problem solving culture definition

• eNewsletter Subscription
• Operations Leadership Summit
• Great Question Podcast
• Search Search

Members Only

• Technology & IIoT
• Supply Chain
• The Economy

• Continuous Improvement

What Does a Good Problem-Solving Culture Look Like?

How would you describe your company’s problem-solving culture?  I have asked any number of managers that question; as often as not, it’s received with a blank stare.  Most managers haven’t thought about just how problem-solving in their organization happens. Those who have thought about it are reluctant to say something like: “When a big problem arises, we ignore it as long as we can so that no one has to take responsibility for fixing it. When it gets so bad that it’s biting our rear ends, we go on a wild hunt for a scapegoat, heap blame on them, engage in a round of hysterical firefighting, then return to our business.” Asked his approach to hitting, baseball legend Ted Williams replied, “See the ball, hit the ball.”  That intuitive tactic worked for Mr. Williams but, too often, “seat of the pants” problem-solving leads to a “See the problem, fix the blame” culture.  A leader’s job is to create a “See the problem, study the problem, fix the problem” culture. 

What, then, does such a culture look like?  What consistent behaviors would we see organization members engaged in? 

Blame-Free Discussion of Problems

I once heard a story about a manager who attended a seminar on continuous improvement strategies. During a break, she got a phone call about a problem back at the worksite.  Forgetting everything she had heard at the workshop, she shouted into the phone, “Who’s responsible for this?  Just wait until I get hold of them!” It might be that the manager spoke in a moment of frustration, but it’s likely that she and her management colleagues often evinced that very behavior.  It’s consistent with a “fix the blame” culture. 

In the “fix the problem” culture, one hears lots of discussions of problems because they are identified quickly, and the culture reinforces deliberation of problems and their causes.  Questions like, “How long has this been going on?”; “How often does this happen?”; “What were the circumstances around the problem?” are asked.  Those questions seek data and information. They come from a stance of “We’re all in this together and it’s in all our interests to get to a solution that’s effective and that everyone buys into.”  Questions like, “How could this have happened?”;  “Why hasn’t anyone done anything about this problem?”; “Why didn’t you take steps to prevent this problem?” are avoided.  Those inquiries come from a position of understandable frustration, but they seek to blame and punish rather than to develop solutions. 

Uncovering Problems Is Reinforced

I once was engaged to assess the effectiveness of a client’s leadership team. My assessment report pointed to several strengths of the leadership team. It also described a few important deficiencies. Within a week, I received a letter from the CEO admonishing me for highlighting those deficiencies. 

We’re all familiar with the term “shoot the messenger.” We’re also familiar with the impact this behavior has on everyone’s willingness to bring problems to light. Problems that are hidden can’t be addressed.

Another dynamic that keeps problems hidden is the “we’ve always done it this way” or the “that’s how things are here” mindset.  A few decades ago, I worked for a lodging company.  I tried to get the management team to understand the concept of cost of quality. There was clear resistance to the idea among the managers.  I asked about the value of “comped meals”; i.e., restaurant meals for which the customer wasn’t charged due to a complaint.  I was certain that managers would be interested in analyzing this source of waste.  Instead, they referred to it simply as “a cost of doing business” that was mostly out of their control. 

Several years later, I was working with a client’s accounting team to map the accounts payable process. The team was launched because bills weren’t being paid in a timely way, and some bills weren’t being paid at all. During our meetings, team members related stories of the many intra-company barriers they ran into as they tried to get their work done. When I asked if they had ever taken these issues to their managers, the team members replied, “It wouldn’t do any good.  That’s just how everyone operates around here.”

The “fix the problem” culture includes specific behaviors designed to uncover problems while they are still small and inexpensive. Supervisors and managers regularly visit and talk with their team just to ask how things are going and what barriers they are experiencing. When team members bring up issues, they are taken seriously rather than brushed off. They understand that their jobs aren’t so much “command and direct” as they are “listen, learn, and coach.”  Clear channels like Idea Systems that provide a means to bring up solutions to problems are implemented and sustained. Team members who bring problems to the forefront are recognized and, when appropriate, rewarded. 

A Structured Approach to Problem Solving

Differences in problem-solving approaches can cause conflict among managers and their associates. Your boss just wants you to “find the answer.” You want to gather some data about possible causes. Neither position is wrong, but you and your boss are likely to be butting heads as he sees you employing tactics that he sees as a waste of time.

The organization benefits when everyone uses a common approach to problem-solving. There are several of them and one of them might already be in use somewhere in your organization.

 A past client asked me to teach its managers a structured approach to problem-solving. After a bit of digging, I found that several of its automotive customers required the quality department to respond to quality problems by filling out what they referred to as a “5P Form.” It turned out that the form was based on a structured approach to problem-solving. We taught “5P Problem Solving” to supervisors and employee problem-solving teams. The 5P approach didn’t magically solve all the company’s problems, but it did make communications about how problems were being tackled much easier. Further, teams and individuals grew to be more confident that managers would listen to problems they raised because the company was committed to the use of 5P. 

The behaviors that underlie a positive problem-solving culture, then, are visible. Those behaviors are practiced daily by everyone in the company, almost without thinking about them. 

Creating such a culture requires an investment in training and ongoing communications. The benefits, though, are substantial and real. Organizations that successfully create and sustain a visibly strong problem-solving culture—one in which problems are identified, tackled, and solved more quickly and effectively than they are by competitors—have a clear and sustained competitive advantage that translates into better market share and better employee engagement.

Rick Bohan , principal, Chagrin River Consulting LLC, has more than 25 years of experience in designing and implementing performance improvement initiatives in a variety of industrial and service sectors. He is also co-author of  People Make the Difference: Prescriptions and Profiles for High Performance .   

Continue Reading

How to Go to the Gemba

Quality Failed Boeing, Not the Other Way Around. Here's Why.

Sponsored recommendations, voice your opinion, to join the conversation, and become an exclusive member of industryweek, create an account today.

Fisker Files for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy

A Thoughtful Safety Program Won’t Save a Thoughtless Culture

Developing Problem Solvers for Operational Excellence

Does US Manufacturing Have a Child Labor Problem?

So That Happened: US Steel/Cleveland Cliffs in a War of Words

IIoT Means Nothing and No One Uses Generative AI

Fifty Factory Tours that Make America Great

Mexico Has a New President: What Does Sheinbaum’s Election Mean for US Manufacturing?

• Nov 8, 2023

How Do Different Cultures Solve Problems?

Written by: liu liu , executive contributor, executive contributors at brainz magazine are handpicked and invited to contribute because of their knowledge and valuable insight within their area of expertise..

I saw this poster a few times, and every time it made me chuckle. Funny aside, there seems to be some truth in it.

Here are three questions to help you reflect before we dive deeper to unpack the different approaches various cultures take to solve problems.

What is your approach to problem-solving?

What other different approaches to problem-solving have you seen?

What would you say are the Pros and Cons of these different approaches?

Group culture approach

In group culture, when there is a problem, people tend to look up to those who are in a higher position for a solution rather than start thinking for themselves about what the solution could be. The solution needs to be a group decision led by a leader. This cultural group is good at solving context-based problems, meaning if the problem has to do with relationships, connections, and issues related to humans.

Individual culture approach

Individual cultures might see problem-solving differently. They might see that everyone in the team can contribute to finding the solution despite their position in the team. People from this culture tend to look at a problem from a process and rule angle and are good at solving problems in these areas.

High context and low contact culture approach

When people from a high-context culture meet problems, they take a perceptual approach. This means the way to find a solution is guided by intuition, your heart, and soul, or your gut feeling as people sometimes call it. They would like to review the problem in connection with time and space because they don’t believe anything happens in isolation. Observation is the primary method to understand the problem.

Different from the high-context culture, the low-context culture approaches problem-solving from an analytical perspective. They don’t rely on their “gut feelings”. Instead, they like to use facts and data to understand the problem and try to find a solution through an analytic and subject process.

Relationship approach

When it comes to problem-solving, another set of cultural lenses we need to look through is our relationship-based versus task-oriented cultures. If you recall, broadly speaking, hot climate and high context cultures are more relationship-based; and cold climate and low context cultures are more task-oriented.

In my years of working with people from these two cultures, I noticed this. When problems occur, a relationship-based culture tends to accept reality quickly. The response often is,” This is bad, how can we work around it and find a new path?” When finding a new path to the solution, people are important. They will try not to embarrass anybody or damage relationships during the process. Ethics and social customs are followed.

Task-oriented approach

On the contrary, the first question task-oriented people tend to ask is “Why did this happen”. The why question is paramount, they want to gather data and analyze every detail and will not shy away from pointing out the mistakes made by people, no matter who that person is. The focus is solely on solving the problem logically.

Graphic by Yang Liu, source: How Western and Eastern people deal with problems

This picture by Liu Yang in an article called “How Western and Eastern people deal with Problems” very vividly summarizes these two different approaches to problem-solving. There is a link at the bottom of the slide to the full article which talks more about the culturally different views on issues. I would encourage you to read it.

Top tips for problem-solving across different cultures

Problem-solving across different cultures can be a complex task, as cultural norms, values, and communication styles can vary significantly. To effectively address problems when working with people from diverse cultural backgrounds, consider the following top tips:

Foster Cultural Awareness: Begin by developing an understanding of the cultural backgrounds of the people involved. This includes learning about their values, traditions, and communication styles.

Active listening: Practice active listening to understand different perspectives and show empathy. This helps create a foundation for effective problem-solving.

Be Respectful: Show respect for cultural differences, even if you don't fully understand them. Avoid making assumptions or judgments about how others think or behave.

Find Common Ground: Identify shared values or objectives that can serve as a foundation for problem-solving. Focus on common goals to bridge cultural gaps.

Embrace Different Perspectives: Encourage diverse viewpoints and ideas. Different cultural backgrounds can bring fresh and innovative solutions to the table.

Avoid Stereotyping: Be mindful of stereotypes and generalizations. Each individual is unique, and cultural backgrounds should not be used to pigeonhole people.

Patience and Flexibility : Be patient and flexible, especially when working with individuals from cultures with different approaches to time, decision-making, or problem-solving. Allow extra time for discussions and adaptation.

Build relationships: Invest in building strong relationships with your colleagues from diverse cultural backgrounds. Trust and mutual understanding are key for effective problem-solving in a multicultural environment.

By following these tips, you can create a more inclusive and effective problem-solving environment when working with individuals from diverse cultural backgrounds. It's essential to recognize the strengths that cultural diversity can bring to a team and leverage them to find creative and robust solutions to problems.

Also, check out these related Brainz articles on working with people who have different cultures:

Life Is All About Problem Solving By: Tugce Ozdeger, Executive Contributor

How To Problem Solve Like A Creative By: Eleanor Oliver-Edmonds, Senior Level Executive Contributor

Problem Solved By: Todd Richardson, Executive Contributor

Follow me on Li nkedIn , and visit my website for more info!

Read more from Liu Liu!

Liu Liu, Executive Contributor Brainz Magazine

Liu Liu is a coach and manager with decades of experience, as a Cross-Cultural Intelligence Coach who specializes in helping international organizations and businesses to improve communications and cooperation among staff for better individual and team performance. He coaches managers and leaders working in a cross-cultural context to build trust, communicate effectively, and deliver results. He also coaches people on management, leadership, and career development. He is someone who helps you to imagine a greater possibility for yourself and supports you in achieving it.

As a senior manager in an international relief and development organization, he has worked with people in over 30 countries over his two-decades-long career. He uses a coaching approach to manage cross-country teams and complex programs to deliver results and impacts.

He is also an experienced trainer and facilitator who has delivered training on management-related and other subjects in over 30 countries.

With a cross-country marriage, developing a career in a second country, and working in an organization that has a reach of 50 countries, Liu Liu understands the importance and pitfalls of working cross-culturally and developing a career in an unfamiliar environment.

Liu Liu is an Associated Certified Coach(ACC), a member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF), and an Executive Contributor to Brainz Magazine.

He holds a BA(Hon) in International Studies and an MSc in Development Management.

Related Posts

Life Is All About Problem Solving

How To Problem Solve Like A Creative

The Problem With Problem-Solving

CURRENT ISSUE

MORE ARTICLES

Business /  mindset / leadership / lifestyle, podcast  / academy.

BUSINESS NEWS

RELATIONSHIPS

SUSTAINABILITY

HEALTH & WELLNESS

EXPERT PANEL

DIVERSITY EQUITY & INCLUSION

BRAINZ 500 AWARD

CREA GLOBAL AWARDS

COVER ARCHIVE

More From Forbes

How to solve a problem like a leader.

• Share to Facebook
• Share to Twitter
• Share to Linkedin

Often leaders will think they are driving a problem-solving culture by insistent, or even just encouraging, team members to utilize the tools and templates of problem-solving.

However, most organizations then respond with either sterile and uninspired efforts or at worse, malicious compliance. Shaping the culture of good problem-solving behaviors will naturally encourage people to pick up those same tools with the right intent.

After nearly three decades of coaching at every level, from entry-level employees to experienced CEOs of multi-billion-dollar corporations, author and advisor Jamie Flinchbaugh has worked with over 300 companies worldwide in Lean transformation, including Intel, Harley-Davidson, Crayola, BMW, and Amazon. In his new book, People Solve Problems: The Power of Every Person, Every Day, Every Problem , Flinchbaugh shifts the conversation and argues that organizations focus too much on problem-solving tools and templates and miss other critical elements that make a more significant difference: getting the right behaviors and building the right capabilities.

Problem-solving is not usually completed in a straight line, with fixed questions and predetermined ... [+] answers, say experts

Problem-solving is not usually completed in a straight line, with fixed questions and predetermined answers. Instead, it requires learning, agility, curiosity, and intuition. “This is certainly the case as problems are not puzzles. Whereas a puzzle may have a correct answer, a problem is often unbounded, requiring firstly, the need to understand its scope before exploring solutions, more accurately, different solutions”, says Lebene Soga of Henley Business School. While each problem may not be unique, each requires its own line of inquiry. And each situation solver cannot just follow a script but must leverage their strengths and overcome their weaknesses. “The formulaic approaches to problem-solving may be useful elsewhere but not when we are confronted with wicked problems.”

Attempting to solve or “solutionize” wicked problems requires an understanding of complexity, risks, and more importantly, people,” Soga adds. This is where the right coaching becomes necessary as you do not want leaders rushing to solve problems which often leads to more significant problems. The flexibility and personal engagement that coaching enables to make it the most powerful leverage point for improving problem-solving.

Best Travel Insurance Companies

Best covid-19 travel insurance plans.

In a similar vein, the head of the management discipline at the University of Newcastle Australia, Ashish Malik, reflecting on his two decades of research on the global information technology industry, noted, “the essence of leadership is to take decisions on a range of problems—which may vary on a continuum from simple to complex, for some there are known solutions, while for others there is no known solution or a script ready. Therefore, decision-making is a courageous exercise, and for the first-time leaders, it is a watershed moment.” Leaders often employ many systematic and less planned tools and techniques to solve complex problems, such as using evidence-based and metricized approaches to solving known and unknown issues. In his research, Malik, Sinha, and Blumenfeld found that the use of Six Sigma or Lean Six Sigma methodologies was very prevalent in offshore outsourcing call centers , BPOs , and IT Industry in India as a useful tool for approaching complex tasks operational and leadership problems.

Problem-solving is not a recipe with known inputs, established steps, and a predictable outcome. Curiosity allows us to enter problem-solving as a learning process because we must close our knowledge gaps before closing our performance gaps. Intuition is helpful because when trekking through uncharted territory, as most problem solving is done, it requires making essential adjustments such as when to go slower, when to start over, and even where to start. Analytical and data-driven methods are critical but insufficient when navigating such a journey as problem-solving.

In summary, excellent and practical tools help us perform better in most domains, and problem-solving is no exception, however, much like many of those exact domains, the skill, capability, and talent that we bring to the task far outweigh those tools in their impact on performance.

Disclosure:  One source mentioned in this article, Lebene Soga, is employed by the same University as this article’s author, though both reside on different campuses

• Editorial Standards
• Reprints & Permissions

Reliability, Resilience, and Developing a Problem-Solving Culture

• First Online: 16 December 2020

Cite this chapter

• David P. Johnson 3 &
• Heather S. McLean 4  

1756 Accesses

Industry and healthcare organizations have made tremendous gains in safety using improvement science methods; however, translating these techniques can be challenging in the fast-paced and complex clinical environment. The goal of this chapter is to demonstrate how to use the Model for Improvement methodology coupled with reliable process design and resilient safety culture change concepts on the journey to becoming a high reliability organization (HRO). A case-based example of a hand hygiene improvement project will be used to illustrate these concepts. Understanding the principles of reliability science is key to designing process and organizational culture to reach the desired goal of reaching “zero harm.” Improvement design must match the complexity of healthcare organizations by incorporating elements of resiliency so they can respond to dynamic changes. In addition, the authors will suggest practical ways to engage frontline staff who may be less familiar with improvement science methods.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

• Available as PDF
• Read on any device
• Instant download
• Own it forever
• Available as EPUB and PDF
• Compact, lightweight edition
• Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
• Free shipping worldwide - see info
• Durable hardcover edition

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

Abbreviations

High reliability organization

Level of reliability

Model for Improvement

Modified failure mode and effects analysis

Plan-Do-Study-Act

Specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, timely aim

Langley GJ, Moen RD, Nolan KM, Nolan TW, Norman CL, Provost LP. The improvement guide: a practical approach to enhancing organizational performance. 2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers; 2009.

Google Scholar  

McLean HS, Carriker C, Bordley WC. Good to great: quality-improvement initiative increases and sustains pediatric health care worker hand hygiene compliance. Hosp Pediatr. 2017;7(4):189–96.

Article   Google Scholar  

Ogrinc GS. Joint commission resources Inc., Institute for Healthcare Improvement. Fundamentals of health care improvement: a guide to improving your patient’s care. 2nd ed. Oak Brook Terrace/Cambridge, MA: Joint Commission; Institute for Healthcare Improvement; 2012.

Perla RJ, Provost LP, Parry GJ. Seven propositions of the science of improvement: exploring foundations. Qual Manag Health Care. 2013;22(3):170–86.

Provost LP, Murray SK. The health care data guide: learning from data for improvement. 1st ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass; 2011.

Wheeler DJ. Understanding variation: the key to managing chaos. 2nd ed. Knoxville: SPC Press; 2000.

Reed JE, Card AJ. The problem with plan-do-study-act cycles. BMJ Qual Saf. 2016;25(3):147–52.

Taylor MJ, McNicholas C, Nicolay C, Darzi A, Bell D, Reed JE. Systematic review of the application of the plan-do-study-act method to improve quality in healthcare. BMJ Qual Saf. 2014;23(4):290–8.

Associates in Process Improvement. 2019. https://www.apiweb.org . Accessed 17 June 2019.

Berwick D, Nolan T. High reliability health care, presented at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 15th annual national forum on quality improvement in health care. 2003. http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/Presentations/HighReliabilityHealthCarePresentation.aspx

Weick KE, Sutcliffe KM. Managing the unexpected: sustained performance in a complex world. 3rd ed. Hoboken: Wiley; 2015.

Luria JW, Muething SE, Schoettker PJ, Kotagal UR. Reliability science and patient safety. Pediatr Clin N Am. 2006;53(6):1121–33.

Improvement IfH. 5 whys: finding the root cause. 2019. http://www.ihi.org/resources/Pages/Tools/5-Whys-Finding-the-Root-Cause.aspx . Accessed 25 Feb 2019.

Deming WE. The new economics: for industry, government, education. 2nd ed. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press; 2000.

Ackoff RL. Creating the corporate future: plan or be planned for. New York: Wiley; 1981.

McChrystal SA, Collins T, Silverman D, Fussell C. Team of teams: new rules of engagement for a complex world. New York: Portfolio/Penguin; 2015.

Download references

Author information

Authors and affiliations.

Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital at Vanderbilt, Department of Pediatrics, Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, Nashville, TN, USA

David P. Johnson

Duke Children’s Hospital, Department of Pediatrics, Duke University School of Medicine, Durham, NC, USA

Heather S. McLean

You can also search for this author in PubMed   Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Heather S. McLean .

Editor information

Editors and affiliations.

Children’s National Health System, Washington, DC, USA

Rahul K. Shah

Children's Hospital of The King's Daughters, Norfolk, VA, USA

Sandip A. Godambe

Chapter Review Questions

What are the three questions the Model for Improvement asks teams to address in the design of a project?

Answer : (1) What are we trying to accomplish? (2) How will we know change is an improvement? And (3) what change can we make that will result in improvement?

What is the difference between the concepts of reliability and resiliency?

Answer : Reliability is the measurable capability of a process, procedure, or health service to perform its intended function in the required time under commonly occurring conditions [ 10 ]; resiliency is the safety culture of an organization and its ability to systematically understand failures that occur and make adaptations to improve over time.

What are the five high-reliability principles that are described by Weick and Sutcliffe?

Preoccupation with Failure – small failures are noticed, reported, and learned from continuously by the organization

Reluctance to Simplify – embrace complexity and welcome diverse experience

Sensitivity to Operations – attentive to frontline workers’ expertise

Commitment to Resilience – the ability to learn and bounce back after failure

Deference to Expertise – authority migrates to the person with most expertise regardless of rank

True or false: “Zero harm” results in patient safety can be achieved by incorporating reliable process design into a healthcare system alone.

Answer : False (need to use both reliable process design and resilient safety culture concepts in order to achieve “zero harm” results).

True or false: Engagement of frontline staff in the PDSA cycles for improvement can be essential for successful problem-solving and positively impacts the safety culture of the organization.

Answer: True.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

Copyright information

© 2021 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG

About this chapter

Johnson, D.P., McLean, H.S. (2021). Reliability, Resilience, and Developing a Problem-Solving Culture. In: Shah, R.K., Godambe, S.A. (eds) Patient Safety and Quality Improvement in Healthcare. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55829-1_4

Download citation

DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-55829-1_4

Published : 16 December 2020

Publisher Name : Springer, Cham

Print ISBN : 978-3-030-55828-4

Online ISBN : 978-3-030-55829-1

eBook Packages : Medicine Medicine (R0)

Share this chapter

Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:

Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article.

Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative

• Publish with us

Policies and ethics

• Find a journal
• Track your research

The Lean Thinker

Thoughts and Insights from the Shop Floor

Anchoring a Problem Solving Culture

More than a few organizations I know are starting to understand the importance of establishing a culture of problem solving. Hopefully they are shifting from a tools implementation model to one which emphasizes how people respond to the daily friction generators.

In an email on the topic to a friend today, I cited four things that I think need to be there before this can be achieved. Upon reflection, I’d like to expand upon and share them. I think I can say that a lot of the failures I have seen can be traced back to only emphasizing one or two of them.

The organization must reset its definition of “a problem.”

I started to get at this mindset back in January with the post “ Chatter as Signal .”

In “traditional” organizations something is labeled “a problem” when it causes enough disruption (or annoys the right (wrong?) person). Anything that does not cross that threshold is tolerated. The “problem” with this approach is that many small issues are ignored and worked around. Their effects, though, tend to clump and cluster into larger cumulative symptoms. When those symptoms reach the threshold of pain, someone starts wanting some kind of action, but by now it is too late for simple solutions.

Another face of the same thinking is the “big problem” syndrome. “We can’t fix everything.” “We have to prioritize on the big hitters.” True enough, but it is not necessary to fix everything at once. That’s the point. Sure, prioritize the technically tough problems. But, at the same time, put the systems into place that allow everyone to work on the little ones, every day.

When the “big problem” statements are used as a “can’t do it” or “we can never be perfect” excuse, the organization’s underlying mindset has dropped into the ”

The “Chatter as Signal” attitude really means instead of putting together plans and processes and then tossing them over a wall for blind execution, the problem solving organization systematically and continuously checks “reality” (what really happens) against their “theory” (the plan, what they expect to happen). Whenever there is a difference between the two, they look at that as “a problem.”

