Seven Steps for Effective Problem Solving

in the Workplace.
Problem-solving and decision-making. Ask anyone in the workplace if these activities
are part of their day and they answer 'Yes!' But how many of us have had training in
problem-solving? We know it's a critical element of our work, but do we know how to
do it effectively?

People tend to do three things when faced with a problem: they get afraid or
uncomfortable and wish it would go away; they feel that they have to come up with
an answer and it has to be the right answer; and they look for someone to blame.
Being faced with a problem becomes a problem. And that's a problem because, in
fact, there are always going to be problems!

There are two reasons why we tend to see a problem as a problem: it has to be
solved and we're not sure how to find the best solution, and there will probably be
conflicts about what the best solution is. Most of us tend to be "conflict-averse". We
don't feel comfortable dealing with conflict and we tend to have the feeling that
something bad is going to happen. The goal of a good problem-solving process is to
make us and our organization more "conflict-friendly" and "conflict-competent".

There are two important things to remember about problems and conflicts: they
happen all the time and they are opportunities to improve the system and the
relationships. They are actually providing us with information that we can use to fix
what needs fixing and do a better job. Looked at in this way, we can almost begin to
welcome problems! (Well, almost.)

Because people are born problem solvers, the biggest challenge is to overcome the
tendency to immediately come up with a solution. Let me say that again. The most
common mistake in problem solving is trying to find a solution right away. That's a
mistake because it tries to put the solution at the beginning of the process, when
what we need is a solution at the end of the process.

Here are seven-steps for an effective problem-solving process.

1. Identify the issues.

 Be clear about what the problem is.

 Remember that different people might have different views of what the issues
are.
 Separate the listing of issues from the identification of interests (that's the
next step!).
2. Understand everyone's interests.

 This is a critical step that is usually missing.

 Interests are the needs that you want satisfied by any given solution. We often
ignore our true interests as we become attached to one particular solution.
 The best solution is the one that satisfies everyone's interests.
 This is the time for active listening. Put down your differences for a while and
listen to each other with the intention to understand.
 Separate the naming of interests from the listing of solutions.

3. List the possible solutions (options)

 This is the time to do some brainstorming. There may be lots of room for
creativity.
 Separate the listing of options from the evaluation of the options.

4. Evaluate the options.

 What are the pluses and minuses? Honestly!

 Separate the evaluation of options from the selection of options.

5. Select an option or options.

 What's the best option, in the balance?

 Is there a way to "bundle" a number of options together for a more satisfactory
solution?

6. Document the agreement(s).

 Don't rely on memory.

 Writing it down will help you think through all the details and implications.

7. Agree on contingencies, monitoring, and evaluation.

 Conditions may change. Make contingency agreements about foreseeable

future circumstances (If-then!).
 How will you monitor compliance and follow-through?
 Create opportunities to evaluate the agreements and their implementation.
("Let's try it this way for three months and then look at it.")

Effective problem solving does take some time and attention more of the latter than
the former. But less time and attention than is required by a problem not well solved.
What it really takes is a willingness to slow down. A problem is like a curve in the
road. Take it right and you'll find yourself in good shape for the straightaway that
follows. Take it too fast and you may not be in as good shape.
Working through this process is not always a strictly linear exercise. You may have
to cycle back to an earlier step. For example, if you're having trouble selecting an
option, you may have to go back to thinking about the interests.

This process can be used in a large group, between two people, or by one person
who is faced with a difficult decision. The more difficult and important the problem,
the more helpful and necessary it is to use a disciplined process. If you're just trying
to decide where to go out for lunch, you probably don't need to go through these
seven steps!

Don't worry if it feels a bit unfamiliar and uncomfortable at first. You'll have lots of
opportunities to practice!

How to decide with Criteria and

Weight
How to decide among a lot of options? … You can improve your decision
making by adding criteria and weight.  This helps you prioritize effectively.
The key is making the criteria explicit.

This is effective for personal decision making, and it’s especially effective for
group decision making.   It works well for personal decision making because
it forces you to get clarity on your own criteria.  It works well for group
decision making because you create a shared set of criteria.  When people
know what’s valued, it’s easier to understand and weigh in on the decisions.

It’s also a good way to find out mismatches on expectations.  For example, if
one person thinks the color of the room is the most important, but another
thinks the size of the room is more important, you can have a conversation
around the usage scenarios and trade-offs and share perspectives.  The
other beauty of using criteria and weight is that it helps make the issue less
subjective, so you can have a less defensive, and more objective evaluation
of the options.

