6 Steps to Better Problem Solving Skills

Problem solving is at the core of human evolution. It is the methods we use to understand what is happening in our environment, identify things we want to change and then figure out the things that need to be done to create the desired outcome. Problem solving is the source of all new inventions, social and cultural evolution, and the basis for market based economies. It is the basis for continuous improvement, communication and learning.

The following steps are critical aspects of an effective problem solving approach:

1. Define the problem clearly.

Before beginning, make sure you completely understand exactly what the problem is. Sometimes it looks like there’s a lot of problems, but it’s actually just one with a lot of symptoms. Try to find the root cause of a problem instead of looking at a myriad of symptomatic issues. Ask questions like these:

–  What is the real problem?

–  What assumptions am I making that could be biased or inaccurate?

–  Where’s the latest information/research/data on this subject?

–  How long do I have before this becomes a bigger issue?

–  Can I ignore this problem?

–  Who and what can help solve this?

2. Gather as many facts as possible.

Collect information based on evidence… not on feelings. It’s easier to come up with problem-solving strategies when you’re not emotionally charged. An informed mind is much more capable of resolution than an uninformed one. Observe what is going right, or the positive aspects of the subject at hand, and to see if it gives ideas of how to fix what’s going wrong. Then, do the same with the negative aspects. Write them down.

3. Identify causes… especially the root cause.

Consider how and why it happened. Look at the problem from different perspectives. Play the devil’s advocate. It wouldn’t be considered a ‘problem’ if you knew how to solve it. This is why it’s imperative to consider other views and opinions. Others may see it differently.

4. Brainstorm solutions.

Before brainstorming, make sure you’ve clearly defined the problem and gathered solid facts. Ask others for input. Often how others view something is completely different than how you viewed it because you might be too close, tunnel-visioned, or too emotionally charged to make distinctions between the facts and exaggerations.

5. Take actions that are focused on a solution.

Select your solution and begin making a step-by-step plan of action to solve the problem. By making a plan, this promotes implementation of the solution. Remember to remain focused on one thing at a time.

6. If you can’t find a solution, go back and define what the problem is.

When problems cannot be solved, it is usually because they weren’t clearly identified. Anytime you hear someone say they’ve been dealing with a problem for quite some time, often the reason is because they haven’t slowed down long enough to carefully define the actual problem.

Problem solving skills and the problem-solving process are a critical part of daily life both as individuals and organizations. Developing and refining these skills through training, practice and learning can provide the ability to solve problems more effectively and over time address problems with a greater degree of complexity and difficulty.

Lean Quote: Rules to Reduce Inefficiencies of Email

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Email is having an increasingly pernicious effect. Not only is it having a perceptible effect on productivity, it's skewing what it is we focus on. The immediate increasingly crowds out the important." — Noreena Hertz

Email has become a huge part of our work lives. It's easy, it's fast, and people can read their emails (or not) when they have the time. Email has become the medium of choice for many business communications.

Email was not designed to be a collaboration tool, yet so many people use it that way. From managing projects to troubleshooting a problem, neverending email threads become inefficient, confusing, and bad for productivity. With many collaboration and project management products now available, email should never be the place you turn in order to stay on top of tasks and projects.

I thought I would shares some rules that can help you reduce the inefficiencies that email can cause. 

Some “Organizational Rules” to Reduce E-mail Waste 

Rule 1 – Limit “CC’s” to only those that are ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL. Make a rule that employees can choose to BLOCK all CC e-mails. 

Rule 2 – No more than two “cycles” back and forth between correspondents. If the issue is not resolved by that point, USE THE TELEPHONE! 

Rule 3 – No unnecessary forwarding of attachments; use a hyperlink instead. 

Rule 4 – Always include the POINT and URGENCY of the e-mail in both the subject line and the first few lines of the text. 

Rule 5 – Consider using the first few sentences of an e-mail as an ABSTRACT that summarizes the remainder of the communication. Below the abstract, add additional detail with the comment, “More detail follows…”. 

Rule 6 – KEEP IT BRIEF! No e-mail should be more than 20 lines in length (consider using a network filter to block any that are longer). 

Rule 7 – Start the subject line with “ACTION” whenever immediate action is required by the addressee. Actions should be identified at the beginning of the e-mail. 

Rule 8 – Try using the SUBJECT LINE to communicate the ENTIRE message, followed by “EOM” which stands for “End of Message”. 

Rule 9 – Limit the number of times during the day that you cleanup or respond to e-mails. Turn off the e-mail alarm, so YOU control when you deal with e-mail. 

Fewer interruptions means more time spent at work on value added activities. Using these rules can help email from becoming a wasteful distraction that can cost companies and you lost productivity.