Maybe the term “problem” is unfortunate.

A lot is made out there about being truly forward-looking organizations seeing “mistakes” as opportunities to learn. A “mistake” is nothing other than an instance of “We did this thinking some specific thing would happen, but something unexpected happened instead.” Or “We thought we could do it this way, but it turns out we couldn’t.” In different words, those events are “the outcome wasn’t what we planned” and “we couldn’t execute the process as planned.” In other words, “problems.”

In summary, specify what you intend to accomplish, how and when you intend to do it. Any departure, necessary or inadvertent, from this specification is a problem .

The organization must have a process for immediately detecting and responding to problems.

It doesn’t do much good to define a problem unless you intend to respond. And you can’t stand and watch every second for problems to occur. That is the whole point of jidoka . When Sakichi Toyoda developed his loom, the prevailing common thinking was “sometimes the threads break.” “When that happens, some material is ruined.” “That is reality.” “Perfection is impossible.” Chatter is noise .

But Sakichi changed the dynamic when he designed a loom that detected a broken thread and shut itself down before any bad material was woven. Now I am fairly certain that, even today, threads break on weaving equipment. (And the same technology developed by Sakichi is used to detect it.) So, as a jidoka, this is a case of detecting a small problem and containing it immediately so it can be corrected.

Consider this: If the organization really understands jidoka then any problem that goes undetected is a problem . Thus, it isn’t necessary to fix it all at once. Rather, when problems occur, get back to where they occured. Look at the actual situation. What was the very first detectable departure from the intended process? It is quite likely that it is a small thing, and also likely it happens all the time. But this time it didn’t get caught and corrected.

Then ask: Can you prevent this departure from process? If you can’t, can it be immediately and automatically corrected? If not, can the process be stopped?

But detecting the problem is only the first step. The response is even more important. When a Team Member (or a machine) detects a problem and calls for help, a real live human needs to show up and show genuine interest. The immediate issue is simple: Fix the problem. Restore a safe operation that produces defect-free output. That may take a temporary countermeasure involving some improvisation, and may compromise speed and cost a little, but safety and quality are never compromised for anything… right?

The next step is to start the process of actually solving the problem. At a minimum, it needs to be written down and put into the “We’ll work on that” management queue (See the next item) to get solved. Note that “fixing it” and “solving it” are two completely separate things.

The organization must have a process for managing problem solving.

When a problem occurs, the first response is to detect it, then to fix (or contain) it. That is jidoka. But at some point, someone has to investigate why it happened, get to the root cause, and establish a robust countermeasure.

Again, I have talked around this in a couple of previous posts: Systematic Problem Solving A Systematic Approach to Part Shortages

However it is done, however, the organizations that do it well:

• Have a public written record of what problems are on the radar. The most common approach is a board of some kind in the area where the daily review takes place.
• Did I just say “Daily Review?” There is a process to check the status of ongoing problem solving activity every day. Problems being worked on do not get a chance to fall off the radar.
• Don’t arbitrarily multi-task your talent. People can’t multi-task. This is actually overloading. The other word for it is muri.
• Don’t jerk them from one thing to the next without allowing them completion.
• They solve the problem at the lowest level of the organization capable of solving it. The corollary here is largely covered below, but it bears mentioning here: If the level that should be solving it isn’t capable then they work THAT problem – developing the skill – rather than ignoring the issue or overloading someone who is never going to have the time to work on it. This is probably the most important lesson in this piece.

They deliberately and systematically develop their problem solving skills at all levels.

It is easy to fall into the trap of assuming that someone with a technical degree is a skilled problem solver and critical thinker. Experience suggests otherwise. And even if there are a couple of people who just have the innate talent, there are not enough of them to go around. There are lots of approaches out there. In reality, all of the effective ones are anchored in the same thinking, they just use different tools and lingo to frame that thinking. My best advice is pick one, teach everyone to use it, then insist that they follow the process exactly . Only by doing that will you actually learn if the process itself has weakness or shortcomings.

Along with this is don’t confuse the tools with the process itself. THIS IS CRITICAL: Anything you draw on paper (or create in a computer) is a tool. The seven problem solving tools are not a process. A statistical control chart is not a process. An A3 is not a process. A cloud diagram is not a process. All of these are tools. The framework in which they are used is structured thinking, and that is a process.

This is important because the process itself is straight forward and simple. It can be taught to anyone. Teaching them the tools, however, teaches them nothing at all about how to solve problems. So many “problem solving courses” spend a week teaching people how to build Pareto charts, histograms, tree diagrams, run charts, even build control charts, and yet teach nothing at all about how to solve problems. Most problems can be solved by unsophisticated troubleshooting techniques that systematically eliminate possible causes. Some can’t, but most can.

This got long, but I guess I had a lot to say on the topic. In the background, I am planning on putting together some basic material on “the process of problem solving” and making it available. Hopefully that will help.

As always, comments are encouraged and appreciated. It tells me that someone actually reads this stuff.

Share this:

14 replies to “anchoring a problem solving culture”.

Mark, I don’t think you need to worry that people do not read your “stuff”. I find the material on your blog very helpful and each day I learn something from you, whether here or on the lean.org forum. I’d like to contribute by drawing a parrallel to the lean implementation.In the same way, the lean tools cannot be used successfully without following the lean thinking process and this is where successful companies do a better job. Regarding the problem solving process, I still see a lot of companies where the task belongs to the engineering department and these people get really crowded with tasks and jobs half finished. You are right in all your statements. We have to get rid of the silo perception and of the departmental walls and start empowering our people to become problem solvers after educating them well in the thinking process and in the tools of choice. Cross functional teams become powerful assets of a company, where the engineer/technical specialist draws on the experience of the front line worker or of the maintenance technician, etc. Thus, the problem solving process is streamlined and the decision taking and the implementation steps are accelerated. At the same time, we’ll need to reduce the approval time, the purchasing steps, as they all lead to extensive delays and “rework” loops. There is still the perception that not all the problems are worth solving, based on the ROI (the subject of another topic).

Very good article. My company has no problem solving system. And no problem solving culture.

We do have a problem solving team. But it’s designed like the fire department. Simply put, when there’s a fire (big problem) we put it out.

Jim – Just a question – when your “fire department” puts out the fire, does the “fire investigator” sift through and look for how the “fire” started in the first place? That is what fire departments do…

Continuing the analogy, a circuit breaker is a jidoka mechanism. By detecting an out-of-spec condition (too much current), it shuts down the operation before it can cause a bigger problem – a fire. In order to reset it, you have to find the cause of the short and fix it. That is an example of pushing the “problem solving” upstream and handling the issue while it is still small. Of course there is no way to do that manually, you can’t go check every circuit every day. So we devise technology to do it for us, and let us know when there is a problem. That is jidoka.

Yes we do have a “Fire Investigator”. We do find out how the problems start and we do followup and correct the source of the problem.

And we do have a system to identify an “out of spec” condition. We use a final inspection cell.

However, my comment meant to say we don’t have a “culture” throughout the plant nor an automatic system to detect problems and solve them. We are far away from having jidoka anywhere but at the very end of our many manufacturing and assembly processes.

Here’s an interesting part of our system. Almost every time we find an error in our product, we add an inspection step to insure it won’t happen again. This drives me (The Lean Manager) crazy. We are forced by our customer to come up with corrective actions. The easiest solution is to add an inspection step in the middle of the building process. I’m more inclined to use the 5 why’s and discover the true source of the error. However, by doing that I’m afraid we may find that low paid, untrained workers would usually be the true source of the error.

Thank you for your thoughts.

About your point “They solve the problem at the lowest level of the organization capable of solving it…” are you recommending solving a problem above your skill level, by taking a two step aproach 1) Learn 2)Then solve??? I can see that this will increase knowledge/skill.

Also sometimes I read books and I’m not sure if what I am thinking comes from the book or if it’s a new idea… But isn’t it a type or waste to have an “uncapable machine or person” take on a task? Which raises the responsibility training a high level of importance.

Jim – It is true that most defects are the result of human error – either a “slip” where some step was omitted, or a “mistake” where the wrong thing was done.

My question is: What are the consequences of finding out that people make errors?

Steve – I was a little ambiguous on the organizational level because I didn’t want to get into the negative consequences of silo and ambiguous matrix organizational structures.

In general, however, if the level of organization that SHOULD be able to solve the problem CAN’T solve the problem, then one of two things is true: – The problem is harder than it looked. Countermeasure: Escalate. The escalation response is technical assistance from the higher level that now owns the problem. – The people aren’t capable of solving a problem they should. Countermeasure: Escalate. The response is to guide and coach the people through the process so they learn how to do it themselves next time.

Note that any time a problem can’t be solved, the initial response is always the same: Escalate. This could be a literal andon call. What should never happen is that a problem goes unaddressed because “we don’t know what to do.”

There certainly are problems which are unsolvable, in cases where we have over reached our technology, for example. But those are rare, and when they occur, they should be well documented, understood and their effects contained so the downstream customers are not affected.

It was your definition of… “Muri: “Overburden” or “Unreasonableness” – in short, asking someone to do something which he should not have to do, or which cannot be done.”

So it wasn’t an idea from a book I was reading, but from your page on Common Searches. In my mind I extended “Unreasonableness” to the many tasks I’ve been asked to do. I am a mountain of Muri. The marine saying… “We’ve done so much, with so little, for so long, THAT NOW we can do anything with nothing” is such nonsense… but it was fun to say. Thanks for the idea of escalating. Even the word “escalating” had a negative connotation with me. I thought that “Escalating” meant going crazy.

I’m starting to be a fan of the proper application of emotion/feeling instead of just a stoic-robotic response. Words like “curiosity” and “determined” do have some feelings attached to them. Now I’m seeing that “Urgency” is important. And that to “Create Urgency/Sound the Alarm” It may be necessary to do it by attaching the appropriate emotions, in a controlled fashion, to the cold hard facts and data. After all, we are humans.

Muri (overburden) is just another “problem.”

The starting hypothesis (or “plan”) is “This person should be able to do this.”

Then try (“do”).

Check: “Can s/he do it?” If no, then we have learned something – the original assumption was wrong. This is good news. (This is the definition of “chatter” in my posts referring to Steve Spear).

It is good news because now we know the next point of weakness in the system to work on.

Escalation is simply the act of notifying the chain-of-support that there is a “problem.” On a good line, it means pulling an andon cord or turning on some kind of signal.

Many times people are overwhelmed thinking about trying to respond to all of the problems. That is where some rational thought comes into play. Respond to them in the sense of making sure safety and quality are not compromised, but then manage them. Some problems never get addressed. Fact of life. They end up in the “too hard” box. The good news is that the organization usually knows how to live with them. It isn’t about solving every problem that comes up, but rather, about systematically responding and solving as many as possible every day.

That was the beauty of the shuffling priority queue I mentioned. There was no attempt at FIFO, rather it was solving as MANY problems as possible. Sometimes the really hard ones just never got addressed, just contained.

To do this (actually solve problems), though, means carving out dedicated time to do it. Where most organizations fall down is the point where “working on solving problems” is only “when we have time.” Rather than being a prime activity, it is supposed to fit between the cracks. That doesn’t work.

• Pingback: Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Management Improvement Carnival #38

Although this article was wriiten 4+ years ago I just found it. Better late than never, eh?

One of my issues I have as a CI coordinator is the buy-in from the shop floor. Metrics are great but if the people providing the feedback aren’t engaged then it turns out to be a fruitless undertaking. Before I implement any Lean concepts or metrics on the floor I explain and train our staff on the ever important “why”. Once they see the reasoning behind needed involvement and how it will positively affect them, then the buy-in is much easier. Credibility from management is paramount. The old adage is “talk is cheap”. If management does not follow through with their commitment then it will not happen where it has to happen – on the shop floor. Machinist, assemblers, shipping personnel, etc. are bottom line people. No BS, just results. When we partake in a Kaizen and we have a laundry list of things that have to be done, then management has to deliver in the time frame agreed upon. The last issue I want to bring up is: time. With production and on time delivery schedules we all get caught up in the day-to-day duties of getting product out the door. If a company has, say 1000 employees, it is much easier to designate a group to focus on Continuous Improvement projects such as Kaizen’s. But when a company has 50 employees then time is the biggest constraint. CI projects become ‘blitzes’, done on the fly, piecemealed when they can be fit in. A simple but painful solution is “make the time”. Do what has to be done because the resulting changes will worth the investment.

Jay – Thanks for the comment. You made me go back and actually read the original post.

Going back to Out of the Crisis by Deming, management commitment is not enough. Every organization I have seen that sustains a continuous improvement culture has the burden of actually improving things on a day-to-day basis being carried by line leaders – especially the first couple of levels closest to the process.

The MOST successful ones I have seen ran very few, if any, dedicated “blitz” type events, nor did they run “CI Projects.” Rather, improvement was part of the daily work, just like production is daily work, just like updating the spreadsheets is part of daily work.

This was insightful. I’m particularly interested in more insights into the topic of problem spotting. Particularly how do organizations put adequate time (at all levels) into defining problem before jumping into solve mode, and what you have seen companies do to combat this to get results from developing this core capability.

Kirk – Thanks for commenting – This post was written back in 2008, before Mike Rother published Toyota Kata. See this post for a starting point, but there are a lot of posts on the blog with Toyota Kata as at least a tangential topic. https://theleanthinker.com/2017/12/21/mike-rother-the-toyota-kata-practice-guide/ That is probably the best framework out there for developing problem solving skills. If you get intrigued, come to Austin, TX in February and meet a few hundred “Kata Geeks” *smile*

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Notify me of follow-up comments by email.

Notify me of new posts by email.

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed .

Real learning gets to the heart of what it means to be human. Through learning we re-create ourselves. Through learning we become able to do something we never were able to do. Through learning we reperceive the world and our relationship to it. Through learning we extend our capacity to create, to be part of the generative process of life. There is within each of us a deep hunger for this type of learning. —Peter M. Senge, The Fifth Discipline [1]

Continuous Learning Culture

The Continuous Learning Culture (CLC) competency describes a set of values and practices that encourage individuals—and the enterprise as a whole—to continually increase knowledge, competence, performance, and innovation.

It is one of the seven core competencies of Business Agility, each of which is essential to achieving Business Agility. Each core competency is supported by a specific assessment, enabling the enterprise to assess its proficiency. The Measure and Grow article provides these core competency assessments and recommended improvement opportunities.

Why Continuous Learning Culture?

Organizations today face an onslaught of forces that create both uncertainty and opportunity. The pace of technological innovation is beyond exponential. Startup companies challenge the status quo by transforming, disrupting, and in some cases eliminating entire markets. Juggernaut companies like Amazon and Google are entering new markets like banking and healthcare. At any moment, political, economic, and environmental turmoil threatens to change the rules. Expectations from new generations of workers, customers, and society challenge companies to think and act beyond balance sheets and quarterly earnings reports. Due to these factors and more, one thing is sure: organizations in the digital age must be able to adapt rapidly and continuously or face decline—and, ultimately, extinction.

What’s the solution? Organizations must evolve into adaptive engines of change to thrive in the current climate, powered by a fast and effective learning culture. Learning organizations leverage the collective knowledge, experience, and creativity of their workforce, customers, supply chain, and the broader ecosystem. They harness the forces of change to their advantage. In these enterprises, curiosity, exploration, invention, entrepreneurship, and informed risk-taking replace commitment to the status quo while providing stability and predictability. Rigid, siloed top-down structures give way to fluid organizational constructs that can shift as needed to optimize the flow of value. Decentralized decision-making becomes the norm as leaders focus on vision and strategy and enable organization members to achieve their fullest potential.

Any organization can begin the journey to a continuous learning culture by focusing its transformation on three critical dimensions, as shown in Figure 1.

The three dimensions are:

• Learning Organization – Employees at every level are learning and growing so that the organization can transform and adapt to an ever-changing world.
• Innovation Culture – Employees are encouraged and empowered to explore and implement creative ideas that enable future value delivery.
• Relentless Improvement – Every part of the enterprise focuses on continuously improving its solutions, products, and processes.

The sections below describe each of these dimensions.

Learning Organization

Learning organizations invest in and facilitate the ongoing growth of their employees. When everyone in the organization continuously learns, it fuels the enterprise’s ability to dynamically transform itself to anticipate and exploit opportunities that create a competitive advantage. Learning organizations excel at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge while modifying practices to integrate new insights [1,2]. These organizations understand and foster people’s intrinsic nature to learn and gain mastery, harnessing that impulse for the benefit of the enterprise [3].

Learning organizations are different from those using the scientific management methods promoted by Frederick Taylor. In Taylor’s model, learning is limited to those at the top while everyone else follows the policies and practices created by management. Becoming a learning organization is not an altruistic exercise. It’s an antidote to the status-quo thinking that drove many former market leaders to bankruptcy. Learning drives innovation, leads to greater information sharing, enhances problem-solving, increases the sense of community, and surfaces opportunities for more efficiency [4].

The transformation into a learning organization requires five distinct disciplines, as described by Senge. The best practices for developing these disciplines include:

Personal Mastery – Employees develop as ‘T-shaped’ people who build a breadth of knowledge in multiple disciplines for efficient collaboration and deep expertise aligned with their interests and skills. T-shaped employees are a critical foundation of Agile teams.

Shared Vision – Forward-looking leaders envision, align with, and articulate exciting possibilities. Then, they invite others to share and contribute to a common view of the future. The vision is compelling and motivates employees to contribute to achieving it.

Team Learning – Teams work collectively to achieve common objectives by sharing knowledge, suspending assumptions, and ‘thinking together.’ They complement each other’s skills for group problem-solving and learning.

Mental Models – Teams surface their existing assumptions and generalizations while working with an open mind to create new models based on a shared understanding of the Lean-Agile way of working and their customer domains. These models make complex concepts easy to understand and apply.

Systems Thinking – The organization sees the larger picture and recognizes that optimizing individual components does not optimize the system. Instead, the business takes a holistic learning, problem-solving, and solution-development approach. This optimization extends to business practices such as Lean Portfolio Management (LPM), which ensures that the enterprise invests in experimentation and learning to drive the system forward.

Many of SAFe’s principles and practices directly support these efforts, as illustrated in Figure 2.

Here are some of the ways SAFe promotes a learning organization:

• Lean-Agile leaders who are insatiable learners use successes and failures in SAFe practices as learning moments to build mastery.
• A shared vision is iteratively refined during each PI Planning period. This shared vision influences Business Owners, the teams on each Agile Release Train (ART), and the entire organization.
• Teams learn continuously through daily collaboration and problem-solving, supported by events such as team retrospectives and Inspect & Adapt.
• Systems Thinking is a cornerstone of Lean-Agile and one of the ten SAFe principles.
• SAFe also provides regular dedicated time and space for learning through the Innovation and Planning (IP) iteration that occurs every PI.
• People working in a SAFe organization are encouraged to build learning networks across organizational boundaries and outside the organization. (Learning networks consist of trusted connections with whom an individual interacts and learns from regularly.)

Innovation Culture

An organization’s innovativeness is essential to competing in the digital age. Such efforts cannot be infrequent or random. It requires an innovation culture . An innovation culture exists when leaders create an environment that supports creative thinking and curiosity and challenges the status quo. When an organization has an innovation culture, employees are encouraged and enabled to:

• Explore ideas for enhancements to existing products
• Experiment with ideas for new products
• Pursue fixes to chronic defects
• Create improvements to processes that reduce waste
• Remove impediments to productivity

Some organizations support innovation with paid time for exploring and experimenting, intrapreneurship programs, and innovation labs. SAFe goes further by providing consistent time each PI for all Agile Release Train (ART) participants to pursue innovation activities during the Innovation and Planning (IP) iteration. Innovation is also integral to Agile Product Delivery and the Continuous Delivery Pipeline.

The following sections provide practical guidance for initiating and continuously improving an innovation culture.

Innovative People

The foundation of an innovation culture recognizes that systems and cultures don’t innovate: people innovate. Instilling innovation as a core organizational capability requires cultivating the courage and aptitude for innovation and encouraging employee risk-taking. For existing organization members, this may necessitate coaching, mentoring, and formal training in the skills and behaviors of entrepreneurship and innovation. Individual goals and learning plans should include language that enables and empowers growth as an innovator. Rewards and recognition that balance intrinsic and extrinsic motivation reinforce the importance of everyone as an innovator. Criteria for hiring new employees should include evaluating how candidates will fit in an innovation culture. Opportunities and paths for advancement should be clear and available for people who demonstrate exceptional talent and performance as innovation agents and champions [5].

Time and Space for Innovation

Building time and space for innovation includes providing work areas conducive to creative activities and setting aside dedicated time from routine work to explore and experiment. Innovation space can also include:

• Broad cross-domain interactions involving customers, the supply chain, and even the physical or professional communities connected to the organization
• Temporary and limited suspension of norms, policies, and systems (within legal, ethical, and safety boundaries) to challenge existing assumptions and explore what’s possible
• Systematic activities (IP iteration, hackathons, dojos, and so on) and opportunistic innovation activities (continuous, accidental, unplanned)
• Perpetual innovation forums on collaboration platforms and Communities of Practice (CoPs) create the opportunity for ongoing conversations across the organization.

The best innovation ideas are often sparked by seeing the problems to be solved first-hand—witnessing how customers interact with products or the challenges they face using existing processes and systems. Gemba is a Lean term and practice from Japan, meaning ‘the real place,’ where the customers’ work is performed. SAFe explicitly supports this concept through Continuous Exploration. First-hand observations and hypotheses channel the creative energy of the entire organization toward conceiving innovative solutions. Leaders should also openly share their views on the opportunities and challenges the organization faces to focus innovation efforts on the things with the highest potential to benefit the enterprise.

Experimentation and Feedback

Innovation cultures embrace the idea that conducting experiments designed to progress iteratively towards a goal is the most effective path to learning that creates successful breakthroughs. Regarding the many unsuccessful experiments to make an incandescent light bulb, Thomas Edison famously said, “I have not failed 10,000 times—I’ve successfully found 10,000 ways that will not work.” [6] Experiments don’t fail in the scientific method; they produce the data needed to accept or reject a hypothesis. Many companies don’t innovate sufficiently due to a fear of failure culture. Such fear cripples innovation.

In contrast, innovation cultures depend on learning from experiments and incorporating those insights into future exploration. When leaders create the psychological safety described in the Lean-Agile Leadership article, people are encouraged to experiment (within guardrails). They feel they have permission to solve big problems, seize opportunities, and do so without fear of blame, even when the results of the experiments suggest moving in a different direction.

Pivot Without Mercy or Guilt

Every innovation begins as a hypothesis – a set of assumptions and beliefs regarding how a new or improved product will delight customers and help the organization achieve its business objectives. However, hypotheses are just informed guesses until real customers provide validated feedback. As Eric Ries promotes in The Startup Way , the fastest way to accept or reject a product development hypothesis is to experiment by building a Minimum Viable Product or MVP [7]. An MVP is the simplest thing that can possibly work to test the proposed innovation to see if it leads to the desired results. Customers and intended users of the system must test MVPs in the target market for fast feedback. In many cases, the feedback is positive, and further investment is warranted to bring the innovation to market or into production. In other instances, the feedback dictates a change in direction. This change could be as simple as a set of modifications to the product followed by additional experiments for feedback, or it could prompt a ‘pivot’ to an entirely different product or strategy. When the fact-based evidence indicates that a pivot is required, the shift in direction should occur as quickly as possible without blame or consideration of sunk costs in the initial experiments.

Innovation Riptides

Organizations must go beyond catchy slogans, ‘innovation teams,’ and popular techniques like hackathons and dojos to create an innovation culture. A fundamental rewiring of the enterprise’s DNA is needed to fully leverage the innovation mindset and develop the processes and systems that promote sustained innovation. As shown in Figure 3, SAFe provides these required structures.

