proactive problem solving and initiative

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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.

Proactive Problem-Solving Implementation Over Discussion

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.

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Taking Initiative at Work: Proactive Approaches to Problem-Solving and Innovation

Explore the power of proactive problem-solving and innovation at work. Uncover how empowerment, collaboration, and continuous growth forge a culture driving transformative change in today’s dynamic workplaces.

Taking initiative goes beyond mere task completion—it’s about spearheading change, embracing challenges, and fostering innovation. Employees who take initiative are highly valued in their organizations. They are proactive and show a willingness to take on new responsibilities and tackle complex problems. Initiative-takers are not afraid to challenge the status quo and offer new ideas that can improve processes and increase efficiency. They are also good at building relationships and working collaboratively with others to achieve common goals. In a world that is constantly changing, taking initiative is an essential skill that can help individuals and organizations stay ahead of the curve. By encouraging employees to take initiative, companies can create a culture of innovation and continuous improvement that can drive success in the long term.

Here are three proactive approaches to problem-solving and innovation that propel workplaces toward success:

1. Cultivate a Culture of Ownership and Initiative

Encouraging a culture where employees feel empowered to take ownership of their work breeds a proactive mindset. When individuals see themselves as contributors to the organization’s success rather than mere executors of tasks, they become catalysts for innovation.

Empowerment stems from clear communication and trust. Leaders should provide autonomy, allowing individuals to make decisions within their realm of expertise. Encourage ideas, recognize initiative, and celebrate efforts that drive progress. This culture of ownership fuels intrinsic motivation, sparking creativity and a sense of responsibility toward finding innovative solutions.

2. Embrace Problem-Solving as a Team Sport

Problem-solving isn’t a solitary endeavor—it’s a team effort that thrives on collaboration and diverse perspectives. Encourage a collaborative environment where individuals feel comfortable sharing ideas, opinions, and perspectives.

Utilize brainstorming sessions or collaborative platforms to gather insights and collectively tackle challenges. Diverse viewpoints fuel creativity, leading to more comprehensive problem-solving approaches. When teams unite in problem-solving endeavors, they foster a culture of collective intelligence, where the sum is truly greater than its parts.

3. Foster a Culture of Continuous Learning and Adaptability

Innovation flourishes in environments that value learning and adaptability. Encourage a growth mindset—embrace failures as learning opportunities and celebrate experimentation. Encourage employees to explore new skills, technologies, or methodologies relevant to their roles.

Regularly engage in knowledge-sharing sessions, workshops, or training programs that facilitate skill enhancement and keep teams abreast of industry advancements. This continuous learning culture not only empowers individuals to adapt to change but also fuels their ability to innovate and solve problems creatively.

Conclusion: Empowerment, Collaboration, and Continuous Growth

Taking initiative at work isn’t merely about problem-solving—it’s a mindset, a culture, and a driving force behind innovation. It starts with empowerment, where individuals feel not just responsible for their tasks, but invested in the organization’s success. Empowered employees are catalysts for change, armed with the autonomy and confidence to seek innovative solutions.

Collaboration emerges as a cornerstone of proactive problem-solving. When diverse minds converge, sharing insights and ideas, solutions become richer and more comprehensive. A culture that encourages teamwork and respects differing perspectives elevates problem-solving to a collective endeavor—an endeavor that transcends individual contributions and fuels innovation.

Yet, true innovation thrives in environments of continuous growth. Embracing a culture of learning, where failures are stepping stones and curiosity is celebrated, sets the stage for groundbreaking ideas. Teams committed to evolving their skill sets and staying at the forefront of industry advancements become pioneers in problem-solving and innovation.

As organizations navigate today’s ever-changing landscape, those fostering cultures of empowerment, collaboration, and continuous growth stand resilient. They’re not merely problem-solvers; they’re architects of change, steering their workplaces toward adaptability and success.

Empowerment ignites the spark of initiative, collaboration fuels the flames of innovation, and continuous growth keeps the fire burning bright. In the realm of proactive problem-solving and innovation, it’s not just about finding solutions—it’s about nurturing a culture that breeds a relentless pursuit of excellence.

The journey towards a workplace thriving on proactive approaches to problem-solving and innovation isn’t a destination—it’s an ongoing evolution, an aspiration to create an environment where every individual feels empowered to make a difference, and where every idea has the potential to spark transformative change.

Empower. Collaborate. Innovate. The future of work rests in the hands of those who dare to take the initiative, collaborate with purpose, and embrace a culture of perpetual growth.

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How to improve your problem solving skills and build effective problem solving strategies

proactive problem solving and initiative

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What is a problem solving process?

What are the problem solving steps I need to follow?

Problem solving strategies

What skills do i need to be an effective problem solver, how can i improve my problem solving skills.

Solving problems is like baking a cake. You can go straight into the kitchen without a recipe or the right ingredients and do your best, but the end result is unlikely to be very tasty!

Using a process to bake a cake allows you to use the best ingredients without waste, collect the right tools, account for allergies, decide whether it is a birthday or wedding cake, and then bake efficiently and on time. The result is a better cake that is fit for purpose, tastes better and has created less mess in the kitchen. Also, it should have chocolate sprinkles. Having a step by step process to solve organizational problems allows you to go through each stage methodically and ensure you are trying to solve the right problems and select the most appropriate, effective solutions.

What are the problem solving steps I need to follow?

All problem solving processes go through a number of steps in order to move from identifying a problem to resolving it.

Depending on your problem solving model and who you ask, there can be anything between four and nine problem solving steps you should follow in order to find the right solution. Whatever framework you and your group use, there are some key items that should be addressed in order to have an effective process.

We’ve looked at problem solving processes from sources such as the American Society for Quality and their four step approach , and Mediate ‘s six step process. By reflecting on those and our own problem solving processes, we’ve come up with a sequence of seven problem solving steps we feel best covers everything you need in order to effectively solve problems.

1. Problem identification

The first stage of any problem solving process is to identify the problem or problems you might want to solve. Effective problem solving strategies always begin by allowing a group scope to articulate what they believe the problem to be and then coming to some consensus over which problem they approach first. Problem solving activities used at this stage often have a focus on creating frank, open discussion so that potential problems can be brought to the surface.

2. Problem analysis

Though this step is not a million miles from problem identification, problem analysis deserves to be considered separately. It can often be an overlooked part of the process and is instrumental when it comes to developing effective solutions.

The process of problem analysis means ensuring that the problem you are seeking to solve is the right problem . As part of this stage, you may look deeper and try to find the root cause of a specific problem at a team or organizational level.

Remember that problem solving strategies should not only be focused on putting out fires in the short term but developing long term solutions that deal with the root cause of organizational challenges.

Whatever your approach, analyzing a problem is crucial in being able to select an appropriate solution and the problem solving skills deployed in this stage are beneficial for the rest of the process and ensuring the solutions you create are fit for purpose.

3. Solution generation

Once your group has nailed down the particulars of the problem you wish to solve, you want to encourage a free flow of ideas connecting to solving that problem. This can take the form of problem solving games that encourage creative thinking or problem solving activities designed to produce working prototypes of possible solutions.

The key to ensuring the success of this stage of the problem solving process is to encourage quick, creative thinking and create an open space where all ideas are considered. The best solutions can come from unlikely places and by using problem solving techniques that celebrate invention, you might come up with solution gold.

4. Solution development

No solution is likely to be perfect right out of the gate. It’s important to discuss and develop the solutions your group has come up with over the course of following the previous problem solving steps in order to arrive at the best possible solution. Problem solving games used in this stage involve lots of critical thinking, measuring potential effort and impact, and looking at possible solutions analytically.

During this stage, you will often ask your team to iterate and improve upon your frontrunning solutions and develop them further. Remember that problem solving strategies always benefit from a multitude of voices and opinions, and not to let ego get involved when it comes to choosing which solutions to develop and take further.

Finding the best solution is the goal of all problem solving workshops and here is the place to ensure that your solution is well thought out, sufficiently robust and fit for purpose.

5. Decision making

Nearly there! Once your group has reached consensus and selected a solution that applies to the problem at hand you have some decisions to make. You will want to work on allocating ownership of the project, figure out who will do what, how the success of the solution will be measured and decide the next course of action.

The decision making stage is a part of the problem solving process that can get missed or taken as for granted. Fail to properly allocate roles and plan out how a solution will actually be implemented and it less likely to be successful in solving the problem.

Have clear accountabilities, actions, timeframes, and follow-ups. Make these decisions and set clear next-steps in the problem solving workshop so that everyone is aligned and you can move forward effectively as a group.

Ensuring that you plan for the roll-out of a solution is one of the most important problem solving steps. Without adequate planning or oversight, it can prove impossible to measure success or iterate further if the problem was not solved.

6. Solution implementation

This is what we were waiting for! All problem solving strategies have the end goal of implementing a solution and solving a problem in mind.

Remember that in order for any solution to be successful, you need to help your group through all of the previous problem solving steps thoughtfully. Only then can you ensure that you are solving the right problem but also that you have developed the correct solution and can then successfully implement and measure the impact of that solution.

Project management and communication skills are key here – your solution may need to adjust when out in the wild or you might discover new challenges along the way.

7. Solution evaluation

So you and your team developed a great solution to a problem and have a gut feeling its been solved. Work done, right? Wrong. All problem solving strategies benefit from evaluation, consideration, and feedback. You might find that the solution does not work for everyone, might create new problems, or is potentially so successful that you will want to roll it out to larger teams or as part of other initiatives.

None of that is possible without taking the time to evaluate the success of the solution you developed in your problem solving model and adjust if necessary.

Remember that the problem solving process is often iterative and it can be common to not solve complex issues on the first try. Even when this is the case, you and your team will have generated learning that will be important for future problem solving workshops or in other parts of the organization.

It’s worth underlining how important record keeping is throughout the problem solving process. If a solution didn’t work, you need to have the data and records to see why that was the case. If you go back to the drawing board, notes from the previous workshop can help save time. Data and insight is invaluable at every stage of the problem solving process and this one is no different.

Problem solving workshops made easy

Problem solving strategies are methods of approaching and facilitating the process of problem-solving with a set of techniques , actions, and processes. Different strategies are more effective if you are trying to solve broad problems such as achieving higher growth versus more focused problems like, how do we improve our customer onboarding process?

Broadly, the problem solving steps outlined above should be included in any problem solving strategy though choosing where to focus your time and what approaches should be taken is where they begin to differ. You might find that some strategies ask for the problem identification to be done prior to the session or that everything happens in the course of a one day workshop.

The key similarity is that all good problem solving strategies are structured and designed. Four hours of open discussion is never going to be as productive as a four-hour workshop designed to lead a group through a problem solving process.

Good problem solving strategies are tailored to the team, organization and problem you will be attempting to solve. Here are some example problem solving strategies you can learn from or use to get started.

Use a workshop to lead a team through a group process

Often, the first step to solving problems or organizational challenges is bringing a group together effectively. Most teams have the tools, knowledge, and expertise necessary to solve their challenges – they just need some guidance in how to use leverage those skills and a structure and format that allows people to focus their energies.

Facilitated workshops are one of the most effective ways of solving problems of any scale. By designing and planning your workshop carefully, you can tailor the approach and scope to best fit the needs of your team and organization.

