Empowering Problem-Solvers: A 5-Step Approach for Talent Professionals

As talent professionals, you strive to cultivate a workforce equipped to tackle challenges and find innovative solutions. One crucial skill is effective problem-solving. This article outlines a straightforward 5-step approach to teach employees how to approach problems systematically and confidently.?

Let me first outline the five steps and then give you an example:

Step 1. Define the problem - ensure you are solving the problem correctly. This may require that you break the bigger problems into smaller problems. You still will need to have the problem defined.

Step 2. Determine what you know about the problem and what you don’t know.?

Step 3. Test the assumptions to make sure you know the things you think are correct.

Step 4. Get an understanding of the things that you don’t know. This may require you to learn new things "that you did not know that you did not know."

Step 5. Along the way or even at the end, you may find smaller problems to solve before tackling the bigger problem. Solve the smaller problem through the steps until the larger problem is solved.

Finally, all problems are solved, and you have succeeded.?

We’ll use this case study as an example:

The CEO sees a problem: They are not making enough money to cover expenses and will be out of business in six months.?

His solution: Direct the Sales VP to sell more. In the next few months, sales were at a record high. Three months later, however, cash reserves were even more down.

Step 1?(problem): The CEO determined that the problem was that revenue was low because sales were down.?

Step 2?(know/don’t know): She knew that the product's price was more than the cost to produce the product. She did not have anything that she thought she did not know.

Step 3?(test know): To test her assumptions, she looked up the price the product was selling for. She was right. The product sold for $200. She realized that she did not know what it cost to make the product. They had just gotten a new supplier for the product, and the company was trying to fill as many orders as they could.

Step 4?(solve what you don’t know): When she checked the cost, it turned out that the cost of making the product was $260.

Step 5?(continue until resolved): The problem that she needed to solve was how to increase the sales price of the product more than the cost to make it and sell enough to cover expenses. So, with this new problem, she went back to Step 1 and set upon solving the problem of the product cost to make it being? more than the price.

Equipping your employees with this 5-step problem-solving framework empowers them to become better problem solvers and, ultimately, increases their competence to tackle any challenge confidently. Carving out time to train employees to improve their problem-solving skills is a return on investment that improves your organization's success rate.

For those who want our problem-solving handout, send a direct message to me.

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