The continuous flow of innovation is built on SAFe principle #9, which promotes decentralized decision-making. Some innovation starts as strategic portfolio concerns realized through Epics and Lean Budgets applied to value streams. In building the solution to realize Epics, teams, suppliers, customers, and business leaders identify opportunities for improving the solution. The potential innovations that result can be considered an ‘innovation riptide’ that flows back into the structures SAFe provides for building solutions. Smaller, less expensive innovations flow into the ART Kanban as Features. In contrast, more significant, costly innovations require an Epic and Lean Business Case and flow into the Portfolio Kanban.

Relentless Improvement

Since its inception in the Toyota Production System, kaizen , or the relentless pursuit of perfection, has been one of the core tenets of Lean. While unattainable, striving for perfection leads to continuous improvements to products and services. In the process, companies have created more and better products for less money and with happier customers, leading to higher revenues and greater profitability. Taiichi Ohno, the creator of Lean, emphasized that the only way to achieve kaizen is for every employee always to have a mindset of continuous improvement. The entire enterprise as a system—executives, product development, accounting, finance, and sales—is continuously being challenged to improve [8].

But improvement requires learning. Rarely are the causes and solutions for problems that organizations face clear and easily identified. The Lean model for continuous improvement is based on small iterative and incremental improvements and experiments that enable the organization to learn its way to the most promising answer to a problem.

Relentless improvement is one of the four SAFe Core Values, conveying that improvement activities are essential to the survival of an organization and should be given priority, visibility, and resources. The following sections illustrate how a continuous learning culture is a critical component of relentless improvement.

Constant Sense of Urgency

Succeeding in the digital age requires sensing shifting market conditions and responding quickly. It requires inviting continuous feedback from customers even if the learning gained leads to change. Delivering needed improvements rapidly is as important as identifying what needs to change. Faster time-to-market requires a bias for action and a constant sense of urgency. In SAFe, this means addressing time-critical improvements frequently. Agile teams make improvements daily as needed and through the effective use of cadence-based SAFe events such as team retrospectives, the problem-solving workshop during Inspect & Adapt (I&A), and the IP iteration. Improvement Features and Stories that emerge from the I&A are incorporated into team plans and prioritized in work planned for the following PI. Time-critical improvements are addressed even more quickly using techniques such as an expedite lane in team and ART Kanbans or simply pausing routine work to swarm on high-impact issues.

Problem Solving Culture

In Lean, problem-solving is the driver for continuous improvement. It recognizes that a gap exists between the current and desired states, requiring an iterative process to achieve the target state. The steps of problem-solving are both fractal and scalable. They apply to teams trying to optimize response time in a software system and to enterprises attempting to reverse a steady decline in market share. Iterative Plan-Do-Check-Adjust (PDCA) cycles, as shown in Figure 4, provide the process for iterative problem solving that is applied until the target state is achieved. This model treats problems as opportunities for improvement in a blameless process. Employees at all levels are empowered and equipped with the time and resources to identify and solve problems. More importantly, every employee views solving problems as part of their ongoing responsibilities, empowered by decentralized decision-making (SAFe Principle #9). Techniques such as retrospectives, problem-solving workshops, hackathons, and communities of practice are ways SAFe reinforces a problem-solving culture.

Reflect and Adapt Frequently

Improvement activities are often deferred in favor of ‘more urgent’ work, such as new feature development, fixing defects, and responding to the latest outage. Relentless improvement requires a disciplined structure to avoid neglecting this critical activity. For individual teams, SAFe encourages retrospectives at iteration boundaries at a minimum, daily as part of team sync events, and in real-time when possible through techniques like pairing, peer review, and swarming. ARTs and Solution Trains reflect every PI as part of the I&A problem-solving workshop. These cadence-based milestones provide predictability, consistency, and rigor to the process of relentless improvement in large enterprises.

Fact-based Improvement

Fact-based improvement leads to changes guided by the data surrounding the problem and informed solutions over opinions and conjecture. Tools and techniques like the Problem-Solving Workshop in SAFe can help determine the fact-based root cause of inefficiencies and lead to effective countermeasures that can be applied rapidly. Root cause analysis is exponentially more effective when supported by data. The self-assessments described in Measure and Grow provide one type of data-driven feedback to help focus improvement work. Organizations practicing the disciplines outlined in Big Data have even more powerful tools and analytics to deliver data-driven insights that lead to more targeted and effective improvement efforts.

Optimize the Whole

‘Optimize the whole’ suggests that improvements should be designed to increase the effectiveness of the entire system that produces the sustainable flow of value instead of optimizing individual teams, silos, or subsystems. Organizing around value in ARTs, Solution Trains, and value streams creates opportunities for people in all domains to have regular cross-functional conversations about enhancing overall quality, the flow of value, and customer satisfaction. Participants in Lean Portfolio Management bring leaders together from across the organization to prioritize investments for improvements and new solutions holistically, representing a fundamental shift from past funding practices and prioritizing initiatives within silos.

Too often, organizations assume that the culture, processes, and products that led to today’s success will also guarantee future results. That mindset increases the risk of decline and failure. The enterprises that will dominate their markets in the future will be adaptive learning organizations with the ability to learn, innovate, and relentlessly improve more effectively and faster than their competition.

Competing in the digital age requires investment in time and resources for innovation, built upon a culture of creative thinking and curiosity—an environment where norms can be challenged, and new products and processes emerge. Alongside this, relentless improvement acknowledges that the survival of an organization is never guaranteed. Everyone in the organization will be challenged to find and make incremental improvements, and leaders will give priority and visibility to this work.

A continuous learning culture will likely be the most effective way for this next generation of workers to improve relentlessly and ensure the success of the companies that employ them.

Last update: 11 October 2023

Privacy Overview

• Virtual Experiences
• In-Person Experiences
• Hybrid Experiences
• Social Calendar [New]
• Experience FAQ
• Features & Benefits
• How Pricing Works
• Client Testimonials
• Happiness Guarantee
• Blog Articles
• Video Library
• View Experiences

Organizational Culture: Definition, Examples, & Best Practices

By: Grace He | Updated: December 10, 2023

You found our article on organizational culture: definition, examples, & best practices .

Organizational culture is the rules, values, beliefs, and philosophy that dictate team members’ behavior in a company. The culture consists of an established framework that guides workplace behavior. Examples include integrity, teamwork, transparency, and accountability. The purpose of organizational value is to differentiate your organization from others and act as a model for decision-making processes.

The ideas in this article are similar to improving company culture , employee engagement activities , having fun with employees , and creating a positive work environment .

This article includes:

• definition of organizational culture
• types of organizational culture
• organizational culture examples
• organizational culture best practices
• importance of organizational culture
• workplace culture examples

Let’s get started.

Definition of organizational culture

Organizational culture refers to the shared values, beliefs, norms, behaviors, and practices that characterize a particular workplace or company. This culture is the collective personality of an organization that shapes the way employees interact, make decisions, and approach their work. Essentially, corporate culture serves as a blueprint for how business is done within the organization and influences the overall work environment and employee experiences.

At its core, company culture reflects the company’s history, leadership style, and values. These cultural elements create a sense of identity and belonging among employees, as they collectively align their actions with the established norms and expectations. Office culture can be explicit, with clearly defined and communicated values. Alternatively, this culture can be implicit, existing in the unspoken behaviors and attitudes of employees. Either way, this system greatly influences employee perceptions of roles, camaraderie, collaboration, problem-solving approaches, and the organization’s external reputation.

Understanding and managing this culture is crucial because it directly affects employee engagement, performance, and overall organizational success. A positive and healthy culture can foster employee satisfaction, motivation, and loyalty, increasing productivity and innovation. On the other hand, a toxic or misaligned culture can result in high turnover, internal conflicts, and hindered performance. Organizations that actively shape their culture tend to have a more engaged and cohesive workforce. In turn, this system helps firms navigate challenges and adapt to changes more effectively.

Several factors can determine your company’s culture, including the following.

1. Leadership Principles

Leadership principles are like the guiding rules that leaders follow to shape an organization’s culture. Good leaders are honest, open, and accountable. These supervisors encourage open communication and value different ideas. Additionally, good leaders believe in the strength of a diverse team. Strong leaders inspire and empower their teams, setting an example of continuous learning and adaptability, which promotes a culture of growth and resilience. In essence, leadership principles are the foundation of an organization’s culture.

2. Type of Business

The type of business greatly influences its organizational culture. For example, a tech startup often fosters an innovative and agile culture that encourages experimentation and risk-taking. In contrast, a more traditional, established company may prioritize stability and hierarchy. Similarly, service-oriented businesses often focus on customer-centric cultures, while creative industries emphasize individuality and creative expression. Regardless of the business type, the firm’s values and practices shape the culture, influencing how employees interact, collaborate, and innovate within the organization.

Get our free team building toolbox

• icebreaker games
• bingo cards

3. Clients and Staff

Clients and staff significantly impact work values. Clients influence culture by shaping products, services, and communication based on their preferences. Positive client experiences foster excellence and innovation, while challenges can prompt cultural shifts. Staff contribute to culture through values, behaviors, and collaboration. Engaged employees create a culture of teamwork and dedication, with leadership playing a key role. Prioritizing employee well-being cultivates a culture of empowerment and growth.

Types of organizational culture

According to professors Robert Quinn and Kim Cameron at the University of Michigan, there are four main workplace culture types. These types are the Adhocracy Culture, Clan Culture, Hierarchy Culture, and Market Culture.

1. Adhocracy Culture

This culture type is characterized by innovation, risk-taking, and adaptability. Organizations with an adhocracy culture value creativity, experimentation, and a dynamic approach to problem-solving. These firms thrive in fast-changing environments and encourage employees to explore new ideas and initiatives. Flexibility and a willingness to take calculated risks are key features of this culture.

For instance, Google is known for its adhocracy culture. The company encourages employees to pursue innovative ideas and projects, even allowing them to dedicate some of their work time to personal initiatives. This culture of experimentation and risk-taking has led to the development of products and services beyond its core search engine, such as Google Maps and Google Glass.

2. Clan Culture

Clan culture centers around collaboration, teamwork, and a sense of community. Organizations with a clan culture prioritize employee engagement, open communication, and mutual support. There is a familiar atmosphere where employees often refer to each other as a “family.” This culture values employee well-being, personal growth, and long-term relationships.

Zappos, an online shoe and clothing retailer, is often cited as an example of clan culture. The company places a strong emphasis on employee happiness and engagement. The firm’s core values include “Deliver WOW Through Service” and “Build a Positive Team and Family Spirit.” Zappos’ commitment to creating a positive and collaborative work environment is a hallmark of clan culture.

3. Hierarchy Culture

Hierarchy culture is characterized by structure, stability, and a strong focus on processes. Organizations with this culture type have clear lines of authority, well-defined roles, and standardized procedures. These firms often value efficiency, predictability, and maintaining stability through established protocols.

IBM is an example of a company with a hierarchy culture. With a history of engineering and technology, IBM emphasizes structured processes and a clear chain of command. The company’s approach to innovation is often more planned and methodical, focusing on research and development driven by a defined hierarchy of expertise.

4. Market Culture

The market culture emphasizes competition, results, and achievement. Organizations with a market culture prioritize goals, performance metrics, and the bottom line. These firms encourage individual initiative, assertiveness, and a strong focus on delivering customer value. This culture type is often associated with a results-driven and competitive environment.

Amazon is a prime example of a market culture. The company is highly results-oriented and customer-focused, prioritizing efficiency, productivity, and competitive success. Amazon’s leadership principles, such as “Customer Obsession” and “Bias for Action,” underscore its market-driven approach to decision-making and achieving results.

Organizational culture examples

Adopting a positive team spirit affects a company’s success. It is little wonder why several companies develop cultures that align with their goals. Here are five examples of companies with great work cultures.

Netflix has an admirable work culture. The entertainment company is popular for its culture that emphasizes people over process. At Netflix, all employees can participate actively in important decision-making processes. There are no inhibiting rules, and staff members can communicate freely and directly. Netflix chooses employees based on integrity, teamwork, passion, humility, innovation, and selflessness.

2. Microsoft

Microsoft has a commendable work culture mainly focused on a growth mindset. The company is popular for employees dedicating their skills, time, and money to help make a difference in the world. This difference contributes to employee diversity and inclusion, considering Microsoft has employees from all backgrounds and walks of life working to ensure customer satisfaction.

3. Patagonia

Patagonia, an outdoor apparel and gear company, is renowned for its commitment to environmental sustainability and social responsibility. The company’s work culture deeply aligns with its core values, which include advocating for environmental causes and encouraging employees to live purposeful lives. A sense of purpose and a mission-driven approach to business categorize Patagonia’s culture. The firm encourages employees to participate in environmental activism, and the company supports their involvement through initiatives such as paid environmental internships.

4. Salesforce

Salesforce, a leading customer relationship management software company, is known for its Ohana culture. This system emphasizes inclusivity, philanthropy, and community engagement. The company’s strong commitment to social impact is reflected in its 1-1-1 model, where it donates 1% of its equity, time, and products to charitable causes. Salesforce fosters a culture of innovation and creativity by encouraging employees to think outside the box and take risks. The company’s work culture promotes continuous learning through its Trailhead platform, which offers various courses and resources for skill development.

Adobe is a multinational software company and has cultivated a culture of creativity, innovation, and employee development. The company’s culture encourages employees to explore their passions and experiment with new ideas. Adobe’s “Kickbox” initiative provides employees with resources to pursue innovative projects, fostering a culture of experimentation and risk-taking. The company promotes diversity and inclusion and provides platforms for employees to share their unique perspectives. Adobe also values work-life balance, offering various programs to support employees’ well-being. This culture of creativity and employee support has contributed to Adobe’s reputation as a leader in creative software and a desirable workplace for creative professionals.

6. Nordstrom

Nordstrom, a high-end fashion retailer, has a strong customer service culture and commitment to employee empowerment. The company values a customer-centric approach and empowers employees to make decisions that prioritize customer satisfaction. Nordstrom’s culture is built on trust and autonomy, allowing employees to take ownership of their roles and contribute to the company’s success. The company also focuses on employee development, offering opportunities for advancement and growth within the organization.

7. Wegmans Food Markets

Wegmans is a regional supermarket chain known for its culture of employee development, community engagement, and work-life balance. The company places a strong emphasis on treating employees like family and providing growth opportunities. Wegmans offers extensive training programs, mentorship opportunities, and pathways for advancement within the organization. The company’s culture features a supportive and collaborative environment. Leaders encourage employees to excel and contribute to the community. Wegmans also prioritizes employee well-being through initiatives such as flexible work schedules and wellness programs.

Organizational culture best practices

Many companies seek best practices to help adopt a healthy culture. However, this process involves more than printing your new values on the office handbook, distributing it to employees, and expecting an instant change. Adopting a thriving work culture does not work like magic. Rather, culture building requires consistency and a roadmap that helps build these best practices. Here are useful organizational cultural best practices to help you rebrand your company culture.

1. Communicate with your Employees

Communicating with your employees is the first step in adopting a healthy work culture. You should discover what employees like or dislike about the work process, leadership, and environment. You should also find out what motivates team members and redesign the existing work culture that is not serving these needs. Similarly, it would help if you encouraged employees to engage more in decision-making. If you can get employees to feel great working with you, then there is a high chance you will notice an increase in productivity.

2. Encourage Creativity and Innovation

A company that encourages employees to be risk-takers, creative, or innovative will likely experience more growth. A single idea may be all you need to launch your company to the next level, and it could be sitting in an employee’s head. You can make a difference in your corporate culture by encouraging employees to undertake personal tasks that align with the company’s goals.

3. Create a Diverse Workspace

Companies like Microsoft did not just become influential overnight. Diversity is a major part of workplace culture. You can incorporate diversity by creating a fun and inclusive workspace where workers from different walks of life can collaborate on impactful projects. By encouraging an equitable onboarding process, you can create a diverse company culture that encompasses all employees and gives them a sense of belonging. You can also conduct confidential surveys or meetings where employees candidly communicate their feelings.

4. Hire Employees With Similar Values

To promote a long-lasting and successful business culture, hiring workers with similar values is one practice you should take seriously. You cannot sustain a positive work culture if new hires think and act differently from existing employees. Hiring based on qualifications or talent is not enough. You should also pay attention to your worker’s personal beliefs and principles, like honesty, innovation, passion, and creativity. You should ensure employees have what it takes to treat clients in a way that mirrors the company’s culture. Before hiring new staff, these questions should always be on your mind.

5. Recognize and Reward Culture-Aligned Behavior

Recognizing and rewarding culture-aligned behavior is like a boost for the right workplace atmosphere. When leaders praise employees for showing the values that the company believes in, it makes a big impact. Sometimes, this praise can be public, like in team meetings, or it can be in private one-on-one talks. Sometimes, managers can offer actual rewards like bonuses, making the connection between good behavior and appreciation even stronger. Doing this process consistently creates a cycle where leaders encourage good behavior, and workers begin to act accordingly.

6. Let Leadership Reflect the Company’s Culture

If you want a healthy company culture, then you must model it yourself. It is advisable to access your personal values and work behavior to ensure they align with the new work culture you want. Your HR team and other high-ranking executives should also mirror these new values. For instance, you cannot encourage punctuality in employees when you are always the last to arrive at work. Healthy culture practices work when team members obey the rules and regulations. Your employees tend to follow suit if the leadership structure embraces this healthy work culture.

7. Invest in Employee Development

Investing in employee development is like putting effort into helping employees grow. For instance, offer training and chances to learn new skills. Also, show employees how they can move up in the company to give them a reason to work hard. Implementing mentoring programs where experienced employees guide newer ones and discuss performance can also help. When companies take care of work skills and overall well-being and balance, it shows they really care about employees. These steps build a culture where employees want to stay, work hard, and succeed together.

Importance of organizational culture

Aside from increasing a company’s success rate, corporate culture produces a well-structured and highly functional workspace. Here are some reasons why culture is important for every company.

1. Improves Your Brand Identity

A company’s culture influences its inner workings and how others see it, affecting its reputation. A positive corporate culture should focus on more than just satisfying your employees. Your culture can also be a great marketing strategy because customers who share similar values will want to do business with you. A workplace culture speaks volumes and helps you stand out from your competitors.

2. Boosts Customer Satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a vital pillar of a successful business climate. When employees care about customer needs and the company prioritizes quality, it leads to loyal customers who spread the word. A culture that focuses on customer satisfaction encourages employees to go beyond meeting expectations, striving to exceed them. This belief leads to repeat business and bolsters the organization’s reputation and market presence.

3. Encourages Ethical Behavior

Ethical behavior forms the moral compass of a robust office culture. When a company values honesty, openness, and integrity, it creates a workplace where employees consistently choose what is right. An ethical culture emphasizes that the means are just as important as the ends, guiding employees to act ethically even when faced with challenges. Such a culture builds trust with customers, partners, and stakeholders while also ensuring compliance with laws and regulations. Ethical behavior is the backbone of an organization’s credibility and long-term success.

4. Retains Employees

It is rare for employees to quit a company that caters to their emotional and physical well-being. A strong culture builds an employee experience that eliminates the need to quit. Some of the most influential companies have the best performers in their industries as employees. These companies have created a workspace that values every skill and helps employees reach their full potential. Besides, a good environment reduces the turnover rate and human and financial resources depletion.

5. Fosters a Healthy Workspace

A great team atmosphere eliminates disputes, chaos, or animosity between team members. A healthy culture encourages a collaborative atmosphere where employees work to achieve the company’s goals. A workspace that caters to workers’ needs and sees others as more than just colleagues is important for a company to stand out from others. A healthy workspace accelerates the decision-making process, fuels purpose, and outlines clear expectations. Therefore, you can expect top-notch results that will benefit both the company and its customers.

Organizational culture is one of many factors that determine a company’s success. A company’s culture greatly influences the perception of others about you and your team. Thankfully, this article provides a concise overview of corporate culture and its importance. Learning about the different types and best practices can shape your current work culture for the best.

Next, check out our guide to creating a strong remote work culture .

Book wildly fun team building events with expert hosts

FAQ: Organizational culture

Here are some commonly asked questions about organizational culture.

What is organizational culture?

Organizational culture refers to the values guiding the behavior of team members in a workspace. Corporate culture is a collection of practices that reflects the company’s philosophy and expectations.

What are the best examples of organizational culture?

The best examples of workplace culture include Netflix, Microsoft, and Wegmans.

How do you improve organizational culture?

You can improve your own culture by encouraging open communication with your employees. Creating a diverse and inclusive workspace as well as encouraging innovation and creativity also helps.

Author: Grace He

People & Culture Director at teambuilding.com. Grace is the Director of People & Culture at teambuilding.com. She studied Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, Information Science at East China Normal University and earned an MBA at Washington State University.

Leave a Reply Cancel

Your email address will not be published.

People & Culture Director at teambuilding.com.

Grace is the Director of People & Culture at teambuilding.com. She studied Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University, Information Science at East China Normal University and earned an MBA at Washington State University.

• 45,000+ clients including Apple, Amazon, Google and NASA
• 50,225+ five star reviews on Google
• #15 on Inc 5000's List of Fastest Growing Private Companies in America for 2022
• 80+ happy remote employees

We lead wildly fun experiences for teams with 1,000,000+ players to date.

4.96 / 5.0 rating on

50,225 Google Reviews

Get our free team building tool box

$49 value at no cost..

• May as well check it out?
• 100+ tested icebreaker questions
• 24+ themed Bingo generators
• 5+ PDFs (including the 8% Rule)
• 2024 team building calendar and more...

Enter your email for instant access

• Business Essentials
• Leadership & Management
• Credential of Leadership, Impact, and Management in Business (CLIMB)
• Entrepreneurship & Innovation
• Digital Transformation
• Finance & Accounting
• Business in Society
• For Organizations
• Support Portal
• Media Coverage
• Founding Donors
• Leadership Team

• Harvard Business School →
• HBS Online →
• Business Insights →

Business Insights

Harvard Business School Online's Business Insights Blog provides the career insights you need to achieve your goals and gain confidence in your business skills.

• Career Development
• Communication
• Decision-Making
• Earning Your MBA
• Negotiation
• News & Events
• Productivity
• Staff Spotlight
• Student Profiles
• Work-Life Balance
• AI Essentials for Business
• Alternative Investments
• Business Analytics
• Business Strategy
• Business and Climate Change
• Design Thinking and Innovation
• Digital Marketing Strategy
• Disruptive Strategy
• Economics for Managers
• Entrepreneurship Essentials
• Financial Accounting
• Global Business
• Launching Tech Ventures
• Leadership Principles
• Leadership, Ethics, and Corporate Accountability
• Leading Change and Organizational Renewal
• Leading with Finance
• Management Essentials
• Negotiation Mastery
• Organizational Leadership
• Power and Influence for Positive Impact
• Strategy Execution
• Sustainable Business Strategy
• Sustainable Investing
• Winning with Digital Platforms

What Is Creative Problem-Solving & Why Is It Important?

• 01 Feb 2022

One of the biggest hindrances to innovation is complacency—it can be more comfortable to do what you know than venture into the unknown. Business leaders can overcome this barrier by mobilizing creative team members and providing space to innovate.

There are several tools you can use to encourage creativity in the workplace. Creative problem-solving is one of them, which facilitates the development of innovative solutions to difficult problems.

Here’s an overview of creative problem-solving and why it’s important in business.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Creative Problem-Solving?

Research is necessary when solving a problem. But there are situations where a problem’s specific cause is difficult to pinpoint. This can occur when there’s not enough time to narrow down the problem’s source or there are differing opinions about its root cause.

In such cases, you can use creative problem-solving , which allows you to explore potential solutions regardless of whether a problem has been defined.