Problem solving workshop

Creating a bespoke, tailored process
Tackling problems of any size
Building in-house workshop ability and encouraging their use

Workshops are an effective strategy for solving problems. By using tried and test facilitation techniques and methods, you can design and deliver a workshop that is perfectly suited to the unique variables of your organization. You may only have the capacity for a half-day workshop and so need a problem solving process to match.

By using our session planner tool and importing methods from our library of 700+ facilitation techniques, you can create the right problem solving workshop for your team. It might be that you want to encourage creative thinking or look at things from a new angle to unblock your groups approach to problem solving. By tailoring your workshop design to the purpose, you can help ensure great results.

One of the main benefits of a workshop is the structured approach to problem solving. Not only does this mean that the workshop itself will be successful, but many of the methods and techniques will help your team improve their working processes outside of the workshop.

We believe that workshops are one of the best tools you can use to improve the way your team works together. Start with a problem solving workshop and then see what team building, culture or design workshops can do for your organization!

Run a design sprint

Great for:

aligning large, multi-discipline teams
quickly designing and testing solutions
tackling large, complex organizational challenges and breaking them down into smaller tasks

By using design thinking principles and methods, a design sprint is a great way of identifying, prioritizing and prototyping solutions to long term challenges that can help solve major organizational problems with quick action and measurable results.

Some familiarity with design thinking is useful, though not integral, and this strategy can really help a team align if there is some discussion around which problems should be approached first.

The stage-based structure of the design sprint is also very useful for teams new to design thinking. The inspiration phase, where you look to competitors that have solved your problem, and the rapid prototyping and testing phases are great for introducing new concepts that will benefit a team in all their future work.

It can be common for teams to look inward for solutions and so looking to the market for solutions you can iterate on can be very productive. Instilling an agile prototyping and testing mindset can also be great when helping teams move forwards – generating and testing solutions quickly can help save time in the long run and is also pretty exciting!

Break problems down into smaller issues

Organizational challenges and problems are often complicated and large scale in nature. Sometimes, trying to resolve such an issue in one swoop is simply unachievable or overwhelming. Try breaking down such problems into smaller issues that you can work on step by step. You may not be able to solve the problem of churning customers off the bat, but you can work with your team to identify smaller effort but high impact elements and work on those first.

This problem solving strategy can help a team generate momentum, prioritize and get some easy wins. It’s also a great strategy to employ with teams who are just beginning to learn how to approach the problem solving process. If you want some insight into a way to employ this strategy, we recommend looking at our design sprint template below!

Use guiding frameworks or try new methodologies

Some problems are best solved by introducing a major shift in perspective or by using new methodologies that encourage your team to think differently.

Props and tools such as Methodkit , which uses a card-based toolkit for facilitation, or Lego Serious Play can be great ways to engage your team and find an inclusive, democratic problem solving strategy. Remember that play and creativity are great tools for achieving change and whatever the challenge, engaging your participants can be very effective where other strategies may have failed.

LEGO Serious Play

Improving core problem solving skills
Thinking outside of the box
Encouraging creative solutions

LEGO Serious Play is a problem solving methodology designed to get participants thinking differently by using 3D models and kinesthetic learning styles. By physically building LEGO models based on questions and exercises, participants are encouraged to think outside of the box and create their own responses.

Collaborate LEGO Serious Play exercises are also used to encourage communication and build problem solving skills in a group. By using this problem solving process, you can often help different kinds of learners and personality types contribute and unblock organizational problems with creative thinking.

Problem solving strategies like LEGO Serious Play are super effective at helping a team solve more skills-based problems such as communication between teams or a lack of creative thinking. Some problems are not suited to LEGO Serious Play and require a different problem solving strategy.

Card Decks and Method Kits

New facilitators or non-facilitators
Approaching difficult subjects with a simple, creative framework
Engaging those with varied learning styles

Card decks and method kids are great tools for those new to facilitation or for whom facilitation is not the primary role. Card decks such as the emotional culture deck can be used for complete workshops and in many cases, can be used right out of the box. Methodkit has a variety of kits designed for scenarios ranging from personal development through to personas and global challenges so you can find the right deck for your particular needs.

Having an easy to use framework that encourages creativity or a new approach can take some of the friction or planning difficulties out of the workshop process and energize a team in any setting. Simplicity is the key with these methods. By ensuring everyone on your team can get involved and engage with the process as quickly as possible can really contribute to the success of your problem solving strategy.

Source external advice

Looking to peers, experts and external facilitators can be a great way of approaching the problem solving process. Your team may not have the necessary expertise, insights of experience to tackle some issues, or you might simply benefit from a fresh perspective. Some problems may require bringing together an entire team, and coaching managers or team members individually might be the right approach. Remember that not all problems are best resolved in the same manner.

If you’re a solo entrepreneur, peer groups, coaches and mentors can also be invaluable at not only solving specific business problems, but in providing a support network for resolving future challenges. One great approach is to join a Mastermind Group and link up with like-minded individuals and all grow together. Remember that however you approach the sourcing of external advice, do so thoughtfully, respectfully and honestly. Reciprocate where you can and prepare to be surprised by just how kind and helpful your peers can be!

Mastermind Group

Solo entrepreneurs or small teams with low capacity
Peer learning and gaining outside expertise
Getting multiple external points of view quickly

Problem solving in large organizations with lots of skilled team members is one thing, but how about if you work for yourself or in a very small team without the capacity to get the most from a design sprint or LEGO Serious Play session?

A mastermind group – sometimes known as a peer advisory board – is where a group of people come together to support one another in their own goals, challenges, and businesses. Each participant comes to the group with their own purpose and the other members of the group will help them create solutions, brainstorm ideas, and support one another.

Mastermind groups are very effective in creating an energized, supportive atmosphere that can deliver meaningful results. Learning from peers from outside of your organization or industry can really help unlock new ways of thinking and drive growth. Access to the experience and skills of your peers can be invaluable in helping fill the gaps in your own ability, particularly in young companies.

A mastermind group is a great solution for solo entrepreneurs, small teams, or for organizations that feel that external expertise or fresh perspectives will be beneficial for them. It is worth noting that Mastermind groups are often only as good as the participants and what they can bring to the group. Participants need to be committed, engaged and understand how to work in this context.

Coaching and mentoring

Focused learning and development
Filling skills gaps
Working on a range of challenges over time

Receiving advice from a business coach or building a mentor/mentee relationship can be an effective way of resolving certain challenges. The one-to-one format of most coaching and mentor relationships can really help solve the challenges those individuals are having and benefit the organization as a result.

A great mentor can be invaluable when it comes to spotting potential problems before they arise and coming to understand a mentee very well has a host of other business benefits. You might run an internal mentorship program to help develop your team’s problem solving skills and strategies or as part of a large learning and development program. External coaches can also be an important part of your problem solving strategy, filling skills gaps for your management team or helping with specific business issues.

Now we’ve explored the problem solving process and the steps you will want to go through in order to have an effective session, let’s look at the skills you and your team need to be more effective problem solvers.

Problem solving skills are highly sought after, whatever industry or team you work in. Organizations are keen to employ people who are able to approach problems thoughtfully and find strong, realistic solutions. Whether you are a facilitator , a team leader or a developer, being an effective problem solver is a skill you’ll want to develop.

Problem solving skills form a whole suite of techniques and approaches that an individual uses to not only identify problems but to discuss them productively before then developing appropriate solutions.

Here are some of the most important problem solving skills everyone from executives to junior staff members should learn. We’ve also included an activity or exercise from the SessionLab library that can help you and your team develop that skill.

If you’re running a workshop or training session to try and improve problem solving skills in your team, try using these methods to supercharge your process!

Active listening

Active listening is one of the most important skills anyone who works with people can possess. In short, active listening is a technique used to not only better understand what is being said by an individual, but also to be more aware of the underlying message the speaker is trying to convey. When it comes to problem solving, active listening is integral for understanding the position of every participant and to clarify the challenges, ideas and solutions they bring to the table.

Some active listening skills include:

Paying complete attention to the speaker.
Removing distractions.
Avoid interruption.
Taking the time to fully understand before preparing a rebuttal.
Responding respectfully and appropriately.
Demonstrate attentiveness and positivity with an open posture, making eye contact with the speaker, smiling and nodding if appropriate. Show that you are listening and encourage them to continue.
Be aware of and respectful of feelings. Judge the situation and respond appropriately. You can disagree without being disrespectful.
Observe body language.
Paraphrase what was said in your own words, either mentally or verbally.
Remain neutral.
Reflect and take a moment before responding.
Ask deeper questions based on what is said and clarify points where necessary.

Active Listening #hyperisland #skills #active listening #remote-friendly This activity supports participants to reflect on a question and generate their own solutions using simple principles of active listening and peer coaching. It’s an excellent introduction to active listening but can also be used with groups that are already familiar with it. Participants work in groups of three and take turns being: “the subject”, the listener, and the observer.

Analytical skills

All problem solving models require strong analytical skills, particularly during the beginning of the process and when it comes to analyzing how solutions have performed.

Analytical skills are primarily focused on performing an effective analysis by collecting, studying and parsing data related to a problem or opportunity.

It often involves spotting patterns, being able to see things from different perspectives and using observable facts and data to make suggestions or produce insight.

Analytical skills are also important at every stage of the problem solving process and by having these skills, you can ensure that any ideas or solutions you create or backed up analytically and have been sufficiently thought out.

Nine Whys #innovation #issue analysis #liberating structures With breathtaking simplicity, you can rapidly clarify for individuals and a group what is essentially important in their work. You can quickly reveal when a compelling purpose is missing in a gathering and avoid moving forward without clarity. When a group discovers an unambiguous shared purpose, more freedom and more responsibility are unleashed. You have laid the foundation for spreading and scaling innovations with fidelity.

Collaboration

Trying to solve problems on your own is difficult. Being able to collaborate effectively, with a free exchange of ideas, to delegate and be a productive member of a team is hugely important to all problem solving strategies.

Remember that whatever your role, collaboration is integral, and in a problem solving process, you are all working together to find the best solution for everyone.

Marshmallow challenge with debriefing #teamwork #team #leadership #collaboration In eighteen minutes, teams must build the tallest free-standing structure out of 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, one yard of string, and one marshmallow. The marshmallow needs to be on top. The Marshmallow Challenge was developed by Tom Wujec, who has done the activity with hundreds of groups around the world. Visit the Marshmallow Challenge website for more information. This version has an extra debriefing question added with sample questions focusing on roles within the team.

Communication

Being an effective communicator means being empathetic, clear and succinct, asking the right questions, and demonstrating active listening skills throughout any discussion or meeting.

In a problem solving setting, you need to communicate well in order to progress through each stage of the process effectively. As a team leader, it may also fall to you to facilitate communication between parties who may not see eye to eye. Effective communication also means helping others to express themselves and be heard in a group.

Bus Trip #feedback #communication #appreciation #closing #thiagi #team This is one of my favourite feedback games. I use Bus Trip at the end of a training session or a meeting, and I use it all the time. The game creates a massive amount of energy with lots of smiles, laughs, and sometimes even a teardrop or two.

Creative problem solving skills can be some of the best tools in your arsenal. Thinking creatively, being able to generate lots of ideas and come up with out of the box solutions is useful at every step of the process.

The kinds of problems you will likely discuss in a problem solving workshop are often difficult to solve, and by approaching things in a fresh, creative manner, you can often create more innovative solutions.

