to 'business as usual'.It is quite a gut wrenching experience to see an employee you have worked with over a period of time leaving your business. Even if the parting of ways is on good terms with a period of handover, you just know that there is so much information walking out the door with your former employee and there is n… 3. How Your Feelings and Those of Your Employees Can Make The Difference By Andrew E. Schwartz How we feel is really more important than what we know. This is because how we feel plays a bigger role in our behavior than knowing what we should or should not do. For instance, we “know” smoking is bad for us. We see research that tell us auto accident injuries and deaths can be greatly reduced by using seat belts. We “know” that brushing our teeth after each meal fights tooth decay. Despite these facts that we “know", many of us smoke, don’t use seat belts, and fail to brush after eating. … 4. Reducing the High Cost of Absenteeism Employers pay a high price for absenteeism, often more than they may realize, in terms of both financial and production losses and employee morale. Managers may view the tasks of finding a substitute employee as a short-term inconvenience; however, absenteeism frequently has more serious long-term effects. Employers can, nevertheless, ensure that employees report in regularly and remain on the job.Before employers can determine the best way to combat absenteeism, they must identify the organiza… |
||||