Creative problem-solving is less structured than other innovation processes and encourages exploring open-ended solutions. It also focuses on developing new perspectives and fostering creativity in the workplace . Its benefits include:

• Finding creative solutions to complex problems : User research can insufficiently illustrate a situation’s complexity. While other innovation processes rely on this information, creative problem-solving can yield solutions without it.
• Adapting to change : Business is constantly changing, and business leaders need to adapt. Creative problem-solving helps overcome unforeseen challenges and find solutions to unconventional problems.
• Fueling innovation and growth : In addition to solutions, creative problem-solving can spark innovative ideas that drive company growth. These ideas can lead to new product lines, services, or a modified operations structure that improves efficiency.

Creative problem-solving is traditionally based on the following key principles :

1. Balance Divergent and Convergent Thinking

Creative problem-solving uses two primary tools to find solutions: divergence and convergence. Divergence generates ideas in response to a problem, while convergence narrows them down to a shortlist. It balances these two practices and turns ideas into concrete solutions.

2. Reframe Problems as Questions

By framing problems as questions, you shift from focusing on obstacles to solutions. This provides the freedom to brainstorm potential ideas.

3. Defer Judgment of Ideas

When brainstorming, it can be natural to reject or accept ideas right away. Yet, immediate judgments interfere with the idea generation process. Even ideas that seem implausible can turn into outstanding innovations upon further exploration and development.

4. Focus on "Yes, And" Instead of "No, But"

Using negative words like "no" discourages creative thinking. Instead, use positive language to build and maintain an environment that fosters the development of creative and innovative ideas.

Creative Problem-Solving and Design Thinking

Whereas creative problem-solving facilitates developing innovative ideas through a less structured workflow, design thinking takes a far more organized approach.

Design thinking is a human-centered, solutions-based process that fosters the ideation and development of solutions. In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar leverages a four-phase framework to explain design thinking.

The four stages are:

• Clarify: The clarification stage allows you to empathize with the user and identify problems. Observations and insights are informed by thorough research. Findings are then reframed as problem statements or questions.
• Ideate: Ideation is the process of coming up with innovative ideas. The divergence of ideas involved with creative problem-solving is a major focus.
• Develop: In the development stage, ideas evolve into experiments and tests. Ideas converge and are explored through prototyping and open critique.
• Implement: Implementation involves continuing to test and experiment to refine the solution and encourage its adoption.

Creative problem-solving primarily operates in the ideate phase of design thinking but can be applied to others. This is because design thinking is an iterative process that moves between the stages as ideas are generated and pursued. This is normal and encouraged, as innovation requires exploring multiple ideas.

Creative Problem-Solving Tools

While there are many useful tools in the creative problem-solving process, here are three you should know:

Creating a Problem Story

One way to innovate is by creating a story about a problem to understand how it affects users and what solutions best fit their needs. Here are the steps you need to take to use this tool properly.

1. Identify a UDP

Create a problem story to identify the undesired phenomena (UDP). For example, consider a company that produces printers that overheat. In this case, the UDP is "our printers overheat."

2. Move Forward in Time

To move forward in time, ask: “Why is this a problem?” For example, minor damage could be one result of the machines overheating. In more extreme cases, printers may catch fire. Don't be afraid to create multiple problem stories if you think of more than one UDP.

3. Move Backward in Time

To move backward in time, ask: “What caused this UDP?” If you can't identify the root problem, think about what typically causes the UDP to occur. For the overheating printers, overuse could be a cause.

Following the three-step framework above helps illustrate a clear problem story:

• The printer is overused.
• The printer overheats.
• The printer breaks down.

You can extend the problem story in either direction if you think of additional cause-and-effect relationships.

4. Break the Chains

By this point, you’ll have multiple UDP storylines. Take two that are similar and focus on breaking the chains connecting them. This can be accomplished through inversion or neutralization.

• Inversion: Inversion changes the relationship between two UDPs so the cause is the same but the effect is the opposite. For example, if the UDP is "the more X happens, the more likely Y is to happen," inversion changes the equation to "the more X happens, the less likely Y is to happen." Using the printer example, inversion would consider: "What if the more a printer is used, the less likely it’s going to overheat?" Innovation requires an open mind. Just because a solution initially seems unlikely doesn't mean it can't be pursued further or spark additional ideas.
• Neutralization: Neutralization completely eliminates the cause-and-effect relationship between X and Y. This changes the above equation to "the more or less X happens has no effect on Y." In the case of the printers, neutralization would rephrase the relationship to "the more or less a printer is used has no effect on whether it overheats."

Even if creating a problem story doesn't provide a solution, it can offer useful context to users’ problems and additional ideas to be explored. Given that divergence is one of the fundamental practices of creative problem-solving, it’s a good idea to incorporate it into each tool you use.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a tool that can be highly effective when guided by the iterative qualities of the design thinking process. It involves openly discussing and debating ideas and topics in a group setting. This facilitates idea generation and exploration as different team members consider the same concept from multiple perspectives.

Hosting brainstorming sessions can result in problems, such as groupthink or social loafing. To combat this, leverage a three-step brainstorming method involving divergence and convergence :

• Have each group member come up with as many ideas as possible and write them down to ensure the brainstorming session is productive.
• Continue the divergence of ideas by collectively sharing and exploring each idea as a group. The goal is to create a setting where new ideas are inspired by open discussion.
• Begin the convergence of ideas by narrowing them down to a few explorable options. There’s no "right number of ideas." Don't be afraid to consider exploring all of them, as long as you have the resources to do so.

Alternate Worlds

The alternate worlds tool is an empathetic approach to creative problem-solving. It encourages you to consider how someone in another world would approach your situation.

For example, if you’re concerned that the printers you produce overheat and catch fire, consider how a different industry would approach the problem. How would an automotive expert solve it? How would a firefighter?

Be creative as you consider and research alternate worlds. The purpose is not to nail down a solution right away but to continue the ideation process through diverging and exploring ideas.

Continue Developing Your Skills

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, marketer, or business leader, learning the ropes of design thinking can be an effective way to build your skills and foster creativity and innovation in any setting.

If you're ready to develop your design thinking and creative problem-solving skills, explore Design Thinking and Innovation , one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses. If you aren't sure which course is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

About the Author

How To Create A Proactive Problem-Solving Culture? 10 Useful strategies

Last Updated: December 17, 2023 | by Paul Harstrom

How can one establish a proactive problem-solving culture? Before addressing this query, let us understand the rationale behind the need for such a culture in the first place.

Even the most well-established and reputable companies often face situations where customers express dissatisfaction by posting negative reviews about their products or services on social media.

Occasionally, companies respond to these complaints by offering apologies, refunds, or solutions, but only after the damage is already done. So, they kind of lost out this way. This reactive strategy can lead to potential customer dissatisfaction and harm the brand’s reputation.

Now imagine a company, where employees are actively monitoring customer feedback, analyzing trends, and identifying potential issues before they escalate. If they notice a pattern of dissatisfaction or receive early complaints, they take proactive measures.

This could involve reaching out to affected customers, implementing improvements to the product or service based on feedback, and communicating transparently about changes. By addressing concerns before they become widespread issues, the business maintains customer satisfaction, loyalty, and a positive brand image.

Hence, a reactive approach involves addressing complaints only after they have gained attention, potentially causing damage to the business’s reputation.

In contrast, a proactive approach to problem solving culture focuses on identifying and addressing customer concerns before they become critical, promoting a more efficient and resilient operation.

LEAD Diligently helps faith-driven executives gain clarity and wisdom to grow profitable enterprises. In this article, you are going to learn 10 useful strategies to create a proactive problem-solving culture so that you can enhance your organizational performance and grow profitably .

What Is A Proactive Problem-Solving Culture?

In the words of business visionary Peter Drucker:

“The best way to predict the future is to create it.” Peter Drucker

This ethos encapsulates the essence of a Proactive Problem-Solving Culture—an organizational mindset where potential challenges are addressed before they burgeon into critical issues, setting the stage for a company’s success.

In a proactive problem-solving culture, employees are encouraged to be forward-thinking and take the initiative to identify potential problems, analyze their root causes, and implement solutions. This approach contrasts with a reactive mindset, where actions are taken only after a problem has already occurred.

Building a proactive problem-solving culture involves creating an environment that values continuous improvement , open communication, and empowerment.

It encourages employees at all levels to think critically, share insights, and collaborate on innovative solutions. If you want to maximize the productivity of your employees click here to learn 5 scientifically proven ways to motivate and engage employees in the workplace .

How to Create a Proactive Problem-Solving Culture? (10 strategies):

Addressing issues in a company and solving problems effectively requires a systematic and proactive approach. Here’s a structured guide including 10 valuable strategies to create an effective problem-solving environment:

Acknowledge Issues:

Start by acknowledging and recognizing the existence of issues within the company. Utilize regular assessments, encourage open feedback, and monitor performance metrics diligently.

Categorize and Prioritize:

Categorize identified issues based on their nature, urgency, and impact on the organization. Prioritize them to focus on the most critical problems that need immediate attention.

Create an Issues List:

Establish an “issues list” to systematically track and document identified challenges. This list should be regularly reviewed and updated, providing a clear overview of ongoing issues. These can be challenges, opportunities, or unresolved matters.

Regularly revisit the issues list, assess the impact of implemented solutions, and refine strategies based on the evolving company’s demands.

Transition from Identification to Action:

Issues that are identified as potential company rocks , or priorities, but not immediately addressed as individual rocks should move to the issues list.

This list serves as a backlog of items that may require attention in the future . Decide when the right time is to address each issue.

Implement Structured Problem-Solving Sessions:

Conduct structured problem-solving sessions or meetings. These sessions should be action-oriented, focusing on finding solutions rather than dwelling on the problems.

Prioritize Implementation Over Discussion:

Emphasize the importance of implementing solutions rather than spending excessive time discussing issues. The goal is to move from identifying problems to actively resolving them.

Strategic Decision-Making with Deadlines:

Set specific timeframes for strategic decision-making through proactive problem management . It can be achieved by determining deadlines for resolving specific issues, such as making final decisions about new hires within 90 days.

Cultivate Individual Accountability:

Encourage a sense of individual accountability . Assign specific responsibilities to team members for addressing and resolving particular issues. Consider the concept of “individual rocks” as tasks or priorities individuals commit to.

Click here to learn 7 tips to create a culture of accountability in the workplace.

Integrate Future Planning:

Incorporate forward-looking planning into the problem-solving process. Consider future quarterly planning sessions where issues can be anticipated, and strategies can be developed to address them proactively.

Document and Analyze:

Document the entire problem-solving process, including the identified issues, proposed solutions, and the outcomes or plan for resolution. The goal is to prevent important matters from being forgotten and to have a structured approach to addressing them.

Concluding 10 Useful Strategies To Create A Proactive Problem-Solving Culture

10 Useful Strategies mentioned above help leaders Create A Proactive Problem Solving Culture in their companies. Adopting this structured approach not only addresses current issues but also anticipates and mitigates challenges in the future.

Did you find these strategies useful? Enlighten us with your thoughts in the comment section below!

Can you provide examples of companies that have successfully created a proactive problem-solving culture?

Many tech giants, such as Google and Microsoft, are known for promoting proactive problem-solving cultures. They encourage employees to engage in continuous improvement and innovation, encouraging them to address challenges before they escalate.

How does technology contribute to problem-solving in modern workplaces?

Technology plays a pivotal role by providing tools for data analysis, communication, and collaboration. Platforms like project management software , data analytics tools, and collaborative platforms enable teams to anticipate issues, share insights, and collectively address problems in real-time, contributing to a proactive work environment.

What steps can employees take individually to contribute to a proactive problem-solving culture within their teams or departments?

Employees can contribute by staying vigilant and identifying potential issues early on. Actively participating in team discussions, proposing effective solutions, and taking the initiative to address small problems before they arise are necessary steps.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment.

Is Your Business Healthy and Fortified For Growth?

Take Our Assessment to Uncover Opportunities and Pinpoint Challenges

Cultural and Tactical Perspectives on Problem Solving

Lean/TPM Knowledge

We often hear from clients that one of the challenges they run into in applying Lean methodologies to daily work isn’t necessarily applying various tools and techniques, it’s how to address the inevitable problems that arise along the way.

We all know there are never a shortage of problems…they’re everywhere. No business is immune to them. They serve a purpose…to provide opportunities for alternative solutions, and improvements in safety and efficiencies. Simply put, problem solving is the process by which we find solutions. After all, isn’t problem solving synonymous with continuous improvement – the very core of what we’re trying to accomplish in the context of a Lean initiative?

To explore problem solving from both a cultural and tactical perspective, we sat down with Jim Vatalaro, senior management consultant with Productivity Inc. and 20+ year veteran of the manufacturing industry, to gather some critical insights.

To gauge the role problem solving plays in your organization from a cultural perspective, Jim suggested asking a few key questions:

• What is your definition of problem solving – are you solving problems or just explaining problems?
• Who’s involved in your problem solving efforts? Has the expectation been set that the broader employee community has become proficient in solving problems?
• To what extent does management play the role of coach or teacher in the various problem solving methodologies?
• How many techniques in the pyramid do you (employees) have competencies in?

The answers to these questions are often enlightening. Like most CI initiatives, Jim cautioned that the Who is responsible for implementation is equally as important as the How. The people doing the problem solving should be the people performing the work – those in the value adding community, not just those supervising or overseeing the effort. A successful problem solving culture requires involvement from all employees, especially those on the front lines.

When it comes to the How, Jim emphasized a few pertinent points to keep in mind:

Requirements

• Problem-solving must be approached systematically – it’s a process
• Stay focused – solve meaningful problems
• Use cross-functional teams – get various perspectives and opinions
• Document solutions to ensure sustainment
• Don’t make assumptions – pursue root cause with an open mind

Recommendations / Best Practices

• Don’t reinvent the wheel – check to see if other areas of the business have already tackled similar issues
• Use the right problem solving tool for the right problem – see pyramid below

Pit Falls to Avoid

• Accepting problems as the norm – don’t let the old way of doing things cloud your judgement. It’s critical to look at the process with a fresh perspective.
• Not using the 5-Why process as a way to get to root cause
• Not having the right people on task – cross-functionality is a must

CEDAC : a fishbone diagram that tracks suggestions for improvement to get from problem effect to target effect using a series of fact and idea cards. Most useful for reoccurring problems.

A3 : refers to the one-page report used to consolidate all relevant information required to make decisions related to the problem to be solved. They’re used to address more complex problems and often require a charter or sponsor to manage the process.

Six Sigma/DMAIC : a specific method used for quantitative analysis to address variation in complex, ongoing problems. Requires software tools, a sponsor, charter, and management oversight.

3P : Designed for the development of new products and processes, 3P can also be used in response to chronic problems, i.e. ergonomic issues. Due to its complexity, 3P projects require management oversight, a sponsor, charter, and separate work area.

Interested in learning more about the role of leadership in problem solving? Join us for our Lean Leadership Event , taking place October 13-16, 2020 in Chicago, IL. Give us a call or visit our website for more information, or if we can help with any of your CI and TPM, from certification to on-site training and consulting .

Subscribe to Productivity News

Veuillez laisser ce champ vide.

• Back to News & Resources

More Lean/TPM Knowledge...

What is Problem Solving? (Steps, Techniques, Examples)

By Status.net Editorial Team on May 7, 2023 — 5 minutes to read

What Is Problem Solving?

Definition and importance.

Problem solving is the process of finding solutions to obstacles or challenges you encounter in your life or work. It is a crucial skill that allows you to tackle complex situations, adapt to changes, and overcome difficulties with ease. Mastering this ability will contribute to both your personal and professional growth, leading to more successful outcomes and better decision-making.

Problem-Solving Steps

The problem-solving process typically includes the following steps:

• Identify the issue : Recognize the problem that needs to be solved.
• Analyze the situation : Examine the issue in depth, gather all relevant information, and consider any limitations or constraints that may be present.
• Generate potential solutions : Brainstorm a list of possible solutions to the issue, without immediately judging or evaluating them.
• Evaluate options : Weigh the pros and cons of each potential solution, considering factors such as feasibility, effectiveness, and potential risks.
• Select the best solution : Choose the option that best addresses the problem and aligns with your objectives.
• Implement the solution : Put the selected solution into action and monitor the results to ensure it resolves the issue.
• Review and learn : Reflect on the problem-solving process, identify any improvements or adjustments that can be made, and apply these learnings to future situations.

Defining the Problem

To start tackling a problem, first, identify and understand it. Analyzing the issue thoroughly helps to clarify its scope and nature. Ask questions to gather information and consider the problem from various angles. Some strategies to define the problem include:

• Brainstorming with others
• Asking the 5 Ws and 1 H (Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How)
• Analyzing cause and effect
• Creating a problem statement

Generating Solutions

Once the problem is clearly understood, brainstorm possible solutions. Think creatively and keep an open mind, as well as considering lessons from past experiences. Consider:

• Creating a list of potential ideas to solve the problem
• Grouping and categorizing similar solutions
• Prioritizing potential solutions based on feasibility, cost, and resources required
• Involving others to share diverse opinions and inputs

Evaluating and Selecting Solutions

Evaluate each potential solution, weighing its pros and cons. To facilitate decision-making, use techniques such as:

• SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats)
• Decision-making matrices
• Pros and cons lists
• Risk assessments

After evaluating, choose the most suitable solution based on effectiveness, cost, and time constraints.

Implementing and Monitoring the Solution

Implement the chosen solution and monitor its progress. Key actions include:

• Communicating the solution to relevant parties
• Setting timelines and milestones
• Assigning tasks and responsibilities
• Monitoring the solution and making adjustments as necessary
• Evaluating the effectiveness of the solution after implementation

Utilize feedback from stakeholders and consider potential improvements. Remember that problem-solving is an ongoing process that can always be refined and enhanced.

Problem-Solving Techniques

During each step, you may find it helpful to utilize various problem-solving techniques, such as:

• Brainstorming : A free-flowing, open-minded session where ideas are generated and listed without judgment, to encourage creativity and innovative thinking.
• Root cause analysis : A method that explores the underlying causes of a problem to find the most effective solution rather than addressing superficial symptoms.
• SWOT analysis : A tool used to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats related to a problem or decision, providing a comprehensive view of the situation.
• Mind mapping : A visual technique that uses diagrams to organize and connect ideas, helping to identify patterns, relationships, and possible solutions.

Brainstorming

When facing a problem, start by conducting a brainstorming session. Gather your team and encourage an open discussion where everyone contributes ideas, no matter how outlandish they may seem. This helps you:

• Generate a diverse range of solutions
• Encourage all team members to participate
• Foster creative thinking

When brainstorming, remember to:

• Reserve judgment until the session is over
• Encourage wild ideas
• Combine and improve upon ideas

Root Cause Analysis

For effective problem-solving, identifying the root cause of the issue at hand is crucial. Try these methods:

• 5 Whys : Ask “why” five times to get to the underlying cause.
• Fishbone Diagram : Create a diagram representing the problem and break it down into categories of potential causes.
• Pareto Analysis : Determine the few most significant causes underlying the majority of problems.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis helps you examine the Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats related to your problem. To perform a SWOT analysis:

• List your problem’s strengths, such as relevant resources or strong partnerships.
• Identify its weaknesses, such as knowledge gaps or limited resources.
• Explore opportunities, like trends or new technologies, that could help solve the problem.
• Recognize potential threats, like competition or regulatory barriers.

SWOT analysis aids in understanding the internal and external factors affecting the problem, which can help guide your solution.

Mind Mapping

A mind map is a visual representation of your problem and potential solutions. It enables you to organize information in a structured and intuitive manner. To create a mind map:

• Write the problem in the center of a blank page.
• Draw branches from the central problem to related sub-problems or contributing factors.
• Add more branches to represent potential solutions or further ideas.

Mind mapping allows you to visually see connections between ideas and promotes creativity in problem-solving.

Examples of Problem Solving in Various Contexts

In the business world, you might encounter problems related to finances, operations, or communication. Applying problem-solving skills in these situations could look like:

• Identifying areas of improvement in your company’s financial performance and implementing cost-saving measures
• Resolving internal conflicts among team members by listening and understanding different perspectives, then proposing and negotiating solutions
• Streamlining a process for better productivity by removing redundancies, automating tasks, or re-allocating resources

In educational contexts, problem-solving can be seen in various aspects, such as:

• Addressing a gap in students’ understanding by employing diverse teaching methods to cater to different learning styles
• Developing a strategy for successful time management to balance academic responsibilities and extracurricular activities
• Seeking resources and support to provide equal opportunities for learners with special needs or disabilities

Everyday life is full of challenges that require problem-solving skills. Some examples include:

• Overcoming a personal obstacle, such as improving your fitness level, by establishing achievable goals, measuring progress, and adjusting your approach accordingly
• Navigating a new environment or city by researching your surroundings, asking for directions, or using technology like GPS to guide you
• Dealing with a sudden change, like a change in your work schedule, by assessing the situation, identifying potential impacts, and adapting your plans to accommodate the change.
• How to Resolve Employee Conflict at Work [Steps, Tips, Examples]
• How to Write Inspiring Core Values? 5 Steps with Examples
• 30 Employee Feedback Examples (Positive & Negative)

Explore Lean Thinking and Practice / Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving

Explore the process that’s foundational to assuring every individual becomes engaged by arming them with methods they can use to overcome obstacles and improve their work process.

Overcoming obstacles to achieve or elevate a standard 

In a lean management system, everyone is engaged in ongoing problem-solving that is guided by two characteristics:

• Everything described or claimed should be based on verifiable facts, not assumptions and interpretations. 
• Problem-solving is never-ending; that is, it begins rather than ends when an improvement plan is implemented. The implementation process is a learning opportunity to discover how to make progress toward the target condition. 

Lean thinkers & practitioners understand that the problem-solving process is impeded if you make the common mistake of mechanically reaching for a familiar or favorite problem-solving methodology or, worse, jump quickly to a solution. 

Leaders and teams avoid this trap by recognizing that most business problems fall into four categories, each requiring different thought processes, improvement methods, and management cadences.

The Four Types of Problems

Type 1: Troubleshooting:   reactive problem-solving that hinges upon rapidly returning abnormal conditions to known standards. It provides some immediate relief but does not address the root cause.

Type 2: Gap from Standard: structured problem-solving that focuses on defining the problem, setting goals, analyzing the root cause, and establishing countermeasures, checks, standards, and follow-up activities. The aim is to prevent the problem from recurring by eliminating its underlying causes.

Type 3: Target Condition:   continuous improvement ( kaizen ) that goes beyond existing standards of performance. It may utilize existing methods in new, creative ways to deliver superior value or performance toward a new target state of improvement.

Type 4: Open-ended:  innovative problem-solving based on creativity, synthesis, and recognition of opportunity. It establishes new norms that often entail unexpected products, processes, systems, or value for the customer well beyond current levels. 

By helping everyone in the organization to understand the importance of taking ownership of seeing and solving all types of problems, lean thinking & practice:

• Engenders a sense of empowerment and autonomy in all workers, which in turn promotes engagement in and ownership of the work process
• Enables organizations to overcome obstacles at their source, so they do not become more significant problems upstream

Ultimately, building a problem-solving culture creates a competitive advantage that is difficult for competitors to match.  

Relevant Posts

Problem Solving

Why the A3 Process Involves More than Filling in Boxes

Article by Tracey Richardson

Big Problems? Start Small

Article by Josh Howell

What’s your problem

Article, Video by John Shook

Recent Posts

Revolutionizing Logistics: DHL eCommerce’s Journey Applying Lean Thinking to Automation  

Podcast by Matthew Savas

Transforming Corporate Culture: Bestbath’s Approach to Scaling Problem-Solving Capability

Teaching Lean Thinking to Kids: A Conversation with Alan Goodman 

Podcast by Alan Goodman and Matthew Savas

Relevant Products

Four Types of Problems

by Art Smalley

Managing to Learn: Using the A3 management process

by John Shook

Getting Home

by Liz McCartney and Zack Rosenburg

Steady Work

by Karen Gaudet

Relevant Events

August 05, 2024 | Coach-Led Online Course and Oakland University in Rochester, Michigan

Managing to Learn

September 26, 2024 | Morgantown, PA or Remond, WA

Building a Lean Operating and Management System 

November 12, 2024 | Coach-Led Online Course

Improvement Kata/Coaching Kata

Be the first to learn of new learning opportunities and the latest practical, actionable information. subscribe to an lei newsletter., join us on social, privacy overview.

