Problem Solving & Critical Thinking
- Introduction
- Fascinating Shocker: The primary reason our customers’ real problems don’t get solved
- Making the connection: Customer focus, strategic direction and problem solving
- Futuring and Strategic Thinking
- Systems thinking
- Futuring tools and application
- Help others break through their paradigms to uncover truth
- Embark on problem solving with staying power
- Overview of the nine step problem solving process
- Problem Solving and Critical Thinking Approach
- Assess the implication of problems and decisions you face everyday
- Use a data driven method to select challenges, issues and improvements and sell your ideas upward
- Develop a problem scope statement that directs you to efficiently solve the right problem the first time
- Gap analysis; current and future state statements
- Techniques for Data Gathering and Analysis
- Avoiding data gathering approaches that fail
- Research methodology in today’s government
- Uses, limitations and parameters of benchmarking
- Tools to gather and analyze data effectively, considering anticipated and unplanned consequences
- Strategies to import ideas from internal and external sources
- Tools for critical thinking
- Forecasting What You Will Achieve
- What happens when you solve a problem without a fixed goal
- Objective setting: Measurable, realistic, achievable, and tangible, and which withstand time and change
- Explore implications of a decision to determine pitfalls, opportunities and alternatives
- Root cause analysis tools and application
- Planning and Implementing Strategies
- Critical thinking tool: Implications of decisions on the organization
- Creative problem solving: Jumping out of the box
- Tools for selecting the best solution
- Developing tracking mechanisms for implementation of problem solutions
- Influencing Others
- How to ensure good solutions don’t fall on deaf ears
- Strategies to influence others regarding your recommendations or solutions
- Designing a communication strategy for buy-in appropriate to the audience
- Applying lessons learned
