Creative Problem Solving Techniques

- What is Creative Problem Solving?

Creative Problem Solving is a proven method for approaching a problem or a challenge in an imaginative and innovative way. It’s a tool that helps people re-define the problems they face, come up with breakthrough ideas and then take action on these new ideas.

Creative problem solving always involves creativity. To qualify as creative problem solving the solution must either have value, clearly solve the stated problem, or be appreciated by someone for whom the situation improves.

If a created solution becomes widely used, the solution becomes an innovation and the word innovation also refers to the process of creating that innovation. A widespread and long-lived innovation typically becomes a new tradition. "All innovations begin as creative solutions, but not all creative solutions become innovations." Some innovations also qualify as inventions.

Inventing is a special kind of creative problem solving in which the created solution qualifies as an invention because it is a useful new object, substance, process, software, or other kind of marketable entity.

- Key Factors needed for creative thinking

Before implementing any problem solving strategy identify the real problem. To use creative problem solving techniques, we must understand creative thinking.

Creative thinking is allowing our imaginations to feed off our memory and knowledge to cause one idea to lead to another, otherwise known as the "association of ideas."

The key factors needed for creative thinking are:

a) No Judgements:  Have an open mind - don't criticize any idea that may come to mind. Instead write each idea down.

For example:-    PROBLEM : Not enough money

                        IDEAS:  Sell any miscellaneous home items I can do without on eBay

                                   No eating out

                                   No more going to the movies

b) Self Assessment: To figure out the best solution to our problem, it is helpful to identify any opinions we may have about our problem and about any of our ideas on how to fix the problem. Literally, ask yourself, “Do I have an opinion about this?”

For example:   IDEA: No eating out 

                     OPINION: I think eating out is unhealthy

c) Positive Attitude: Develop an attitude that all ideas are good ideas, as cynicism only inhibits creative thinking.

d) Use Checklists:  There are a couple reasons why you should write down EVERY idea, no matter how far-fetched it may seem at the moment. Writing down all ideas will ensure that nothing important is forgotten, and will give us an opportunity to go back, and combine parts of one idea with another, letting our ideas feed off each other.

e) Be Self Confident: Remember that many of the world's greatest ideas were ridiculed at first. Have faith in your creativity!!! Some of our most basic scientific principles like that the Earth is round and revolves around the sun never would have been advanced without the confidence and courage to go against the grain.

A TEAM BUILDING Exercise depicting the flavors of CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING. Have a look at it:

CIRCLE PASS

 

- Stages in Creative Problem Solving

 

Stage 1: Explore the Challenge

Step 1: Objective Finding - Identify Goal, Objective or Challenge

This could be a wish or a goal. It might be the initial dissatisfaction or a desire that opens the door to using the CPS (Creative Problem Solving) process.

Step 2: Fact Finding - Gather Data

Assess and review all the data that pertains to the situation at hand. Who’s involved, what’s involved, when, where, and why it’s important. Make a list of the facts and information, as well as the more visceral hunches, feelings, perceptions, assumptions and gossip around the situation. In this step, all the data is taken into consideration to review the objective and begin to innovate. 

Step 3: Problem Finding - Clarify the Problem

In this step, explore the facts and data to find all the problems and challenges inherent in the situation, and all the opportunities they represent. This is about making sure you’re focusing on the right problem. It is possible to come up with the right answer to the wrong problem. Re-define what you want or what’s stopping you.

Stage 2: Generate Ideas

Step 4: Idea Finding - Generate Ideas

Generating ideas is much more than brainstorming. During this step, be vigilant about deferring judgment and coming up with wild, outrageous, out-of-the-box ideas. This is where you explore ideas that are possible solutions and have the most fun. It’s also where you need to stretch to make connections, take risks, and try new combinations to find potentially innovative solutions.

Stage 3: Prepare for Action

Step 5: Solution Finding - Select and Strengthen Solutions

First, try to strengthen and improve the best ideas generated. Next, generate the criteria that needs to be considered to evaluate the ideas for success. Apply that criteria to the top ideas and decide which are most likely to solve the redefined problem. The best idea needs to meet criteria that makes it actionable before it becomes the solution. A creative idea is not really useful if it won’t be implemented.

Step 6: Acceptance Finding - Plan for Action

In this step, look at who’s responsible, what has to be done by when, and what resources are available in order to realize this idea as a full-fledged, activated solution.

 

Following the above stages(steps) of creating problem solving process some creative strategies may be designed of solving a particular problem.

!!! SO NEVER STOP INNOVATING !!!

### HAPPY LEARNING FOLKS ###

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Organizational Structure

 

 SAMPLE ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES

An organizational structure consists of activities such as task allocation, coordination and supervision, which are directed towards the achievement of organizational aims. It can also be considered as the viewing glass or perspective through which individuals see their organization and its environment.