12 Strategies For Creating A Culture Of Problem-Solving In Your Classroom

What Are The Best Strategies For Creating A Culture Of Problem-Solving In Your Classroom?

by TeachThought Staff

Without the ability to solve problems, learning is ‘academic.’

Problem-solving, creative thinking, and critical thinking are both skills and habits that allow students to apply and transfer academic knowledge into real-world application. Unfortunately, problem-solving isn’t a significant part of most curriculum in K-12 schools.

Further, problem-solving–being a habit as much as a skill–both creates and is dependent upon a kind of culture in your classroom. To remedy the situation, and grow fruitful and happy students within the confines of the syllabus you are bound to, start to fix the problem yourself by creating an atmosphere of problem-solving in your classes. Create situations where students have to think for themselves.

Here are some ideas.

1. Use Exit Slips

Instead of telling students what the learning objective is for a task, have them come up with one when they’ve completed it. Make it the exit slip.

2. Ask 3B4ME

Instead of answering an unnecessary question, urge students to take back their power by taking another moment to think about the problem, then to check their books and other resources around them for the solution, before asking their table for help, before asking the teacher. Adam Schoenbart’s advice here is excellent: Ask 3B4ME

3. Perfect–And Actually Use–The Gradual Release Of Responsibility Model

Gradually reduce the scaffolds on tasks, increasing the amount of autonomy with the approach to a task. Explain that in the previous task you helped in this way, but that in this task you are not. This will make students connect previous experiences.

4. Allow–Or Require–Students To Help Shape The Curriculum

The goal is to get students to solve the problem of satisfying the demands of the syllabus while making the learning interesting. Outline what must be covered, and challenge them to come up with interesting and creative ways to get it done. You could begin by looking at the whole course, and asking for suggestions about projects. The more adventurous could increase the challenge by asking – ‘here’s what must be done in this lesson – how can we achieve it’. Trust yourself that you can handle the change in direction, and that if a student comes up with a great way to get to the same place, then be brave enough to go with it.

How you handle the change in direction is the best example of problem-solving there is. Even if no one comes up with something this time, the process will not only stimulate their thinking to some degree, but also empower them to know that you are offering some autonomy in the learning. But the real gain in such a process is that students will begin the process of truly understanding the outcomes of the course. Then out of nowhere you are achieving the desired growth, but in a sustainable manner.

5. Make Sure Students Review Instructions Periodically

Teach students to return to instructions after they have completed some of the work. They may not, but when they don’t and have trouble, use that as a teachable moment.

Why can this help? When students first view a task, they often only take in the first few components of the task, and then automatically ask what’s next once they’ve got to that point. Encourage the habit of revisiting the instructions, emphasizing to students that the brain is now able to process the next parts of the task.

6. Have Students Articulate Learning To Others

Get students to make connections between their learning more often. A great way to do this is to get students to go around the school and describe to another teacher or school leader the activity or activities involved, and ask them what they think the real world learning is for the task/s. The responses will make the student consider the relevancy a lot more, especially if the responder asks the student some questions.

7. Use ABC Feedback

When questioning students, make it interactive. Get them on their toes when discussions ensue. Use Alez Quigley’s excellent suggestion of ABC Feedback to energize student interaction in lessons. Every question then becomes a chance to solve a problem.

8. Encourage Them To Be Self-Sufficient

Redirect students’ questions back to them or to other students. This could have several possible outcomes: it provides more students with a chance to participate in a discussion; provides opportunities for students to teach; and will minimize the number of unnecessary questions, as students are by far the harshest critics of time-wasting, especially when it’s theirs.

9. ‘Play With’ Confusion

Ask questions that deliberately create thinking, such as thunks. Questions that create confusion are also winners – I guarantee someone in the class will respond and have a go at making sense of it. If played well (it can be a fine line at times), creating a space where the class is not able to assume what is presented to them is straight forward, or accurate, begins an unmistakable increase in student awareness, and brain activity.

Examples include getting students to remember everything around the room they see that is the color of white, and then, ensuring they don’t look up, get them to write down everything in the room that is the color green; writing 4 random words on the board and getting students to rank them in order; add a word to board and have students design a question where the word is the only possible answer; adding deliberately wrong info within an activity and getting students to spot it; and of course, riddles – which every student seems to love.

10. Helps Students Focus On The Solution Instead Of The Problem

Teach students what Patch Adams had to learn: to focus on the solution rather than the problem in front of them. It’s incredible what a small change in perspective can achieve.

11. Explain How They’re learning

Above all else, ensure that you label the next unit you teach as a Problem-Solving Unit and consistently refer to it as it unfolds. Explicitly discussing the problem-solving aspects of each activity will develop and consolidate the expectations that your classroom demands. Students will have the chance to thrive as a result!

12. Ask Students What Problems Matter To Them

Then use inquiry learning , create a self-directed classroom culture , promote collaboration, and more to help them solve those problems for themselves.

Teaching is not about raising grades. Teaching should always be motivated by a need to create amazing people. Amazing people, by definition, are active sort of people, inspiring, creative and resilient. They are people who flourish in the right conditions, and who grow with challenge and inquiry.

These qualities are not unique to a select group of people defined by hereditary–they are outcomes of having to consistently solve problems. Changing your classroom from a delivery room into a learning room relies entirely on your ability to change students from receptors to problem solvers.

So let’s get to it, there’s not a moment to lose!

About The Author

Teachthought staff.

35 problem-solving techniques and methods for solving complex problems

Design your next session with SessionLab

Join the 150,000+ facilitators 
using SessionLab.

Recommended Articles

A step-by-step guide to planning a workshop, how to create an unforgettable training session in 8 simple steps, 18 free facilitation resources we think you’ll love.

• 47 useful online tools for workshop planning and meeting facilitation

All teams and organizations encounter challenges as they grow. There are problems that might occur for teams when it comes to miscommunication or resolving business-critical issues . You may face challenges around growth , design , user engagement, and even team culture and happiness. In short, problem-solving techniques should be part of every team’s skillset.

Problem-solving methods are primarily designed to help a group or team through a process of first identifying problems and challenges , ideating possible solutions , and then evaluating the most suitable .

Finding effective solutions to complex problems isn’t easy, but by using the right process and techniques, you can help your team be more efficient in the process.

So how do you develop strategies that are engaging, and empower your team to solve problems effectively?

In this blog post, we share a series of problem-solving tools you can use in your next workshop or team meeting. You’ll also find some tips for facilitating the process and how to enable others to solve complex problems.

Let’s get started! 

How do you identify problems?

How do you identify the right solution.

• Tips for more effective problem-solving

Complete problem-solving methods

• Problem-solving techniques to identify and analyze problems
• Problem-solving techniques for developing solutions

Problem-solving warm-up activities

Closing activities for a problem-solving process.

Before you can move towards finding the right solution for a given problem, you first need to identify and define the problem you wish to solve. 

Here, you want to clearly articulate what the problem is and allow your group to do the same. Remember that everyone in a group is likely to have differing perspectives and alignment is necessary in order to help the group move forward. 

Identifying a problem accurately also requires that all members of a group are able to contribute their views in an open and safe manner. It can be scary for people to stand up and contribute, especially if the problems or challenges are emotive or personal in nature. Be sure to try and create a psychologically safe space for these kinds of discussions.

Remember that problem analysis and further discussion are also important. Not taking the time to fully analyze and discuss a challenge can result in the development of solutions that are not fit for purpose or do not address the underlying issue.

Successfully identifying and then analyzing a problem means facilitating a group through activities designed to help them clearly and honestly articulate their thoughts and produce usable insight.

With this data, you might then produce a problem statement that clearly describes the problem you wish to be addressed and also state the goal of any process you undertake to tackle this issue.  

Finding solutions is the end goal of any process. Complex organizational challenges can only be solved with an appropriate solution but discovering them requires using the right problem-solving tool.

After you’ve explored a problem and discussed ideas, you need to help a team discuss and choose the right solution. Consensus tools and methods such as those below help a group explore possible solutions before then voting for the best. They’re a great way to tap into the collective intelligence of the group for great results!

Remember that the process is often iterative. Great problem solvers often roadtest a viable solution in a measured way to see what works too. While you might not get the right solution on your first try, the methods below help teams land on the most likely to succeed solution while also holding space for improvement.

Every effective problem solving process begins with an agenda . A well-structured workshop is one of the best methods for successfully guiding a group from exploring a problem to implementing a solution.

In SessionLab, it’s easy to go from an idea to a complete agenda . Start by dragging and dropping your core problem solving activities into place . Add timings, breaks and necessary materials before sharing your agenda with your colleagues.

The resulting agenda will be your guide to an effective and productive problem solving session that will also help you stay organized on the day!

Tips for more effective problem solving

Problem-solving activities are only one part of the puzzle. While a great method can help unlock your team’s ability to solve problems, without a thoughtful approach and strong facilitation the solutions may not be fit for purpose.

Let’s take a look at some problem-solving tips you can apply to any process to help it be a success!

Clearly define the problem

Jumping straight to solutions can be tempting, though without first clearly articulating a problem, the solution might not be the right one. Many of the problem-solving activities below include sections where the problem is explored and clearly defined before moving on.

This is a vital part of the problem-solving process and taking the time to fully define an issue can save time and effort later. A clear definition helps identify irrelevant information and it also ensures that your team sets off on the right track.

Don’t jump to conclusions

It’s easy for groups to exhibit cognitive bias or have preconceived ideas about both problems and potential solutions. Be sure to back up any problem statements or potential solutions with facts, research, and adequate forethought.

The best techniques ask participants to be methodical and challenge preconceived notions. Make sure you give the group enough time and space to collect relevant information and consider the problem in a new way. By approaching the process with a clear, rational mindset, you’ll often find that better solutions are more forthcoming.  

Try different approaches  

Problems come in all shapes and sizes and so too should the methods you use to solve them. If you find that one approach isn’t yielding results and your team isn’t finding different solutions, try mixing it up. You’ll be surprised at how using a new creative activity can unblock your team and generate great solutions.

Don’t take it personally 

Depending on the nature of your team or organizational problems, it’s easy for conversations to get heated. While it’s good for participants to be engaged in the discussions, ensure that emotions don’t run too high and that blame isn’t thrown around while finding solutions.

You’re all in it together, and even if your team or area is seeing problems, that isn’t necessarily a disparagement of you personally. Using facilitation skills to manage group dynamics is one effective method of helping conversations be more constructive.

Get the right people in the room

Your problem-solving method is often only as effective as the group using it. Getting the right people on the job and managing the number of people present is important too!

If the group is too small, you may not get enough different perspectives to effectively solve a problem. If the group is too large, you can go round and round during the ideation stages.

Creating the right group makeup is also important in ensuring you have the necessary expertise and skillset to both identify and follow up on potential solutions. Carefully consider who to include at each stage to help ensure your problem-solving method is followed and positioned for success.

Document everything

The best solutions can take refinement, iteration, and reflection to come out. Get into a habit of documenting your process in order to keep all the learnings from the session and to allow ideas to mature and develop. Many of the methods below involve the creation of documents or shared resources. Be sure to keep and share these so everyone can benefit from the work done!

Bring a facilitator 

Facilitation is all about making group processes easier. With a subject as potentially emotive and important as problem-solving, having an impartial third party in the form of a facilitator can make all the difference in finding great solutions and keeping the process moving. Consider bringing a facilitator to your problem-solving session to get better results and generate meaningful solutions!

Develop your problem-solving skills

It takes time and practice to be an effective problem solver. While some roles or participants might more naturally gravitate towards problem-solving, it can take development and planning to help everyone create better solutions.

You might develop a training program, run a problem-solving workshop or simply ask your team to practice using the techniques below. Check out our post on problem-solving skills to see how you and your group can develop the right mental process and be more resilient to issues too!

Design a great agenda

Workshops are a great format for solving problems. With the right approach, you can focus a group and help them find the solutions to their own problems. But designing a process can be time-consuming and finding the right activities can be difficult.

Check out our workshop planning guide to level-up your agenda design and start running more effective workshops. Need inspiration? Check out templates designed by expert facilitators to help you kickstart your process!

In this section, we’ll look at in-depth problem-solving methods that provide a complete end-to-end process for developing effective solutions. These will help guide your team from the discovery and definition of a problem through to delivering the right solution.

If you’re looking for an all-encompassing method or problem-solving model, these processes are a great place to start. They’ll ask your team to challenge preconceived ideas and adopt a mindset for solving problems more effectively.

• Six Thinking Hats
• Lightning Decision Jam
• Problem Definition Process
• Discovery & Action Dialogue

Design Sprint 2.0

• Open Space Technology

1. Six Thinking Hats

Individual approaches to solving a problem can be very different based on what team or role an individual holds. It can be easy for existing biases or perspectives to find their way into the mix, or for internal politics to direct a conversation.

Six Thinking Hats is a classic method for identifying the problems that need to be solved and enables your team to consider them from different angles, whether that is by focusing on facts and data, creative solutions, or by considering why a particular solution might not work.

Like all problem-solving frameworks, Six Thinking Hats is effective at helping teams remove roadblocks from a conversation or discussion and come to terms with all the aspects necessary to solve complex problems.

2. Lightning Decision Jam

Featured courtesy of Jonathan Courtney of AJ&Smart Berlin, Lightning Decision Jam is one of those strategies that should be in every facilitation toolbox. Exploring problems and finding solutions is often creative in nature, though as with any creative process, there is the potential to lose focus and get lost.

Unstructured discussions might get you there in the end, but it’s much more effective to use a method that creates a clear process and team focus.

In Lightning Decision Jam, participants are invited to begin by writing challenges, concerns, or mistakes on post-its without discussing them before then being invited by the moderator to present them to the group.

From there, the team vote on which problems to solve and are guided through steps that will allow them to reframe those problems, create solutions and then decide what to execute on. 

By deciding the problems that need to be solved as a team before moving on, this group process is great for ensuring the whole team is aligned and can take ownership over the next stages. 

Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ)   #action   #decision making   #problem solving   #issue analysis   #innovation   #design   #remote-friendly   The problem with anything that requires creative thinking is that it’s easy to get lost—lose focus and fall into the trap of having useless, open-ended, unstructured discussions. Here’s the most effective solution I’ve found: Replace all open, unstructured discussion with a clear process. What to use this exercise for: Anything which requires a group of people to make decisions, solve problems or discuss challenges. It’s always good to frame an LDJ session with a broad topic, here are some examples: The conversion flow of our checkout Our internal design process How we organise events Keeping up with our competition Improving sales flow

3. Problem Definition Process

While problems can be complex, the problem-solving methods you use to identify and solve those problems can often be simple in design. 

By taking the time to truly identify and define a problem before asking the group to reframe the challenge as an opportunity, this method is a great way to enable change.

Begin by identifying a focus question and exploring the ways in which it manifests before splitting into five teams who will each consider the problem using a different method: escape, reversal, exaggeration, distortion or wishful. Teams develop a problem objective and create ideas in line with their method before then feeding them back to the group.

This method is great for enabling in-depth discussions while also creating space for finding creative solutions too!

Problem Definition   #problem solving   #idea generation   #creativity   #online   #remote-friendly   A problem solving technique to define a problem, challenge or opportunity and to generate ideas.

4. The 5 Whys 

Sometimes, a group needs to go further with their strategies and analyze the root cause at the heart of organizational issues. An RCA or root cause analysis is the process of identifying what is at the heart of business problems or recurring challenges. 

The 5 Whys is a simple and effective method of helping a group go find the root cause of any problem or challenge and conduct analysis that will deliver results. 

By beginning with the creation of a problem statement and going through five stages to refine it, The 5 Whys provides everything you need to truly discover the cause of an issue.

The 5 Whys   #hyperisland   #innovation   This simple and powerful method is useful for getting to the core of a problem or challenge. As the title suggests, the group defines a problems, then asks the question “why” five times, often using the resulting explanation as a starting point for creative problem solving.

5. World Cafe

World Cafe is a simple but powerful facilitation technique to help bigger groups to focus their energy and attention on solving complex problems.

World Cafe enables this approach by creating a relaxed atmosphere where participants are able to self-organize and explore topics relevant and important to them which are themed around a central problem-solving purpose. Create the right atmosphere by modeling your space after a cafe and after guiding the group through the method, let them take the lead!

Making problem-solving a part of your organization’s culture in the long term can be a difficult undertaking. More approachable formats like World Cafe can be especially effective in bringing people unfamiliar with workshops into the fold. 

World Cafe   #hyperisland   #innovation   #issue analysis   World Café is a simple yet powerful method, originated by Juanita Brown, for enabling meaningful conversations driven completely by participants and the topics that are relevant and important to them. Facilitators create a cafe-style space and provide simple guidelines. Participants then self-organize and explore a set of relevant topics or questions for conversation.

6. Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)

One of the best approaches is to create a safe space for a group to share and discover practices and behaviors that can help them find their own solutions.

With DAD, you can help a group choose which problems they wish to solve and which approaches they will take to do so. It’s great at helping remove resistance to change and can help get buy-in at every level too!

This process of enabling frontline ownership is great in ensuring follow-through and is one of the methods you will want in your toolbox as a facilitator.

Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)   #idea generation   #liberating structures   #action   #issue analysis   #remote-friendly   DADs make it easy for a group or community to discover practices and behaviors that enable some individuals (without access to special resources and facing the same constraints) to find better solutions than their peers to common problems. These are called positive deviant (PD) behaviors and practices. DADs make it possible for people in the group, unit, or community to discover by themselves these PD practices. DADs also create favorable conditions for stimulating participants’ creativity in spaces where they can feel safe to invent new and more effective practices. Resistance to change evaporates as participants are unleashed to choose freely which practices they will adopt or try and which problems they will tackle. DADs make it possible to achieve frontline ownership of solutions.

7. Design Sprint 2.0

Want to see how a team can solve big problems and move forward with prototyping and testing solutions in a few days? The Design Sprint 2.0 template from Jake Knapp, author of Sprint, is a complete agenda for a with proven results.

Developing the right agenda can involve difficult but necessary planning. Ensuring all the correct steps are followed can also be stressful or time-consuming depending on your level of experience.

Use this complete 4-day workshop template if you are finding there is no obvious solution to your challenge and want to focus your team around a specific problem that might require a shortcut to launching a minimum viable product or waiting for the organization-wide implementation of a solution.

8. Open space technology

Open space technology- developed by Harrison Owen – creates a space where large groups are invited to take ownership of their problem solving and lead individual sessions. Open space technology is a great format when you have a great deal of expertise and insight in the room and want to allow for different takes and approaches on a particular theme or problem you need to be solved.

Start by bringing your participants together to align around a central theme and focus their efforts. Explain the ground rules to help guide the problem-solving process and then invite members to identify any issue connecting to the central theme that they are interested in and are prepared to take responsibility for.

Once participants have decided on their approach to the core theme, they write their issue on a piece of paper, announce it to the group, pick a session time and place, and post the paper on the wall. As the wall fills up with sessions, the group is then invited to join the sessions that interest them the most and which they can contribute to, then you’re ready to begin!

Everyone joins the problem-solving group they’ve signed up to, record the discussion and if appropriate, findings can then be shared with the rest of the group afterward.

Open Space Technology   #action plan   #idea generation   #problem solving   #issue analysis   #large group   #online   #remote-friendly   Open Space is a methodology for large groups to create their agenda discerning important topics for discussion, suitable for conferences, community gatherings and whole system facilitation

Techniques to identify and analyze problems

Using a problem-solving method to help a team identify and analyze a problem can be a quick and effective addition to any workshop or meeting.

While further actions are always necessary, you can generate momentum and alignment easily, and these activities are a great place to get started.

We’ve put together this list of techniques to help you and your team with problem identification, analysis, and discussion that sets the foundation for developing effective solutions.

Let’s take a look!

• The Creativity Dice
• Fishbone Analysis
• Problem Tree
• SWOT Analysis
• Agreement-Certainty Matrix
• The Journalistic Six
• LEGO Challenge
• What, So What, Now What?
• Journalists

Individual and group perspectives are incredibly important, but what happens if people are set in their minds and need a change of perspective in order to approach a problem more effectively?

Flip It is a method we love because it is both simple to understand and run, and allows groups to understand how their perspectives and biases are formed. 

Participants in Flip It are first invited to consider concerns, issues, or problems from a perspective of fear and write them on a flip chart. Then, the group is asked to consider those same issues from a perspective of hope and flip their understanding.  

No problem and solution is free from existing bias and by changing perspectives with Flip It, you can then develop a problem solving model quickly and effectively.

Flip It!   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   Often, a change in a problem or situation comes simply from a change in our perspectives. Flip It! is a quick game designed to show players that perspectives are made, not born.

10. The Creativity Dice

One of the most useful problem solving skills you can teach your team is of approaching challenges with creativity, flexibility, and openness. Games like The Creativity Dice allow teams to overcome the potential hurdle of too much linear thinking and approach the process with a sense of fun and speed. 

In The Creativity Dice, participants are organized around a topic and roll a dice to determine what they will work on for a period of 3 minutes at a time. They might roll a 3 and work on investigating factual information on the chosen topic. They might roll a 1 and work on identifying the specific goals, standards, or criteria for the session.

Encouraging rapid work and iteration while asking participants to be flexible are great skills to cultivate. Having a stage for idea incubation in this game is also important. Moments of pause can help ensure the ideas that are put forward are the most suitable. 

The Creativity Dice   #creativity   #problem solving   #thiagi   #issue analysis   Too much linear thinking is hazardous to creative problem solving. To be creative, you should approach the problem (or the opportunity) from different points of view. You should leave a thought hanging in mid-air and move to another. This skipping around prevents premature closure and lets your brain incubate one line of thought while you consciously pursue another.

11. Fishbone Analysis

Organizational or team challenges are rarely simple, and it’s important to remember that one problem can be an indication of something that goes deeper and may require further consideration to be solved.

Fishbone Analysis helps groups to dig deeper and understand the origins of a problem. It’s a great example of a root cause analysis method that is simple for everyone on a team to get their head around. 

Participants in this activity are asked to annotate a diagram of a fish, first adding the problem or issue to be worked on at the head of a fish before then brainstorming the root causes of the problem and adding them as bones on the fish. 

Using abstractions such as a diagram of a fish can really help a team break out of their regular thinking and develop a creative approach.

Fishbone Analysis   #problem solving   ##root cause analysis   #decision making   #online facilitation   A process to help identify and understand the origins of problems, issues or observations.

12. Problem Tree 

Encouraging visual thinking can be an essential part of many strategies. By simply reframing and clarifying problems, a group can move towards developing a problem solving model that works for them. 

In Problem Tree, groups are asked to first brainstorm a list of problems – these can be design problems, team problems or larger business problems – and then organize them into a hierarchy. The hierarchy could be from most important to least important or abstract to practical, though the key thing with problem solving games that involve this aspect is that your group has some way of managing and sorting all the issues that are raised.

Once you have a list of problems that need to be solved and have organized them accordingly, you’re then well-positioned for the next problem solving steps.

Problem tree   #define intentions   #create   #design   #issue analysis   A problem tree is a tool to clarify the hierarchy of problems addressed by the team within a design project; it represents high level problems or related sublevel problems.

13. SWOT Analysis

Chances are you’ve heard of the SWOT Analysis before. This problem-solving method focuses on identifying strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats is a tried and tested method for both individuals and teams.

Start by creating a desired end state or outcome and bare this in mind – any process solving model is made more effective by knowing what you are moving towards. Create a quadrant made up of the four categories of a SWOT analysis and ask participants to generate ideas based on each of those quadrants.

