The process of solving a problem
Table of Contents
Becoming a problem solver.
When providing products/services, you will need to develop solutions for your business that allow it to function as efficiently and effectively as possible. Such as, organising processes to maintain control of workflows or integrating technology to improve performance. At the same time, you are selling a concept that solves your customers/clients problems. Whether those are existing problems or potential problems that they may be facing as their life/business evolves. Being professional and standing out can require you to solve simple and hard or complex and easy problems.
What exactly is meant by simple, complex, easy and hard? These are defined as:
Simple: Basic and generally uncomplicated, but also referring to being easy though not elaborate or luxurious.
Easy: Not difficult and requires little or no attention and effort.
Complex: Complicated and elaborate by being made up of multiple composites.
Hard: Difficult and mandates an extensive amount of attention and effort.
On one hand, you have to solve a problem that is uncomplicated but requires a lot of attention. Meanwhile, on the other hand, a problem can have multiple composites but requires less effort to solve. By clearly identifying problems, you should be able to create solutions. Whereas, not understanding a problem can confuse solving it. An end-goal should solve a problem that has value.
Sustainable performance and profitability.
In terms of solving a problem for your customer/client, wasting their time and losing your credibility both affect the outlook of your business’s performance and profitability. Asking the right questions and listening before hastily acting is a step in the right direction to solving problems. A good exercise in identifying and solving problems would be to place yourself in your customer’s/client’s shoes to understand their point of view and needs.
In regards to the workplace of your business, you can solve short term and long term problems. These can have an impact on sustainable business performance and profitability. Investing in the right tools and endorsing key strategies can boost morale for yourself and, if applicable, your team members. As a business owner, you have a lot to maintain. Though there are always improvements to be made within the inner workings of a business, and identifying problems to solve sooner rather than later can reflect the quality of the work.
Understanding just how well a business has performed in solving a problem will require information, measurements and actions. These include:
Data: Facts and statistics collected together for reference or analysis.
Metrics: A system or standard of measurement.
Processes: A series of actions or steps taken in order to achieve a particular end-goal.
Problems to solve.
Reliability and celerity allow for the reduction in expenses for your business and to your customers/clients. The typical problems to solve as a business owner, include but are not limited to:
Discovering new customers/clients.
Maintaining existing customers/clients.
Upselling to existing customers/clients.
Customer service improvements.
Office expense reductions.
Customer dissatisfaction reductions.
Reduction of time to market.
Market share growth.
Integrating new technology.
Morale scaling.
New product/service developments.
The mind of a problem-solver.
You do not need to have an earth-shattering and game-changing concept to launch a business. You only need to identify a problem that needs solving, whether it is a small problem or large and understand how to provide a solution. Successful business owners are good problem solvers. Problem-solving skills can allow you to tackle the challenges that inevitably develop within your business or your customer’s/client’s. So, what kind of mentality do you need?
Successful mindset: Approach each problem with a positive and successful mindset. This can allow you to create innovative methods to solve the problem. Exploring problems this way can allow you to develop revolutionary solutions.
Curiosity: There may be times when you will face radical uncertainty. This can be an opportunity for you to channel your inquisitiveness into being on a mission of discovery, and to be determined in solving problems. Use different angles to relentlessly investigate a problem. Cognitive biases in decision making, a systematic pattern of deviation from norm or rationality in judgment, can force business owners to shut down a range of solutions too early. Being curious can allow you to build better solutions from a broader range of potential creative answers.
Humble in tolerating ambiguity: Good problem solving involves a lot of trial and error. There is nothing wrong with failure. Because with failure, you could have learned how not to solve a problem in a particular way. Problems are random, and we can only predict so many future occurrences and their likelihoods. Theoretical and experimental probabilities are ratios and we can use proportions with probabilities to make predictions. We form predictions that can translate into data, and then observe, refine and filter our initial solution to the problem. Embracing imperfection and tolerance for ambiguity can allow us to form strong predictions, along with our ut feeling. Gut feelings can pay off, although these can be sometimes wildly wrong. Epistemic humility can allow a realization that our knowledge is always provisional and incomplete, which may require revision in light of new evidence. Embracing imperfection with epistemic humility will require you to challenge a solution that implies certainty and can lead to effective problem-solving. If there is high uncertainty, invest in a solution that allows for progression.