Lean Tips Edition #137 (#2266-2280)

For my Facebook fans you already know about this great feature. But for those of you that are not connected to A Lean Journey on Facebook or Twitter I post daily a feature I call Lean Tips.  It is meant to be advice, things I learned from experience, and some knowledge tidbits about Lean to help you along your journey.  Another great reason to like A Lean Journey on Facebook.

Click this link for A Lean Journey's Facebook Page Notes Feed.

Here is the next addition of tips from the Facebook page:

Lean Tip #2266 - Communicate a Clear Mission, Vision and Goals.
Employees not only need to know how the business is performing but also where it's headed. All employees should understand the goals of the company and how their individual jobs support them. This is essential for employee engagement. Also, by asking for regular feedback about how employees are tracking toward meeting their goals, leadership can get a good idea of the organization’s progress.

Lean Tip #2267 - Promote Learning and Growth at Every Opportunity.
For everyone in a company, from the CEO to the entry-level employee, continuous learning is essential to growing and adapting to dynamic market conditions. Encourage employees to constantly improve their skills and market knowledge. Support employees who want to go back to school, attend training sessions or expand their market knowledge. This can provide tremendous long-term value to a company.

Lean Tip #2268 - Do Not Limit Yourself.
Don’t be afraid to try every single thing that might take you to your goal. In fact, be more concerned about the potential opportunities you might be missing out on when you don’t try something. Opening yourself up to possibilities will enable you to pick up on things which might be fundamental to your success.

Lean Tip #2269 - Go All Out; Work Really Hard.
With every success, comes hard work. Without hard work, you cannot achieve results. People who try to find the easy way out are kidding themselves if they think they can achieve excellence without putting in hard work. If you observe around you, the people who seek out ‘get-rich-quick’ methods are also the very people who don’t achieve much in their lives. Hard work is the universal quality that will pay off in the long-term. Once you invest the due time and effort, the results will start coming in.

Lean Tip #2270 - Never Give Up.
Don’t ever give up. Remember that defeat never occurs unless you accept it as defeat. If a certain problem is too big for you to handle, break it down into smaller pieces so it’s easier for you to tackle them. As long as you keep trying, you will eventually achieve your goal.

Lean Tip #2271 – Don’t Try a Solution before You Really Understand the Problem
You might start out believing you know where the problem is in your processes. You might already have a solution in mind. However, if you start out by changing processes without analyzing the problem, you may find that the problem isn’t what you thought it was. You may even make it worse.

Bring together people with different perspectives on the problem in your process. Talk about what everyone thinks is going wrong and listen to their ideas about solutions. It’s likely you’ll get insight you didn’t anticipate so you can make better solutions.

Lean Tip #2272 – Mapping Can Be an Effective Tool
Mapping your business processes is a formal way to bring together everyone’s insight on the problem. It creates a consensus view of what’s going on in your organization, and allows you to model the impact of solutions on the entire process, not just the problematic step or steps.

Lean Tip #2273 – Tie Process Improvement To Key Objectives
Your employees need to see the connection between their efforts to improve processes and your company’s mission. By linking process improvement strategies to organizational goals, you will be more apt to earn the support of employees across the board.

Lean Tip #2274 – Request Employee Feedback
Your front-line employees are the best embodiment of your company’s processes. They perform the same tasks every day and often have firsthand information regarding procedural strengths and weaknesses. Suggestions and feedback from front-line employees can play an incredibly vital role in improving your processes.

Lean Tip #2275 – Optimize Everyday Operations
Many companies are never able to grow because they spend all of their energy fixing broken processes. While addressing bottlenecks and other problems is an important part of process improvement, a more productive approach is to evaluate procedures that are not broken. Sometimes this can be achieved by making an adjustment that is as small as a minor tweak to the order entry process.

Lean Tip #2276 – Empower Employees With Improvement
By delegating key process improvement responsibilities to your managers and supervisors, you help ensure that key employees remain actively involved. Additionally, managers and supervisors are aware of key problem areas that require sustained attention. Some strategies to empower employees to manage process improvement include the following:

• Assign a team of employees to conduct an internal process improvement audit
• Establish regular reporting procedures to track results
• Delegate responsibility to employees who consistently model process improvement behaviors

Lean Tip #2277 – Focus on Long-Term Success
The most successful process improvement initiatives value future solutions over short-term fixes. You should expect to encounter obstacles as you focus on process improvement and strive to maintain a positive attitude towards process improvement.  Success requires patience and a long-term commitment to documenting strategies and outcomes from start to finish. This allows you to review your execution in detail to determine when and where a process faltered.

Lean Tip #2278 – Share More, Not Less. 
Even in a small company, silos emerge. A policy of more sharing will help everyone stay in touch with what others are doing, and create a collective expectation. Keeping everyone pointed in the same direction is hard; sharing more about what’s going on, how you’re doing things, reasoning behind decisions, etc. will help.

