“Problem Solving”

How does your team go about trying to solve the challenges of the day – let me share how we have taken to the this conundrum.First, the team looks at the challenge from this perspective - is it solvable. So many of the challenges we face today - simply aren’t. Despite looking at the challenges carefully, and striving for a thoughtful and methodical approach leading to lasting solutions - there are times today, given the complexity of our challenges we simply can’t see our way through and when that happens, and it does, we intentionally slow down, solve for what we can and live to fight another day. Some might describe it as eating the elephant one bite at a time. We call it IPP - intentional partial practice. It’s a name that honors our study, our recognition that the problem has not been solved and calls us to keep working on it. It’s an imperfect solution for an imperfect world. But it works.

For challenges that we see as solvable, or as a component of the larger unsolvable challenge, we begin by focusing on the understanding the problem; getting everyone around the table to actively define and actually articulate the problem. Once we know the problem, we generate as many thoughtful solutions as possible – withholding judgment and resisting the urge to offer comment. Once we have a pool of possible solutions, we begin to assess their viability and we generate a list of pro’s and con’s. Once we can clearly see the risks and benefits of our solution set – we can make an informed choice that takes us forward.