Once you have those ideas assembled in their quadrants, cluster them together based on their affinity with other ideas. These clusters are then used to facilitate group conversations and move things forward. 

SWOT analysis   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   #meeting facilitation   The SWOT Analysis is a long-standing technique of looking at what we have, with respect to the desired end state, as well as what we could improve on. It gives us an opportunity to gauge approaching opportunities and dangers, and assess the seriousness of the conditions that affect our future. When we understand those conditions, we can influence what comes next.

14. Agreement-Certainty Matrix

Not every problem-solving approach is right for every challenge, and deciding on the right method for the challenge at hand is a key part of being an effective team.

The Agreement Certainty matrix helps teams align on the nature of the challenges facing them. By sorting problems from simple to chaotic, your team can understand what methods are suitable for each problem and what they can do to ensure effective results. 

If you are already using Liberating Structures techniques as part of your problem-solving strategy, the Agreement-Certainty Matrix can be an invaluable addition to your process. We’ve found it particularly if you are having issues with recurring problems in your organization and want to go deeper in understanding the root cause. 

Agreement-Certainty Matrix   #issue analysis   #liberating structures   #problem solving   You can help individuals or groups avoid the frequent mistake of trying to solve a problem with methods that are not adapted to the nature of their challenge. The combination of two questions makes it possible to easily sort challenges into four categories: simple, complicated, complex , and chaotic .  A problem is simple when it can be solved reliably with practices that are easy to duplicate.  It is complicated when experts are required to devise a sophisticated solution that will yield the desired results predictably.  A problem is complex when there are several valid ways to proceed but outcomes are not predictable in detail.  Chaotic is when the context is too turbulent to identify a path forward.  A loose analogy may be used to describe these differences: simple is like following a recipe, complicated like sending a rocket to the moon, complex like raising a child, and chaotic is like the game “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”  The Liberating Structures Matching Matrix in Chapter 5 can be used as the first step to clarify the nature of a challenge and avoid the mismatches between problems and solutions that are frequently at the root of chronic, recurring problems.

Organizing and charting a team’s progress can be important in ensuring its success. SQUID (Sequential Question and Insight Diagram) is a great model that allows a team to effectively switch between giving questions and answers and develop the skills they need to stay on track throughout the process. 

Begin with two different colored sticky notes – one for questions and one for answers – and with your central topic (the head of the squid) on the board. Ask the group to first come up with a series of questions connected to their best guess of how to approach the topic. Ask the group to come up with answers to those questions, fix them to the board and connect them with a line. After some discussion, go back to question mode by responding to the generated answers or other points on the board.

It’s rewarding to see a diagram grow throughout the exercise, and a completed SQUID can provide a visual resource for future effort and as an example for other teams.

SQUID   #gamestorming   #project planning   #issue analysis   #problem solving   When exploring an information space, it’s important for a group to know where they are at any given time. By using SQUID, a group charts out the territory as they go and can navigate accordingly. SQUID stands for Sequential Question and Insight Diagram.

16. Speed Boat

To continue with our nautical theme, Speed Boat is a short and sweet activity that can help a team quickly identify what employees, clients or service users might have a problem with and analyze what might be standing in the way of achieving a solution.

Methods that allow for a group to make observations, have insights and obtain those eureka moments quickly are invaluable when trying to solve complex problems.

In Speed Boat, the approach is to first consider what anchors and challenges might be holding an organization (or boat) back. Bonus points if you are able to identify any sharks in the water and develop ideas that can also deal with competitors!   

Speed Boat   #gamestorming   #problem solving   #action   Speedboat is a short and sweet way to identify what your employees or clients don’t like about your product/service or what’s standing in the way of a desired goal.

17. The Journalistic Six

Some of the most effective ways of solving problems is by encouraging teams to be more inclusive and diverse in their thinking.

Based on the six key questions journalism students are taught to answer in articles and news stories, The Journalistic Six helps create teams to see the whole picture. By using who, what, when, where, why, and how to facilitate the conversation and encourage creative thinking, your team can make sure that the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the are covered exhaustively and thoughtfully. Reporter’s notebook and dictaphone optional.

The Journalistic Six – Who What When Where Why How   #idea generation   #issue analysis   #problem solving   #online   #creative thinking   #remote-friendly   A questioning method for generating, explaining, investigating ideas.

18. LEGO Challenge

Now for an activity that is a little out of the (toy) box. LEGO Serious Play is a facilitation methodology that can be used to improve creative thinking and problem-solving skills. 

The LEGO Challenge includes giving each member of the team an assignment that is hidden from the rest of the group while they create a structure without speaking.

What the LEGO challenge brings to the table is a fun working example of working with stakeholders who might not be on the same page to solve problems. Also, it’s LEGO! Who doesn’t love LEGO! 

LEGO Challenge   #hyperisland   #team   A team-building activity in which groups must work together to build a structure out of LEGO, but each individual has a secret “assignment” which makes the collaborative process more challenging. It emphasizes group communication, leadership dynamics, conflict, cooperation, patience and problem solving strategy.

19. What, So What, Now What?

If not carefully managed, the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the problem-solving process can actually create more problems and misunderstandings.

The What, So What, Now What? problem-solving activity is designed to help collect insights and move forward while also eliminating the possibility of disagreement when it comes to identifying, clarifying, and analyzing organizational or work problems. 

Facilitation is all about bringing groups together so that might work on a shared goal and the best problem-solving strategies ensure that teams are aligned in purpose, if not initially in opinion or insight.

Throughout the three steps of this game, you give everyone on a team to reflect on a problem by asking what happened, why it is important, and what actions should then be taken. 

This can be a great activity for bringing our individual perceptions about a problem or challenge and contextualizing it in a larger group setting. This is one of the most important problem-solving skills you can bring to your organization.

W³ – What, So What, Now What?   #issue analysis   #innovation   #liberating structures   You can help groups reflect on a shared experience in a way that builds understanding and spurs coordinated action while avoiding unproductive conflict. It is possible for every voice to be heard while simultaneously sifting for insights and shaping new direction. Progressing in stages makes this practical—from collecting facts about What Happened to making sense of these facts with So What and finally to what actions logically follow with Now What . The shared progression eliminates most of the misunderstandings that otherwise fuel disagreements about what to do. Voila!

20. Journalists  

Problem analysis can be one of the most important and decisive stages of all problem-solving tools. Sometimes, a team can become bogged down in the details and are unable to move forward.

Journalists is an activity that can avoid a group from getting stuck in the problem identification or problem analysis stages of the process.

In Journalists, the group is invited to draft the front page of a fictional newspaper and figure out what stories deserve to be on the cover and what headlines those stories will have. By reframing how your problems and challenges are approached, you can help a team move productively through the process and be better prepared for the steps to follow.

Journalists   #vision   #big picture   #issue analysis   #remote-friendly   This is an exercise to use when the group gets stuck in details and struggles to see the big picture. Also good for defining a vision.

Problem-solving techniques for developing solutions 

The success of any problem-solving process can be measured by the solutions it produces. After you’ve defined the issue, explored existing ideas, and ideated, it’s time to narrow down to the correct solution.

Use these problem-solving techniques when you want to help your team find consensus, compare possible solutions, and move towards taking action on a particular problem.

• Improved Solutions
• Four-Step Sketch
• 15% Solutions
• How-Now-Wow matrix
• Impact Effort Matrix

21. Mindspin  

Brainstorming is part of the bread and butter of the problem-solving process and all problem-solving strategies benefit from getting ideas out and challenging a team to generate solutions quickly. 

With Mindspin, participants are encouraged not only to generate ideas but to do so under time constraints and by slamming down cards and passing them on. By doing multiple rounds, your team can begin with a free generation of possible solutions before moving on to developing those solutions and encouraging further ideation. 

This is one of our favorite problem-solving activities and can be great for keeping the energy up throughout the workshop. Remember the importance of helping people become engaged in the process – energizing problem-solving techniques like Mindspin can help ensure your team stays engaged and happy, even when the problems they’re coming together to solve are complex. 

MindSpin   #teampedia   #idea generation   #problem solving   #action   A fast and loud method to enhance brainstorming within a team. Since this activity has more than round ideas that are repetitive can be ruled out leaving more creative and innovative answers to the challenge.

22. Improved Solutions

After a team has successfully identified a problem and come up with a few solutions, it can be tempting to call the work of the problem-solving process complete. That said, the first solution is not necessarily the best, and by including a further review and reflection activity into your problem-solving model, you can ensure your group reaches the best possible result. 

One of a number of problem-solving games from Thiagi Group, Improved Solutions helps you go the extra mile and develop suggested solutions with close consideration and peer review. By supporting the discussion of several problems at once and by shifting team roles throughout, this problem-solving technique is a dynamic way of finding the best solution. 

Improved Solutions   #creativity   #thiagi   #problem solving   #action   #team   You can improve any solution by objectively reviewing its strengths and weaknesses and making suitable adjustments. In this creativity framegame, you improve the solutions to several problems. To maintain objective detachment, you deal with a different problem during each of six rounds and assume different roles (problem owner, consultant, basher, booster, enhancer, and evaluator) during each round. At the conclusion of the activity, each player ends up with two solutions to her problem.

23. Four Step Sketch

Creative thinking and visual ideation does not need to be confined to the opening stages of your problem-solving strategies. Exercises that include sketching and prototyping on paper can be effective at the solution finding and development stage of the process, and can be great for keeping a team engaged. 

By going from simple notes to a crazy 8s round that involves rapidly sketching 8 variations on their ideas before then producing a final solution sketch, the group is able to iterate quickly and visually. Problem-solving techniques like Four-Step Sketch are great if you have a group of different thinkers and want to change things up from a more textual or discussion-based approach.

Four-Step Sketch   #design sprint   #innovation   #idea generation   #remote-friendly   The four-step sketch is an exercise that helps people to create well-formed concepts through a structured process that includes: Review key information Start design work on paper,  Consider multiple variations , Create a detailed solution . This exercise is preceded by a set of other activities allowing the group to clarify the challenge they want to solve. See how the Four Step Sketch exercise fits into a Design Sprint

24. 15% Solutions

Some problems are simpler than others and with the right problem-solving activities, you can empower people to take immediate actions that can help create organizational change. 

Part of the liberating structures toolkit, 15% solutions is a problem-solving technique that focuses on finding and implementing solutions quickly. A process of iterating and making small changes quickly can help generate momentum and an appetite for solving complex problems.

Problem-solving strategies can live and die on whether people are onboard. Getting some quick wins is a great way of getting people behind the process.   

It can be extremely empowering for a team to realize that problem-solving techniques can be deployed quickly and easily and delineate between things they can positively impact and those things they cannot change. 

15% Solutions   #action   #liberating structures   #remote-friendly   You can reveal the actions, however small, that everyone can do immediately. At a minimum, these will create momentum, and that may make a BIG difference.  15% Solutions show that there is no reason to wait around, feel powerless, or fearful. They help people pick it up a level. They get individuals and the group to focus on what is within their discretion instead of what they cannot change.  With a very simple question, you can flip the conversation to what can be done and find solutions to big problems that are often distributed widely in places not known in advance. Shifting a few grains of sand may trigger a landslide and change the whole landscape.

25. How-Now-Wow Matrix

The problem-solving process is often creative, as complex problems usually require a change of thinking and creative response in order to find the best solutions. While it’s common for the first stages to encourage creative thinking, groups can often gravitate to familiar solutions when it comes to the end of the process. 

When selecting solutions, you don’t want to lose your creative energy! The How-Now-Wow Matrix from Gamestorming is a great problem-solving activity that enables a group to stay creative and think out of the box when it comes to selecting the right solution for a given problem.

Problem-solving techniques that encourage creative thinking and the ideation and selection of new solutions can be the most effective in organisational change. Give the How-Now-Wow Matrix a go, and not just for how pleasant it is to say out loud. 

How-Now-Wow Matrix   #gamestorming   #idea generation   #remote-friendly   When people want to develop new ideas, they most often think out of the box in the brainstorming or divergent phase. However, when it comes to convergence, people often end up picking ideas that are most familiar to them. This is called a ‘creative paradox’ or a ‘creadox’. The How-Now-Wow matrix is an idea selection tool that breaks the creadox by forcing people to weigh each idea on 2 parameters.

26. Impact and Effort Matrix

All problem-solving techniques hope to not only find solutions to a given problem or challenge but to find the best solution. When it comes to finding a solution, groups are invited to put on their decision-making hats and really think about how a proposed idea would work in practice. 

The Impact and Effort Matrix is one of the problem-solving techniques that fall into this camp, empowering participants to first generate ideas and then categorize them into a 2×2 matrix based on impact and effort.

Activities that invite critical thinking while remaining simple are invaluable. Use the Impact and Effort Matrix to move from ideation and towards evaluating potential solutions before then committing to them. 

Impact and Effort Matrix   #gamestorming   #decision making   #action   #remote-friendly   In this decision-making exercise, possible actions are mapped based on two factors: effort required to implement and potential impact. Categorizing ideas along these lines is a useful technique in decision making, as it obliges contributors to balance and evaluate suggested actions before committing to them.

27. Dotmocracy

If you’ve followed each of the problem-solving steps with your group successfully, you should move towards the end of your process with heaps of possible solutions developed with a specific problem in mind. But how do you help a group go from ideation to putting a solution into action? 

Dotmocracy – or Dot Voting -is a tried and tested method of helping a team in the problem-solving process make decisions and put actions in place with a degree of oversight and consensus. 

One of the problem-solving techniques that should be in every facilitator’s toolbox, Dot Voting is fast and effective and can help identify the most popular and best solutions and help bring a group to a decision effectively. 

Dotmocracy   #action   #decision making   #group prioritization   #hyperisland   #remote-friendly   Dotmocracy is a simple method for group prioritization or decision-making. It is not an activity on its own, but a method to use in processes where prioritization or decision-making is the aim. The method supports a group to quickly see which options are most popular or relevant. The options or ideas are written on post-its and stuck up on a wall for the whole group to see. Each person votes for the options they think are the strongest, and that information is used to inform a decision.

All facilitators know that warm-ups and icebreakers are useful for any workshop or group process. Problem-solving workshops are no different.

Use these problem-solving techniques to warm up a group and prepare them for the rest of the process. Activating your group by tapping into some of the top problem-solving skills can be one of the best ways to see great outcomes from your session.

• Check-in/Check-out
• Doodling Together
• Show and Tell
• Constellations
• Draw a Tree

28. Check-in / Check-out

Solid processes are planned from beginning to end, and the best facilitators know that setting the tone and establishing a safe, open environment can be integral to a successful problem-solving process.

Check-in / Check-out is a great way to begin and/or bookend a problem-solving workshop. Checking in to a session emphasizes that everyone will be seen, heard, and expected to contribute. 

If you are running a series of meetings, setting a consistent pattern of checking in and checking out can really help your team get into a groove. We recommend this opening-closing activity for small to medium-sized groups though it can work with large groups if they’re disciplined!

Check-in / Check-out   #team   #opening   #closing   #hyperisland   #remote-friendly   Either checking-in or checking-out is a simple way for a team to open or close a process, symbolically and in a collaborative way. Checking-in/out invites each member in a group to be present, seen and heard, and to express a reflection or a feeling. Checking-in emphasizes presence, focus and group commitment; checking-out emphasizes reflection and symbolic closure.

29. Doodling Together  

Thinking creatively and not being afraid to make suggestions are important problem-solving skills for any group or team, and warming up by encouraging these behaviors is a great way to start. 

Doodling Together is one of our favorite creative ice breaker games – it’s quick, effective, and fun and can make all following problem-solving steps easier by encouraging a group to collaborate visually. By passing cards and adding additional items as they go, the workshop group gets into a groove of co-creation and idea development that is crucial to finding solutions to problems. 

Doodling Together   #collaboration   #creativity   #teamwork   #fun   #team   #visual methods   #energiser   #icebreaker   #remote-friendly   Create wild, weird and often funny postcards together & establish a group’s creative confidence.

30. Show and Tell

You might remember some version of Show and Tell from being a kid in school and it’s a great problem-solving activity to kick off a session.

Asking participants to prepare a little something before a workshop by bringing an object for show and tell can help them warm up before the session has even begun! Games that include a physical object can also help encourage early engagement before moving onto more big-picture thinking.

By asking your participants to tell stories about why they chose to bring a particular item to the group, you can help teams see things from new perspectives and see both differences and similarities in the way they approach a topic. Great groundwork for approaching a problem-solving process as a team! 

Show and Tell   #gamestorming   #action   #opening   #meeting facilitation   Show and Tell taps into the power of metaphors to reveal players’ underlying assumptions and associations around a topic The aim of the game is to get a deeper understanding of stakeholders’ perspectives on anything—a new project, an organizational restructuring, a shift in the company’s vision or team dynamic.

31. Constellations

Who doesn’t love stars? Constellations is a great warm-up activity for any workshop as it gets people up off their feet, energized, and ready to engage in new ways with established topics. It’s also great for showing existing beliefs, biases, and patterns that can come into play as part of your session.

Using warm-up games that help build trust and connection while also allowing for non-verbal responses can be great for easing people into the problem-solving process and encouraging engagement from everyone in the group. Constellations is great in large spaces that allow for movement and is definitely a practical exercise to allow the group to see patterns that are otherwise invisible. 

Constellations   #trust   #connection   #opening   #coaching   #patterns   #system   Individuals express their response to a statement or idea by standing closer or further from a central object. Used with teams to reveal system, hidden patterns, perspectives.

32. Draw a Tree

Problem-solving games that help raise group awareness through a central, unifying metaphor can be effective ways to warm-up a group in any problem-solving model.

Draw a Tree is a simple warm-up activity you can use in any group and which can provide a quick jolt of energy. Start by asking your participants to draw a tree in just 45 seconds – they can choose whether it will be abstract or realistic. 

Once the timer is up, ask the group how many people included the roots of the tree and use this as a means to discuss how we can ignore important parts of any system simply because they are not visible.

All problem-solving strategies are made more effective by thinking of problems critically and by exposing things that may not normally come to light. Warm-up games like Draw a Tree are great in that they quickly demonstrate some key problem-solving skills in an accessible and effective way.

Draw a Tree   #thiagi   #opening   #perspectives   #remote-friendly   With this game you can raise awarness about being more mindful, and aware of the environment we live in.

Each step of the problem-solving workshop benefits from an intelligent deployment of activities, games, and techniques. Bringing your session to an effective close helps ensure that solutions are followed through on and that you also celebrate what has been achieved.

Here are some problem-solving activities you can use to effectively close a workshop or meeting and ensure the great work you’ve done can continue afterward.

• One Breath Feedback
• Who What When Matrix
• Response Cards

How do I conclude a problem-solving process?

All good things must come to an end. With the bulk of the work done, it can be tempting to conclude your workshop swiftly and without a moment to debrief and align. This can be problematic in that it doesn’t allow your team to fully process the results or reflect on the process.

At the end of an effective session, your team will have gone through a process that, while productive, can be exhausting. It’s important to give your group a moment to take a breath, ensure that they are clear on future actions, and provide short feedback before leaving the space. 

The primary purpose of any problem-solving method is to generate solutions and then implement them. Be sure to take the opportunity to ensure everyone is aligned and ready to effectively implement the solutions you produced in the workshop.

Remember that every process can be improved and by giving a short moment to collect feedback in the session, you can further refine your problem-solving methods and see further success in the future too.

33. One Breath Feedback

Maintaining attention and focus during the closing stages of a problem-solving workshop can be tricky and so being concise when giving feedback can be important. It’s easy to incur “death by feedback” should some team members go on for too long sharing their perspectives in a quick feedback round. 

One Breath Feedback is a great closing activity for workshops. You give everyone an opportunity to provide feedback on what they’ve done but only in the space of a single breath. This keeps feedback short and to the point and means that everyone is encouraged to provide the most important piece of feedback to them. 

One breath feedback   #closing   #feedback   #action   This is a feedback round in just one breath that excels in maintaining attention: each participants is able to speak during just one breath … for most people that’s around 20 to 25 seconds … unless of course you’ve been a deep sea diver in which case you’ll be able to do it for longer.

34. Who What When Matrix 

Matrices feature as part of many effective problem-solving strategies and with good reason. They are easily recognizable, simple to use, and generate results.

The Who What When Matrix is a great tool to use when closing your problem-solving session by attributing a who, what and when to the actions and solutions you have decided upon. The resulting matrix is a simple, easy-to-follow way of ensuring your team can move forward. 

Great solutions can’t be enacted without action and ownership. Your problem-solving process should include a stage for allocating tasks to individuals or teams and creating a realistic timeframe for those solutions to be implemented or checked out. Use this method to keep the solution implementation process clear and simple for all involved. 

Who/What/When Matrix   #gamestorming   #action   #project planning   With Who/What/When matrix, you can connect people with clear actions they have defined and have committed to.

35. Response cards

Group discussion can comprise the bulk of most problem-solving activities and by the end of the process, you might find that your team is talked out! 

Providing a means for your team to give feedback with short written notes can ensure everyone is head and can contribute without the need to stand up and talk. Depending on the needs of the group, giving an alternative can help ensure everyone can contribute to your problem-solving model in the way that makes the most sense for them.

Response Cards is a great way to close a workshop if you are looking for a gentle warm-down and want to get some swift discussion around some of the feedback that is raised. 

Response Cards   #debriefing   #closing   #structured sharing   #questions and answers   #thiagi   #action   It can be hard to involve everyone during a closing of a session. Some might stay in the background or get unheard because of louder participants. However, with the use of Response Cards, everyone will be involved in providing feedback or clarify questions at the end of a session.

Save time and effort discovering the right solutions

A structured problem solving process is a surefire way of solving tough problems, discovering creative solutions and driving organizational change. But how can you design for successful outcomes?

With SessionLab, it’s easy to design engaging workshops that deliver results. Drag, drop and reorder blocks  to build your agenda. When you make changes or update your agenda, your session  timing   adjusts automatically , saving you time on manual adjustments.

Collaborating with stakeholders or clients? Share your agenda with a single click and collaborate in real-time. No more sending documents back and forth over email.

Explore  how to use SessionLab  to design effective problem solving workshops or  watch this five minute video  to see the planner in action!

Over to you

The problem-solving process can often be as complicated and multifaceted as the problems they are set-up to solve. With the right problem-solving techniques and a mix of creative exercises designed to guide discussion and generate purposeful ideas, we hope we’ve given you the tools to find the best solutions as simply and easily as possible.

Is there a problem-solving technique that you are missing here? Do you have a favorite activity or method you use when facilitating? Let us know in the comments below, we’d love to hear from you! 

thank you very much for these excellent techniques

Certainly wonderful article, very detailed. Shared!

Your list of techniques for problem solving can be helpfully extended by adding TRIZ to the list of techniques. TRIZ has 40 problem solving techniques derived from methods inventros and patent holders used to get new patents. About 10-12 are general approaches. many organization sponsor classes in TRIZ that are used to solve business problems or general organiztational problems. You can take a look at TRIZ and dwonload a free internet booklet to see if you feel it shound be included per your selection process.

Leave a Comment Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Going from a mere idea to a workshop that delivers results for your clients can feel like a daunting task. In this piece, we will shine a light on all the work behind the scenes and help you learn how to plan a workshop from start to finish. On a good day, facilitation can feel like effortless magic, but that is mostly the result of backstage work, foresight, and a lot of careful planning. Read on to learn a step-by-step approach to breaking the process of planning a workshop into small, manageable chunks.  The flow starts with the first meeting with a client to define the purposes of a workshop.…

How does learning work? A clever 9-year-old once told me: “I know I am learning something new when I am surprised.” The science of adult learning tells us that, in order to learn new skills (which, unsurprisingly, is harder for adults to do than kids) grown-ups need to first get into a specific headspace.  In a business, this approach is often employed in a training session where employees learn new skills or work on professional development. But how do you ensure your training is effective? In this guide, we'll explore how to create an effective training session plan and run engaging training sessions. As team leader, project manager, or consultant,…

Facilitation is more and more recognized as a key component of work, as employers and society are faced with bigger and more complex problems and ideas. From facilitating meetings to big, multi-stakeholder strategy development workshops, the facilitator's skillset is more and more in demand. In this article, we will go through a list of the best online facilitation resources, including newsletters, podcasts, communities, and 10 free toolkits you can bookmark and read to upskill and improve your facilitation practice. When designing activities and workshops, you'll probably start by using templates and methods you are familiar with. Soon enough, you'll need to expand your range and look for facilitation methods and…

Design your next workshop with SessionLab

Join the 150,000 facilitators using SessionLab

Sign up for free

What Is Problem Solving?