To make this easier to follow, I walk through an example to illustrate the

approach.
Summary of Steps
If you need to make an important decision, the following steps can help:

 Step 1.   Identify the criteria

 Step 2.   Rate the criteria.
 Step 3.   Rate your options against the criteria and multiply by the
weightings

Step 1. Identify the Criteria

In this step, identify the key factors that matter.  For example, when I was
giving input on hiring our new leader, I identified the following criteria:

 Microsoft Experience
 patterns & practices Experience
 Attract the right talent
 Execution
 Customer-connection
 Engineering Competence
 Business Competence
 Political Competence

I knew ultimately it was not a linear decision, and that it’s about satisfying
the various skills for the job (the business perspective, the technical
perspective, the political perspective, the customer perspective … etc), but I
thought that if I shared the frame for how I was thinking of the new leader, it
might help make a better decision, avoid simple pitfalls and create a more
objective frame for discussion, dialogue, or debate.
Step 2. Rate the Criteria
The next step is to identify the weighting of each criteria.  This is where you
start to get clarity on what really matters.  I find that that sticking to a scale
of 1-3 helps keep it simple.  In this case, 1 is less important and 3 is more
important, since we will multiply by these numbers in the next step.

Criteria Rating
 Microsoft Experience 2

patterns & practices Experience 3

Attract the right talent 3

Execution 3

Customer-connection 3

Engineering Competence 2

Business Competence 2

Political Competence 2

Step 3. Rate Your Options against the Criteria and multiply by the
Weightings
In this step, you rate your options against the criteria, and then multiply by
the weightings:

Criteria Candidate A Candidate B Candidate C

Microsoft Experience 9 5 0

patterns & practices Experience 10 0 0

Attract the right talent 8 5 5

Execution 10 5 5

Customer-connection 9 5 5

Engineering Competence 9 5 5

Business Competence 8 5 5

Political Competence 5 5 5
When you score against your criteria, you can have an objective discussion
around the criteria.  This helps especially when everybody may be on
different pages.  For example, in my experience, political competence varies
by situation.
The 5 rating for political competence I gave across the board is actually
interesting.  It’s far easier to get a 1 for political competence than anything
past a 5 given the mix of “task-focus” and “people-focus” among our melting
pot of disciplines, cultures, engineering focus, product mentality, and
company maturity level.  Really, political competence is a matter of situation
and networks — where some networks are better than others.  The good
news is that most political competence challenges can be addressed with
grooming and tuning (I see it every day.)  Other people certainly have
different views and experience on political competence, so this was a good
backdrop for the conversation.

Multiply by the Weightings

Here is the result of multiplying the candidate scores against the weightings.

Criteria Rating Candidate A Candidate B Candidate C

Microsoft Experience 2 18 10 0

Patterns & Practices

3 30 0 0
Experience

Attract the right talent 3 24 15 15

Execution 3 30 15 15

Customer-connection 3 27 15 15

Engineering Competence 2 18 10 10

Business Competence 2 16 10 10

Political Competence 2 10 10 10
 Score – 173 85 75

For example, Candidate A is gets an 18 in Microsoft Experience (9 x 2, where

9 is the candidate’s score and 2 is the weighting of the criteria).  As you can
see, the numbers helped highlight some key differences between the
candidates.   It’s not so much that you can your decisions into numbers,
since it’s rarely that black and white, instead, it’s really that you expose your
thinking, get clarity on your values, and have more meaningful dialogues.

GENERATING SOLUTIONS
When the group is comfortable, you will be ready to work together to think up some possible
solutions. Listed below are just a few of the many different ways to do so. Your group can try
the one that members prefer; all should yield some good solutions.

 Simply go around the room and ask everyone to suggest ideas. No tricks, no
gimmicks, but it works.
 Send a piece of paper around the room. People can write down their ideas, which can
later be discussed without anyone knowing who suggested which idea.
 Idea writing. Idea writing is especially helpful to people who like to write. It also
helps many people generate and comment on ideas in a short amount of time. Large
groups should be divided into small groups of five or six. Each person writes a
possible solution to the problem on his/her own pad of paper. Then each person puts
their pad on a table in the middle of the group. Next, everyone takes someone else's
pad and comments on the idea. People keep doing this until everyone in the group has
commented on everyone else's idea. During or after the meeting, all the ideas are
discussed or summarized in a report.
 Brainstorming. Brainstorming is a tried-and-true way to come up with ideas in a
group. The method is simple: The problem is stated, and the recorder stands in front
of a room with some newsprint or a blackboard. People in the group say whatever
ideas pop into their minds. The recorder writes down all of the comments made.

Helpful hints to keep in mind when brainstorming include:

 Watch out for assumptions; every unnecessary assumption reduces the number of
potential solutions. If your group is looking for entertainment for an upcoming
celebration, for example, don't assume that there isn't talent within the group. You
might have an outstanding singer who is just too shy to bring his talents up unasked.
 Simply giving instructions that people can or should be creative in the brainstorming
session may help raise the number and quality of solutions created.
 No idea is too outlandish. The meeting recorder writes all the ideas down. Why? An
idea that seems ridiculous on first hearing might turn out to be possible and even
desirable. It may also be modified by other members of the group, and end up being
the perfect solution to the problem.
A member of the coalition might suggest asking NBA players to mentor area youth. That
might be impossible, but the idea sparks another member's imagination, and she suggests
asking local college athletes to serve as mentors. Still another member suggests asking the
coaches to sponsor youth who are having problems at home as scholarship students for their
summer sports camps. Other suggestions come up as a result of these ideas, and after half an
hour of brainstorming, the group has a long list of possibilities to choose from.