Alter perspective: Once in a while, you will face an obstacle that can seem insurmountable. All it can take is for you to shift your perspective and take a look at the problem from a different angle. Adjusting the problem can allow you to examine it in a new light and can assist you to understand new possibilities.
360-degrees view: By widening the aperture on a problem or viewing it through multiple lenses, you will be able to observe the whole scale of the problem, which can attribute your perception. Attempt to see beyond the periphery of vision of a problem by widening the aperture and identifying threats or opportunities. Observing outside rather than inside when faced with problems of uncertainty and opportunity, can help you to drive through the journey of decision-thinking. Keep in mind that decision-makers face highly constrained time frames or resources. Therefore, you may have to narrow the aperture and deliver a tight, conventional solution.
Pursue occurrent behaviour: Opposite to what was potential or predicted behaviour, happenings in a time and place forms occurrent behaviour. Complex problems, most often conceal their secrets. Though, this should not deter problem solvers from observing, hypothesising, experimenting and discovering the facets of a solution. Generating more and updated data can lead to progression when staling in solutions that have old data. Problem-solving can bootstrap, getting into or out of a situation using existing resources, into uncertain new spaces, building information, foundational assets, and confidence as they take steps forward. Problem solvers should embrace risks to discover a solution path, through constant experimentations.
Collective intelligence and wisdom: It can be a disadvantage to assume that you are a super smart individual, which enables you to do all of the work yourself. It is good to know the limits of your knowledge and capabilities. Because now you can crowdsource problem solvers through benchmarking, a process used to measure the quality and performance of a business’s products, services, and processes. There can be limitations to crowdsourcing. Though, it can be useful when conventional thinking yields insufficient solutions for the problem. Effective crowdsourcing is a timely and high budget process. Brainstorming engages with individuals outside of your business to generate ideas. Deep-learning, a broader family of machine learning methods based on artificial neural networks with representation learning, can provide insights that exist in your data, which conventional approaches have not discovered. Expanding the circles of information that you have access to can develop novel and creative solutions.
Momentum: It is good to have a plan, but issues will always appear out of nowhere. Critical to problem-solving uses combinations of logic and persuasion to gain action. By demonstrating an idea and going into detail about it you can bring the decision-makers into the problem-solving domain through the show and tell. Keep a clear head, do not stop at the first hiccup and a way to tackle a problem is to create your solution. Govern an idea for change that finds a way to present your logic visually so that the path to answers can be debated and embraced. Problem-solving can become the core of your business building strategy. Problem-solving creates value and this can develop a solution for you or your customer/client. Spell out the risks of inaction, which often have a higher cost than imperfect actions have. The more value you create, the more your business can grow.
The power of self-discipline.
Regardless of intelligence quotient (IQ) or academic credentials, some business owners are good at problem-solving and some are not. Some traits in solving a problem can be learned, while others require instinct.
You know there is a problem that needs solving. Systematically solving problems requires that you put the problem in context and discover an approach to solve it. Conclusions cannot be drawn up yet and alternative solutions will be to be considered. Mastering the discipline of problem-solving integrate:
Problem identification: First you must listen and understand what the customer/client is explaining to you. Ask the right questions. Then, you must identify and prioritise the most important problems, whilst understanding how to provide intuitive solutions.
Alternative paths and opportunities: Keep in mind that some aspects of the work are out of your reach. What may seem like a problematic obstruction could well be an opportunity in disguise.
Define the challenge: Being wear of a problem can allow you to define it in other ways that enable you to find the best solution.
Question the problem: You will have to analyse the root cause of the problem and ask yourself some questions. By not reaching the root cause, the problem will likely recur, perhaps with different symptoms. How often the problem occurs and for how long it has lasted. Its severity. If there are any special circumstances related to the problem. If it has worsened with time. Rule out any causes. Who, what department or section of the business is affected.
