Facing Problems and Making Decisions: A Practical Guide

By Sorin Dumitrascu

If you've ever had to apply temporary fixes to an issue that just kept coming back up, you know how frustrating it can be. To get to the root cause of the problem, to implement a proper solution you need to ask the right people the right questions. In this course you'll learn how to identify and survey the right stakeholders, how to determine the root cause, and acquire tools to enable you to dig deeper and ultimately help solve the problem.

Before you jump in and start looking for alternative solutions to a problem, it's helpful to know what people want in an ideal world. This provides some direction when solving problems, and coming up with new ideas. In this course you will learn how to get people to define their ideal states, and use basic techniques for generating and evaluating alternative solutions. You'll also learn to recognize and avoid common pitfalls that can occur during the process.

It's finally crunch time. You're struggling to make that final irrevocable decision. What's it going to be? In this course, you will learn how to make smart decisions by paying attention to key criteria such as costs, time constraints, and alignment with organizational goals. In addition you'll find out about different decision-making styles, and ways to plan and manage the implementation of your solution. Finally, you’ll learn how to evaluate an implementation, and the importance of celebrating your efforts and accomplishments.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Publishdrive
• Release date: Nov 10, 2021

Book preview

Framing the Problem You Need to Solve

1. Identifying Stakeholders

2. Getting Stakeholder Input

3. Gaining Stakeholder Trust

4. Investigating Causes of Organizational Problems

5. Uncovering Causes with the 5 Whys Technique

6. Uncovering Causes with Fishbone Diagrams

7. Exercise: Getting to the Bottom of Things

Identifying Stakeholders

You may have heard the expression, If it wasn't a challenge it wouldn't be an opportunity. Challenges or problems are a fact of life, in business too. Stepping up to those challenges and making the right business decisions is what creates opportunities for success. How do you even begin solving a problem? First, you need to understand the scope and the impact it may have. Then you have to know who is affected by the problem and who can do something about it. These are the stakeholders, and you begin by talking to them.

Let's say you're the manufacturing supervisor for a toy company. You report to the chief operations officer who in turn reports to the CEO. 4% of the toys coming off your production line are scrapped due to quality issues. This defect rate is 2% higher than the industry standard. To solve this issue you start by making a list of stakeholders. As a process owner, you may also be the final decision maker, but that's not always the case. Your boss or even the CEO may have to sign off on whatever solution you choose. These other key players who can either help you solve the problem or block your way are the persuaders, sometimes known as sponsors. These are the people who have influence in or oversee areas of the business that need to be part of the solution.

In this case, the head of finance needs to sign off on funding for the solution, whether it's determined that the workers need more training or a piece of equipment on the line needs to be repaired. Then you have the people upstream; those who feed into the system in some way. In this example, the upstream stakeholders might include online stores who advertise your toys, and who supply you with potential customers. If your solution involves downtime, it'll have to be implemented in a way that they can handle. Downstream stakeholders are those who will be affected by the outcome, who make business decisions based on the output, in this situation it's the physical stores that order a certain amount of toys every month. If there will be less toys available for the short period due to downtime you'll need to find out what these stakeholders need in terms of a solution.

Finally, there are the remote stakeholders, people from either upstream or downstream whose requirements you need to consider too. In this case, the freight company who handles shipping finished products which would be affected if there is significant downtime. Not every problem will have this many stakeholders. It all depends on the situation. The more complex the problem the more stakeholders are likely to be affected.

Now, to get more varied responses when problems arise, consider the views of non-stakeholders, people who aren't directly affected by a problem, like clients, consultants, even competitors can offer you valuable insights from an objective perspective. Contacting all people affected by a problem can be challenging, but by showing everyone you care about their experience and their input you'll get maximum buy-in on decisions. It'll make finding a solution a lot easier.

Getting Stakeholder Input

People like to be valued. In the same way you'd appreciate being consulted before anything noteworthy happens in your life, stakeholders also value being asked for their input when it comes to the business decisions that affect them. As the