Problems as opportunities

Set aside time to tackle a problem and then use the entire time. Don't head for the door after the first good idea, as there may be bigger and better ideas to come.

Bring facilitation techniques to encourage participation.

By giving team members time and resources to grow, learn, and explore you get a better quality and wider brainstorming. 

Great problem solvers take a high-level view of the issues involved and jot down a list of all the potential factors that could get in the way of a solution. 

So many times great opportunities are wrapped up inside simple problems.

The problem at hand may be symptomatic of bigger problems with your systems or perhaps your industry.

Skills are temporary; meta-skills are permanent.

Learning a second language gives you a skill, a learned ability. A meta-skill, on the other hand, is your ability to learn new languages. Developing that meta-skill, makes it easier to learn a third or a fourth tongue.

“The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

It's important to understand what is how big the problem is.

Use questions like:

• How many requests the system should satisfy?
• What is the expected response time?
• How many resources do we have?
• What about deadlines?

The chance someone else already solved your problem is high. All you have to do is a search in the literature to find out if there is a solution for a problem matching your use case. There is no point in reinventing the wheel.

Often the most difficult step, because it's easy to focus on the wrong part of the problem, or look at the problem too broadly.

The first thing you need to do is reduce it to its simplest and purest form so you know exactly what you're dealing with. While you're doing this, you need to ask yourself questions to make sure you're focusing on the right things. 

You need a plan with actionable steps. Ask yourself what's barring you from moving forward and make step one. Step one will open doors to other steps. 

Consider which steps will open more doors, add them to the plan, and keep doing that until you get to your solution. Things will change as you act on the plan and you'll need to adapt, so it's best to keep your plan somewhat open-ended and try to include steps that involve preparing for trouble you can foresee. 

The right questions are at the heart of discovery. And one of the very first questions you should be asking yourself is “What assumptions can I challenge?”

The mere act of trying to discover what assumptions you and others are making can give you a new perspective on the challenge you're facing.

Go beyond the basic features being asked for and get to the heart of the problem.

Ask questions like: Who cares about this problem? Why is it important to them?

If there are no good answers to these questions, is the problem even worth working on?

In any organization you will usually find these main work styles:

• Logical, analytical, linear, and data-oriented
• Organized, sequential, planned, and detailed-oriented
• Supportive, expressive, and emotionally oriented
• Big-picture, integrative, and ideation-oriented.

Their strengths are in analyzing data, logical processing, and solving complex problems.

They are focused on achieving the established goals and will ensure that you stay on budget.

Instead of increasing the number of productive hours, we can focus on getting the right things done in a timely way. We also need to restore and balance ourselves, our colleagues, family and environment, instead of a neurotic or pathological focus on deadlines.

Find out what's truly important to us and use the finite resource of time wisely.

Phantom workload looks like real work but results in massive unproductivity and even conflict in an organization. The pressure to meet unrealistic expectations causes a vicious cycle of further workload.

Leaders need to take a hard look at what is being avoided or not addressed. Facing difficult tasks that were 'swept under the carpet' earlier strengthens them further to make hard decisions and face difficult people and situations.

• It brings team members' diverse experience into play. It increases the richness of ideas explored, which means that you can often find better solutions.
• It can help you get buy-in from team members for the solution chosen – after all, they're likely to be more committed to an approach if they were involved in developing it. 
• It helps team members bond, as they solve problems in a positive, rewarding environment.

• groups aren't always strict in following the rules of brainstorming, and bad behaviors creep in. 
• people pay so much attention to other people that they don't generate ideas of their own – or they forget these ideas while they wait for their turn to speak. 

On your own, you don't have to worry about other people's egos or opinions, and you can be freer and more creative.