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Click on blue
hyperlinks for more information. Consultants On-demand Problem
Solving Consultants 1. Basic Problem Solving: Quickly resolve urgent problems with
this five-step process. 2. Systems Problem Solving: Comprehensive
systems process to resolve complex problems. 3. Root Cause Analysis Problem Solving: Restores a prior, original or standard condition. 4. Resolve Any
Problem: Gradually resolve
what may appear to be an insurmountable problem. Innovation &
Performance Improvement Consultants 5. Brainstorm, Creativity & Innovation: Turn creative ideas into innovative
solutions. 6. Performance Improvement: Lean Six-sigma
DMAIC processes and tools. 7. Describe & Define: Collect and understand “relevant” data to improve innovative thinking. Planning Consultants
8.
Strategic Planning: Develop action
plans to achieve your organization’s mission & vision. 9. Goal Setting: Set meaningful
goals that are achievable. 10. Preferred Futures: Anticipate and prepare for potential
future problems or opportunities. Management &
Leadership Consultants 11. Project Management: Execute project and achieve
objectives (quality, on time, within budget). 12. Time Management: Find ways to improve use of both work
and personal time. 13. Decision Making: Improve
decision-making certainty. 14. Team Building: Build and maintain a high performance
team and work environment. |
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Basic
Problem Solving Overview |
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In as little as 90 minutes,
this basic problem solving application will guide your meeting through a
simple series of questions and tools that increases effectiveness, quality of
results and enough certainty and agreement that you can take effective
action. The application follows a
five step (task) process that uses basic problem solving tools, techniques
and questions commonly asked by skilled problem solvers. Since every situation is different, it is
not recommended that you answer every question or complete every template.
Use only the ones that fit your meeting. |
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Task 1: Write a Problem & a Goal statement |
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Task 2: Understand the
problem and analyze obstacles |
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Task 3: Find Solutions |
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Task 4: Decide on the
best solution |
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Task 5: Determine
implementation action steps |
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Many people think creativity is the same as innovation. It’s NOT. It is relatively EASY to be creative but fairly DIFFICULT to be innovative. Creativity is coming up with new ideas or solutions. Typical brainstorming sessions can yield hundreds of creative ideas. Innovation is taking a creative idea and turning it into something of “value or profit”. About 1 in a 1000 creative ideas turns into an innovative idea. This application follows a five step (task) process that promotes the same basic core qualities of creative and innovative geniuses. Since every situation is different, use only those questions and tools that fit your meeting or consider adding your own custom tools or questions. |
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Task 1: Define
requirements that all ideas/solutions must meet. |
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Task 2: Prepare for
creative thinking. |
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Task 3: Generate lots
of creative ideas. |
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Task 4: Categorize and turn
creative ideas into valuable innovative ideas and solutions. |
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Task 5: Prioritize
Ideas and identify action steps. |
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Six-sigma is a methodology and set of tools used to improve quality to near perfection (less than 3.4 defects/problems per million). Six Sigma generally follows a DMAIC process. The following are the DMAIC agendas. They are designed to be used to elevate your team (meeting) to the proficiency of trained Green/Black belts. Note: While the DMAIC methodology presented below may appear linear and explicitly define, it is likely that an iterative approach may be necessary … Thinking is not a linear process! Prepare a Project
Charter that DEFINES the business
process, project boundaries, customers, their product and service
requirements and expectations. |
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Task 1: Identify improvement
opportunities |
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Task 2: Select the best
business process opportunity to work on |
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Task 3: Define
boundaries, customer requirements & goals. |
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Task 4: Develop the
business case and prepare a project charter. |
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MEASURE PHASE MEASURE the business process to determine current performance. Collect data from many sources to determine data/metrics and compare to customer requirements and expectations. Establish new measurement goals as needed. |
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Task 1: Identify measurements
and a prepare data collection strategy. |
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Task 2: Gather baseline
information and measure performance. |
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ANALYZE PHASE ANALYZE the data collected to determine root causes of defects/problems
and identify gaps between current performance and new goal performance |
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Task 1: Identify
the obstacles that are preventing this process from improving. |
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Task 2: Analyze
the root causes of existing defects and problems. |
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IMPROVE PHASE IMPROVE the business process by designing (and
implementing) creative solutions to eliminate defects/problems or achieve
desired performance levels. |
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Task 1: Generate
lots of improvement ideas. |
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Task 2: Synthesize ideas
into implement-able improvement solutions. |
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Task 3: Pick the
improvement solution to implement. |
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Task 4: Design,
test, and implement proposed solution.