Having practical creative skills is also a boon when it comes to problem solving. If you can help create quality design sketches and prototypes in record time, it can help bring a team to alignment more quickly or provide a base for further iteration.

The paper clip method #sharing #creativity #warm up #idea generation #brainstorming The power of brainstorming. A training for project leaders, creativity training, and to catalyse getting new solutions.

Critical thinking

Critical thinking is one of the fundamental problem solving skills you’ll want to develop when working on developing solutions. Critical thinking is the ability to analyze, rationalize and evaluate while being aware of personal bias, outlying factors and remaining open-minded.

Defining and analyzing problems without deploying critical thinking skills can mean you and your team go down the wrong path. Developing solutions to complex issues requires critical thinking too – ensuring your team considers all possibilities and rationally evaluating them.

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.

Data analysis

Though it shares lots of space with general analytical skills, data analysis skills are something you want to cultivate in their own right in order to be an effective problem solver.

Being good at data analysis doesn’t just mean being able to find insights from data, but also selecting the appropriate data for a given issue, interpreting it effectively and knowing how to model and present that data. Depending on the problem at hand, it might also include a working knowledge of specific data analysis tools and procedures.

Having a solid grasp of data analysis techniques is useful if you’re leading a problem solving workshop but if you’re not an expert, don’t worry. Bring people into the group who has this skill set and help your team be more effective as a result.

Decision making

All problems need a solution and all solutions require that someone make the decision to implement them. Without strong decision making skills, teams can become bogged down in discussion and less effective as a result.

Making decisions is a key part of the problem solving process. It’s important to remember that decision making is not restricted to the leadership team. Every staff member makes decisions every day and developing these skills ensures that your team is able to solve problems at any scale. Remember that making decisions does not mean leaping to the first solution but weighing up the options and coming to an informed, well thought out solution to any given problem that works for the whole team.

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

Dependability

Most complex organizational problems require multiple people to be involved in delivering the solution. Ensuring that the team and organization can depend on you to take the necessary actions and communicate where necessary is key to ensuring problems are solved effectively.

Being dependable also means working to deadlines and to brief. It is often a matter of creating trust in a team so that everyone can depend on one another to complete the agreed actions in the agreed time frame so that the team can move forward together. Being undependable can create problems of friction and can limit the effectiveness of your solutions so be sure to bear this in mind throughout a project.

Team Purpose & Culture #team #hyperisland #culture #remote-friendly This is an essential process designed to help teams define their purpose (why they exist) and their culture (how they work together to achieve that purpose). Defining these two things will help any team to be more focused and aligned. With support of tangible examples from other companies, the team members work as individuals and a group to codify the way they work together. The goal is a visual manifestation of both the purpose and culture that can be put up in the team’s work space.

Emotional intelligence

Emotional intelligence is an important skill for any successful team member, whether communicating internally or with clients or users. In the problem solving process, emotional intelligence means being attuned to how people are feeling and thinking, communicating effectively and being self-aware of what you bring to a room.

There are often differences of opinion when working through problem solving processes, and it can be easy to let things become impassioned or combative. Developing your emotional intelligence means being empathetic to your colleagues and managing your own emotions throughout the problem and solution process. Be kind, be thoughtful and put your points across care and attention.

Being emotionally intelligent is a skill for life and by deploying it at work, you can not only work efficiently but empathetically. Check out the emotional culture workshop template for more!

Facilitation

As we’ve clarified in our facilitation skills post, facilitation is the art of leading people through processes towards agreed-upon objectives in a manner that encourages participation, ownership, and creativity by all those involved. While facilitation is a set of interrelated skills in itself, the broad definition of facilitation can be invaluable when it comes to problem solving. Leading a team through a problem solving process is made more effective if you improve and utilize facilitation skills – whether you’re a manager, team leader or external stakeholder.

The Six Thinking Hats #creative thinking #meeting facilitation #problem solving #issue resolution #idea generation #conflict resolution The Six Thinking Hats are used by individuals and groups to separate out conflicting styles of thinking. They enable and encourage a group of people to think constructively together in exploring and implementing change, rather than using argument to fight over who is right and who is wrong.

Flexibility

Being flexible is a vital skill when it comes to problem solving. This does not mean immediately bowing to pressure or changing your opinion quickly: instead, being flexible is all about seeing things from new perspectives, receiving new information and factoring it into your thought process.

Flexibility is also important when it comes to rolling out solutions. It might be that other organizational projects have greater priority or require the same resources as your chosen solution. Being flexible means understanding needs and challenges across the team and being open to shifting or arranging your own schedule as necessary. Again, this does not mean immediately making way for other projects. It’s about articulating your own needs, understanding the needs of others and being able to come to a meaningful compromise.

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.

Working in any group can lead to unconscious elements of groupthink or situations in which you may not wish to be entirely honest. Disagreeing with the opinions of the executive team or wishing to save the feelings of a coworker can be tricky to navigate, but being honest is absolutely vital when to comes to developing effective solutions and ensuring your voice is heard.

Remember that being honest does not mean being brutally candid. You can deliver your honest feedback and opinions thoughtfully and without creating friction by using other skills such as emotional intelligence.

Explore your Values #hyperisland #skills #values #remote-friendly Your Values is an exercise for participants to explore what their most important values are. It’s done in an intuitive and rapid way to encourage participants to follow their intuitive feeling rather than over-thinking and finding the “correct” values. It is a good exercise to use to initiate reflection and dialogue around personal values.

Initiative

The problem solving process is multi-faceted and requires different approaches at certain points of the process. Taking initiative to bring problems to the attention of the team, collect data or lead the solution creating process is always valuable. You might even roadtest your own small scale solutions or brainstorm before a session. Taking initiative is particularly effective if you have good deal of knowledge in that area or have ownership of a particular project and want to get things kickstarted.

That said, be sure to remember to honor the process and work in service of the team. If you are asked to own one part of the problem solving process and you don’t complete that task because your initiative leads you to work on something else, that’s not an effective method of solving business challenges.

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.

Impartiality

A particularly useful problem solving skill for product owners or managers is the ability to remain impartial throughout much of the process. In practice, this means treating all points of view and ideas brought forward in a meeting equally and ensuring that your own areas of interest or ownership are not favored over others.

There may be a stage in the process where a decision maker has to weigh the cost and ROI of possible solutions against the company roadmap though even then, ensuring that the decision made is based on merit and not personal opinion.

Empathy map #frame insights #create #design #issue analysis An empathy map is a tool to help a design team to empathize with the people they are designing for. You can make an empathy map for a group of people or for a persona. To be used after doing personas when more insights are needed.

Being a good leader means getting a team aligned, energized and focused around a common goal. In the problem solving process, strong leadership helps ensure that the process is efficient, that any conflicts are resolved and that a team is managed in the direction of success.

It’s common for managers or executives to assume this role in a problem solving workshop, though it’s important that the leader maintains impartiality and does not bulldoze the group in a particular direction. Remember that good leadership means working in service of the purpose and team and ensuring the workshop is a safe space for employees of any level to contribute. Take a look at our leadership games and activities post for more exercises and methods to help improve leadership in your organization.

Leadership Pizza #leadership #team #remote-friendly This leadership development activity offers a self-assessment framework for people to first identify what skills, attributes and attitudes they find important for effective leadership, and then assess their own development and initiate goal setting.

In the context of problem solving, mediation is important in keeping a team engaged, happy and free of conflict. When leading or facilitating a problem solving workshop, you are likely to run into differences of opinion. Depending on the nature of the problem, certain issues may be brought up that are emotive in nature.

Being an effective mediator means helping those people on either side of such a divide are heard, listen to one another and encouraged to find common ground and a resolution. Mediating skills are useful for leaders and managers in many situations and the problem solving process is no different.

Conflict Responses #hyperisland #team #issue resolution A workshop for a team to reflect on past conflicts, and use them to generate guidelines for effective conflict handling. The workshop uses the Thomas-Killman model of conflict responses to frame a reflective discussion. Use it to open up a discussion around conflict with a team.

Planning

Solving organizational problems is much more effective when following a process or problem solving model. Planning skills are vital in order to structure, deliver and follow-through on a problem solving workshop and ensure your solutions are intelligently deployed.

Planning skills include the ability to organize tasks and a team, plan and design the process and take into account any potential challenges. Taking the time to plan carefully can save time and frustration later in the process and is valuable for ensuring a team is positioned for success.

3 Action Steps #hyperisland #action #remote-friendly This is a small-scale strategic planning session that helps groups and individuals to take action toward a desired change. It is often used at the end of a workshop or programme. The group discusses and agrees on a vision, then creates some action steps that will lead them towards that vision. The scope of the challenge is also defined, through discussion of the helpful and harmful factors influencing the group.

Prioritization

As organisations grow, the scale and variation of problems they face multiplies. Your team or is likely to face numerous challenges in different areas and so having the skills to analyze and prioritize becomes very important, particularly for those in leadership roles.

A thorough problem solving process is likely to deliver multiple solutions and you may have several different problems you wish to solve simultaneously. Prioritization is the ability to measure the importance, value, and effectiveness of those possible solutions and choose which to enact and in what order. The process of prioritization is integral in ensuring the biggest challenges are addressed with the most impactful solutions.

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.

Project management

Some problem solving skills are utilized in a workshop or ideation phases, while others come in useful when it comes to decision making. Overseeing an entire problem solving process and ensuring its success requires strong project management skills.

While project management incorporates many of the other skills listed here, it is important to note the distinction of considering all of the factors of a project and managing them successfully. Being able to negotiate with stakeholders, manage tasks, time and people, consider costs and ROI, and tie everything together is massively helpful when going through the problem solving process.

Record keeping

Working out meaningful solutions to organizational challenges is only one part of the process. Thoughtfully documenting and keeping records of each problem solving step for future consultation is important in ensuring efficiency and meaningful change.

For example, some problems may be lower priority than others but can be revisited in the future. If the team has ideated on solutions and found some are not up to the task, record those so you can rule them out and avoiding repeating work. Keeping records of the process also helps you improve and refine your problem solving model next time around!

Personal Kanban #gamestorming #action #agile #project planning Personal Kanban is a tool for organizing your work to be more efficient and productive. It is based on agile methods and principles.

Research skills

Conducting research to support both the identification of problems and the development of appropriate solutions is important for an effective process. Knowing where to go to collect research, how to conduct research efficiently, and identifying pieces of research are relevant are all things a good researcher can do well.

In larger groups, not everyone has to demonstrate this ability in order for a problem solving workshop to be effective. That said, having people with research skills involved in the process, particularly if they have existing area knowledge, can help ensure the solutions that are developed with data that supports their intention. Remember that being able to deliver the results of research efficiently and in a way the team can easily understand is also important. The best data in the world is only as effective as how it is delivered and interpreted.

Customer experience map #ideation #concepts #research #design #issue analysis #remote-friendly Customer experience mapping is a method of documenting and visualizing the experience a customer has as they use the product or service. It also maps out their responses to their experiences. To be used when there is a solution (even in a conceptual stage) that can be analyzed.

Risk management

Managing risk is an often overlooked part of the problem solving process. Solutions are often developed with the intention of reducing exposure to risk or solving issues that create risk but sometimes, great solutions are more experimental in nature and as such, deploying them needs to be carefully considered.

Managing risk means acknowledging that there may be risks associated with more out of the box solutions or trying new things, but that this must be measured against the possible benefits and other organizational factors.

