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. Your Ultimate Leadership Feedback Loop: Their Leadership 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: 517Summary: Leaders need feedback to thrive. If they don't constantly evaluate how they are doing as leaders, they face repeated failure. Here is one important feedback… 2. Why Don't We Help Each Other Learn? I recently had the opportunity to speak at a regional conference for long-term care professionals. It was very exciting to be selected to speak and to share what I had learned about employee online and computer based education. Not to mention a little bragging about our new corporate education center. While I was waiting for my scheduled time to present I couldn't help but notice how many speakers were not practicing administrators or directors of nursing. The session's speakers were mostly co… 3. Time Management Tips for Managers By Lorraine Pirihi Late last year I was presenting a workshop for the senior managers of a major organisation. Whilst doing a pre-workshop survey to assess the challenges these managers were experiencing it became very apparent to me that many of them were showing the signs of business burn-out. And it was no wonder why. They were suffering from 'Priority Problems'. Quite simply they were making the mistake of doing the urgent rather than the important tasks.They were working extremely long hours, with no time f… 4. Every Business Needs a BHAG In the heady arena of strategy, the consultants of the world find wonderful acronyms for the work they do. Today let me introduce one of those to you. It's the BHAG - the Big Hairy Audacious Goal! This is the goal that really stretches you to think differently about how you do business. It's the goal that going to help you transform your business, rather than being satisfied with incremental change. It's the goal that's going to inspire you to do your best work and outshine your competition. So … |
||||