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CONTROL PHASE CONTROL the improvements to ensure they are functioning
and develop processes to maintain “new performance” levels and prevent
reverting to “old performance”. |
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Task 1: Develop control
and feedback mechanisms to maintain and promote continuous improvement. |
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Task 2: Perform a post implementation
review to determine if improvement goals have been met and to document
lessons learned |
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There
is a positive correlation between people who develop more and better
ideas/solutions and people that have acquired the right amount of background
knowledge about the problem. Ask
yourself the question: What relevant data is needed to promote effective thinking about the situation When
defining the problem be careful not to indiscriminately
amass all available data/information. Doing that may impede thinking by
burying the problem under an avalanche of irrelevant detail. |
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Task 1: Identify the reasons why data/information needs collecting. |
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Task 2: Collect only relevant data/information. |
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Task 3: Analyze the data/information collected. |
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Task 4: Present the data/information to clearly communicate results. |
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Strategic
planning is the process of determining your business/organization’s long-term
vision or goals and how to fulfill them. Its purpose is to provide a framework
for decision making on what short/long-term actions are important to
achieve organizational success. The agenda follows a six step (task) process that uses strategic planning tools, techniques and questions commonly asked by skilled planners. Since every situation is different, it is not recommended that you answer every question or complete every template. Use only the ones that best fit your planning needs. |
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Task 1: Describe your business/organization’s
current purpose and mission. |
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Task 2: Assess the current business environment,
market trends, and strengths & weaknesses. |
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Task 3: Decide where you want your business to be
in 2-5 years and write a Strategic Goal Statement. |
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Task 4: Develop alternative strategies to reach
your Strategic Goal |
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Task 5: Pick the strategic alternative you want to
implement. |
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Task 6: Map out action
plans for: alignment with current organizational work efforts, and, movement
towards strategic goals. |
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This quote essentially describes the
purpose of goal setting, “If you don’t know where you are going, how are you going
to get there?” Unknown A goal describes what the
problem or opportunity will look like after it has been resolved. Without
clear goals and objectives, people scatter ideas around as they occur. In
general, be aware of these problems in setting goals:
Use the tasks that fit your
need. |
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Task 1: State the
situation that needs a goal and why is it needed. |
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Task 2: Write a goal
statement and validate its reasonableness. |
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Task 3: Align goals
with organization, group, and personal goal. |
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Task 4: Establish Milestones,
Objectives & Action Steps. |
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Preferred
Futures thinking represents a shift away from a traditional problem solving process
that reacts to change; to a process that manages change. While problem
solving focusing on taking action to fix or resolve a current change
(problem/opportunity), futures thinking focusing on what the future “should
be” and taking action steps to control change. The following is a comparison of thinking
methods. |
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Problem Solving – Reacting to Change |
Preferred Futures – Managing Change |
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1.
Identify current problems or opportunities. |
1.
Observe current trends and identify likely future problems or opportunities. |
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2.
Chose a problem to work on and write a clear problem statement. |
2.
Prioritize alternative futures and
write a clear preferred futures statement. |
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3.
Develop ideas and solutions to resolve the current problem. |
3.
Create alternative scenarios that would achieve the preferred
future. |
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4.
Select the idea to implement. |
4.
Select the scenarios to build a plan. |
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5.
Identify actions now to implement the solution. |
5.
Identify both actions to be taken now
and future actions to achieve the “Preferred Future.” |
Use the tasks that fit your needs.