Lean Tip #2279 – Inspire Employees
Employees are the eyes and ears of your business operations. If there are weak spots in your system, it’s likely employees know about them. It’s also likely they want a better process for completing tasks. But when your staff thinks you’re a “my way or the highway” leader, they usually aren’t motivated to come up with solutions.

Involve your employees in improving business operations. Ask your staff where improvements can be made. Take notes of the flaws that are pointed out and solutions offered. Make sure your employees know their opinions matter and you are open to suggestions. In addition to accelerating your business process improvement, showing your employees that they add value to your business can take the stress off of your staffing management plan by keeping employee turnover at a minimum.

Lean Tip #2280 – Set Time Aside to Reflect
It’s hard not to get caught up in the daily hustle of running a business. But if you forget to stop and look at your business operations, you’ll never know if they’re effective. Take a step back to review your business plan and processes. Schedule time as a part of your workweek to follow through on your evaluation.

As you reflect on the success of your operating efforts, decide which processes work and which need to go. Continue to try new practices to push your business forward.

Lean Quote: Perceiving and Thinking Are Not the Same

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Perceiving means recognizing phenomena by means of our five senses. Thinking, on the other hand, is our mental ability to pursue causes and purposes by objectively asking 'why' about all phenomena." — Shigeo Shingo

Humans perceive via the five senses – sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. Looking up at the sky, we perceive that it is cloudy. Then there is thought: Will it rain or not?

Here is a little story that illustrates this point:

Foreman A walks into plant manager Ohara’s office with a safety part and says that a defect has occurred. “What do we do?” he asks.

Ohara examines the part for a moment and then instructs the foreman to bring him the next defective item if the defect shows up again. Dubious because he has received no instructions on how to handle the matter, the foreman goes back to the shop floor.

A week later, the defect shows up again and the foreman immediately rushes to the plant manager’s office. “We’ve got another defect” he announces. But when the manager asks him about the conditions under which the defect occurred, the foreman stammer incoherently.

“In that case,” the manager says, “bring the offending part to me if the defect shows up again.” The foreman quickly withdraws.

Ten days later, when the defect occurs again, the foreman visits the manager’s office for a third time. “The defect was caused by play in a stopper on the machine,” he reports. “We’ve fixed it so the defect won’t show up again.”

Here’s what happened: The first two times, the foreman merely perceived that a defect had occurred. The third time, having understood what the manager had in mind, he thought about why the defect might have occurred.

Thus there are two positions we can take: merely perceiving – or thinking objectively about what we have perceived. Action comes about in response to cycling back and forth between perceiving and thinking, perceiving and thinking, and then finally, perceiving the solution. The more this cycle of perceiving and thinking is repeated, the closer we can approach the truth.

We must remember to ask ourselves, as we move from thought to action in the course of every day, whether we are merely perceiving or whether we have really thought about the matter in question.

Adapted from “The Sayings of Shigeo Shingo: Key Strategies for Plant Improvement” By Shigeo Shingo

10 Ways to Show Your Employees Are Valued

Many companies proclaim that their employees are their greatest asset. Unfortunately, the phrase has become somewhat cliché, similar to saying employees are "empowered." These are valid statements only if companies put actions behind their claims.

In other words, if you say your employees are your greatest asset, do you treat them as if they are the most valuable part of your company?

1. Say thank you.

Show your appreciation for their hard work and contributions. Identify the specific actions that you found admirable. This praise feels sincere since you took the time to spell out details—not just, "You did a good job." You also emphasize the actions that you'd like to see the employee do more often and everybody benefits when people experience clear direction.

2, Make time to connect.

Leaders have a lot of responsibilities, and it's easy to get caught up in your own work, without paying much attention to your team. But one of the best ways to show your employees you appreciate them is making the time to connect with them. Find out how they're doing--including their lives outside work.

3. Create new opportunities.

One of the best ways to win the hearts and minds of your employees is to give them as many opportunities as you can. Let them take on big challenges like a highly visible project or a new leadership role, or pick up the tab for a workshop or conference.

4. Show you trust them.

When you can show your employees you trust them, it sends a very important message. In essence, you're telling them their work is good enough that they don't need you looking over their shoulder.

5. Encourage input from them.

Ask for employee suggestions for other ways of getting the task or project accomplished. Listen and be willing to really hear the employees' comments. Employees hate to have no input and be told exactly how to perform their jobs, leaving no creativity.

6. Let them solve their own problems.

Listen to their problems but don’t bark out the answer. Instead, ask probing questions that will lead them to determine the right answer. When they get it, compliment them and tell them they don’t need to ask you about similar situations; that you have faith in them to figure it out. Don’t abandon them, but prove that you trust their judgment.

7. Make mentorship part of the culture.

In almost any organization, there are newer employees who could benefit from being paired with an old hand. Whether you establish a formal mentorship program or a more casual buddy system, there's no better way to transmit helpful information and give newbies a support system right from the start.