Be informed, get the right data and stakeholders in the room and you can appropriately factor risk into your decision making process.

Decisions, Decisions… #communication #decision making #thiagi #action #issue analysis When it comes to decision-making, why are some of us more prone to take risks while others are risk-averse? One explanation might be the way the decision and options were presented. This exercise, based on Kahneman and Tversky’s classic study , illustrates how the framing effect influences our judgement and our ability to make decisions . The participants are divided into two groups. Both groups are presented with the same problem and two alternative programs for solving them. The two programs both have the same consequences but are presented differently. The debriefing discussion examines how the framing of the program impacted the participant’s decision.

Team-building

No single person is as good at problem solving as a team. Building an effective team and helping them come together around a common purpose is one of the most important problem solving skills, doubly so for leaders. By bringing a team together and helping them work efficiently, you pave the way for team ownership of a problem and the development of effective solutions.

In a problem solving workshop, it can be tempting to jump right into the deep end, though taking the time to break the ice, energize the team and align them with a game or exercise will pay off over the course of the day.

Remember that you will likely go through the problem solving process multiple times over an organization’s lifespan and building a strong team culture will make future problem solving more effective. It’s also great to work with people you know, trust and have fun with. Working on team building in and out of the problem solving process is a hallmark of successful teams that can work together to solve business problems.

9 Dimensions Team Building Activity #ice breaker #teambuilding #team #remote-friendly 9 Dimensions is a powerful activity designed to build relationships and trust among team members. There are 2 variations of this icebreaker. The first version is for teams who want to get to know each other better. The second version is for teams who want to explore how they are working together as a team.

Time management

The problem solving process is designed to lead a team from identifying a problem through to delivering a solution and evaluating its effectiveness. Without effective time management skills or timeboxing of tasks, it can be easy for a team to get bogged down or be inefficient.

By using a problem solving model and carefully designing your workshop, you can allocate time efficiently and trust that the process will deliver the results you need in a good timeframe.

Time management also comes into play when it comes to rolling out solutions, particularly those that are experimental in nature. Having a clear timeframe for implementing and evaluating solutions is vital for ensuring their success and being able to pivot if necessary.

Improving your skills at problem solving is often a career-long pursuit though there are methods you can use to make the learning process more efficient and to supercharge your problem solving skillset.

Remember that the skills you need to be a great problem solver have a large overlap with those skills you need to be effective in any role. Investing time and effort to develop your active listening or critical thinking skills is valuable in any context. Here are 7 ways to improve your problem solving skills.

Share best practices

Remember that your team is an excellent source of skills, wisdom, and techniques and that you should all take advantage of one another where possible. Best practices that one team has for solving problems, conducting research or making decisions should be shared across the organization. If you have in-house staff that have done active listening training or are data analysis pros, have them lead a training session.

Your team is one of your best resources. Create space and internal processes for the sharing of skills so that you can all grow together.

Ask for help and attend training

Once you’ve figured out you have a skills gap, the next step is to take action to fill that skills gap. That might be by asking your superior for training or coaching, or liaising with team members with that skill set. You might even attend specialized training for certain skills – active listening or critical thinking, for example, are business-critical skills that are regularly offered as part of a training scheme.

Whatever method you choose, remember that taking action of some description is necessary for growth. Whether that means practicing, getting help, attending training or doing some background reading, taking active steps to improve your skills is the way to go.

Learn a process

Problem solving can be complicated, particularly when attempting to solve large problems for the first time. Using a problem solving process helps give structure to your problem solving efforts and focus on creating outcomes, rather than worrying about the format.

Tools such as the seven-step problem solving process above are effective because not only do they feature steps that will help a team solve problems, they also develop skills along the way. Each step asks for people to engage with the process using different skills and in doing so, helps the team learn and grow together. Group processes of varying complexity and purpose can also be found in the SessionLab library of facilitation techniques . Using a tried and tested process and really help ease the learning curve for both those leading such a process, as well as those undergoing the purpose.

Effective teams make decisions about where they should and shouldn’t expend additional effort. By using a problem solving process, you can focus on the things that matter, rather than stumbling towards a solution haphazardly.

Create a feedback loop

Some skills gaps are more obvious than others. It’s possible that your perception of your active listening skills differs from those of your colleagues.

It’s valuable to create a system where team members can provide feedback in an ordered and friendly manner so they can all learn from one another. Only by identifying areas of improvement can you then work to improve them.

Remember that feedback systems require oversight and consideration so that they don’t turn into a place to complain about colleagues. Design the system intelligently so that you encourage the creation of learning opportunities, rather than encouraging people to list their pet peeves.

While practice might not make perfect, it does make the problem solving process easier. If you are having trouble with critical thinking, don’t shy away from doing it. Get involved where you can and stretch those muscles as regularly as possible.

Problem solving skills come more naturally to some than to others and that’s okay. Take opportunities to get involved and see where you can practice your skills in situations outside of a workshop context. Try collaborating in other circumstances at work or conduct data analysis on your own projects. You can often develop those skills you need for problem solving simply by doing them. Get involved!

Use expert exercises and methods

Learn from the best. Our library of 700+ facilitation techniques is full of activities and methods that help develop the skills you need to be an effective problem solver. Check out our templates to see how to approach problem solving and other organizational challenges in a structured and intelligent manner.

There is no single approach to improving problem solving skills, but by using the techniques employed by others you can learn from their example and develop processes that have seen proven results.

Try new ways of thinking and change your mindset

Using tried and tested exercises that you know well can help deliver results, but you do run the risk of missing out on the learning opportunities offered by new approaches. As with the problem solving process, changing your mindset can remove blockages and be used to develop your problem solving skills.

Most teams have members with mixed skill sets and specialties. Mix people from different teams and share skills and different points of view. Teach your customer support team how to use design thinking methods or help your developers with conflict resolution techniques. Try switching perspectives with facilitation techniques like Flip It! or by using new problem solving methodologies or models. Give design thinking, liberating structures or lego serious play a try if you want to try a new approach. You will find that framing problems in new ways and using existing skills in new contexts can be hugely useful for personal development and improving your skillset. It’s also a lot of fun to try new things. Give it a go!

Encountering business challenges and needing to find appropriate solutions is not unique to your organization. Lots of very smart people have developed methods, theories and approaches to help develop problem solving skills and create effective solutions. Learn from them!

Books like The Art of Thinking Clearly , Think Smarter, or Thinking Fast, Thinking Slow are great places to start, though it’s also worth looking at blogs related to organizations facing similar problems to yours, or browsing for success stories. Seeing how Dropbox massively increased growth and working backward can help you see the skills or approach you might be lacking to solve that same problem. Learning from others by reading their stories or approaches can be time-consuming but ultimately rewarding.

A tired, distracted mind is not in the best position to learn new skills. It can be tempted to burn the candle at both ends and develop problem solving skills outside of work. Absolutely use your time effectively and take opportunities for self-improvement, though remember that rest is hugely important and that without letting your brain rest, you cannot be at your most effective.

Creating distance between yourself and the problem you might be facing can also be useful. By letting an idea sit, you can find that a better one presents itself or you can develop it further. Take regular breaks when working and create a space for downtime. Remember that working smarter is preferable to working harder and that self-care is important for any effective learning or improvement process.

Want to design better group processes?

Over to you

Now we’ve explored some of the key problem solving skills and the problem solving steps necessary for an effective process, you’re ready to begin developing more effective solutions and leading problem solving workshops.

Need more inspiration? Check out our post on problem solving activities you can use when guiding a group towards a great solution in your next workshop or meeting. Have questions? Did you have a great problem solving technique you use with your team? Get in touch in the comments below. We’d love to chat!

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Proactive Problem Solving as a Soft Skill

Understanding proactive problem solving as a soft skill equips you with tools to tackle challenges effectively. Anticipating issues and taking initiative are essential. Proactive problem solvers adapt swiftly, persist, and think creatively for innovative solutions . This skill enhances collaboration, boosts confidence, and leads to improved efficiency. Strategic planning , root cause analysis, and engaging stakeholders are key strategies. By fostering a proactive mindset, you can navigate professional challenges with ease. Brushing up on these skills can set you apart in the workplace.

Table of Contents

Key Takeaways

Proactive problem solving showcases initiative and forward-thinking.
It involves anticipating challenges and taking preventive actions.
Enhances adaptability and resourcefulness in handling issues.
Fosters innovation and creative problem-solving approaches.
Valued soft skill for improving efficiency, productivity, and decision-making.

Importance of Proactive Problem Solving

Proactive problem solving is an essential skill in today's fast-paced and dynamic work environments, allowing individuals to anticipate and address challenges before they escalate. Problem prevention through forward thinking is a key aspect of proactive problem-solving.

By identifying potential issues before they arise, individuals can take vital intervention steps to mitigate risks and prevent larger problems from occurring. Anticipating challenges is a pivotal approach that involves analyzing past patterns, current trends, and future possibilities to prepare for various scenarios that may arise in the workplace.

This forward-looking mindset enables individuals to stay ahead of the curve and be better equipped to handle unexpected obstacles efficiently. Early intervention is vital in addressing issues promptly to prevent them from snowballing into significant disruptions.

Proactive problem solvers are adept at recognizing warning signs and taking proactive measures to resolve issues swiftly, maintaining a smooth workflow and fostering a proactive problem-solving culture within their teams.

Characteristics of Proactive Problem Solvers

When it comes to proactive problem solvers , key attributes and effective strategies play an essential role in their approach.

Understanding the characteristics that define proactive individuals can help you enhance your own problem-solving skills .

Key Attributes

Among the key attributes that characterize proactive problem solvers is a strong sense of adaptability and resourcefulness in challenging situations. When faced with obstacles, they excel due to their ability to think critically and make effective decisions. Here are four essential traits that proactive problem solvers possess:

Flexibility : They can adjust their approach swiftly when circumstances change.
Initiative : Proactive problem solvers take the lead in finding solutions without waiting to be directed.
Persistence : They persevere through difficulties, never giving up easily.
Creativity : Thinking outside the box, they come up with innovative solutions to complex problems.

These attributes collectively enable proactive problem solvers to tackle challenges effectively and achieve successful outcomes.

Effective Strategies

An essential characteristic of effective problem solvers is their ability to strategize methodically and adapt their approach based on the specific demands of each situation. Creative problem solving and innovative solutions are key in tackling complex issues. Strategic thinking enables proactive approaches, allowing problem solvers to anticipate obstacles and devise plans to overcome them. Here is a table outlining the characteristics of proactive problem solvers:

Benefits for Individuals and Teams

Enhancing problem-solving skills can lead to improved efficiency and productivity for both individuals and teams. When individuals excel in proactive problem-solving, the benefits extend beyond personal growth to positively impact the entire team dynamic. Here are some key advantages of honing this essential soft skill:

Foster Innovation: By actively seeking solutions to challenges, you encourage a culture of innovation within the team. This mindset can spark creativity and lead to groundbreaking ideas.
Enhance Team Collaboration: Proactive problem solvers are adept at working with others to find solutions. This collaborative approach fosters a sense of unity and strengthens teamwork synergy.
Boost Confidence: Successfully overcoming obstacles through proactive problem-solving can boost your confidence and morale. This positive mindset can be infectious and inspire others within the team.
Improve Decision-Making: Developing the strong problem-solving skills equips you with the ability to make informed decisions swiftly. This can streamline processes and lead to more effective outcomes for the team as a whole.