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Task 1: Anticipate
future problems or opportunities by observing trends. |
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Task 2: Write a preferred
(desired) futures statement. |
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Task 3: Create
alternative scenarios that could achieve the preferred future. |
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Task 4: Select the best
scenario and build a plan how to get there. |
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Problems and opportunities
generally do not exist in isolation. However, the natural human tendency is
to want to resolve any situation or problem with the first solution that comes
to mind. While this approach does lead to problem resolution, it could also
cause other problems that may even be worse. This “systems thinking” application helps look at the
broader context in which the problem resides. Instead of resolving a specific
problem part, it focuses on the whole and the interrelationship between the
parts as they work together to fulfill the purpose of the whole system. This
approach leads to determining the right point where change can have the
greatest impact on improving the system. There is no simple formula for problem-solving. Look at the systems tasks and pick the ones that fit your problem situation. |
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Task 1: Write a problem
statement. |
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Task 2: Validate this
is the right problem to work on. |
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Task 3: Write a goal
statement. |
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Task 4: Assemble the
right team to solve the problem. |
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Task 5: Define and
understand the problem. |
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Task 6: Analyze
obstacles and root causes. |
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Task 7: Prepare for
creative thinking. |
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Task 8: Brainstorm lots
of ideas. |
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Task 9: Synthesize
ideas and turn them into practical solutions. |
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Task 10: Identify
criterion and pick right decision-making strategy. |
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Task 11: Decide and
validate the best solution to implement. |
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Task 12: Design and
Test the solution. |
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Task 13: Develop an
implementation plan. |
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Task 14: Implement the
plan. |
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Task 15: Develop a
feedback to prevent problem recurrence. |
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Root Cause Analysis (RCA) problem solving can be defined as a deviation or gap between what “is” and what “was”. RCA is about fixing the current situation and returning it back to a prior condition or standard. While most problem solving efforts lead to improvement thinking actions, the purpose of RCA is to take corrective thinking actions that get a situation back to the way it was, plus preventing it from ever happening again. RCA uses these tasks |
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Task 1: Define the
problem situation that needs analysis or fixing. |
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Task 2: Perform a root
cause analysis to find problem source. |
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Task 3. Develop
corrective actions to fix the problem. |
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Task 4. Create a corrective
action plan and a systems feedback process. |
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Use this very simple technique to define and resolve any problem/situation in any area of personal or work life. The key to managing problems, no matter how complex or difficult, is to define and solve the “easiest part first”. This method allows a gradual way of confronting what may appear to be an insurmountable situation. The principle behind this
technique is by solving even the most trivial part of a problem, it will
result in taking a first step and gaining confidence to face the next step.
Subsequently, taking one easy step at a time will lead to solving the entire
problem. |
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Project
management is the application of knowledge, skills, tools and techniques to a
broad range of tasks in order to meet the requirements of the particular
project. A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to achieve a particular
aim. Project management knowledge and practices are best described in terms of their component processes (Phases) below. Since every project is different, it is not recommended that you answer every question or complete every template. Use only the ones that best fit your project needs. |
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Phase 1: Project Initiation |
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Phase 2: Project
Definition & Planning |
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Phase 3: Project
Design, Development & Testing |
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Phase 4: Project
Implementation |
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Phase 5: Project Control & Maintain |
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Phase 6: Project Evaluation & Close |
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Time management
is considered a very important business and personal skill. It essentially
means spending the hours and minutes in the day as effectively as possible. Most
people think there are more things they need to do, or would like to do, than
they have time for. This happens a lot at work, and often results in working
overtime with stress and feeling guilt or panic if deadlines are not met.
Good time management will not remove all the inevitable pressures and
conflicts that arise in most jobs, but it will help make the working day more
productive and satisfying. The following agenda tasks
uses tools, techniques and facilitator questions commonly used by skilled Time
Managers. Since every situation is unique, use only the ones that fit your
needs. |
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Task 1: Observe and
prioritize present use of time. |
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Task 2: Identify ways to improve use of time. |
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Task 3: Develop
daily/weekly objectives and schedules |
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We all possess the ability to think in different ways, however, each of us has developed dominant thinking patterns (biases), which have been shaped by our education, life, and work experiences. When confronted with decision making, we instinctively draw upon the skills with which we are most familiar to guide us. The problem is that the decision making thought patterns we are accustomed to using might not always lead to making the right decision. Use the following process to make a more certain and right decision. |
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Task 1: Prepare of
decision making. |
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Task 2: Make the
decision. |
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Task 3: Validate the
correctness of the decision. |
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Amazing
things happen in groups when everyone has balanced work, common goals and works
well together. Working collaboratively in high performance teams brings forth
a synergy that raises everyone’s level of thinking. The result is often an
extraordinarily creative approach to difficult problems or projects. Every day more organizations are
realizing the need for fully functioning, highly productive teams. Such teams
do not just happen; they are carefully built and maintained. Basic work
teams, specialized quality and task teams, and self-directed teams can use
this application to help develop solid team dynamics and critical team
performance skills. Tasks included are: |
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Task 1: Building a high
performance team and team environment. |
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Task 2: Maintaining a
high performance team. |
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Task 3: Holding effective
team meetings, the cornerstone of team success. |
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