How to Solve Any Problem

There is a way to unlock a door of opportunity as well as to close the door to a problem. You need to find the key or look for someone who has the key. Or, go figure how to make that key. Sounds impossible?

Photo: Pixabay

Consider the tiny ants foraying in your kitchen. They are ever busy and industriously looking for food to eat or store and materials to build their nest. Ants do not need to be told what to do or where to go. They just rolled up their sleeves and get to it.

If there are cookies in a closed jar, they will still keep trying and wait for an opportunity when an unwitting human forget to close the lid. They could also pick out the huge crumbs that come tumbling down when the human savours those cookies. In any case the ants will just keep looking for what they want within your kitchen or venture over to your neighbours' kitchens. They are focused on their goal with diligent persistence. 

By a stretch of imagination, an ant can find a way to fly, too. If it happened to stay hidden in the eyelet of a shoe worn by a frequent traveller, it may well end up flying First Class to Paris. The seemingly impossible could come to past.

Now that your imagination has been made more elastic, you are ready to make your own key in 5 steps.

Step 1: Define the Issue or Problem

It has been a week since your friend's child started school and it wasn't working out. The child kept crying whenever the form teacher appeared and your friend ended up bringing him out of the class within the first half an hour. He kept saying, "I don't like lions."

Photo: Pixabay

Your friend then consulted you and you unraveled that your friend and her son had been watching a documentary recently wherein a male lion had mauled a young deer. And, that blonde form teacher has a tall and large hairdo. Problem is not solved yet, but at least you now know that the child was associating the teacher's mane with that of the lion.

Frame the problem, any problem, positively. The negative approach says,"My friend's son is afraid of lions." Instead, say: "How to remove his fear of lions" or "How to show him that he is safe from lions for real".  

State, "How can I increase the profits of my company" instead of "I don't know whether my business can tide over this recession" or "I don't think my company can survive the competition". A positive frame of mind energises whereas a negative mindset depletes your energy bank.

Step 2: Verify Premises or Conditions

You are the owner of 24/7 Fitness Centre and business has been going well for you. You start making plans to expand your business to other parts of your country. One day, hypothetically, you got wind that Under Armour has just leased several units of retail space in the mall across the street. It was of no consequence to you. You were assuming that they were going to open a retail outlet like what they have been doing all over your country.

However, a real estate associate had let on that Under Armour has incorporated UltraMax Fitness to run a gym at that location. Your external business environment has just changed forever in one fell swoop. There is no time to waste. You gotta to redefine your problem from "How to expand profitably" to "How to beat the competition on my home turf" -- it is far better to be a victor than a survivor. Aim high. Fight for your life. You have to play the game at a higher level now. Failure is not an option.

In addressing a problem, look at both your internal and external environment. Challenge your existing knowledge and look for what may have changed or what could potentially change. Internal factors could be things like losing a star-studded fitness instructor.

Step 3: Develop Initiatives / Use Your Ingenuity / Get Creative

Rally your think-tank and employ the Innovative Thinking Process:

3.1 Identify what you want to achieve (i.e., what is the desired goal).
3.2 Generate ideas; ask your team for ideas.
3.3 Evaluate the merits of each idea with an open mind.

Be SMART with your desired goal. Make it Specific, Measurable, Aligned to goal, Realistic and Time scheduled.

Photo: Pixabay

Allow for brainstorming of ideas. Let each one speak their minds to avoid the danger of group think, where people suspend their own views for fear of being 'persecuted' for holding a divergent idea or point of view. Encourage the use of the wildest imagination, do not dismiss or ridicule any idea, think as if there are no constraints, be audacious ... the idea is to generate as many ideas as possible (get it?).

Give all ideas an airing in this creative exercise. There is no need to worry about having too many ideas for you to filter out the good from the bad; they will stand and fall on their own merits. The best and strongest ideas will be left standing as ammunition for your fight.

Use SCAMPER as a tool to generate ideas:

Substitute by collaborating with your local university to harness the power of robotics and information technology for automating your processes so as to reduce dependency on human power where plausible and cost-effective.  (e.g. robot aerobic instructor, Apps for your members to keep track of their fitness goals, etc.) Your human capital could then be employed for higher value-added (more personalised) services to your customers.

Combine by introducing other benefits to your membership card through networking with merchants of sports and health goods so as to secure discounts for your members. 

Adapt by launching customer loyalty programmes so as to retain long term customers. Engage your customers by listening to their feedback (free advice in the guise of complaints) and find out how you can effectively improve your value proposition to them as well as potential new customers. Train your staff to refresh their service attitude and approach. Reward those who embrace the ethos and goals of your company. After all, a company is only as great as its management team and operators. 

Magnify your contribution to the community. Renew your commitment to support the local charity, award bursaries to needy local students, donate physiotherapy equipment to your local hospital, offers 2-weeks of free membership to every local resident who is clinically obese or whose body mass index is out of whack for their age group, etc.

Put to other use. Conduct free seminar on health and fitness at your premises. Offer the hotels and motels in town with free usage of your facilities by their guests for the first hour.

Eliminate the sugar-added drinks and sodas from your vending machines. Phase out out-dated equipment and lacklustre exercise programmes.

Rearrange your business with cutting edge practices from the industry in your country and elsewhere. Your hands are full now as you work on the two potential winners after much market research -- indoor rock climbing facility and trampoline park!

Photo: Pixabay

Step 4: Select and Develop Your Best Ideas

Evaluate your ideas and select the very best of the best. Appoint your teams to develop the detailed plans for implementing each of the winning so that you will know what are the resources required and how these could be sourced or developed in-house costs effectively. 

Step 5: Follow Through with Actions

Pursue your plans with actions and fine-tune as you go along. You only need a workable plan to start out. Having a perfect plan is an oxymoron. You will only have perfect vision upon hindsight. 

You would never know if a strategy would work unless you try it out. The market is always cool in that it always prove what is hot. For example, in movie making, Star Wars (1977) and My Big Fat Greek Wedding were unexpected blockbusters. 

"An organization's ability to learn, and translate that learning into action rapidly, is the ultimate competitive advantage." -- Jack Welch

"The lazy man says, “There is a lion outside! I shall be slain in the streets!”" -- Proverbs 22:13 (NKJV)


Just to recap, your key to solving any problem may take the shape of the following 5 steps which you could apply, with adaptation, to your mountain of problem:

Step 1: Define the Issue or Problem
Step 2: Verify Premises or Conditions
Step 3: Develop Initiatives / Use Your Ingenuity / Get Creative
Step 4: Select and Develop Your Best Ideas
Step 5: Follow Through with Actions


Daily Refreshing wishes you all the best as you march forward to tackle and surmount your problem, especially the besetting problem which has been with you for the longest time.


Bibliography:
Business Management Work Skills Qualification - Critical Thinking by Capelle Academy