Implementing Proactive Problem-Solving Strategies

When implementing proactive problem-solving strategies, you must focus on:

Identifying the root causes of issues.
Developing actionable plans to address them.
Fostering a continuous improvement mindset within your team.

Identifying Root Causes

To effectively implement proactive problem-solving strategies, it's imperative to explore thoroughly into the issue by identifying its root causes. This step is vital in ensuring that solutions are tailored to address the core of the problem rather than just its symptoms.

When conducting a root cause analysis, consider the following:

Trace the Issue Back : Look beyond the surface level to understand what triggered the problem.
Ask Why Multiple Times : Use the '5 Whys' technique to dig deeper into the underlying reasons.
Collect Data : Gather relevant information and data to support your analysis.
Engage Stakeholders : Involve individuals connected to the problem to gain diverse perspectives and insights.

Developing Action Plans

Developing actionable plans involves strategically mapping out steps to address identified root causes effectively. Action planning begins by setting specific, measurable goals that align with solving the identified issues. These goals should be clear and achievable within a reasonable timeframe.

Once the goals are established, the next important step is implementing solutions . This involves breaking down the action plan into smaller tasks, assigning responsibilities, and setting deadlines. During the implementation phase, monitoring progress is essential to guarantee that the plan stays on track and adjustments can be made if necessary.

Regular check-ins and evaluations help in identifying any deviations from the plan and allow for timely corrective actions to be taken, ensuring the successful resolution of the identified problems.

Continuous Improvement Mindset

Embracing a continuous improvement mindset is essential for effectively implementing proactive problem-solving strategies in any organizational setting. To cultivate this mindset, consider the following key points:

Growth Mindset : Adopt a growth mindset that values learning from mistakes and seeking opportunities for development.
Ongoing Improvement : Aim for ongoing progress by regularly evaluating processes and identifying areas for enhancement.
Problem-Solving Skills : Hone your problem-solving skills through practice and feedback to become more adept at addressing challenges.
Proactive Approach : Anticipate potential issues and take preemptive action to prevent problems before they escalate.

Proactive Vs. Reactive Problem Solving

In problem-solving scenarios, taking a proactive approach involves anticipating potential challenges and addressing them before they escalate. This contrasts with reactive problem solving, which involves responding to issues after they've already arisen.

A proactive approach implies a strategic mindset where you actively seek out potential problems, analyze them, and take steps to prevent or mitigate their impact. It requires foresight, planning, and a willingness to invest time and effort upfront to minimize future issues.

On the other hand, a reactive response involves dealing with problems as they arise, often leading to quick fixes or temporary solutions rather than addressing the root cause .

Developing Proactive Problem-Solving Skills

To excel in proactive problem-solving, you must consistently anticipate challenges and implement preemptive strategies to address them effectively. Developing proactive problem-solving skills requires a combination of critical thinking and creativity to tackle issues before they escalate.

Here are four key steps to enhance your proactive problem-solving abilities:

Anticipate Potential Obstacles: Engage in scenario planning to identify possible challenges that may arise in your projects or daily tasks. This foresight allows you to proactively devise solutions before problems occur.
Implement Preventative Measures: Take proactive steps to mitigate risks by implementing strategies that prevent issues from occurring. This could involve setting up contingency plans or establishing protocols to address common challenges.
Seek Feedback and Learn from Past Experiences: Reflect on past situations where reactive problem-solving was necessary and determine how similar issues can be approached proactively in the future.
Encourage Innovation: Embrace creativity in your problem-solving approach by thinking outside the box and exploring unconventional solutions that can address issues before they become significant hurdles.

Examples of Proactive Problem Solving in Action

Engaging in proactive problem-solving involves exploring potential challenges and taking preemptive actions to address them efficiently. Real-life scenarios and case studies provide valuable insights into the practical applications and success stories of proactive problem-solving. Let's investigate some examples to better understand how this soft skill plays out in different situations.

In the software development project case, by identifying potential risks early on, teams can allocate resources effectively. Customer complaint handling improves by proactively seeking feedback, leading to higher satisfaction. Clear expectations in team projects reduce misunderstandings, enhancing collaboration. Market research before a product launch helps in designing strategies to mitigate possible challenges. These examples showcase the significance of proactive problem-solving in various contexts.

To sum up, proactive problem-solving is a valuable soft skill that can greatly benefit individuals and teams in various settings. By taking a proactive approach, you can anticipate and address issues before they escalate, leading to smoother processes and better outcomes.

Remember, in a world where time is of the essence, being ahead of the curve can make all the difference. So, don't be caught sleeping on the job – stay proactive and stay ahead of the game.

Matthew Lee is a distinguished Personal & Career Development Content Writer at ESS Global Training Solutions, where he leverages his extensive 15-year experience to create impactful content in the fields of psychology, business, personal and professional development. With a career dedicated to enlightening and empowering individuals and organizations, Matthew has become a pivotal figure in transforming lives through his insightful and practical guidance. His work is driven by a profound understanding of human behavior and market dynamics, enabling him to deliver content that is not only informative but also truly transformative.

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Every driven professional is looking for a way to stand out from their competition and impress their employer to advance their career.

Taking the initiative to make things happen in your position is a tremendous tactic to attract positive attention from a supervisor and be a generally good employee .

Key Takeaways:

Taking initiative at work can lead to positive growth and benefits.

Ways to take initiative include: offering solutions beyond the scope of your work, speaking up during meetings, and being willing to take on additional tasks.

Make sure not to overextend yourself because this can lead to a negative impact.

Taking initiative is a great way to build confidence and dependability.

Be positive and empathetic when taking initiative.

17 Tips On How To Take Initiative At Work (With Examples)

17 Tips for How to Take Initiative at Work

The definition of taking initiative at work, ways taking initiative at work can help you, what causes and how to overcome a lack of initiative.

Taking more initiative at work is a strong strategic move to make if it’s gone about in the right way. You’ve taken the first step by deciding to be more resourceful in your professional life . The second is reading through the following list of 17 tips for how to take initiative at work:

Think about ways to improve the organization. Even the best companies manage to find ways to innovate and improve their productivity. This is true of your employer as well. Consider the ways that your organization or team could improve.

Once you’ve gathered a list of realistic ways to innovate your company, think about how you’ll go about presenting these ideas to your team. You don’t need to formulate the entire plan, just the thought outline.

Go the extra mile when completing projects. Work is stressful , and because of this fact, many employees cruise by for years just meeting the average expectations of their employers.

While only meeting the bottom line of completing your work probably won’t get you fired , it also isn’t going to win you any promotions either.

Speak up during meetings more. A lot of companies have meetings weekly or monthly as a designated time for employees to converse about what’s going on. Unfortunately, many employees stay quiet during team meetings . This is a squandered opportunity to speak up and take initiative.

Ask questions. One of the best ways to take initiative at your job is to ask questions every chance you need to. Asking questions shows that you’re interested in improving and doing good work. You can’t advance from your position if you don’t know where you stand or what you can do to get better.

Only put out work you’re proud of. When you first began your job, this tip was probably an inherent part of your work process. Over time, though, your drive to only turn in work that you’re 100% proud of becomes a little less intense.

It’s a natural cycle that happens when someone settles into their professional role.

Consider your future and career goals. Individuals who display initiative in their career are often thinking about objectives in the future and how to achieve them.

Building rapport with co-workers. It’s important to build rapport with co-workers and act together as a team. The staff of a company needs to be able to function well together, even in jobs with competitive undertones.

Request constructive feedback from supervisors. Another technique for showing your employer you mean business when it comes to growing your career is to request constructive feedback.

Asking a supervisor for feedback about your skills and weak points indicates that you’re an employee who’s open to suggestions and ready to improve your performance.

Pay attention at all times. You never know when a vital piece of information is going to be brought up in a meeting or a new opportunity will present itself briefly. To make sure you’re aware of everything happening at your organization and any opportunities for advancement, pay attention at all times.

Always be prepared for the next opportunity. Your place of employment has a wealth of opportunities that can introduce themselves at any given point. Taking advantage of these occasions relies on catching them at the right moment and being ready to take them on.

Adopt a team-centered mentality. A business achieves its success through the strength of its team. Always feeling like you need to compete with your co-workers creates a tense work environment that’s difficult to collaborate in.

Offer to help when you can. An employer notices when you go out of your way to offer help when you didn’t have to because it exhibits initiative. While you should never extend your services to help when you already have a full plate, making the generous offer when you can will impress a supervisor.

Take on some extra work . This is another tip that’s only possible to do if you have enough room for it in your schedule. When you have some downtime at your position, it might be a good call to ask for some extra assignments.

Step up to solve problems when they arise. Problem-solving is an advantageous skill for employees to have, but it’s useless if you don’t share this information with your colleagues. Although nobody is thrilled at the idea of maneuvering problems and overcoming obstacles, it needs to happen eventually in any professional environment.

Act as a leader within the company. While you might be in an associate ’s position now, there’s always the possibility of leadership in your career’s future. Start now by acting as an example and presenting leadership skills .

Improve your soft skills in your spare time. Taking it upon yourself to improve your career’s transferable skills shows an immense amount of initiative. An employee is rarely told they need to work on their interpersonal abilities or time management.

Stay positive. Co-workers are aware of and affected by the energy you bring to the workplace. Even though a professional environment has the potential to be stressful at times, staying positive is significant to how you’ll be perceived.

Most companies have that one employee who goes beyond their basic job responsibilities to accomplish goals and find solutions without being asked.

Their supervisors know that they can count on them to get their job done and more. Thanks to being proactive and problem-solving , they experience career growth.

This describes an individual who takes initiative at work.

Helps you stand out from the competition. The professional world is competitive despite the field you work in. Even people in the most laid-back occupations need to make themselves stand out to gain traction in their careers.

Builds confidence. Putting yourself out there as a capable employee who’s eager to take on difficult assignments builds confidence . It’s impossible to get better at your craft without taking a little calculated risk to improve.

Your employer sees you as dependable. Businesses want to fill their team with individuals who take initiative because it means that they won’t need to hold their hand through every small task.

It can improve your career. Taking initiative in the workplace can greatly advance your career over time. Stagnant employees who don’t take action to move upward in their company usually don’t.

To overcome a lack of initiative, you must first understand what causes a lack of initiative. Not everyone is naturally good at taking initiative, so it is very normal to feel like you have certain challenges in front of you.

These challenges can be broken into two categories:

External factors. External factors are challenges within your work environment that prevent you from taking initiative. This could be a toxic work culture where initiative is not rewarded, where speaking up can lead to ideas being stolen or shot down.

Other factors include a lack of infrastructure that allows you to work outside your job responsibilities. For example, although you may want to take initiative, your boss only wants you to work on a specific project and provides no means for you to expand outward.

Internal factors. Internal factors are the challenges within you that prevent you from taking initiative. This can range from something as simple as ignorance to opportunities, to something more serious such as a mental health issue like chronic depression.

Most people have internal factors get in the way of their initiative. A lack of confidence, an anxiety of being rejected, procrastination, or an inability to articulate goals can all result in little to no initiative being taken.

Luckily, these are all problems that can be solved. If your environment does not incentivize initiative, you can try to bring the issue up with your supervisors. However, sometimes it may just be better to find work elsewhere. Generally though, most work environments will want to see and support initiative from their employees and do their best to help you.