Identify multiple solutions: It is not a case of the number of solutions that you can plan, but rather how many practical solutions can be developed that results in a purposeful impact. The quality of the solution seems to be in direct proportion to the quantity of solutions considered in problem-solving.
Prioritize potential solutions: Every large problem was once a small problem, which could be solved easily at a time. An acceptable solution can be superior compared to an excellent solution that has a higher complexity, longer timeframe, and higher cost.
Make a decision: A solution will need to be selected and a course of action decided. The objectives should solve at least 80% of the problems immediately. The more delayed a decision is then the more ‘foggy’ the objectives become. At the very least, set a specific deadline for making a decision and stick to it.
Assign responsibility: Both parties need to decide who makes the decisions, who will carry out the solution or the different elements of the solution and just how much control is allocated.
Set a measure for the solution: Once the end-goal is reached you will need to know just how effective the solution is to the problem. Otherwise, unintended side effects can be worse than the original problem.
Phases of problem-solving within a project.
Providing convenient, cost-effective, timely and valuable solutions for everyday problems to yourself or your target audience can drive critical success. A roadmap can be the perfect asset in planning phases for progression within a project. Roadmap phases can assist in delivering high-value and innovative solutions to the customer’s/client’s problems, and also identifying the priorities needed in solving those problems. A roadmap can include phases, such as:
Discovery phase: In this phase, you initially define the scope of a project. This is done through an initial meeting with the customer/client. Then the project parameters can be defined along with an assessment of the project. Once all of this is complete, a contract will need to be agreed to and the project can commence.
Development phase: In this phase, the service will provide the work, along with implementing concepts. These will be displayed to the customer/client for feedback and agreement.
Analysis phase: In this phase, the goal is to gain real feedback. This can enable you and the customer/client to better define the business asset and to assess the project thus far.
Enhancement phase: In this phase, any small and large alterations can be implemented to the project from the feedback in the Analysis phase. If the final project edits still do not fulfil the project scope then additional edit applications can be enacted until complete.
Completion phase: In this phase, both you and the customer/client will evaluate the project together. Once the project has fulfilled the objectives in the project end-goals, the project will be handed off to the customer/client.
Benchmarking business performance.
Every business owner strives to solve problems, for themselves and their customer/client, in order to generate high performance. A benchmark can measure your own or your customer/client processes and procedures. Through the benchmarking process, any business can compare itself against a standard and develop a consistent way of measuring performance.
Benchmarking can provide a diverse range of measurements. There are three primary categories of benchmarking:
Internal benchmarking: If a business has multiple departments/teams with already established best practices in processes similar to your department/team, internal benchmarking is the involvement of analyzing other departments/teams to determine areas for improvement and efficiency.
Competitive benchmarking: Every business has some level of competition, competitive benchmarking compares products/services, processes, and methods of your direct competitors and provides insights into the position of a business within an industry and what may need to be done to increase productivity.
Strategic benchmarking: Adapt methods into a business’s procedures and processes, strategic benchmarking observes beyond a business’s industry to identify high performance and best practices.
Throughout the benchmarking process, the objective is to use gathered data to identify areas for improvement. This includes:
Deducing and comparing how and where your and a competitor business are achieving higher performance levels.
Deducing and comparing your and competitor business processes and strategies.
Implement alterations from research and analysis to improve your business’s performance and products/services.
Performance metrics can be obtained from benchmarking analysis, including:
Cost per unit: Also known as cost of sales, this is how much finance a business spends on producing one unit of the product/service they provide.
Time to produce each unit: The time required to produce a single item.
Unit quality: This is the fulfilment of both Quality Assurance (QA) and Quality Control (QC) responsibilities.
Customer satisfaction: A measure of how products and services supplied by a company meet or surpass customer expectations.
This data can be compared to other businesses to determine best practices for improving your operations. Solving problems can lead to sustainable growth. Benchmarking is a tool that can be involved in improving a business model. Consistent benchmarking can optimise:
Improving processes and procedures.
Gauging the effectiveness of past performance.
Providing better identification of how the competition operates.
Increasing efficiency, decreasing expense and increasing profitability.