8. Be honest and transparent.

Honesty should be a given, but it's easier at some times than at others. Many people believe you shouldn't talk about the bad news, but those conversations--difficult as they may be--prove you care enough to deliver even hard truths. Truthful and transparent feedback will gain you respect and garner the best possible results.

9. Challenge them

Employees may become bored and dissatisfied if they are performing the same tasks and projects each day. Give your staff new challenges that are within their abilities. Provide constructive feedback as they work on new projects. Learning and mastering new challenges will give your staff a sense of accomplishment. It shows that you have confidence in their skills and value them as part of the organization.

10. Give them credit

Praise employees for their good work in front of their peers. You don’t have to spend a dime to reward hardworking employees for their actions and achievements. Your gesture lets employees know their unique contributions and positive attitudes make a difference for your company and the team.

If you're serious about creating a workforce that's engaged and productive, you must devote time and attention to creating environments in which the people on your teams can flourish. And when they flourish, you must take measures to ensure they are protected and well cared for, because that's what people do with their most celebrated and valuable assets.

Gemba Walks: A Tool for Leaders To Check

It has been said that the farther removed a leader becomes from the place where the work gets done, the less effective he/she will be in supporting those who do the work. And while that statement may be largely accurate, it’s also true that all operational leaders, but particularly department leaders and above, are pulled in many different directions during a given day, week, or month and may not feel that they have time to spend out in the operation where the products are made or the services rendered.

Additionally, some leaders, particularly those that didn’t start out working in operational roles, may not know how to productively spend time in the operation. Where should they go? What should they observe? Who should they talk to?

A “Gemba” Walk is a structured approach to getting leaders out of their offices and into the places where the critical work of the healthcare facility takes place to engage with the operation in a meaningful way and to look for signs of waste and inefficiency or other opportunities to improve. “Gemba” is a Japanese term that means “the real place”, “the actual place”, or “the place where value is created.”

Perhaps the best way to understand Gemba walks is to clarify what they are not. A Gemba walk is not a random, unplanned visit to “check up” on the workforce or catch employees being unproductive. It is also not the equivalent of a department meeting whereby leadership pull staff together to deliver a series of messages. Instead, a Gemba walk is a pre-planned and structured visit to a particular area or areas to better understand some aspect of the operation, dialogue with staff, and/or learn something that the leader can take back to his/her job. Along the way, the leader should be role modeling the behaviors that he/she expects from the broader workforce by identifying potential patient or employee safety hazards and other signs of waste or inefficiency to be addressed (e.g., disorganized work area, inefficient business processes, etc.).

The most effective Gemba walks are planned in advance and entered into with a particular objective in mind (e.g., teach something, learn something, role model a behavior, build a relationship, etc.). Contrary to popular opinion, the workforce will come to appreciate the presence of leadership in their place of work because it sends the signal that leaders want to understand the challenges they face every day and opens up opportunities for a constructive dialogue.

Nothing sustains itself, certainly not Lean manufacturing or Lean management. So, establish and stick to a routine including regular visits to the Gemba, check the status of visual controls, follow-up on daily accountability assignments, and ask the three simple questions everywhere. Gemba walks are really the check in our PDCA methodology of continuous improvement.

Lean Quote: Zeal Will Do More Than Knowledge

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

"Zeal will do more than knowledge." — William Hazlitt

Without a sense of zeal, life sometimes can become pretty boring. Everything then seems to be done with a big sigh and a have-to. Going through the motions without a genuine want-to, turns everything into a must-do.

Nothing can take the place of being zealous or passionate. Opportunity can’t. Opportunity may open the door, but without zeal you won’t make the most of it. A lack of zeal, may cause you to miss a door meant to lead you toward your destiny.

Knowledge can’t replace zeal. Knowledge can be taught, and experience is earned in time, but it’s very hard to make someone passionate about something. And if someone is passionate about something, they’re more willing to take the extra steps and make the sacrifices to gain the necessary knowledge and collect the valuable experience.

Having a passion promotes a sense of creativity. All of the sudden, you'll find yourself connecting two aspects of your life together that you never thought could coexist. You may be inspired to start a blog to share your ideas with the world, or you may be more compelled to show your talents in a more hands-on environment.

Without passion, there isn't much motivation to work. Yes, there are material motivations such as a large bank account, the biggest house or a new car. When those things are put into perspective, though, one learns that these wants will only satisfy you for a certain amount of time before you want something else. Following your dreams suppresses all of these desires because you're striving for knowledge rather than money. Knowledge is a motivation in itself because it is infinite. You could never have too much, but you'll never have it all.

Finally, having good connections isn’t a substitute for personal zeal. You will never be successful without others, but merely surrounding yourself with the right people doesn’t guarantee success either. A team with no heart, passion, and vision won’t succeed.