Internal factors, which are more common, also come with solutions. The first step is to be honest with yourself. Practice developing your self-awareness with exercises such as meditation and journaling. From there, begin to notice patterns in your behavior. Acknowledge and accept internal factors that are preventing you from taking initiative.

Once you understand what the problem is, you can work to improving your situation. Each internal factor has its own solution, but it first needs to be identified. This may be accomplished alone, however, don’t be afraid to ask for help from peers, a mentor , or a mental health professional . Generally it is going to take effort to develop new habits.

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Sky Ariella is a professional freelance writer, originally from New York. She has been featured on websites and online magazines covering topics in career, travel, and lifestyle. She received her BA in psychology from Hunter College.

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Article • 10 min read

Taking Initiative

Making things happen in the workplace.

By the Mind Tools Content Team

"There are three types of people in this world: those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who wonder what happened." – Mary Kay Ash, American businesswoman

"Initiative is doing the right thing without being told." – Victor Hugo, French writer

Helen's manager was due to meet with her and her co-workers to discuss their role in the next product roll-out. Unfortunately, he's been snowed in at an airport on the other side of the country, and his cell phone battery is dead. The deadline is tight, and the team can't afford to waste a day because of his absence.

Helen was the last person to talk to her boss before he left, and he'd outlined who was going to be doing what on the project. So, Helen takes command, and, within an hour, everyone on the team has their preliminary tasks mapped out.

When her boss arrives in the office three days later, he's impressed and grateful that Helen took responsibility to get the project moving. If she hadn't, several valuable days would have been lost.

Do you take initiative like Helen? That is, do you make things happen for yourself and for your team? Or, do you wait for someone else to tell you what to do?

People who have initiative and make things happen are highly valued in the workplace. But, what is it? And how can you develop it? We'll be covering both of these questions in this article.

Defining Initiative

Researchers Michael Frese and Doris Fay define initiative as "work behavior characterized by its self-starting nature, its proactive approach, and by being persistent in overcoming difficulties that arise in pursuit of a goal."

When you show initiative, you do things without being told; you find out what you need to know; you keep going when things get tough; and you spot and take advantage of opportunities that others pass by. You act, instead of reacting, at work.

Most of us have seen initiative in action. Maybe you've seen a young manager who fills her boss's shoes when she's sick and the rest of the team is unsure what to do, or perhaps you've seen a team member proposing a process improvement plan to the executive board.

Initiative has become increasingly important in today's workplace. Organizations want employees who can think on their feet and take action without waiting for someone to tell them what to do. After all, this type of flexibility and courage is what pushes teams and organizations to innovate and overcome competition.

How to Develop Your Initiative

The good news is that initiative is a skill that you can develop. You can do this by following these steps:

1. Develop a Career Plan

Research* has shown that people who have a long-term career plan are more likely to take initiative. Professionals who know what they want and where they want to go are far more likely to show initiative at work, especially when the action or decision will help them further their career goals. Develop this plan .

Also, make sure that you understand your job, your team and your organization's purpose, so that you know what you should be achieving. See our articles on Job Analysis , Team Charters and Mission and Vision Statements for more on this.

Once you know what you want to achieve, integrate your career goals with your personal goals so that you have something to work towards. (In your personal life, the key to developing initiative is to set clear personal goals , and then to work steadily towards achieving them.)

2. Build Self-Confidence

It can take courage and a strong sense of self to show initiative, especially if you fear that people may disagree with your actions or suggestions.

First, take our quiz, How Self-Confident Are You? The results will give you a good idea of your confidence levels right now. Then, if you need to, take steps to build your self-confidence .

For instance, set small goals so you can achieve some quick wins. And push yourself to do (positive) things that you'd otherwise be scared to do – this will not only help you build your self-confidence, but it will help you build the courage to accomplish bigger, scarier tasks later on.

You might also want to read our article on Positive Thinking . This, along with Visualization , can help you build your self-confidence even further.

Some people have a real fear of speaking up , or of taking any action that's not yet authorized by the leadership team, because they're afraid of failure or rejection. If this sounds like you, see our article on overcoming fear of failure to learn how to manage your fears.

3. Spot Opportunities and Potential Improvements

People who show initiative often do so by spotting and acting on opportunities that their colleagues or leaders have not noticed. They're curious about their organization and how it works, and they keep their minds open to new ideas and new possibilities.

You should always be on the lookout for areas in your organization that could use improvement. To spot opportunities and potential improvements, consider the following from the problem-finding stage of the Simplex Process :

What would our customers (internal and external) want us to improve? What could they be doing better if we could help them? How can we improve quality?
Who else could we help by using our core competencies ?
What small problems do we have that could grow into bigger ones?
What slows our work or makes it more difficult? What do we often fail to achieve? Where do we have bottlenecks ? What is frustrating and irritating to people on our team?

Get into the habit of looking for these things – perhaps set a repeating appointment in your diary to remind you to look for them; and, when things go wrong, think about how you can fix them.

For more on implementing your ideas, see our articles on the Simplex Process and on turning your idea into reality .

4. Sense-Check Your Ideas

Imagine that you've come up with a creative way of breaking through a bottleneck in your customer service process. Before you head straight to your boss with your idea, stop and do some homework. Think about the costs and risks associated with the idea. (Tools like Cost/Benefit Analysis , Risk Analysis and Impact Analysis will help here.)

Where the cost of the project and the consequences of something going wrong are small, consider going ahead with your idea directly, while keeping your boss "in the loop" (how far you should do this depends on your relationship with your boss). Where risks or costs are more significant, consider preparing a business case , and ask for authorization before you go ahead.

You've already shown initiative by coming up with a solution. Make sure that you follow this through by doing your homework on the idea. The more you have researched and considered your ideas, the higher your chances of success will be.

5. Develop Rational Persistence

Persistence is the art of moving forward even when you encounter inertia or difficulty. People who show initiative often encounter difficulties and setbacks along the way, so resilience and rational persistence (where you listen to, consider, and appropriately modify your direction depending on other people's input) are essential if you want to achieve what you've set out to do.

When you're persisting with your idea, you'll find things much easier if you learn how to manage change effectively – this can often make the difference between success and failure for a project. It's also helpful to learn how to open closed minds , since people may already have an opinion on a subject before you even start presenting your idea.

6. Find Balance

While it's important to take initiative, it's just as important to be wise in the way that you use it. In some situations, it can be inappropriate to take initiative, and people who generate too much extra work for other people can upset others.

For instance, you might have worked with a colleague who was "gung-ho" about every idea. He was constantly pushing the team, and your boss, to lead the next project or to implement a new idea. However, some of his ideas were naïve, his persistence in taking the initiative often crossed the line into aggressiveness, and perhaps the team felt that he "rocked the boat" too much at a time when other team members were overloaded.

This is why it's so important to learn good decision-making techniques . The more you enhance these skills, the better you'll be at judging when an idea is good, and it isn't. This way, you can develop a reputation both for initiative and for good judgment – an invaluable combination!

You'll also want to develop your emotional intelligence skills. It's helpful to know how to read the emotions of others. This sensitivity can help you further decide when to take initiative, and when it's best to let things be.

Initiative has become increasingly important in today's workplace. You show initiative when you act without being told what to do, persist in the face of inertia and difficulty, and see your idea through to a successful conclusion.

There are six steps you can take to develop your own initiative.

Develop a career plan.
Build self-confidence.
Spot opportunities and potential improvements.
Sense-check your ideas.
Develop persistence.
Find balance.

Frese, M. et al (1997) 'The Concept of Personal Initiative: Operationalization, Reliability, and Validity in Two German Samples,' Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psycholog y, No 70. (Available here .)

Campbell, D.J. (2000) 'The Proactive Employee,' The Academy of Management Executive , Vol. 14, No 3. (Available here .)

Frese, M. and Fay, D. (2001) 'Personal Initiative: An Active Performance Concept for Work in the 21st Century,' Research in Organization Behavior , Vol. 23.

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How to build a proactive workforce: training problem solvers or strategic change agents.

by Karoline Strauss , 03.10.16 Follow

Organizations are increasingly looking for their employees to be proactive – to show initiative in their work and contribute to positive change. But how can organizations increase proactivity in their workforce? Can employees be trained to be more proactive? ESSEC Prof. Karoline Strauss aims to answer this question in her research. “The short answer is: yes”, she says. “The long answer is that which training approach will be effective – and for which employees – depends on the kind of proactivity an organization is looking for in their workforce. Do you want your employees to be proactive problem solvers, fixing issues they come across in their day-to-day job, or do you want them to be proactive in shaping the long-term future of the organization? Our findings show that a different training approach is needed for these two different types of proactivity”.

The proactivity gap

Employees who take a proactive approach at work – who speak up with suggestions, try to bring about improvements, and take initiative – generally perform better, are more satisfied with their job, and progress more quickly in their career. For organizations, a proactive workforce which anticipates changes and is willing to contribute to innovation is seen as a competitive advantage. So how can organizations encourage employees to be more proactive?

Previous research has highlighted two potential avenues for organizations wishing to increase the proactivity of their workforce: hiring new human resources with particular personalities and skills sets, or changing the work context, for example by enriching existing employees’ work. However, these strategies often encounter two issues that may block their implementation: the lack of opportunity to hire due to difficult economic or budgetary contexts, and the lack in means and resources to enrich job roles. It therefore falls to training and development to offer a feasible approach to promoting employee proactivity. Indeed, in the United States alone, organizations spent over $165 billion on employee training and development in 2013. But how should training approaches aimed at encouraging proactivity in the workforce be designed? And which training approaches are most effective for employees with different needs and priorities?

Bridging the gap

Karoline Strauss , together with Sharon K. Parker of the University of Western Australia, decided to carry out research to address these questions. “It was clear to us that the training approach an organization should take would depend on the type of proactivity it is looking for in its employees”, says Prof. Strauss. The researchers suspected that a different training approach would be needed to encourage employees to become proactive in solving problems they encountered in their day-to-day work, or to encourage them to involve themselves in strategic change and become proactive in shaping the future of the organization. The researchers developed two distinct training interventions focused on encouraging these two types of proactivity.

The researchers then recruited 112 volunteers from a police force in the North of England. The volunteers were randomly allocated to one of the two training approaches, or to a third group that received no training whatsoever. “To test whether the training approaches were effective in promoting proactivity, we compare employees who took part in the training to employees in this third group”, explains Prof. Strauss. “This means that we can rule out that employees throughout the organization became more or less proactive because of other changes that took place during the time of our study”. The researchers then tracked employees over 9 months to see if their proactivity increased. The findings showed that both training approaches were potentially effective in encouraging employees to be more proactive, but that employees’ needs and preferences determined whether the training worked for them.

It depends: Employee needs and preferences matter for proactivity training

Prof. Strauss’s findings showed that employees faced with a high workload were most likely to respond positively to the training approach aimed at encouraging them to be proactive problem solvers. “These employees felt swamped by the demands they were facing”, states Prof. Strauss. “We succeeded in training them to approach their job in a more proactive way and take charge of challenges and obstacles they were facing”. Training these employees to identify problems in their job and to develop ways to address these problems helped them to find more efficient ways of completing their day-to-day tasks.