Organizational structure affects organizational action in two big ways. 

a) Provides the foundation on which standard operating procedures and routines rest. 

b) Determines which individuals get to participate in which decision-making processes, and thus to what extent their views shape the organization’s actions.

The set organizational structure may not coincide with facts, evolving in operational action. Such divergence decreases performance, when growing. E.g., a wrong organizational structure may hamper cooperation and thus hinder the completion of orders in due time and within limits of resources and budgets. Organizational structures shall be adaptive to process requirements, aiming to optimize the ratio of effort and input to output.

- 4 Basic Elements of Organizational Structure

a) Span of Control: Number of people directly reporting to the next level in the hierarchy.

b) Centralization: Degree to which formal decision authority is held be a small group of people, typically those at the top of the organizational hierarchy.

c) Formalization: Degree to which organizations standardize behavior through rules, procedures, formal training, and related mechanisms.

d) Departmentalization: Organizational charts that specifies how employees and their activities are grouped together.

- TYPES OF ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURES

a) Functional Organization

 

This type of organizational structure:

 - Brings together in one department everyone engaged in one activity or several related activities that are called FUNCTIONS. 

   For example: As shown, the organization is divided by functions into different departments like sales, finance, engineering, HR. A sales manager would be responsible for the sale of all the products which are manufactured by the firm.

  - This leads to operational efficiencies within that group. However it could also lead to a lack of communication between the functional groups within an organization, making the organization slow and inflexible.

 - Mainly used by the smaller firms that offer a limited line of products.

 - Makes supervision easier as each manager must be expert in only a narrow range of skills. It also helps to group a particular set of people with the specialized kind of skill set.

 - But as the organization grow and diversify, some of the problems begin to surface:

   i) As each department functional managers need to report to central headquarters (President), it can be difficult to make quick decisions.

   ii) Harder to judge performance because which department to blame when a new product fails.

   iii) Difficult to coordinate the functions of members of the entire organization as each department may have difficulty working with other departments in a unified way to achieve organizational goals.

b) Product/Market/Divisional Organization

  - Brings together in one work unit all those involved in the production and marketing of a product or a related group of products, all those in a certain geographic area, or all those dealing with a certain type of customer.

  - Can follow three patterns as described above:

    i) DIVISION BY PRODUCT

As shown the categorization (division) has been done on the basis of broad category of products. And each category of related group of products has its own marketing, sales, purchasing and inventory manager.

    ii) DIVISION BY GEOGRAPHY

 

Geographical organization is logical when a plant must be located as close as possible to sources of raw materials, to major markets, or to specialized personnel.

   iii) DIVISION BY CUSTOMER 

The organization is divided according to the different ways customers use products.

 

c) Matrix Organization/ Multiple Command System

 

  - Employees have in effect 2 bosses ie. 2 chains of command. One chain of command is functional or divisional and the second is a horizontal overlay that combines people from various divisions or functional departments into a project or business team led by a project or group manager who is an expert in the team's assigned area of specialization.

 - For example, many large companies have a corporate human resources division, with individual HR representatives stationed at local facilities. At the local level, the HR representative may report to the operations manager charged with responsibility for that facility. However, the operations manger does not likely have specific expertise in human resource management and is not directly involved in setting corporate HR initiatives. For that reason, the HR representative may also report to a corporate HR manager or director, resulting is a matrix structure

 - Bring together the diverse specialized skills required to solve a complex problem.

 - Problems of coordination are minimized here because the most important personnel for a project work together as a group. They come to understand the demands faced by those who have different areas of responsibility.

 - Gives the organization a great deal of cost-saving flexibility because each project is assigned only to the required people and unnecessary duplication is avoided.

 - To be effective, team members must have good interpersonal skills and flexibility and cooperation.

- Additional Business Structure Considerations: Flat vs. Tall

In addition to defining the reporting structure, businesses structures can also be described in terms of whether the organization is tall or flat. This characteristic refers to how many layers of management there are in an organization.

A tall organization is quite hierarchical, with several different levels of management. Individual managers have a narrow span of control, with a relatively small number of employees in their direct reporting line. Decision making tends to be centralized with management in tall organizations.

A flat organization is one where there are relatively few levels of management. Supervisory employees tend to have a wide span of control, which means they are likely to have a relatively large number of direct reports. Decision making is less centralized, with employees being empowered to exercise discretion in their work and having an opportunity to participate in much of the decision making that takes place.

- Choosing an Organizational Structure

Choosing among the types of business organizational structures is a big decision that should not be taken lightly. It's important to look an organization's size, number of facilities located in different geographic areas, marketing strategy, business philosophy, and other factors when making this decision. Regardless of the type of structure you choose, it's important to clearly communicate expectations to employees at all levels, making sure that each member of the team is clear about his or her reporting lines.


Above are my views as I learnt during my learning sessions. Please provide your valuable comments and anything you like to add to my learnings. Looking forward to a lot of replies from your side.

 As Always

!!!! HAPPY LEARNING FOLKS !!!!