General
General
Multiple techniques
There have been and will be many techniques for solving problems and each has it’s place.
At the same time each may have its limitations depending on what you may be trying to solve.
Traditional v creative
Brainstorming is a well known tool but could have the effect of producing processes that are similar to what has gone before.
Ideally, creativity is needed to come up with ideas that may challenge the normal train of thought and lead to solutions that traditional techniques may miss.
Quality, time and cost
Of course, no one would implement a solution without considering the implications of the time taken, the cost involved and the product quality.
In the main, people want the end product to be of high quality (performance), cheap (cost) and produced quickly (time).
In practice, it is difficult to achieve all of these at the same time and unrealistic plans and schedules often result.
Use of opportunity
In some cases the product might not achieve all of its aims and may appear to have negative aspects.
In this case a tactic may well be to focus on the apparent negative character of the product and promote this in a positive manner.
In a similar way, one man’s problem is another man’s opportunity.
Can any issue be turned into a positive opportunity, that is a key question?
It is widely recognised that a person’s perception of an item can depend on many things, for example, an individuals visual senses and sensory input.
Many problems can be solved by suitable research, a lot of hard work or by merely repeating a process with minor changes in an attempt to arrow in on the optimum process. These types of solutions may be valuable where a simple thought process can lead to a logical stepwise procedure.
These systems are usually straightforward and will often lead to solutions that others will also achieve.
However, most issues can be very complex with multiple variables, plenty of unknown aspects and interactions on known and unknown levels.
If a business or individual wants to get ahead they might wish to use processes that lead to solutions others wouldn’t easily discern.
They solutions may have a significant advantage over others.
Constraints
The pressure in modern business and daily life is often not conducive to finding good solutions.Time and costs are pressing.
A process may well be very inefficient but is maintained on the basis of these constraints.
Other traits
Problem solving is not necessarily an instant technique – one meeting and hey presto.
This might well be the case in some creative industries.
Allowing an issue to simmer often lets the brain consider alternatives which materialise later.
For example, solving cryptic crosswords often benefits from a planned hiatus.
Often a visual or other trigger will accelerate the solving process.
Sometimes we act in ways which we know are not logical but we still do them anyway.
It is not unusual for many people to smoke even if the negative effects are well recorded.
In other cases, the effect may be unconscious. The brain is very good at interpreting what it expects to see, even if we know that we are being fooled.
Pricing structures often take advantage of the fact that people believe the higher priced item must be better quality.
These simple comments really suggest that problem solving can not be easily compartmentalised.
It is not a simple process of research, analysis and putting together some logical steps.
Yet on the other hand creative thinking may need the support of a formal structure.
Both aspects are important.
Type of problem
What sort of problem are you solving?
This will need to be well defined.
It could be that you are already running some sort of ‘process’ and for some reason it has gone wrong.
In this case, you will need to solve this element in order to proceed.
However, in a marketing environment you may be looking for the next big idea.
Here, this may need a different approach to know how to move the business forward.
Collating the ideas that lead to problem solutions is usually carried out using a brainstorm process (see The Brainstorm Process).
Generating the ideas themselves can utilise varied techniques.