On the other hand, the training approach aimed at encouraging employees to become more proactive in shaping the future of the organization was most effective for those who are generally more focused on long-term rather than short-term benefits. Employees who were more interested in the short-term did not respond to the training approach in the same way – they did not become more proactive. “Our findings really show that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to proactivity training”, explains Prof. Strauss. “For organizations who want to enhance proactivity in their workforce this has two important implications. First, what kind of proactivity do they expect? Do they want employees to become proactive in overcoming obstacles and finding more efficient ways of working, or do they want employees who think about the long-term future and about strategic change at the organization level? Second, organizations need to consider the situation the employee is in. What are the employee’s needs and preferences? Pushing somebody who is generally not very interested in the long-term to contribute to bringing about a vision of the organization in the future is unlikely to be effective in making them more proactive, and our findings suggest that it can even backfire”.

Expanding the bridge

Prof. Strauss’s work has been recognized for the strength of its experimental design which rules out alternative explanations for changes in employee proactivity. However, she suggests that more research is needed on the effects of training interventions on employee proactivity. “Our study is an important first step in determining which type of training approach can be effective in encouraging employees to be more proactive, and who is most likely to respond positively to the training. But can we, for example, combine the different training approaches, and are there other ways in which employees and organizations can benefit from proactivity training?” Further research will need to explore these questions in other organizational settings.

Useful links:

Acquire the research paper: Intervening to Enhance Proactivity in Organizations: Improving the Present or Changing the Future free on the ResearchGate website.

Other work and publications:

Strauss, K. & Kelly, C. (in press). An identity-based perspective on proactivity: Future work selves and beyond . In Parker, S. K & Bindl, U. K. (Eds.) Proactivity at Work. New York: Routledge Organization and Management Series.

Strauss, K. , Griffin, M. A., Parker, S. K., & Mason, C. M. (2015). Building and sustaining proactive behaviors: The role of adaptivity and job satisfaction . Journal of Business and Psychology, 30(1), 63-72

Strauss, K. , & Parker, S. K. (2014). Effective and sustained proactivity in the workplace: A self-determination theory perspective . In Gagné, M. (Ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Work Engagement, Motivation, and Self-Determination Theory. New York: Oxford University Press.

Strauss, K. , Griffin, M. A., & Parker, S. K. (2012). Future Work Selves: How salient hoped-for identities motivate proactive career behaviors . Journal of Applied Psychology, 97 (3), 580 -589.

Parker, S. K., Bindl, U. K., & Strauss, K. (2010). Making things happen: A model of proactive motivation . Journal of Management, 36 (4), 827-856.

Strauss, K. , Griffin, M. A., & Rafferty, A. E. (2009). Proactivity directed toward the team and organization: The role of leadership, commitment, and role-breadth self-efficacy . British Journal of Management, 20 (3), 279-291.

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31 examples of problem solving performance review phrases

Jump to section

You're doing great

You should think of improving

Tips to improve

Use these practical examples of phrases, sample comments, and templates for your performance review , 360-degree feedback survey, or manager appraisal.

The following examples not only relate to problem-solving but also conflict management , effective solutions, selecting the best alternatives, decision making , problem identification, analyzing effectively, and generally becoming an effective problem-solving strategist. Start using effective performance review questions to help better guide your workforce's development.

Problem solving appraisal comments: you're doing great

You always maintain an effective dialogue with clients when they have technical problems. Being clear and articulate makes sure our customers' faults are attended to promptly.
You constantly make sure to look beyond the obvious you never stop at the first answer. You’re really good at exploring alternatives. Well done!
Keeping the supervisors and managers informed of status changes and requests is important. You’re really good at communicating the changes to the projects at all times. Keep it up!
You stay cool and collected even when things aren’t going according to plan or up in the air. This is a great trait to possess. Well done!
You’re excellent at giving an honest and logical analysis. Keep it up! Effectively diagnosing complex problems and reaching sustainable solutions is one of your strong points.
Your ability to ability to make complex systems into simple ones is truly a unique skill to possess. Well done!
You often identify practical solutions to every roadblock. You’re a real asset to the team! Great job.
You always listen actively and attentively to make sure you understand what the exact problem is and you come up with solutions in an effective manner.
You have an amazing ability to clearly explain options and solutions effectively and efficiently. Well done!
When driving projects, you can shift to other areas comfortably and easily. making sure the project runs smoothly. Great job!

problem-solving-performance-review-phrases-person-at-work-talking-to-boss

Problem solving performance review phrases: you should think of improving

You always seem too overwhelmed when faced with multiple problems. Try to think of ways to make problems more manageable so that they can be solved in a timely and effective manner.
Avoiding conflicts constantly with people is not a good idea as you will only build up personal frustration and nothing will be done to remedy the situation. Try to face people when there are problems and rectify problems when they occur.
Don’t allow demanding customers to rattle your cage too much. If they become too demanding, take a step back, regulate your emotions , and try to make use of online support tools to help you rectify problems these tools can help a lot!
It’s necessary that you learn from your past mistakes . You cannot keep making the same mistakes , as this is not beneficial to the company.
You tend to ask the same questions over and over again. Try to listen more attentively or take notes when colleagues are answering!
Providing multiple solutions in an indirect and creative approach will allow you to be more effective at problem-solving . if you struggle with this typically through viewing the problem in a new and unusual light.
You fail to provide staff with the appropriate amount of structure and direction. They must know the direction you wish them to go in to achieve their goals .
You need to be able to recognize repetitive trends to solve problems promptly.
You tend to have problems troubleshooting even the most basic of questions. As a problem solver and customer support person, it’s imperative that you can answer these questions easily.
Read through your training manual and make sure you fully understand it before attempting questions again.

problem-solving-performance-review-phrases-person-talking-at-work

Performance review tips to improve problem solving

Try to complain less about problems and come up with solutions to the problems more often. Complaining is not beneficial to progression and innovation.
As a problem solver, it’s important to be able to handle multiple priorities under short deadlines.
You need to be able to effectively distinguish between the cause and the symptoms of problems to solve them in an efficient and timely manner.
Try to anticipate problems in advance before they become major roadblocks down the road.
Try to view obstacles as opportunities to learn and thrive at the challenge of solving the problem.
Remember to prioritize problems according to their degree of urgency. It's important that you spend the majority of your time on urgent tasks over menial ones.
When putting plans into place, stick to them and make sure they are completed.
When solving problems, try to allocate appropriate levels of resources when undertaking new projects. It is important to become as efficient and as effective as possible.
Try to learn to pace yourself when solving problems to avoid burnout . You’re a great asset to the team and we cannot afford to lose at this point.
Meeting regularly with your staff to review results is vital to the problem-solving process.
Staff that has regular check-ins understand what it is that is required of them, what they are currently achieving, and areas they may need to improve. Try to hold one-on-one meetings every week.

Enhance your problem-solving skills

Discover personalized coaching to navigate challenges effectively and boost your performance.

Madeline Miles

Madeline is a writer, communicator, and storyteller who is passionate about using words to help drive positive change. She holds a bachelor's in English Creative Writing and Communication Studies and lives in Denver, Colorado. In her spare time, she's usually somewhere outside (preferably in the mountains) — and enjoys poetry and fiction.

How a performance review template improves the feedback process

25 performance review questions (and how to use them), agile performance management: how to improve an agile team, 5 tactics for managing managers effectively — and why it matters, 53 performance review examples to boost growth, managers have a strong effect on team performance, for better or worse, how stanford executive education embraces vulnerability as a form of resilience, awakening human potential: developing people and driving performance in the new world of work, uk leaders develop future-minded skills with betterup, similar articles, 10 problem-solving strategies to turn challenges on their head, teamwork skills self-appraisal comments: 40 example phrases, your complete guide to self-assessments (with examples), 30 communication feedback examples, 30 customer service review examples to develop your team, 37 innovation and creativity appraisal comments, 8 creative solutions to your most challenging problems, 5+ ways to establish taking ownership as a core value at work, stay connected with betterup, get our newsletter, event invites, plus product insights and research..

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A Better Framework for Solving Tough Problems

Start with trust and end with speed.

Apple Podcasts

When it comes to solving complicated problems, the default for many organizational leaders is to take their time to work through the issues at hand. Unfortunately, that often leads to patchwork solutions or problems not truly getting resolved.

But Anne Morriss offers a different framework. In this episode, she outlines a five-step process for solving any problem and explains why starting with trust and ending with speed is so important for effective change leadership. As she says, “Let’s get into dialogue with the people who are also impacted by the problem before we start running down the path of solving it.”

Morriss is an entrepreneur and leadership coach. She’s also the coauthor of the book, Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems .

Key episode topics include: strategy, decision making and problem solving, strategy execution, managing people, collaboration and teams, trustworthiness, organizational culture, change leadership, problem solving, leadership.

HBR On Strategy curates the best case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, to help you unlock new ways of doing business. New episodes every week.

Listen to the full HBR IdeaCast episode: How to Solve Tough Problems Better and Faster (2023)
Find more episodes of HBR IdeaCast
Discover 100 years of Harvard Business Review articles, case studies, podcasts, and more at HBR.org .

HANNAH BATES: Welcome to HBR On Strategy , case studies and conversations with the world’s top business and management experts, hand-selected to help you unlock new ways of doing business.

When it comes to solving complicated problems, many leaders only focus on the most apparent issues. Unfortunately that often leads to patchwork or partial solutions. But Anne Morriss offers a different framework that aims to truly tackle big problems by first leaning into trust and then focusing on speed.

Morriss is an entrepreneur and leadership coach. She’s also the co-author of the book, Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leader’s Guide to Solving Hard Problems . In this episode, she outlines a five-step process for solving any problem. Some, she says, can be solved in a week, while others take much longer. She also explains why starting with trust and ending with speed is so important for effective change leadership.

This episode originally aired on HBR IdeaCast in October 2023. Here it is.

CURT NICKISCH: Welcome to the HBR IdeaCast from Harvard Business Review. I’m Curt Nickisch.

Problems can be intimidating. Sure, some problems are fun to dig into. You roll up your sleeves, you just take care of them; but others, well, they’re complicated. Sometimes it’s hard to wrap your brain around a problem, much less fix it.

And that’s especially true for leaders in organizations where problems are often layered and complex. They sometimes demand technical, financial, or interpersonal knowledge to fix. And whether it’s avoidance on the leaders’ part or just the perception that a problem is systemic or even intractable, problems find a way to endure, to keep going, to keep being a problem that everyone tries to work around or just puts up with.

But today’s guest says that just compounds it and makes the problem harder to fix. Instead, she says, speed and momentum are key to overcoming a problem.

Anne Morriss is an entrepreneur, leadership coach and founder of the Leadership Consortium and with Harvard Business School Professor Francis Frei, she wrote the new book, Move Fast and Fix Things: The Trusted Leaders Guide to Solving Hard Problems . Anne, welcome back to the show.

ANNE MORRISS: Curt, thank you so much for having me.

CURT NICKISCH: So, to generate momentum at an organization, you say that you really need speed and trust. We’ll get into those essential ingredients some more, but why are those two essential?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah. Well, the essential pattern that we observed was that the most effective change leaders out there were building trust and speed, and it didn’t seem to be a well-known observation. We all know the phrase, “Move fast and break things,” but the people who were really getting it right were moving fast and fixing things, and that was really our jumping off point. So when we dug into the pattern, what we observed was they were building trust first and then speed. This foundation of trust was what allowed them to fix more things and break fewer.

