Tag: problem solving

Build Trust and Push off Worry – Pick a Review Date

Post author By jrlsage
Post date September 15, 2016

Review in intervals, not the moment

There is no perfect choice.

With that said, it’s insane to change every time you feel there is a better option. There is always a “better” choice. Making that choice is a shortcut into decision fatigue.

In order to avoid decision fatigue, make it your practice to check and improve your plan before you begin every project. This tactic is a best practice.

Put the date on the calendar. When it’s there, if something needs a change, just document it. Once it is out of your head, you’ll feel better. Instead of a headache, wondering if this changes, you know you will address it.

This tactic is even more important when you delegate to or deal with a team.

Keep your team in the loop. An established review date improves trust and makes change a natural part of the process.

When you don’t do this, you risk changing the plan on the fly and demoralizing your team around you.

Leaving your team out: avoid this at your peril. When you often change things without a set process, you seem to be a waffler.

This simple move, picking a date, allows the worry to have its “day in court.”

Most importantly, you and your team get back to work.

Tags delegation, problem solving, process, review, team

Blog Post

The Garlic Problem

Post author By jrlsage
Post date June 14, 2016

We Aren’t Logical, So Prepare For It

When you eat garlic, the smell gets on your hands, around your mouth, and on your breath. People notice, but mostly, you care. Should you do something?

Options:

Do nothing.
You can excuse yourself, go to the bathroom, wash your hands, and pop in a stick of gum.
You could either register this change as the start of a catastrophe and run away from the dinner.

While we sit here and read this, the first two options seem reasonable. With no skin in the game, you recognize the best choice is the second, but you could live with the first.

The last choice seems insane. In life, when you add emotion, it isn’t that simple.

You can feel the slight change of disposition in the room. And in our worst moments, it can cause us to lose perspective.

When the pressure is on, the third option becomes much more reasonable in our heads.

Tomorrow – I’ll talk about why this is important.

Tags change, garlic, important, no, problem solving, slight

Blog Post

Problem Solving and the 9 Hour Video

Post author By jrlsage
Post date November 23, 2015

This video took 9 hours to make.

Producing is hard work.

What I assumed would take an hour, took 9. When I strive for more, I struggle. From 4 PM to 1 AM yesterday, I floundered, saw a small amount of success, then problems popped up again. What looked like a victory turned into defeat. It was three steps forward and two back.

It was frustrating. I wasn’t happy. But I kept at it. In the end, what started out as an exercise in producing media content turned into a lesson of persistence and learning through problems.

By producing this video, I had to deal with transfer errors, learning how to edit video, messed up sound, false starts, and even a virus. But, I kept going.

Eventually, 5 minutes came into the world on YouTube and Facebook. As a result, I learned a ton about uploading from my phone, free video editing software, YouTube editor, lighting, and file formats.

Doing this next week won’t take nearly the amount of time. Hopefully I will fun into more challenges along the way. Each challenge is nothing more than an opportunity to learn and build a knowledge base on problem solving.

Tags problem solving, video, work

Blog Post

Question the Problem?

I think there is a lot of power in thinking about the problem instead of thinking about a solution. It takes some time to find and define a problem fully. A well-defined problem is usually attached to several questions. I usually see people(leadership?) walk into meetings with a problem and then ask people “How do we solve it?”. The people in the room rarely feel attached, and standard questions get clichéd answers. Maybe it’s and maybe it isn’t, but just showing the meeting existed (AHGHHH!) and people were there (AGHGHHGHGHHGHGH!!!!) is generally good enough. Not digging into the question is like an athlete that just hits the field with no stretching. Would you expect that athlete to work at his best?

Is there anything worse than clichéd thinking? I can’t stand hearing the cliché. There is a place and a time where it was the best we could do, it caught on, and people could use it to move forward. But now, we live in a world where there is more research and better ways of communicating what we need to get done. Words matter, so I reject that idea of concepts like “thinking outside the box.”. It is hollow corporate speak in a world where knowing how to say something allows you to get back to whatever you want instead of what you need.

When was the last time you stopped a meeting and asked if we are asking the right questions? (Actually, when were you in a meeting that tried to solve a problem? That is another issue for another post.) In my experience, taking the time to understand what you are looking at instead of just tackling what provided opens up a well of solutions.

It is easy to try to shortcut this process, and that is exactly why you can’t. Learning how to question the problems is a powerful tool in getting things done.

Tags cliche, problem solving, questions