Problem solving and decision making

Problem solving and decision-making are important skills for business and life. Problem-solving often involves decision-making, and decision-making is especially important for management and leadership. Decision-making is more natural to certain personalities, so these people should focus more on improving the quality of their decisions. Good decision-making requires a mixture of skills: creative development and identification of options, clarity of judgement, firmness of decision, and effective implementation. 

Lets look into the types of problems-
1) Urgent vs important-
First task for any manager is to classify problems as Urgent and Important. This is necessary to know the priority of problems and hence resources can be allocated and work can be started upon urgent problems.

2) Structured vs unstructured problems-

Structured problems-

These kinds of problems are familiar, straightforward, and clear with respect to the information needed to resolve them. Managers can expect this type of problems, and they can plan ahead and develop specific ways to deal with them, or even can take action to prevent their occurrence.

Unstructured problems-

These types of problems do not have any clear format or defined structure. They often involve ambiguities and information deficiencies. They occur quite unexpectedly. They often require lateral thinking to solve them.

Steps to solve a problem-

1. Analyze the situation-

Manager should first prioritize the problem and agree on the problem at hand. SWOT analysis can be used for this purpose.

2. Understand the problem-

Next step for a manager is to analyse the problem. For this he needs to gather all necessary information and to analyse and process it. It often begins with the appearance of   problem symptoms which signal the presence of a performance deficiency or opportunity. 

3. Analyze possible solutions & select the best one-

Manager along with his team need to solve the problem using various approaches and thus arrive at probable solutions. For this they need to gather more information & analyze the same. After that pros and cons need to be identified for every solution. More the team members more will be the solutions and more chances of arriving at best solution to the problem. 

Common errors in this stage include selecting a particular solution too quickly, and choosing an alternative that has damaging side effects. Criteria for evaluating alternatives: Benefits, Cost, Timeliness, Acceptability, Ethical Soundness.

4. Decide implementation strategy-

After solution is finalized, manager needs to make a plan to implement that solution. Managers need the ability and willingness to implement the decision. Difficulties at this stage often can trace to the lack-of-participation error, or the failure to involve those whose support is necessary.