Solve the problem like a master: you must have super skills

On July 16, 2004, Michael Dell, chairman and CEO of Dell Company, announced that Kevin Rolinus, the chief operating officer of Dell executives for a long time, will take over the position of Dell CEO. Before joining Dell in 1996, Rorinus served as the vice president and partner of the Bain Consulting Company, where he put forward the famous direct sales business model for Dell.

When Rolinus was new, Dell was the world's largest and most profitable computer manufacturer. The company's stock price was slightly higher than $ 35, which was the highest level since the breakthrough of technology stock foam in the summer of 2000. In the early two and a half years, the situation was very different in early 2007. The company's revenue growth has slowed significantly, and the market share has declined sharply, and HP also squeezed Dell's throne in the world's largest computer manufacturer. In the end, an internal employee investigation directly stated that everyone's confidence in Dell's leadership is declining.

Dell encountered a problem. Shareholders and employees are dissatisfied with the development situation, and they are urgent to hope that the company's performance will return to the peak of the past. As the chairman and the largest shareholder, Michael Dell is responsible for this issue, and he has a strong motivation to quickly solve the problem. If you are Michael Dell, who is in the early 2007, what measures will you take to solve this problem?

01

Fast and slowness of the problem solving

The problems faced by Dell in early 2007 involved a series of intricate and little -known factors, which made it difficult to define the problem and cannot start. This complex and unclear problem is very weird and rarely occurs, so it is difficult to solve it in conventional methods. Nevertheless, we may still feel that we understand all the information needed to solve the problem of Dell.

For many people, the cause and solution of the problem are obvious: Kevin Rolinus is the culprit, and he should be dismissed immediately. Construction of the situation in this way is to simplify the challenge.

People do not need to carry out long and difficult work, define, construct and analyze the problems, and then generate several potential solutions. Selecting from it, just simplify the process of solving the problem to support or replace Roreins for choice between supporting or replacement of Rolinus for choice. Just accept it.

No matter what advice you give, the solution will be quickly obtained.

Psychologist and Nobel Prize winner Daniel Cunman said in his pioneering best -selling book "Thinking, Quick and Slow" that the same brain often has two sets of thinking systems. These two sets of thinking are often thought. The system will continue to "dispute" because of our psychological activities.

Our default way of thinking, including the way of solving problems, is to think quickly, that is, the so -called system of thinking. The system is unknowing, automatic, and unconscious.

When thinking about quickly, we will focus on the information in front of our eyes, and we will not think about finding information that can help us better grasp the situation. Caniman calls this tendency "in front of the world."

At the same time, thinking quickly is also associative: the limited information of some of the situation we pay attention to, the brain will trigger the relevant ideas in memory, and quickly activate it in unconsciousness, and then trigger other related ideas, and so on. Essence

As a result of this level of couplet process, through constructing a coherent story that is happening and the action that should be taken, we can quickly understand the new situation under the situation of limited information. In other words, our brain is particularly good at conclusions.

In contrast to fast thinking, thinking slowly, that is, the system of thinking, is active and spontaneous, because slow thinking requires efforts to focus on attention and conscious thinking. However, this effort must pay the high cost of cognition. Mental ability is a scarce resource. We need to allocate it to the problem, so we have the term "concentrated attention".

When solving the problem of challenging, we are often attracted by the "most effective law". This is a systematic thinking that rely on faster and lower cognitive costs. Subsequently, the prudent system two thoughts will simply agree with the system of thinking.

However, as long as you pay full efforts and master enough skills, slow thinking can be logical, rational, and organized. Slow thinking can urge us to find missing information. Understand the situation, so as to obtain a deeper, comprehensive grasp of the problem, and the better idea of ​​solving the problem.

But the brain will only trigger slow thinking only when thinking about the situation in front of you quickly. The neuroscience research on the problem solving also confirms this: When people quickly solve the problem based on faith, the areas of active areas in the brain are different from the areas that are activated when deeply logical thinking.

This shows that when solving the problem, different mental processes are competing for control.

02

Learn to question whether the information you control is sufficient

In the stories of Kevin Rolinus and Dell, we can easily think too fast about problems and their solutions, or to commit laziness in the process of thinking about slow thinking.

When we saw that during the CEO of Kevin Roreins, compared with the Michael Dell era, Dell's sales growth slowed down, market share decreased, revenue expected goals, and stock prices declined. We are easily convinced by these facts that we don't need to understand more.

As a result, our brain began to operate quickly, looking for associations between the above information. The important point is that Rorinus is CEO. This is easy to trigger a belief in leadership, that is, leaders have the ability (or should) dominate the fate of the organization they lead. In this way, we have attributed excellent performance to excellent leadership, and the failure of failure is to blame the poor leadership. Establishing associations between leadership and performance indicators, people can soon build a story that is self -telling, and decisively give solutions: frying Rolinus.