Problem solving is a daily practice inside and outside of the workplace. Understanding the process of solving a problem allows you to work towards a solution quickly and effectively.

There are 4 basic steps in solving a problem:

1. Defining the problem

2. Generating alternatives

3. Evaluating and selecting alternatives

4. Implementing solutions

Learn more about each of these steps here.

Read More From the Editors

Submit an article to Wisdom Café

Find out how and learn about the benefits!

Sign up for our Wisdom Café Wednesdays newsletter!

Previous newsletters.

• See all issues here
• June 12, 2024
• June 5, 2024
• May 29, 2024
• May 23, 2024

More Learning Resources

• lol Badge Feed
• win Badge Feed
• trending Badge Feed

Browse links

• © 2024 BuzzFeed, Inc
• Consent Preferences
• Accessibility Statement

Beauty + Personal Care

Sports + Fitness

We hope you love our recommendations! Some may have been sent as samples, but all were independently selected by our editors. Just FYI, BuzzFeed and its publishing partners may collect a share of sales and/or other compensation from the links on this page.

There’s A Genuinely Good Chance That You Haven’t Seen These 37 Problem-Solving Kitchen Products

Go on. Check them out and let me know if I'm wrong.

BuzzFeed Staff

1. A Le Creuset magnetic trivet  if you're always dangerously juggling hot plates. This GENIUS invention allows you to simply hover a hot pot over the trivet and — BAM! — the trivet will stick to the bottom, and you can place the pot on any nearby, stable surface. Gone are the days of frantically shouting, "Can someone help me in here?!" when your hands are full.

Promising review: "The wood is really super nice, smooth, and clean. It sticks great to the pan, and the silicone rings add great shock absorption, so it doesn't make a lot of noise when I send down my heavy-ass 13-some-inch skillet! It cleans off easily; I've only used it a handful of times, but it still looks brand new! A little pricey, but it's a premium kitchen thing. I recommend don't settle for something cheaper." — K. Lujan

Get it from Amazon for   $49.95 .

2. A wineglass clip  for securing your delicate glassware in the dishwasher so you don't have to wash them by hand anymore. Score!

Wine Wash Co. is a small business based in Houston, Texas.

Promising review: "These work with all of our wineglasses, including my Riedels, thin champagne flutes, and crystal wineglasses. Our KitchenAid dishwasher came with a wine rack, but it didn't hold our taller wineglasses, so this little gadget did the trick. Very easy to use. I keep them clipped in between cycles now that I’ve found a good spot for them. Extra helpful for dinner party clean up. Cheers to never washing wineglasses by hand again!" — Amazon Customer

Get a four-pack from Amazon for $15 .

3. A plant-based  cooking oil solidifier  (you might remember it from Shark Tank !) because it makes getting rid of leftover grease easier than whatever method you're using right now. Simply sprinkle the powder in your remaining oil while it's still hot, let it cool, and then scoop it into the trash.

FryAway is a woman-owned small business started by Laura Lady, who loves both cooking and being kind to the planet. They donate 1% of revenue to nonprofits focused on water conservation.

Promising review: "Honestly, I didn’t know if this would work; waiting for it to cool down made me nervous, but once it was at room temperature, it was solid. It popped out of the fryer so nicely. Worth every penny." — Emma

Get it from Amazon for $12.99  (available in three styles).

4. A pack of  towel clips  that'll prevent kids and pets from pulling down the towel. Or, maybe you have neither of those things, yet your hand and kitchen towels  always  end up on the ground.

Promising review: "This clip is amazing. No more towels falling on the floor. It was becoming a routine thing since my cat thinks it's fun to pull the kitchen towels off the oven. Not now, bad kitty! Great product...wish I had bought one sooner!" — Joanna

Get a three-pack from Amazon for $12.99 .

5. A dishwasher-safe  wine-saving carafe  so you can enjoy a bottle for up to 7 days after uncorking.

This is designed for nonsparkling  wines.

Promising review: "I never know how much of a bottle I want; the nice part about this wine storage is that it’s easy, it’s beautiful, it’s clear, so you know how much is left, and it’s super easy to clean . As a busy mom, sometimes I want 1 glass, sometimes I want 1.5, LOL. This makes it both fun and easy to keep the wine fresh! " — Evan

Get it from Amazon for $49.97+ (available in five colors).

6. A cookware set with detachable handles  to replace the clunky pots and pans that are currently (and very inefficiently, I might add!) taking up basically all the storage space in your cabinets. The removable handle attaches to all pieces and then you can pop it off and stick it in a separate drawer while you neatly stack the pots and pans in half the space your old set needed.

This set includes one removable handle, two frypans (9'' and 10''), one saucepan (2 quarts), and a silicone lid glass lid.

Promising review: "This set has been a dream! With my kids helping with dishes, this set has made the pots/pans cabinet a non-issue. Before, we had to stack the pans together, but they’d get stacked wonky because of the handles. With this set, we keep the handles in the utensil drawer and the rest stacked together. I typically cook without the handles attached (depending on the meal, of course) and clip on once complete to move the pan wherever it needs to go. I rinse the handle of any debris and put it away. Grab the storage lid and plop the pan directly into the fridge. This set has made a huge difference in my desire to cook, as the hassle from start to finish is a fraction of what it was with my old set! " — Brooke

Get a five-piece set from Amazon for $39.99+  (available in two color combinations).

7. A dirty dishwasher indicator  if you find yourself thinking, "What's it gonna be today?" when you open your dishwasher. If your household doesn't consistently flip the clean/dirty dishwasher magnets, try this instead! It sits inside your dishwasher, so you know if dishes are clean or dirty depending on whether the container has water in it.

Promising review: "I have been looking for a dishwasher done indicator to use on a stainless steel front (no magnets). This is the BOMB. NO moving parts. No flimsy clips. No tape, glue, or magnets. Simply slip it over the edge of the bottom basket, and you are good. The sturdy clip does not flex, so there is no wear and tear. The action of the washer fills up the tube. DONE. The first time you open the door after washing, tip out the tube, and you are ready again. Hooray...something that works." — MRMACHINE of Raleigh

Get it from Amazon for $12.99 .

8. A pack of reusable toaster bags for when a 2 a.m. craving for a grilled cheese hits but you don't want to dirty a pan. Just plop your bread and cheese in the bag and then in the toaster and you're minutes away from ooey gooey cheesy goodness. And they're great for helping prevent cross contamination if someone in your house has food allergies.

These reusable bags are good for 50–100 washes and can hold pizza, chicken nuggets, and pastries.

Promising review: "I love using these! Since I live alone, I don't like having to dirty a skillet to make just one sandwich. This makes a great sandwich in the toaster without any muss or fuss. They're easy to clean; just wipe it out or use a little soap and water if needed. The nonstick feature is very helpful." — Branwynmars

Get a set of four from Amazon for $4.70 .

9. A foil pan protector  because your one job is to bring a dish to the family potluck, but your flimsy foil pans are doing their darnedest to leak everywhere. Enter the Fancy Panz. Simply plop your foil pan inside it (there's a riser so you can use it for both shallow and deep foil pans), and you'll have peace of mind knowing your pasta salad isn't sloshing around in the backseat leaking dressing all over your car. You can even stack 'em — that's how sturdy they are.

Promising review: "Skeptical yet very satisfied!! I was a little skeptical, but it was worth it. Love it! No collapsing to worry about, so less mess, and I can stack on top without it getting smushed!! " — Jennifer Miles

Get it from Amazon for $25.99  (available in nine colors).

10. A cast-iron scrubber  that'll lift leftover food grit — not the pan's seasoning. This'll save you a heck of a lot of time now that you're not trying to scrub away stubborn stains with a fragile sponge.

Because this scrubber is metal, you should avoid using it on nonstick pans as it can scratch and damage the surface.

Promising review: "I love the product. I wish I had known about it when I first got my cast-iron skillet over a year ago. It is really easy to use and did a great job getting the crud off of the skillet without stripping the seasoning away and it was fast. I find myself using my cast-iron more frequently since purchasing this product because I no longer dread the cleanup process. If you have cast-iron cookware then you need one of these babies. I will definitely recommend it to others." — KeCaRi

Get it from Amazon for $17.99 . This customer review is long but it's full of great tips if you end up purchasing this scrubber.

11. A set of refrigerator drip catchers  so there isn't always  a puddle in the water tray...and the floor in front of your fridge. They sit securely in the tray thanks to their magnetic design.

Promising review: "This pad fits perfectly in our Samsung four-door in-door ice/water dispenser. Catches the occasional drips and matches the color of the dispenser perfectly. The four-pack lets you wash one and place another one into service immediately." — Amazon Customer

Get a two-pack for $12.93+ (available in three colors and packs of four).

12. A 2-in-1 kitchen scale and measuring cup  to reduce the number of dirty dishes you create and ensure your measurements are accurate.

Promising review: "This scale with a built-in cup is the best thing for my baking tools. No more whipping out 1,000,000 cups. Also, [rather than] always trying to figure out grams or cups, now I just press a button, and it tells me I love this." — Corin lonigro

Get it from Amazon for $20.29+ (available in three colors).

13. A  Souper Cube  if weeknight dinners take you no less than an hour and a half to make (and that's not counting cleanup time!). This silicone freezing tray stores perfectly portioned soups, stews, sauces, and more so you can meal prep in bulk over the weekend and then freeze it in these trays. It's so easy to quickly grab them as needed and defrost them for an easy meal.

Each tray has four fill lines — 1/2 cup, 1 cup, 125 mL, and 250 mL — which is ideal for people who like to portion their food.

You may remember Souper Cube from Shark Tank  (Lori invested in the company!). This small business was started by four friends who loved soup but hated food waste.

Promising review: "So happy that I found these. I’m the only one in my household who enjoys soup year-round. Have you ever tried to make homemade soup for one? I say it’s impossible! But no longer. I can brew up the stock pot with bone broth or my favorite home soup. Fill up my Souper Cubes, freeze, pop out, store my goodies in a freezer bag, and I’m ready for the next batch!" — Debbie R. Texas

Get it from Amazon for $19.95  (available in three colors and in a two-pack).

Check out my colleague's  Souper Cubes review !

14. A 6-in-1 kitchen tool  for replacing a ton of kitchen utensils, which means fewer things for you to wash! Use it as a whisk, egg separator, slotted spoon, colander, masher, or grinder/grater.

Promising review: "This is quite possibly my favorite new kitchen gadget. It is so sturdy, well-made, and versatile. I will be buying more to add to gifts for friends who are having bridal showers and housewarming parties." — Nancy Holmes

Get it from Amazon for $8.99 .

15. A Spoon Buddy utensil rest and holder  because not only does it help keep your countertops clean when you need to put down a dirty spoon or spatula, but it also functions as a measuring cup and a jar gripper. 

Promising review: "This product makes it easy to keep your spoon close and prevents getting a mess from drips on the stove." — John H. Parton

16. A lasagna trio pan that'll help you prepare meals for everyone, regardless of their dietary restrictions. Mamma mia! *insert chef finger kiss*

Promising review: "In a family of six, there are always SOME who don't like what everyone else is eating. This is a pan where making three different kinds of lasagna doesn't require much if any, more effort than making a single lasagna with the same dimensions.  It takes the same amount of time to layer the noodles and the same amount of time to build the things...but you have three different builds to satisfy those darned picky kids. Or hey, go adult gourmet in a way that Olive Garden cannot. What's fun with this pan is it's not just lasagna. I tried making bread with it to good effect. Yeah, the loaves looked a little weird, but I DON'T CARE. I did it, and that's all. It gives me what I prize most in cooking gear...versatility. Easy to clean, certainly...and nonstick, though that requires a little care (use wood, not metal utensils). With proper care and feeding, these are made to last pretty much forever. I love it." — J. Tant

Get it from Amazon for $22.99 .

17. Some lemon wedge wraps  so you can squeeze your citrus with reckless abandon and never worry that you'll find a seed in your drink or dish.

Promising review: "I love lemonade and lemon juice drizzled over my baked fish, but I hate those slippery little seeds. These lemon covers are perfect. They stop me from calling the seeds dirty names because they are sometimes hard to pick up. I use them all the time." — Wanda C.

Get a 12-pack from Amazon for $6.13 .

18. A salad sling  (from Shark Tank !) to dry greens, lettuce, and herbs without a salad spinner. Yep! Just wrap 'em in this green microfiber cloth and start slinging it around your kitchen — just don't let go or your romaine will go flying.

Promising review: "Don't even ask me what my previous process was for drying my greens because this one takes the cake ! It works effectively at drying your greens in seconds and then you just throw it in the wash once you're done, which frees up space in your dishwasher if you're used to using a salad spinner. Bonus use: When I was done drying the greens, I had other vegetables that I needed to wash, so I placed them on the Salad Sling and dabbed them dry before chopping. Since the waterproof liner traps moisture, it worked much better than an un-environmentally friendly paper towel or annoyingly thin dishtowel. I highly recommend this for people who are sick of salad spinning and using paper towels/thin dishtowels to dry their greens/veggies." — Kristen N.

Get it from Amazon for $23.99 .

19. A set of toss-and-chop salad tongs  if you don't want to waste time pulling out a whole chopping board (that you will have to clean later) to transform your romaine into bite-sized pieces. Scissor supremacy! Use these blades to slice your greens as well as your toppings: eggs, tomatoes, radishes, cucumbers, pieces of chicken, olives, apples, and more.

Promising review : "Love these! I hate big leafy salads, so I bought these, and they're perfect for chopping greens into bites. I also use them to quickly chop cherry tomatoes, onions, and other veggies. VERY nice quality." — asoon

Get it from Amazon for $18.76 . 

20. An onion holder  for a more secure grip and more evenly sized slices of onions, tomatoes, lemons, eggs, potatoes, and fruits. You can even use it as a meat tenderizer!

Promising review: "I’ve used this on different fruits and veggies and love it! I have a mandolin slicer and a food processor that slices, but it is easier just to use this tool . Nice and even slices of tomatoes and onions every time !" — Bekkster

Get it from Amazon for $9.98 .

21. A set of modular sheet pan dividers  because no, you don't need to suffer through veggies that are burned to a crisp because you had to leave the pan in the oven to make sure the salmon was fully cooked. With this handy system, you can just remove individual trays when the ingredients are fully cooked.

Promising review: "Brilliant. 100,000% Recommend them! It lets me separate veggies by how long they take to cook so they are all ready at the same time and nothing is over/undercooked. I love these cheat sheets. They are a great tool for my kitchen. " — yule

Get a set of four from Amazon for $29.99  (lids available for purchase separately). 

22. A set of  oven liners  that'll catch crumbs  before  they can permanently attach themselves to your oven and create a big freaking mess you'll spend hours cleaning. Raise your hand if you hate cleaning your oven. Great. Now take that same hand and click the "add to cart" button.

Promising review: "I got tired of cleaning the bottom of my oven out after every drip and spill or running the 'oven clean' option, which uses up so much energy and makes my house HOT during the process. I used to have foil on the bottom of the oven to help with spills, and that improved things greatly — but then you have to replace the foil after a while. I had to cut them to size, which was easy to do with a simple pair of household scissors. Then I placed them in the oven ( they look nice! ), and I waited for them to get messy. I cooked something super messy and finally needed to clean the liner. It was SO easy ; I put it in the sink and used my sink sprayer, and everything immediately slid right off the liner. No problem! I have a double oven, so I was glad this pack came with more than one. I have one in each oven and one on standby in case I need it. I know that having a dirty oven isn't the worst thing in the world, but if it matters to you, try these! " — Hpg

Get a set of three from Amazon for $13.99 .

23. A super-convenient tofu press so you can squeeze out as much water as possible from your tofu (preventing it from getting soggy and also helping it better absorb yummy marinades and spices) without needing to come back every 30 minutes to place a heavier book on top of your paper towel–wrapped tofu block.

Plus, all the water collects at the bottom, so there's no mess and no need for paper towels.

Promising review: "I've been eating tofu quite often. What I needed was a way to improve the texture. Even the 'extra firm' was too mushy. I searched through the many types of tofu presses and found this one. I like that there are only three parts, and everything is easy to clean. The tofu comes out perfect every time and doesn't take long at all. By the next day, it's ready to use. Even a few hours will do the trick!" — Margaret B.

Get it from Amazon for $21.99 .

24. A pouring chute  to save you a lot of frustration when you're baking. Both wet and dry ingredients slide down seamlessly and into the mixing bowl instead of ending up on the counter...which you will now have to clean. 

Promising review: "I have struggled with the pouring shields that came with my KitchenAid and Cuisinart stand mixers. They were messy and hard to use. I purchased this and forgot I had it! LOL. This weekend, I have been making tons of cookies and tried the New Metro chute out, and OMG! It works great. No mess. The flour or liquids go into the bowl and nowhere else. It's sturdy and super easy to use and clean. I highly recommend it. It's a quality product." — Retep

Get it from Amazon for $22.31 (also available in a two-pack).

25. A pair of silicone stands  if you don't wash your emotional support water bottle as much as you should because it's annoying how long it takes for it to dry. These provide a sturdy base so your bottles don't tip over while also allowing air to flow to ensure your bottles fully dry.

These are designed to work with a variety of brands including Stanley, Hydro Flask, Owala, Yeti, and more.

Promising review: "I wash my thermal cups by hand and found these individual drying racks to be helpful for getting my cups dry quickly and without taking up space in my drying rack . They fit a wide variety of thermal cup sizes. [They are made of] pliable rubber and don't allow the cups to tip over while drying. They vent air well and allow for excess water to sluice off the inside of the cup and drain." — Sonya Groves

Get a two-pack from Amazon for $8.88 (also available in four- and six-packs).

26. An air fryer basket  you can use in the oven for whipping up crispy, crunchy foods that *taste* like they came straight from the air fryer...no air fryer needed! It's great for people who 1) don't want to shell out for an air fryer (esp. one that's bulky/an appliance you're not sure you'll use), or 2) want to cook larger quantities of food than their air fryer can currently hold. 

Promising review: "I wanted to simulate air-frying in a countertop or conventional oven. This product does the trick, more so in my conventional oven; it has a 'speed-bake' feature that simulates a confection oven. It’s small enough to fit in my countertop oven. Love that the tray catches drips, and it doubles up nicely as a cookie sheet for small batches of chocolate chips! Cleanup is a dream. I cook-spray it prior to use, then treat it as cast iron while cleaning it (i.e., very hot water and a scrubby sponge — no soap on the baking surface). I use a little soapy water on the rim and 'feet,' so there is no oily buildup there. (I also foil or parchment paper line the drip sheet to make cleanup that much easier, but that’s just me. I’m pretty sure it’s not necessary as the non-stick finish seems pretty danged good so far.)" — Joanna Aislinn

Get it from Amazon for $19.89+  (available in three sizes).

27. A pair of  meat shredder claws  because pulling apart pounds of pork with two measly forks is not efficient or fun. 

Promising review: "I just made 26 pounds of pork butt for a large family gathering. Several months ago, I did the same thing, and my husband and I shredded it together with four forks. We scorched our hands repeatedly, and it took over 70 minutes. I looked at several shredding forks and settled in on these and I sure am glad I did! They are solid, light, and sharp. They are not hollow on the back side, so meat doesn't get stuck in them. It didn't take long to get the hang of them. They double as handles to pick the large 8.5 pounds of butts, which was very nice. They really do become extensions of your hands! I had read reviews that said that these don't let you get meat shredded finely, but that was certainly not my experience. Although I haven't used them on other sorts of meat yet, this pork was fall-off-the-bone tender, and it shredded very finely for me. And it did it so fast! I shredded all 26 pounds by myself in less than 30 minutes and didn't burn my hands once.  I wish I hadn't waited so long to get these...It really does beat the two-fork system!" — L. Smith

Get it from Amazon for $14.99  (available in four colors).

28. A bagel knife  that'll ensure a quick and even slice. Raise your hand if every time you cut a bagel, you have one side that's 1-inch thick while the other side is barely 1/2-inch thick. Great! Now take that hand and add this to your cart.

Promising review: "I bought this for my husband, who is the "official" bagel cutter in the house. He doesn't like bagel guillotines and our knives are too sharp and present an issue with accidental finger cuts. So far this has worked on varied girth bagels with ease. This is a great item!" — JW

Get it from Amazon for $17.99 .

29. A pizza storage container  so you don't lose the *entire* second shelf in your fridge to a pizza box. This expandable container grows to hold up to *5* slices of 'za, and creates an airtight lid that keeps your cheesy, pepperoni-y from getting stale or soggy. AND! The dividers prevent your pieces from sticking together while also serving as plates when you want to microwave your pizza.

Promising review: "I love this! I used the pizza pack to store four slices. They fit great and they were full-size slices. I also used the pizza trays included to warm up the pizza in the microwave. It did a pretty good job of getting the slices hot. I love the collapsible aspect. Great for easy storage. Great product, really good price, and made in the USA!!" — Tom Angiolillo

Get it from Amazon for $24.99  (available in eight colors).

30. A portable range hood  with five activated charcoal filters designed to suck up the odors, oils, and smoke that stink up your kitchen after cooking bacon, fish, and other delicious-yet-fragrant foods. It's also a great option for apartment dwellers or folks without a range hood.

Promising review: "This works exactly as stated and well. We just moved into a new place with no vent hood, so when we cook things like bacon on the stovetop we were worried about all the smoke and smell. This thing sucks it right away and works exactly as intended! " — Jennifer Billie

Get it from Amazon for $199.99 (available in four colors).

31. A 2-in-1 garlic press  if you're the type of person who's going to add three cloves (minimum!) when the recipe calls for two. This press slices *and* minces, so you don't need two separate gadgets.

Promising review: "I have carpal tunnel, so I like to minimize straining my muscles. I also have pretty small hands. This garlic press is really comfortable to use, albeit a little bit annoying to clean. I recently tried using a friend's garlic press, and the amount of force I needed to use really hurt my hands and wrists. If you've been avoiding getting a garlic press because you fear you lack wrist strength, this is the product for you. I'm never mincing or slicing garlic again. " — Jamie Sarmiento

Get it from Amazon for   $14.99 .

32. A pack of sink sound dampeners  for absorbing noise so the sound of running water or simply setting a pot in the sink to be cleaned doesn't make you cringe.

Promising review: "This product took the annoying ring out of my stainless sink and changed it to a dull thud. Just what I expected. Pads were easy to install and haven't had any adhesion issues in the month of heavy use with very hot water." — G. Fischer

Get nine pads from Amazon for $23.93 .

33. A time-saving  Thaw Belt  because you didn't remember to move your chicken from the freezer to the fridge, and now you're home from work, starving, exhausted, and seriously considering ordering takeout. This silicone strap keeps your meat submerged so it defrosts in minutes instead of hours.

Promising review: "I have never defrosted food so easily. Food that would've taken about 20 minutes normally (due to floating or having other items holding stuff down changing water temp) now only took a few minutes! " — Carissa Flowers

Get it from Amazon for $9.90 .

34. An ice cube tray  that'll make hollow cylindrical ice cubes — aka the perfect shape for your giant Stanleys and Hydro Flasks.

This tray is designed to make cubes that will fit in 30-oz. and 40-oz. tumblers.

