Decision Making & Problem Solving

Introduction

Analytical thinking is a new approach that helps you make decisions and solve challenges faster and easier than ever before

Analytical thinking and problem solving are foundational thinking skills that involve breaking things down into their component parts. They also involve deductive reasoning, drawing conclusions from givens and applying judgments to reach conclusions from a combination of evidence and assumptions. it helps you learn how to think like an analyst. You’ll learn how to think creatively and logically how to approach your challenges analytically and how to understand the decision-making process to solve your problems more efficiently and successfully. In this seminar we will cover all these important thinking approaches. After understanding the thinking mechanisms, we will provide you with methods and tools that you will practice during the sessions and that can help you at work or in life, and from the most mundane situations to the most difficult or unusual ones. 

Course Objective

• How to correctly diagnose and understand the problem
• Ways to break down potential causes and focus on the problem
• Creative methods to find solutions
• Utilizing your team to expand possible ideas
• Distinguish Between Problem Solving and Decision Making, in Order to Identify True Decisions
• Recognize How Your Feelings About Uncertainty and Risk Impact the Way You Make Decisions
• How to use your natural thinking to make effective decisions
• Identifying possible roadblocks
• Overcoming resistance to change
• Avoiding decision-making traps
• Winning support for your solutions
• Apply Tools and Techniques for Sharpening Analytical and Intuitive Aspects of Decision Making
• More Deliberately Apply Personal Experience to Complex Decision Making Under Conditions of Uncertainty

Course Content

Define the Problem

• Isolate the real problem, not just the symptoms
• When you should ask Why ? to diagnose the problem
• Key questions that help you quickly and accurately define the problem
• Identifying and understanding the scope of the problem and why its important

Identify Root Causes

• Free your mind and overcome assumptions and biases
• How to stop yourself from taking your best guess
• Go beyond the obvious for lasting solutions that work
• Search for multiple causes to be sure you fully solve the problem

Identify Viable Solutions

• How to find multiple solutions so you have options to make the best decision
• How to identify alternate solutions for a problem
• How to stop personal judgment from influencing your ability to try solutions/solve problems
• Does your risk preference stop you from making decisions?

Psychological Factors Impacting Decision Making

• Identify Personal Attitudes Toward Decision Making
• Articulate the Common Reasons for Decision Avoidance
• Describe the Key Cause of Decisions Made in HastOverconfidence
• Apply Techniques to Avoid the Most Common Pitfalls of Decision Making

Get Creative!

• The role of creativity in coming up with the best possible solutions (from the obvious to the absurd)
• How to spark creativity in groups
• How to keep creative ideas alive rather than letting them succumb to naysayers
• Get a new perspective and look at your challenges in new ways
• How to find patterns and common elements in problems and what that means
• Learn how to generate ideas and not evaluate them

Test Potential Solutions

• How to select and test realistic and practical solutions
• Identify potential resistance and other roadblocks
• How and when you should consider the consequences
• Conduct a postmortem on your solution to be sure it accomplished all you thought it would

Make Effective Decisions

• How to use your natural thinking and decision-making style to full advantage
• Overcoming weaknesses that can derail your decision making process
• Learn the most common decision-making strategies

Win Support for Solutions

• Tactics for getting stakeholder buy-in
• How to identify and address questions and objections before they come up
• Essential strategies for overcoming resistance to change

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