However, when we make questions about this information and try to find more information, do we still draw the same conclusion?

For example, if we find that although Dell's stock price has fallen, it is still better than all other companies in the industry. What will happen? If the Dell employee's confidence in executives has declined, Rorinus still has a high status in the minds of employees and is respected and admired by all employees? If we get some other information about the root cause, will we have different analysis ideas?

When we no longer assume that ourselves understand the truth, but to question whether the information we master is sufficient and trying to find more information, we are more likely to overcome our own limitations, look at the problem from another angle, so as to look at the problem, thereby Different, even more excellent solutions.

Are you more inclined to think and act in hasty, or can you be unable to extricate yourself? Although the conclusion and action are often made by people, it is also commonplace because of the analysis of even indecisive. Many bureaucratic agencies will conduct a lot of research and data collection before taking action, and the results still do not take any action.

On the one hand, the rapid or laziness of the thinking process allows us to save scarce and high -cost mental resources, but the solutions obtained are often poor and invalid; on the other hand Complex business problems are necessary, but the reflection process is likely to cause delay and slowing of decision -making.

If organizations and institutions want to have high efficiency and efficiency at the same time, they need to overcome these challenges to solve complex business issues.

03

We need the ability to solve complex problems

When solving complex business problems, if we cannot rely on the power of experts and professional knowledge, what else can we do? Psychological research shows that IQ itself can play a role. A comprehensive analysis of the recent 47 studies involved in nearly 14,000 people showed that people's intelligence level can explain nearly 20%of the differences in the effectiveness of complex problems.

Although IQ is important, the difference between more than 80%of the effectiveness of complex problems is determined by other factors.

That is to say, the smarter the better, but it is not enough to use your head alone. This explains why the management consultant company not only hires smart people, uses the professional knowledge of these people in specific fields, but also invests in a lot of resources. Through formal training and guidance of their actual work to help these people solve the solution to solve the solution of these people The ability of the problem.

The ability to solve complex business problems is crucial for managers, consultants, and organizations that hire them. With the increasingly dependence of organizations on mobile, cross -function, and multi -disciplinary teams to solve new business challenges, this ability will become increasingly important.

Even if your organizational environment is still on the traditional functional division, it is likely that your boss will let your boss lead or participate in cross -job issues to solve the operation. Whether your career is successful will depend on how much contribution you have made when you solve such complex problems. And your expertise in a certain function, although it is very valuable, is not sufficient.

A survey of company recruiters shows that the maximum skill gap of fresh university graduates is the ability to solve the ability and critical thinking ability. Organizations need to effectively solve complex problems, but these organizations also tell us that universities have not fully developed this competitiveness of students.

It is difficult for us to use technology to make up for this skill gap. Although technology can help us solve many challenging problems, big data analysis, artificial intelligence, and robotics are changing with each passing day, which cannot alleviate our urgent needs for the problem of solving problems.

There are also many analysts that the importance of the problem solving ability will only increase day by day. The automation of blessing from big data, artificial intelligence, and robotics is likely to make the importance of human problems solving ability to be increasingly prominent, so it cannot replace human labor or positions in this regard.

The "Employment Life Report" published by the World Economic Forum in 2015 proposed that in 2020, 36%of the positions in all industries will take the ability to solve complex problems as part of the core ability requirements, and the ability to solve the complex problem is also this report. Focus on one of the skills that emphasize.

If professional knowledge, IQ and technology are not enough to solve complex business problems, how can we do better? In the short term, in terms of professional knowledge accumulation, we cannot make rapid progress, and it is even more difficult to improve IQ.

In the face of unconventional complex issues, we cannot solve it simply by professional knowledge. We need to understand how to reason in a inductive way, and then solve complex problems while avoiding the fell into an indecisive quagmire. We also need to effectively use our own professional knowledge and IQ to overcome the huge temptation of in a hurry to conclude in the case of insufficient information.

Studies have shown that solving the problem cannot be based on brainpower, and many scholars have studied the impact of the training of problem solutions on people. A survey of 70 research shows that training specific processes and skills has improved the actual effect of the problem solving.

Following the methodology, it is very important for the actual effect of the problem.

Mastering the solution to complex problems and promoting solutions is very important for individuals and organizations, and we have never received related education in daily learning and work.

In "Solving the Problem Like a Master", experienced problems solve Bernard Garete, Kori Philpus and Olivier Sibeni proposed a whole set of rigorous and practical problems to solve the solution Methodism, that is, the problem solving the 4S method can help readers: four complete steps: problem statement, problem construction, problem sales, and solution sales, and gradually deepen the core of the problem, and learn to solve any challenging business problems. Mastering this set of methodology, anyone can be a problem solving master!

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