Improving quality and customer satisfaction.
Benchmarking typically involves eight features, these include:
Selecting a subject to benchmark: Deciding prioritized processes for a business’s critical success should be based on important metrics. Once this has been prioritized, select and define the measures that are to be collected.
Deciding benchmarking: Determine if the benchmark processes will be within your or your customer/client business, a competitor or a business outside of the industry. Selecting multiple businesses to study can generate optimal and detailed data.
Documenting current processes: Observe, identify and map out the processes and areas for improvement.
Collecting and analyzing data: Researching, interviewing and casually engaging in conversations with connections, or formal interviews and questionnaires, can yield a diversity of primary information. Though, in some circumstances, this information may be confidential. Secondary information can be collected from websites, reports, marketing materials, and news articles. However, this information may lack reliability. Once the data is collected, it will need to be analysed.
Measuring performance against collected data: Observe and compare the collected data with metrics that have been gathered from the analysis of the processes. It could be the case that the performance metrics are aligned on top of mapped processes to more easily determine what may be causing gaps in the process.
Developing a plan: Once performance gaps have been identified, a plan will be to be developed. Implementing the plan will require an agreement from all parties involved in the work and it will have to include defined goals; which connect with a business’s culture to minimise potential ‘push back’ from employees.
Implementing changes: Monitoring performance can allow in identifying if processes are inefficient and if these need to be adjusted. Maintaining control of assigned tasks and documenting processes can make sure that all parties involved in the work are working to the same end-goal.
Repeating the process: Once a process has been successfully implemented, discovering ways to improve it can increase greater profitability. Reviewing the process and identifying any required adjustments can allow for newer benchmarks to be incorporated. Repeating the benchmark is a continuous practice to enable business growth.
Problem-solving for a particular type of client.
Good solutions require a well-planned and organised effort. You can mitigate some of your business problems with a bespoke schematic roadmap. Meanwhile, customers/clients who understand the significance of quality solutions can be willing to pay to have their problems go away. There is just the case of identifying the type of customer/client that you are dealing with and qualifying the opportunity to profit from them. A customer/client can be a problem in itself. There are four main customer/client profiles that a business owner must acknowledge and deal with accordingly, including:
The Fisher: A Fisher is often trying to figure out what they need to put a request for proposal together for a project. The calling card of a Fisher is that they don’t have any intent to buy. Though these clients generally aren’t malicious, they can be a major drain on your resources.
The Square Pegger: A Square Pegger is a client who isn’t the final decision maker, but they are responsible for getting something done. The sooner that you can show them precisely what they’re looking for, or the sooner you realize that the two of you aren’t a good match, the better.
The Cost-Conscious: A Cost-Conscious Client is someone who sees what you provide as a commodity. If they’ve been burned before, it will likely come out. You can use the information they provide to decide if they’re the type of client that would be a good match for you.
The Perfect Client: The Perfect Client is the individual that you want to work with. They show respect for what you do, they value what you can provide, and they communicate easily. All in all, they’re someone who is simply a pleasure to do business with.
Begin solving valuable problems.
There is no ‘cut and paste’ template process in solving problems. Developing a bespoke method for your own or your customer’s/client’s business to solve a problem is a part of the practice and experience. Being a good problem solver will transform you into a respected professional within your industry. Success can be defined as the ability to solve problems. This is often referred to as ‘street smart’. Great business owners are both ‘street smart’ and ‘book smart’.
Your knowledge, skills and experience define your problem-solving abilities. When solving problems systematically, you save time, achieve better solutions, and increase your credibility, while generating perceived value. Solving a problem that one of your customer’s/client’s may face expeditiously than another one of your customer’s/client’s, then the first customer’s/client’s will appreciate the time saved.
There may be a situation where you will have to rely on a 3rd party individual to initiate research and create a solution from scratch, or perhaps you can discover a partner that already has the solution you need. An approach to solving problems will need to be innovated. Exceptional business owners are made exceptional when deciding to create solutions and drive progress.
Some problems may be more complex and harder than others, but the problem-solving process may also be more rewarding.
