A Definitive Guide to Problem-Solving: Part 2

​There’s no one way to solve a problem — in fact, you should avoid using canned approaches. But there are ideas, steps, plans and questions that problem-solving professionals have found useful for decades.​

This is a five-part series on problem-solving. Click to see steps one, three, four and five.

Building the Problem-Solving Team

In 2009, nonprofit Prize4Life posted a problem to InnoCentive, an open-innovation and crowdsourcing platform. Prize4Life wanted to find the biomarker for Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS), a degenerative disease that seemingly comes out of nowhere. Prize4Life offered problem-solvers $1 million to find the ALS biomarker; within two years, Dr. Seward Rutkove of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston found it. Six years later, Prize4Life used the pool of more than 1,000 problem-solvers on InnoCentive to find ways to predict disease progression in ALS patients, awarding problem-solvers smaller cash prizes.

InnoCentive’s crowdsourcing system brings in problem-solvers from outside the organization, granting access to the eyes, brains and problem-solving abilities of people who may have never worked in medical research. Jon Fredrickson, chief innovation officer at InnoCentive, says that using outsiders allows companies to look at a problem differently than they would by assembling a team from inside.

But what if a company has access only to its own employees?

Companies should form a problem-solving team where each member brings a different perspective, writes Antonio E. Weiss in his book Key Business Solutions: Essential Problem-Solving Tools and Techniques That Every Manager Needs to Know. Each team member must feel comfortable giving feedback to one another: “Feedback is just as much about giving constructive praise as constructive criticism,” he writes. “And feedback can be given by any team member, no matter how junior or inexperienced.” Weiss writes that all team stakeholders need to understand what the problem is, what a good solution looks like, when the solution needs to be delivered and the context surrounding the problem.

Glenn Llopis, a business management consultant and author of The Innovation Mentality: Six Strategies to Disrupt the Status Quo and Reinvent the Way We Work, says that cultivating an environment where feedback is acceptable takes something organizations often lack: vulnerability.

“Very few people have all the answers, so you have to be able to create an environment of vulnerability and inclusivity within your organization for people to provide constant feedback and recommendations, regardless of hierarchy or rank,” Llopis says. “There are so many opportunities that are ignored because the individual doesn’t feel comfortable revealing them.”

Beyond stifling feedback, companies often involve too many high-level employees and not enough employees who deal with the problem’s issues every day, Bossi says. “They may not have enough knowledge of what’s going on,” he says of high-level personnel. “They miss what could be the root causes of a problem in the production chain. They may miss some of the considerations that actually drive them to find a lasting solution.”

To avoid missing insights, Bossi says that organizations should find a mix of knowledge from technical and managerial points of view. “You need someone with the vision of the higher level in a management position and those that work more on the technical level and see how the work is performed on the ground,” he says.

Nickols, the Navy serviceman who went on to solve problems his entire career, says that he has a few basic principles for forming a problem-solving team. First, there must be someone in a position of authority. In addition, he agrees with Bossi: There must be people who know the system well. “I don’t want newbies and trainees,” he says. “I want people who have the respect of their peers.” Nickols says that the team also needs a sponsor, someone who will give the project authority and support behind the scenes and get all departments to buy into the team’s work. Finally, he suggests adding a “straw boss,” someone who ensures the team has everything it needs.

In the book The Moment of Clarity: Using the Human Sciences to Solve Your Toughest Business Problems, authors Christian Madsbjerg and Mikkel B. Rasmussen suggest that businesses frame problems in a way that allows employees to be curious. “Reframe the problem as a phenomenon,” the authors write. “If your team can create a shared understanding of the problem and agree on what you and the rest of the team don’t know, it is much easier to accept new ways of solving the problem.”

In Brian Tracy’s book Creativity & Problem Solving, he suggests that teams hold both “mindstorming” and brainstorming sessions. In mindstorming sessions, each team member takes a sheet of paper with the problem or goal at the top, then writes 20 answers using the first-person voice and action verbs. The question, “What can we do to double our sales and profitability in the next 24 months?” could be answered with ideas like, “We hire and train 22 new sales people.” In brainstorming sessions, Tracy widens the scope by including four to seven team members and having them generate ideas together for 30 minutes, staying positive and saving the criticism of ideas for after the meeting.

Throughout the problem-solving process, Browne says, teams — especially those working on critical-thinking problems — should focus on a series of evidence-focused questions, such as “Do you have any financial interest in the answer to this question?” and “How much experience do you have in using this evidence?” Although many people may find this kind of critical thinking aggressive, Browne says that questions foster a better understanding of what team members know and why they believe their solution would work best. Team members should ask questions respectfully, with curiosity and with willingness to understand new information.

After all the ideas, questions and evidence are on the table, Browne says that teams must quickly decide on a solution. “We can’t analyze this thing the rest of our lives,” he says. “We have to make decisions in a business environment more quickly than people typically do.”

At this point, digging into the problem through a map and problem statement will be useful.

About the Author | Hal Conick

Hal Conick is a staff writer for the AMA’s magazines and e-newsletters. He can be reached at hconick@ama.org or on Twitter at @HalConick.