Promising review: "I use these in my brumate and meoky cups, and they fit perfectly. I always struggle with getting my straw through the ice and in the middle so the lid will close. These ice cubes stay on the edge of the cup and allow plenty of room for the straw." — sarah schultz

Get it from Amazon for $16.99 (available in four colors).

35. An investment-worthy  MicrowavaBowl  so you don't have to constantly pause the microwave to mix your bowl to prevent cold spots. Yep, this dishwasher-safe bowl is designed to evenly distribute heat so your meal is perfectly warmed throughout.

Promising review: "These bowls are high quality and very convenient. They heat up food very quickly and evenly, therefore saving you valuable time and energy. Its ability to heat the food and not the bowl itself is very valuable to me. Prior to this purchase, I would have to use a hot bowl holder to avoid burning my fingers. The size of the bowls is perfect for the dishwasher, making them easy to clean and use. These bowls are sold at a reasonable price for what they have to offer. I would highly recommend them to friends and family!" — Alana

Get two from Amazon for $34.99 . 

36. A countertop composter  to turn your food scraps into natural fertilizer in less than 24 hours. Its compact size makes it a great option for people who don't have room for a backyard compost bin. And if you've tried composting already but were turned off by the smell and the pests it attracted, don't fret! This model is designed to be odor-free.

You'll get the composter, one filter, and two compost accelerator pods.

Promising review: "I held off on buying this because it seemed expensive, but I finally broke down and got the Lomi and am so glad I did! It makes compost efficient, and there's no smell at all. I've thrown kitchen scraps like fruit skins, lettuce scraps, egg shells, and some expired (and buggy) pasta, and it reduced it all down to lovely compost in a surprisingly short time. It does have a sound, but it's not obnoxious or loud. Being able to get these scraps broken down quickly helps keep the kitchen smelling clean, and I'm able to use the compost in my garden immediately. So great!" — Amazon Customer

Get it from Amazon for $449 .

37. A  cutting board with a built-in colander  if you're all about efficiency in the kitchen. Now you don't have to waste paper towels drying off your produce or sprint from the sink to the counter trying to prevent your freshly washed potatoes from dripping all over your floor.

Promising review: "This is an extremely useful cutting board with a collapsible bowl for washing vegetables and/or fruits, draining them, or depositing scraps. It fits nicely over my sink and is easily cleaned and stored. Find myself using it every day!" — Patty Boh

Get it from Amazon for $24.99+ (available in five colors).

The reviews for this post have been edited for length and clarity.  

Share This Article

• Share full article

For more audio journalism and storytelling, download New York Times Audio , a new iOS app available for news subscribers.

• Apple Podcasts
• Google Podcasts

Abortion United Evangelicals and Republicans. Now That Alliance Is Fraying.

The southern baptist convention, long a bellwether for american evangelicalism, voted to oppose the use of in vitro fertilization..

Hosted by Sabrina Tavernise

Featuring Ruth Graham

Produced by Rob Szypko ,  Sydney Harper ,  Stella Tan ,  Asthaa Chaturvedi and Rachelle Bonja

Edited by Marc Georges and Lisa Chow

Original music by Dan Powell and Marion Lozano

Engineered by Alyssa Moxley

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | YouTube

The Southern Baptist Convention, the largest denomination of Protestant Christians in the United States, voted at an annual gathering last week to oppose the use of in vitro fertilization.

Ruth Graham, who covers religion, faith and values for The New York Times, discusses the story behind the vote, the Republican scramble it prompted and what it could eventually mean for the rest of the country.

On today’s episode

Ruth Graham , who covers religion, faith and values for The New York Times.

Background reading

How baptists and the Republican Party took different paths on I.V.F.

Here’s what to know about the vote .

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson, Nina Lassam and Nick Pitman.

Ruth Graham is a national reporter, based in Dallas, covering religion, faith and values for The Times. More about Ruth Graham

Advertisement

What is AI (artificial intelligence)?

Humans and machines: a match made in productivity  heaven. Our species wouldn’t have gotten very far without our mechanized workhorses. From the wheel that revolutionized agriculture to the screw that held together increasingly complex construction projects to the robot-enabled assembly lines of today, machines have made life as we know it possible. And yet, despite their seemingly endless utility, humans have long feared machines—more specifically, the possibility that machines might someday acquire human intelligence  and strike out on their own.

Get to know and directly engage with senior McKinsey experts on AI

Sven Blumberg is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Düsseldorf office; Michael Chui is a partner at the McKinsey Global Institute and is based in the Bay Area office, where Lareina Yee is a senior partner; Kia Javanmardian is a senior partner in the Chicago office, where Alex Singla , the global leader of QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey, is also a senior partner; Kate Smaje and Alex Sukharevsky are senior partners in the London office.

But we tend to view the possibility of sentient machines with fascination as well as fear. This curiosity has helped turn science fiction into actual science. Twentieth-century theoreticians, like computer scientist and mathematician Alan Turing, envisioned a future where machines could perform functions faster than humans. The work of Turing and others soon made this a reality. Personal calculators became widely available in the 1970s, and by 2016, the US census showed that 89 percent of American households had a computer. Machines— smart machines at that—are now just an ordinary part of our lives and culture.

Those smart machines are also getting faster and more complex. Some computers have now crossed the exascale threshold, meaning they can perform as many calculations in a single second as an individual could in 31,688,765,000 years . And beyond computation, which machines have long been faster at than we have, computers and other devices are now acquiring skills and perception that were once unique to humans and a few other species.

About QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey

QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI arm, helps companies transform using the power of technology, technical expertise, and industry experts. With thousands of practitioners at QuantumBlack (data engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and software engineers) and McKinsey (industry and domain experts), we are working to solve the world’s most important AI challenges. QuantumBlack Labs is our center of technology development and client innovation, which has been driving cutting-edge advancements and developments in AI through locations across the globe.

AI is a machine’s ability to perform the cognitive functions we associate with human minds, such as perceiving, reasoning, learning, interacting with the environment, problem-solving, and even exercising creativity. You’ve probably interacted with AI even if you don’t realize it—voice assistants like Siri and Alexa are founded on AI technology, as are some customer service chatbots that pop up to help you navigate websites.

Applied AI —simply, artificial intelligence applied to real-world problems—has serious implications for the business world. By using artificial intelligence, companies have the potential to make business more efficient and profitable. But ultimately, the value of AI isn’t in the systems themselves. Rather, it’s in how companies use these systems to assist humans—and their ability to explain to shareholders and the public what these systems do—in a way that builds trust and confidence.

For more about AI, its history, its future, and how to apply it in business, read on.

Learn more about QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey .

Introducing McKinsey Explainers : Direct answers to complex questions

What is machine learning.

Machine learning is a form of artificial intelligence that can adapt to a wide range of inputs, including large sets of historical data, synthesized data, or human inputs. (Some machine learning algorithms are specialized in training themselves to detect patterns; this is called deep learning. See Exhibit 1.) These algorithms can detect patterns and learn how to make predictions and recommendations by processing data, rather than by receiving explicit programming instruction. Some algorithms can also adapt in response to new data and experiences to improve over time.

The volume and complexity of data that is now being generated, too vast for humans to process and apply efficiently, has increased the potential of machine learning, as well as the need for it. In the years since its widespread deployment, which began in the 1970s, machine learning has had an impact on a number of industries, including achievements in medical-imaging analysis  and high-resolution weather forecasting.

The volume and complexity of data that is now being generated, too vast for humans to process and apply efficiently, has increased the potential of machine learning, as well as the need for it.

What is deep learning?

Deep learning is a more advanced version of machine learning that is particularly adept at processing a wider range of data resources (text as well as unstructured data including images), requires even less human intervention, and can often produce more accurate results than traditional machine learning. Deep learning uses neural networks—based on the ways neurons interact in the human brain —to ingest data and process it through multiple neuron layers that recognize increasingly complex features of the data. For example, an early layer might recognize something as being in a specific shape; building on this knowledge, a later layer might be able to identify the shape as a stop sign. Similar to machine learning, deep learning uses iteration to self-correct and improve its prediction capabilities. For example, once it “learns” what a stop sign looks like, it can recognize a stop sign in a new image.

What is generative AI?

Case study: vistra and the martin lake power plant.

Vistra is a large power producer in the United States, operating plants in 12 states with a capacity to power nearly 20 million homes. Vistra has committed to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. In support of this goal, as well as to improve overall efficiency, QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey worked with Vistra to build and deploy an AI-powered heat rate optimizer (HRO) at one of its plants.

“Heat rate” is a measure of the thermal efficiency of the plant; in other words, it’s the amount of fuel required to produce each unit of electricity. To reach the optimal heat rate, plant operators continuously monitor and tune hundreds of variables, such as steam temperatures, pressures, oxygen levels, and fan speeds.

Vistra and a McKinsey team, including data scientists and machine learning engineers, built a multilayered neural network model. The model combed through two years’ worth of data at the plant and learned which combination of factors would attain the most efficient heat rate at any point in time. When the models were accurate to 99 percent or higher and run through a rigorous set of real-world tests, the team converted them into an AI-powered engine that generates recommendations every 30 minutes for operators to improve the plant’s heat rate efficiency. One seasoned operations manager at the company’s plant in Odessa, Texas, said, “There are things that took me 20 years to learn about these power plants. This model learned them in an afternoon.”

Overall, the AI-powered HRO helped Vistra achieve the following:

• approximately 1.6 million metric tons of carbon abated annually
• 67 power generators optimized
• $60 million saved in about a year

Read more about the Vistra story here .

Generative AI (gen AI) is an AI model that generates content in response to a prompt. It’s clear that generative AI tools like ChatGPT and DALL-E (a tool for AI-generated art) have the potential to change how a range of jobs  are performed. Much is still unknown about gen AI’s potential, but there are some questions we can answer—like how gen AI models are built, what kinds of problems they are best suited to solve, and how they fit into the broader category of AI and machine learning.

For more on generative AI and how it stands to affect business and society, check out our Explainer “ What is generative AI? ”

What is the history of AI?

The term “artificial intelligence” was coined in 1956  by computer scientist John McCarthy for a workshop at Dartmouth. But he wasn’t the first to write about the concepts we now describe as AI. Alan Turing introduced the concept of the “ imitation game ” in a 1950 paper. That’s the test of a machine’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior, now known as the “Turing test.” He believed researchers should focus on areas that don’t require too much sensing and action, things like games and language translation. Research communities dedicated to concepts like computer vision, natural language understanding, and neural networks are, in many cases, several decades old.

MIT physicist Rodney Brooks shared details on the four previous stages of AI:

Symbolic AI (1956). Symbolic AI is also known as classical AI, or even GOFAI (good old-fashioned AI). The key concept here is the use of symbols and logical reasoning to solve problems. For example, we know a German shepherd is a dog , which is a mammal; all mammals are warm-blooded; therefore, a German shepherd should be warm-blooded.

The main problem with symbolic AI is that humans still need to manually encode their knowledge of the world into the symbolic AI system, rather than allowing it to observe and encode relationships on its own. As a result, symbolic AI systems struggle with situations involving real-world complexity. They also lack the ability to learn from large amounts of data.

Symbolic AI was the dominant paradigm of AI research until the late 1980s.

Neural networks (1954, 1969, 1986, 2012). Neural networks are the technology behind the recent explosive growth of gen AI. Loosely modeling the ways neurons interact in the human brain , neural networks ingest data and process it through multiple iterations that learn increasingly complex features of the data. The neural network can then make determinations about the data, learn whether a determination is correct, and use what it has learned to make determinations about new data. For example, once it “learns” what an object looks like, it can recognize the object in a new image.

Neural networks were first proposed in 1943 in an academic paper by neurophysiologist Warren McCulloch and logician Walter Pitts. Decades later, in 1969, two MIT researchers mathematically demonstrated that neural networks could perform only very basic tasks. In 1986, there was another reversal, when computer scientist and cognitive psychologist Geoffrey Hinton and colleagues solved the neural network problem presented by the MIT researchers. In the 1990s, computer scientist Yann LeCun made major advancements in neural networks’ use in computer vision, while Jürgen Schmidhuber advanced the application of recurrent neural networks as used in language processing.

In 2012, Hinton and two of his students highlighted the power of deep learning. They applied Hinton’s algorithm to neural networks with many more layers than was typical, sparking a new focus on deep neural networks. These have been the main AI approaches of recent years.

Traditional robotics (1968). During the first few decades of AI, researchers built robots to advance research. Some robots were mobile, moving around on wheels, while others were fixed, with articulated arms. Robots used the earliest attempts at computer vision to identify and navigate through their environments or to understand the geometry of objects and maneuver them. This could include moving around blocks of various shapes and colors. Most of these robots, just like the ones that have been used in factories for decades, rely on highly controlled environments with thoroughly scripted behaviors that they perform repeatedly. They have not contributed significantly to the advancement of AI itself.

But traditional robotics did have significant impact in one area, through a process called “simultaneous localization and mapping” (SLAM). SLAM algorithms helped contribute to self-driving cars and are used in consumer products like vacuum cleaning robots and quadcopter drones. Today, this work has evolved into behavior-based robotics, also referred to as haptic technology because it responds to human touch.

• Behavior-based robotics (1985). In the real world, there aren’t always clear instructions for navigation, decision making, or problem-solving. Insects, researchers observed, navigate very well (and are evolutionarily very successful) with few neurons. Behavior-based robotics researchers took inspiration from this, looking for ways robots could solve problems with partial knowledge and conflicting instructions. These behavior-based robots are embedded with neural networks.

Learn more about  QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey .

What is artificial general intelligence?

The term “artificial general intelligence” (AGI) was coined to describe AI systems that possess capabilities comparable to those of a human . In theory, AGI could someday replicate human-like cognitive abilities including reasoning, problem-solving, perception, learning, and language comprehension. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves: the key word here is “someday.” Most researchers and academics believe we are decades away from realizing AGI; some even predict we won’t see AGI this century, or ever. Rodney Brooks, an MIT roboticist and cofounder of iRobot, doesn’t believe AGI will arrive until the year 2300 .

The timing of AGI’s emergence may be uncertain. But when it does emerge—and it likely will—it’s going to be a very big deal, in every aspect of our lives. Executives should begin working to understand the path to machines achieving human-level intelligence now and making the transition to a more automated world.

For more on AGI, including the four previous attempts at AGI, read our Explainer .

What is narrow AI?

Narrow AI is the application of AI techniques to a specific and well-defined problem, such as chatbots like ChatGPT, algorithms that spot fraud in credit card transactions, and natural-language-processing engines that quickly process thousands of legal documents. Most current AI applications fall into the category of narrow AI. AGI is, by contrast, AI that’s intelligent enough to perform a broad range of tasks.

How is the use of AI expanding?

AI is a big story for all kinds of businesses, but some companies are clearly moving ahead of the pack . Our state of AI in 2022 survey showed that adoption of AI models has more than doubled since 2017—and investment has increased apace. What’s more, the specific areas in which companies see value from AI have evolved, from manufacturing and risk to the following:

• marketing and sales
• product and service development
• strategy and corporate finance

One group of companies is pulling ahead of its competitors. Leaders of these organizations consistently make larger investments in AI, level up their practices to scale faster, and hire and upskill the best AI talent. More specifically, they link AI strategy to business outcomes and “ industrialize ” AI operations by designing modular data architecture that can quickly accommodate new applications.

What are the limitations of AI models? How can these potentially be overcome?

We have yet to see the longtail effect of gen AI models. This means there are some inherent risks involved in using them—both known and unknown.

The outputs gen AI models produce may often sound extremely convincing. This is by design. But sometimes the information they generate is just plain wrong. Worse, sometimes it’s biased (because it’s built on the gender, racial, and other biases of the internet and society more generally).

It can also be manipulated to enable unethical or criminal activity. Since gen AI models burst onto the scene, organizations have become aware of users trying to “jailbreak” the models—that means trying to get them to break their own rules and deliver biased, harmful, misleading, or even illegal content. Gen AI organizations are responding to this threat in two ways: for one thing, they’re collecting feedback from users on inappropriate content. They’re also combing through their databases, identifying prompts that led to inappropriate content, and training the model against these types of generations.

But awareness and even action don’t guarantee that harmful content won’t slip the dragnet. Organizations that rely on gen AI models should be aware of the reputational and legal risks involved in unintentionally publishing biased, offensive, or copyrighted content.

These risks can be mitigated, however, in a few ways. “Whenever you use a model,” says McKinsey partner Marie El Hoyek, “you need to be able to counter biases  and instruct it not to use inappropriate or flawed sources, or things you don’t trust.” How? For one thing, it’s crucial to carefully select the initial data used to train these models to avoid including toxic or biased content. Next, rather than employing an off-the-shelf gen AI model, organizations could consider using smaller, specialized models. Organizations with more resources could also customize a general model based on their own data to fit their needs and minimize biases.

It’s also important to keep a human in the loop (that is, to make sure a real human checks the output of a gen AI model before it is published or used) and avoid using gen AI models for critical decisions, such as those involving significant resources or human welfare.

It can’t be emphasized enough that this is a new field. The landscape of risks and opportunities is likely to continue to change rapidly in the coming years. As gen AI becomes increasingly incorporated into business, society, and our personal lives, we can also expect a new regulatory climate to take shape. As organizations experiment—and create value—with these tools, leaders will do well to keep a finger on the pulse of regulation and risk.

What is the AI Bill of Rights?

The Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights, prepared by the US government in 2022, provides a framework for how government, technology companies, and citizens can collectively ensure more accountable AI. As AI has become more ubiquitous, concerns have surfaced  about a potential lack of transparency surrounding the functioning of gen AI systems, the data used to train them, issues of bias and fairness, potential intellectual property infringements, privacy violations, and more. The Blueprint comprises five principles that the White House says should “guide the design, use, and deployment of automated systems to protect [users] in the age of artificial intelligence.” They are as follows:

• The right to safe and effective systems. Systems should undergo predeployment testing, risk identification and mitigation, and ongoing monitoring to demonstrate that they are adhering to their intended use.
• Protections against discrimination by algorithms. Algorithmic discrimination is when automated systems contribute to unjustified different treatment of people based on their race, color, ethnicity, sex, religion, age, and more.
• Protections against abusive data practices, via built-in safeguards. Users should also have agency over how their data is used.
• The right to know that an automated system is being used, and a clear explanation of how and why it contributes to outcomes that affect the user.
• The right to opt out, and access to a human who can quickly consider and fix problems.

At present, more than 60 countries or blocs have national strategies governing the responsible use of AI (Exhibit 2). These include Brazil, China, the European Union, Singapore, South Korea, and the United States. The approaches taken vary from guidelines-based approaches, such as the Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights in the United States, to comprehensive AI regulations that align with existing data protection and cybersecurity regulations, such as the EU’s AI Act, due in 2024.

There are also collaborative efforts between countries to set out standards for AI use. The US–EU Trade and Technology Council is working toward greater alignment between Europe and the United States. The Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence, formed in 2020, has 29 members including Brazil, Canada, Japan, the United States, and several European countries.

Even though AI regulations are still being developed, organizations should act now to avoid legal, reputational, organizational, and financial risks. In an environment of public concern, a misstep could be costly. Here are four no-regrets, preemptive actions organizations can implement today:

• Transparency. Create an inventory of models, classifying them in accordance with regulation, and record all usage across the organization that is clear to those inside and outside the organization.
• Governance. Implement a governance structure for AI and gen AI that ensures sufficient oversight, authority, and accountability both within the organization and with third parties and regulators.
• Data management. Proper data management includes awareness of data sources, data classification, data quality and lineage, intellectual property, and privacy management.
• Model management. Organizations should establish principles and guardrails for AI development and use them to ensure all AI models uphold fairness and bias controls.
• Cybersecurity and technology management. Establish strong cybersecurity and technology to ensure a secure environment where unauthorized access or misuse is prevented.
• Individual rights. Make users aware when they are interacting with an AI system, and provide clear instructions for use.

How can organizations scale up their AI efforts from ad hoc projects to full integration?

Most organizations are dipping a toe into the AI pool—not cannonballing. Slow progress toward widespread adoption is likely due to cultural and organizational barriers. But leaders who effectively break down these barriers will be best placed to capture the opportunities of the AI era. And—crucially—companies that can’t take full advantage of AI are already being sidelined by those that can, in industries like auto manufacturing and financial services.

To scale up AI, organizations can make three major shifts :

• Move from siloed work to interdisciplinary collaboration. AI projects shouldn’t be limited to discrete pockets of organizations. Rather, AI has the biggest impact when it’s employed by cross-functional teams with a mix of skills and perspectives, enabling AI to address broad business priorities.
• Empower frontline data-based decision making . AI has the potential to enable faster, better decisions at all levels of an organization. But for this to work, people at all levels need to trust the algorithms’ suggestions and feel empowered to make decisions. (Equally, people should be able to override the algorithm or make suggestions for improvement when necessary.)
• Adopt and bolster an agile mindset. The agile test-and-learn mindset will help reframe mistakes as sources of discovery, allaying the fear of failure and speeding up development.

Learn more about QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey , and check out AI-related job opportunities if you’re interested in working at McKinsey.

Articles referenced:

• “ As gen AI advances, regulators—and risk functions—rush to keep pace ,” December 21, 2023, Andreas Kremer, Angela Luget , Daniel Mikkelsen , Henning Soller , Malin Strandell-Jansson, and Sheila Zingg
• “ What is generative AI? ,” January 19, 2023
• “ Tech highlights from 2022—in eight charts ,” December 22, 2022
• “ Generative AI is here: How tools like ChatGPT could change your business ,” December 20, 2022, Michael Chui , Roger Roberts , and Lareina Yee  
• “ The state of AI in 2022—and a half decade in review ,” December 6, 2022, Michael Chui , Bryce Hall , Helen Mayhew , Alex Singla , and Alex Sukharevsky  
• “ Why businesses need explainable AI—and how to deliver it ,” September 29, 2022, Liz Grennan , Andreas Kremer, Alex Singla , and Peter Zipparo
• “ Why digital trust truly matters ,” September 12, 2022, Jim Boehm , Liz Grennan , Alex Singla , and Kate Smaje
• “ McKinsey Technology Trends Outlook 2023 ,” July 20, 2023, Michael Chui , Mena Issler, Roger Roberts , and Lareina Yee  
• “ An AI power play: Fueling the next wave of innovation in the energy sector ,” May 12, 2022, Barry Boswell, Sean Buckley, Ben Elliott, Matias Melero , and Micah Smith  
• “ Scaling AI like a tech native: The CEO’s role ,” October 13, 2021, Jacomo Corbo, David Harvey, Nicolas Hohn, Kia Javanmardian , and Nayur Khan
• “ What the draft European Union AI regulations mean for business ,” August 10, 2021, Misha Benjamin, Kevin Buehler , Rachel Dooley, and Peter Zipparo
• “ Winning with AI is a state of mind ,” April 30, 2021, Thomas Meakin , Jeremy Palmer, Valentina Sartori , and Jamie Vickers
• “ Breaking through data-architecture gridlock to scale AI ,” January 26, 2021, Sven Blumberg , Jorge Machado , Henning Soller , and Asin Tavakoli  
• “ An executive’s guide to AI ,” November 17, 2020, Michael Chui , Brian McCarthy, and Vishnu Kamalnath
• “ Executive’s guide to developing AI at scale ,” October 28, 2020, Nayur Khan , Brian McCarthy, and Adi Pradhan
• “ An executive primer on artificial general intelligence ,” April 29, 2020, Federico Berruti , Pieter Nel, and Rob Whiteman
• “ The analytics academy: Bridging the gap between human and artificial intelligence ,” McKinsey Quarterly , September 25, 2019, Solly Brown, Darshit Gandhi, Louise Herring , and Ankur Puri  

This article was updated in April 2024; it was originally published in April 2023.

Want to know more about AI?

Related articles.

Ten unsung digital and AI ideas shaping business

Driving innovation with generative AI

As gen AI advances, regulators—and risk functions—rush to keep pace