Problem-Solving Best Practices
Thank you for joining us for FountainBlue's March 7 Front Line Managers Online program, on the topic of 'Problem-Solving Best Practices'. Please join me in thanking our panelists.
as a Program Leader - Sondra Bollar, Oracle
as an Operations Leader - Mike Pettinicchio, Bestow
Our panelists shared much wisdom and many best practices on how to solve a wide range of problems with grace and wisdom. We live in times of great change, and adapting to these changes will build relationships, solve problems, and deliver for our customers. Below is a summary of their suggestions.
Accept the diverse people around you and include and empower them.
Practice deep listening with empathy, listening to understand rather than listening to respond.
Communicate with kindness, humility and respect.
Build a safe culture and place where people are invited and rewarded for speaking up and participating.
Be clear on what needs to be accomplished and the parameters and guardrails for getting the work done, without micromanaging.
Provide the level of resources and support your people need, based on their experience and preferences.
Be resilient and persistent, leveraging a wide range of strategies to address problems.
Take the short term view in addressing a problem and iterate so that you can address the longer term issues which might be associated with the problem.
Navigate obstacles and challenges based on your learnings from the past, the input of others around you, the guardrails set by customers, executives and managers.
Be metrics-driven, strategically focused on adopting and implementing strategies which meet goals.
Learn from your successes and failures, and keep learning and improving yourself.
Be an observant participant, learning from others around you on what works best for which audience.
Choose to keep learning and growing and expanding, based on the needs of your team and organization.
Put your customers and your team first, helping them perform at their best.
Make your internal and external customers feel important, prioritizing their needs based on factors such as urgency, importance and impact.
Create a platform so that all can benefit and invite input for creating and expanding that platform.
Mediate conflict between people, focusing on the challenges and opportunities which benefit all parties.
Adopt a 'help me help you' mindset, being the servant leader who empowers and equips team members, partners and customers for success.
We closed with a brainstorm about problem-solving.
What can we each do to become more effective and versatile problem-solvers?
Some problems require thinking creatively, outside of the box
Cross-check between your gut and your brain regarding problem-solving strategies
Take the initiative, be scrappy; ask for forgiveness
Decide to accept, change or leave when faced with something you don’t like
Leverage your personal style
Create a safe place so that your team can fully participate in the problem-solving
Optimize short-term and long-term benefits
The bottom line is that there are problems for every business, so creating a collaborative, learning-forward approach and leaning in with your stakeholders will greatly improve your probability of success.