Workshop on Practical Problem Solving

Last Sunday, I have attended the Practical Problem Solving Workshop which was facilitated by the Northern Division Governor and Professional Trainer Maree Pickens. It was an inspiring 1.5 hours workshop which I’d like to share my notes with you!

Practical Problem Solving Workshop by Maree Pickens

Problem solving is about understanding the problem and apply the most desirable solution to the problem. A problem is defined by these three elements:

• Discrepancy between actual and expected outcome; and
• The cause of the problem is unknown; and
• It matter and I care about it!

When one encountered a problem, the first and foremost step is to stay calm and analyse the problem. Ask questions regarding the problem to get a better understandings about it and what might have cause the problem to arise. Often times, we will also need to evaluate the problem statement describing the problem as it can be subjective and biased. Since its the human nature to use our past experience to induce the possible cause of the problem, and attempting to make assumption which may not be true.

There are a couple of problem solving techniques such as six sigma, Toyota 8 steps and root cause analysis. At the workshop, we did a practice on using Toyota’s 5 Whys iterative question-asking technique by asking 5 iteration of Why as it is generally sufficient to get to a root cause.

Here is a video example:

I enjoyed the contents in the workshop as delivered by Maree, and I hope you can get a thing or two out of my notes. 😛 Frankly speaking, the concept of problem solving and decision making is not new for me. But the workshop has reminded me of how our mind always get clogged up by our emotions when we encountered a serious problem. The decision to how the problem will be dealt with also lies in our hands.

After all, would you prefer the saying “We’ve got a problem” as compared to “We’ve got some decision to make”?

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— Huili