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Seven Questions for Solving Really Tough Problems Fast

By Peter Lloyd

From Stephen R. Grossman, author and problem-solving consultant, comes a way to take the waste and chaos out of traditional brainstorming. To begin, Grossman advises not to brainstorm problems until they become intractable. Got a problem? Put somebody bright and creative on it. Then only after your best people fail to crack it should you put a brainstorming team on it.

photoWhen that time comes, here are seven questions to answer before you book the conference room and invite participants. All seven have to do with how the brainstorming facilitator should deal with the Problem Owner. And when answered, they guarantee much faster, much more efficient idea generation with a whole lot less noise, body odor, and wasted time.

1. Whose Problem Is This?
To begin, the facilitator must identify the Problem Owner. That’s not a simple matter in some situations. You can determine who among a group of solution seekers actually owns the problem by asking these questions: Who will gain the most if you solve the problem? Who will lose the most if you fail? Who will have to implement the solution?

2. What Have You Tried?
This is the most important step and the unique part of Grossman’s innovation. Ask the Problem Owner to provide an inventory of solutions the group has considered and rejected. Then probe and find out why the solutions were rejected. To have been considered as solutions, even inadequate solutions, the discarded ideas must have had some merit. So what was considered worthwhile about them? Why did other ideas fail? What was wrong with them?

Now instead of focusing on what you think is the problem, focus on what is wrong with the previous attempts to solve it. That’s the crux of this process.

3. What’s the Real Problem?
You and the Problem Owner can now describe the problem in terms of the way the creative team has been working. Now and only now that your team has admitted that previous approaches have come up wanting, and now that they have identified what has limited their failed attempts, can they shift their focus to new approaches and open their thinking to untried, unconventional, novel, and new-to-the-world ideas that will deliver one or more breakthrough solutions.

4. What’s a Solution?
With the real problem defined, the facilitator now helps the Problem Owner define the dimensions of the ideal solution. That is, set down a list of criteria against which candidate solutions can be judged. These criteria define what will determine the success of the problem-solving effort.

5. Who Can Help?
It’s also the job of the Problem Owner to enlist the participants of the problem-solving effort. The facilitator guides this selection process, coaching the Problem Owner to select those members of his or her team who are most willing and able to fluently generate ideas. The participants should be drawn from a variety of responsibilities and backgrounds.

6. What’s Your Big Idea?
After directing the participants to study the problem statement, the success criteria, and the inventory of considered solutions along with the reasons they were rejected, the Problem Owner invites the participants to the problem-solving session. Admission: one or more big ideas. By demanding ideas for admission, this step gives the participants valuable incubation time during the days preceding the session.

7. How Did We Do That!
Finally the facilitator coaches the Problem Owner in how to be the most creative player in the room. But that’s the subject of another Workout. Trained to field and guide the presentation of the ideas that the players have brought with them as the price of admission, the Problem Owner guides the facilitator through the session, which will run more like an idea-optimizing and solution-selection session.

Any problem-solving session that asks and addresses these seven questions will hit the ground running and quickly deliver one or more solid solutions to even the most hard-to-crack problems.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.

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