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. Can You Make a Fortune with Stocks? Realistic Ways to Play the US Stock Market The stock market should present you with a lot of hot stocks in 2006. Many of them are going to be new technology stocks that come from the nanotech, biotech, voip, healthcare, homeland defense or internet sectors. Most of them will seem promising, but the truth is that a good number of these trading & investing opportunities are extremely risky, while others are not as good as they seem. That's why it's very important to know how to choose the best especially if you want to day trade them. … 2. Performance Expectations - 5 Tips and 5 Questions By Martin Haworth People want to understand their role - they want to do well! So by being clear, really clear about what it expected of them, makes a big, big difference! And that improves performance as well as saving you time chasing others around to deliver what you want.5 TipsBe Clear - your people need to know what they are doing, both in terms of actions and the standards that you will be expecting. By being really clear, checking understanding and having it written down makes a big difference.Have Patie… 3. IBEREASY: Spanish real estate adapted to suit foreigners� needs Ibericity, specialist in real estate services, has launched a third service. IBEREASY ensures real-estate purchases for every foreigner wanting to invest in Spain or live on the Mediterranean coast. The Spanish real-estate market has been growing for some years. According to INSE (National Institute for Statistics in Spain), more than one and a half million foreigners are interested in investing in Spanish real-estate in the next 5 years. The Spanish climate, the moderate prices and the lifesty… 4. Company Liability: Harassment by Non-Employees By Rhonda Goetz Harassment by Non-employees falls under the Hostile Environment category of the federal law that governs harassment and discrimination in the workplace.The Civil Rights Act of 1964 makes it illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, color, religion, age, national origin, and sex. Businesses are required to comply with both federal and state laws governing harassment and discrimination.Hard to believe, but yes the government expects you to protect your employees from outside harassment. Hara… |
||||