 Nobody should comment on how good or bad the ideas are; there should be no
discussion about them at this time. Keep producing all kinds of ideas until everyone
runs out of steam.
 Ideas can be "piggy-backed" or combined as people see connections during the
process.
 The facilitator should keep the energy high and constantly ask for more and different
ideas. This may even be done in the manner of an auctioneer, with constant chatter
and a fast-paced discussion.
 If the group gets off the subject, the facilitator or recorder should gently remind them
of why they are there.
 Discussion, analysis, and idea selection come later.

Variations on brainstorming:

 A period of individual brainstorming can precede the group activity. Each person
generates his/her own ideas privately and later shares them with the group.
 If idea generating is done on a day after you defined and analyzed the problem, group
members can be asked to generate solutions as "homework" between the two sessions.

EVALUATING SOLUTIONS
Hopefully, your work up to this point has produced many potential solutions. Now, it's time
to decide which idea is best. There are many possible ways to do this. One approach includes
doing the following three things for each idea:

  Judge each idea independently. List on separate pieces of paper:

o What you like about the idea
o What you don't like about the idea
o What the side effects might be
 Ask the following questions:
o Is it practical?
o Is it effective?
o Is it cost effective?
o Will it be easy to put into practice? There's a lot involved in this question.
Related questions might include: Can it be done by group members, or will
you need outside help? How much time will it take? Will anyone need to learn
new skills?
o Will it be accepted by everyone involved? That is, by group members, those
who will be affected, and those doing (and paying for) the work? How about
the community as a whole?
o Is it consistent with other things done by the group?
Looking at the above questions, it's easy to see that the answers will often be fairly
subjective. Spending $1000 on a project may not be much if you are working on a $300,000
grant, but may be quite a bit more for less well-funded groups. But going through the above
questions should give you a pretty good idea of what will work for you.

 Modify the solution you are looking at if suggestions have come up that can improve
it.

After looking carefully at each idea, and weighing the pros and cons of each, you're now
ready to make your decision.

MAKING A DECISION
When it comes to how to make a decision, you can:

 Have someone decide, and then announce the decision to the group
 Gather input from individuals, and then have one person decide
 Gather input from the group, and then have one person decide
 Vote
 Try to build consensus among everyone at the meeting

All of these are feasible alternatives that may be chosen at different times. For the group
problem-solving process, however, we strongly recommend the last option. Choosing by
consensus - discussing and debating the possibilities until everyone comes to an agreement -
is often the strongest of these ideas, because everyone is part of the solution. Members are
much more likely to fully support a decision that they had a hand in creating.
That's not to say that it's always easy to build consensus. Sometimes, it might be; when the
group has looked carefully at all of the options available to them, one might jump out as
clearly being superior to the others. But, when the solution is not so evident, it can be quite a
challenge to form an agreement, especially if people in your group have strong opinions one
way or another.
The following tips are often helpful to keep in mind during the discussion:

 Avoid arguing blindly for your own opinions. It's easy to get so caught up in what you
believe that you don't really hear what others are saying. Be sure to listen as carefully
as you speak.
 Don't change your mind just to reach an agreement. If you aren't happy with a
solution now, it's not likely it will please you much more when you are doing the
work several months down the line.
 It's easy to think of this as an "all or none" situation: someone must win, and someone
has to lose. That's not necessarily the case. If the group is locked between two
different possibilities, see if a third will be more palatable for everyone involved.
 If people are becoming frustrated, or you are making no progress, then take a break.
Have some coffee, work on something else for a few minutes, or adjourn for the day.
Sometimes, just a short breather can give people a new perspective.
What if you can't reach an agreement?
If a thorough discussion doesn't seem to result in a decision on which everyone agrees, you
have a couple of options. (Hint: The group can decide before you debate solutions what you
will do if you can't agree on any of the proposals.)

 You can try one of the other decision-making possibilities mentioned above
(nominate one person to make the final decision, vote, etc.).
 You can try what authors David Quinlivan-Hall and Peter Renner call the "nominal
group technique." To do this, ask each participant to assign a number to every
solution, with one being their favorite solution, two being their second favorite, and so
on. The numbers are all added up, and the solution with the lowest value is the one
chosen.
 In some cases, you might choose not to decide, or to defer the decision until the next
meeting. Some ideas and opinions may change if people are allowed some time to
mull them over.

Whatever you as a group decide to do, the facilitator should ask for feedback after the
decision has been made. Questions might include, "Do you have any problems you would
like to air?"; "Do you have any suggestions that might make this better?"; and, "Are
you completely satisfied with the solution we have chosen?"