CURT NICKISCH: Trust sounds like a slow thing, right? If you talk about building trust, that is something that takes interactions, it takes communication, it takes experiences. Does that run counter to the speed idea?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah. Well, this issue of trust is something we’ve been looking at for over a decade. One of the headlines in our research is it’s actually something we’re building and rebuilding and breaking all the time. And so instead of being this precious, almost farbege egg, it’s this thing that is constantly in motion and this thing that we can really impact when we’re deliberate about our choices and have some self-awareness around where it’s breaking down and how it’s breaking down.

CURT NICKISCH: You said break trust in there, which is intriguing, right? That you may have to break trust to build trust. Can you explain that a little?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah, well, I’ll clarify. It’s not that you have to break it in order to build it. It’s just that we all do it some of the time. Most of us are trusted most of the time. Most of your listeners I imagine are trusted most of the time, but all of us have a pattern where we break trust or where we don’t build as much as could be possible.

CURT NICKISCH: I want to talk about speed, this other essential ingredient that’s so intriguing, right? Because you think about solving hard problems as something that just takes a lot of time and thinking and coordination and planning and designing. Explain what you mean by it? And also, just how we maybe approach problems wrong by taking them on too slowly?

ANNE MORRISS: Well, Curt, no one has ever said to us, “I wish I had taken longer and done less.” We hear the opposite all the time, by the way. So what we really set out to do was to create a playbook that anyone can use to take less time to do more of the things that are going to make your teams and organizations stronger.

And the way we set up the book is okay, it’s really a five step process. Speed is the last step. It’s the payoff for the hard work you’re going to do to figure out your problem, build or rebuild trust, expand the team in thoughtful and strategic ways, and then tell a real and compelling story about the change you’re leading.

Only then do you get to go fast, but that’s an essential part of the process, and we find that either people under emphasize it or speed has gotten a bad name in this world of moving fast and breaking things. And part of our mission for sure was to rehabilitate speed’s reputation because it is an essential part of the change leader’s equation. It can be the difference between good intentions and getting anything done at all.

CURT NICKISCH: You know, the fact that nobody ever tells you, “I wish we had done less and taken more time.” I think we all feel that, right? Sometimes we do something and then realize, “Oh, that wasn’t that hard and why did it take me so long to do it? And I wish I’d done this a long time ago.” Is it ever possible to solve a problem too quickly?

ANNE MORRISS: Absolutely. And we see that all the time too. What we push people to do in those scenarios is really take a look at the underlying issue because in most cases, the solution is not to take your foot off the accelerator per se and slow down. The solution is to get into the underlying problem. So if it’s burnout or a strategic disconnect between what you’re building and the marketplace you’re serving, what we find is the anxiety that people attach to speed or the frustration people attach to speed is often misplaced.

CURT NICKISCH: What is a good timeline to think about solving a problem then? Because if we by default take too long or else jump ahead and we don’t fix it right, what’s a good target time to have in your mind for how long solving a problem should take?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah. Well, we’re playful in the book and talking about the idea that many problems can be solved in a week. We set the book up five chapters. They’re titled Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, and we’re definitely having fun with that. And yet, if you count the hours in a week, there are a lot of them. Many of our problems, if you were to spend a focused 40 hours of effort on a problem, you’re going to get pretty far.

But our main message is, listen, of course it’s going to depend on the nature of the problem, and you’re going to take weeks and maybe even some cases months to get to the other side. What we don’t want you to do is take years, which tends to be our default timeline for solving hard problems.

CURT NICKISCH: So you say to start with identifying the problem that’s holding you back, seems kind of obvious. But where do companies go right and wrong with this first step of just identifying the problem that’s holding you back?

ANNE MORRISS: And our goal is that all of these are going to feel obvious in retrospect. The problem is we skip over a lot of these steps and this is why we wanted to underline them. So this one is really rooted in our observation and I think the pattern of our species that we tend to be overconfident in the quality of our thoughts, particularly when it comes to diagnosing problems.

And so we want to invite you to start in a very humble and curious place, which tends not to be our default mode when we’re showing up for work. We convince ourselves that we’re being paid for our judgment. That’s exactly what gets reinforced everywhere. And so we tend to counterintuitively, given what we just talked about, we tend to move too quickly through the diagnostic phase.

CURT NICKISCH: “I know what to do, that’s why you hired me.”

ANNE MORRISS: Exactly. “I know what to do. That’s why you hired me. I’ve seen this before. I have a plan. Follow me.” We get rewarded for the expression of confidence and clarity. And so what we’re inviting people to do here is actually pause and really lean into what are the root causes of the problem you’re seeing? What are some alternative explanations? Let’s get into dialogue with the people who are also impacted by the problem before we start running down the path of solving it.

CURT NICKISCH: So what do you recommend for this step, for getting to the root of the problem? What are questions you should ask? What’s the right thought process? What do you do on Monday of the week?

ANNE MORRISS: In our experience of doing this work, people tend to undervalue the power of conversation, particularly with other people in the organization. So we will often advocate putting together a team of problem solvers, make it a temporary team, really pull in people who have a particular perspective on the problem and create the space, make it as psychologically safe as you can for people to really, as Chris Argyris so beautifully articulated, discuss the undiscussable.

And so the conditions for that are going to look different in every organization depending on the problem, but if you can get a space where smart people who have direct experience of a problem are in a room and talking honestly with each other, you can make an extraordinary amount of progress, certainly in a day.

CURT NICKISCH: Yeah, that gets back to the trust piece.

ANNE MORRISS: Definitely.

CURT NICKISCH: How do you like to start that meeting, or how do you like to talk about it? I’m just curious what somebody on that team might hear in that meeting, just to get the sense that it’s psychologically safe, you can discuss the undiscussable and you’re also focusing on the identification part. What’s key to communicate there?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah. Well, we sometimes encourage people to do a little bit of data gathering before those conversations. So the power of a quick anonymous survey around whatever problem you’re solving, but also be really thoughtful about the questions you’re going to ask in the moment. So a little bit of preparation can go a long way and a little bit of thoughtfulness about the power dynamic. So who’s going to walk in there with license to speak and who’s going to hold back? So being thoughtful about the agenda, about the questions you’re asking about the room, about the facilitation, and then courage is a very infectious emotion.

So if you can early on create the conditions for people to show up bravely in that conversation, then the chance that you’re going to get good information and that you’re going to walk out of that room with new insight in the problem that you didn’t have when you walked in is extraordinarily high.

CURT NICKISCH: Now, in those discussions, you may have people who have different perspectives on what the problem really is. They also bear different costs of addressing the problem or solving it. You talked about the power dynamic, but there’s also an unfairness dynamic of who’s going to actually have to do the work to take care of it, and I wonder how you create a culture in that meeting where it’s the most productive?

ANNE MORRISS: For sure, the burden of work is not going to be equitably distributed around the room. But I would say, Curt, the dynamic that we see most often is that people are deeply relieved that hard problems are being addressed. So it really can create, and more often than not in our experience, it does create this beautiful flywheel of action, creativity, optimism. Often when problems haven’t been addressed, there is a fair amount of anxiety in the organization, frustration, stagnation. And so credible movement towards action and progress is often the best antidote. So even if the plan isn’t super clear yet, if it’s credible, given who’s in the room and their decision rights and mandate, if there’s real momentum coming out of that to make progress, then that tends to be deeply energizing to people.

CURT NICKISCH: I wonder if there’s an organization that you’ve worked with that you could talk about how this rolled out and how this took shape?

ANNE MORRISS: When we started working with Uber, that was wrestling with some very public issues of culture and trust with a range of stakeholders internally, the organization, also external, that work really started with a campaign of listening and really trying to understand where trust was breaking down from the perspective of these stakeholders?

So whether it was female employees or regulators or riders who had safety concerns getting into the car with a stranger. This work, it starts with an honest internal dialogue, but often the problem has threads that go external. And so bringing that same commitment to curiosity and humility and dialogue to anyone who’s impacted by the problem is the fastest way to surface what’s really going on.

CURT NICKISCH: There’s a step in this process that you lay out and that’s communicating powerfully as a leader. So we’ve heard about listening and trust building, but now you’re talking about powerful communication. How do you do this and why is it maybe this step in the process rather than the first thing you do or the last thing you do?

ANNE MORRISS: So in our process, again, it’s the days of the week. On Monday you figured out the problem. Tuesday you really got into the sandbox in figuring out what a good enough plan is for building trust. Wednesday, step three, you made it better. You created an even better plan, bringing in new perspectives. Thursday, this fourth step is the day we’re saying you got to go get buy-in. You got to bring other people along. And again, this is a step where we see people often underinvest in the power and payoff of really executing it well.

CURT NICKISCH: How does that go wrong?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah, people don’t know the why. Human behavior and the change in human behavior really depends on a strong why. It’s not just a selfish, “What’s in it for me?” Although that’s helpful, but where are we going? I may be invested in a status quo and I need to understand, okay, if you’re going to ask me to change, if you’re going to invite me into this uncomfortable place of doing things differently, why am I here? Help me understand it and articulate the way forward and language that not only I can understand, but also that’s going to be motivating to me.

CURT NICKISCH: And who on my team was part of this process and all that kind of stuff?

ANNE MORRISS: Oh, yeah. I may have some really important questions that may be in the way of my buy-in and commitment to this plan. So certainly creating a space where those questions can be addressed is essential. But what we found is that there is an architecture of a great change story, and it starts with honoring the past, honoring the starting place. Sometimes we’re so excited about the change and animated about the change that what has happened before or what is even happening in the present tense is low on our list of priorities.

Or we want to label it bad, because that’s the way we’ve thought about the change, but really pausing and honoring what came before you and all the reasonable decisions that led up to it, I think can be really helpful to getting people emotionally where you want them to be willing to be guided by you. Going back to Uber, when Dara Khosrowshahi came in.

CURT NICKISCH: This is the new CEO.

ANNE MORRISS: The new CEO.

CURT NICKISCH: Replaced Travis Kalanick, the founder and first CEO, yeah.

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah, and had his first all-hands meeting. One of his key messages, and this is a quote, was that he was going to retain the edge that had made Uber, “A force of nature.” And in that meeting, the crowd went wild because this is also a company that had been beaten up publicly for months and months and months, and it was a really powerful choice. And his predecessor, Travis was in the room, and he also honored Travis’ incredible work and investment in bringing the company to the place where it was.

And I would use words like grace to also describe those choices, but there’s also an incredible strategic value to naming the starting place for everybody in the room because in most cases, most people in that room played a role in getting to that starting place, and you’re acknowledging that.

CURT NICKISCH: You can call it grace. Somebody else might call it diplomatic or strategic. But yeah, I guess like it or not, it’s helpful to call out and honor the complexity of the way things have been done and also the change that’s happening.

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah, and the value. Sometimes honoring the past is also owning what didn’t work or what wasn’t working for stakeholders or segments of the employee team, and we see that around culture change. Sometimes you’ve got to acknowledge that it was not an equitable environment, but whatever the worker, everyone in that room is bringing that pass with them. So again, making it discussable and using it as the jumping off place is where we advise people to start.

Then you’ve earned the right to talk about the change mandate, which we suggest using clear and compelling language about the why. “This is what happened, this is where we are, this is the good and the bad of it, and here’s the case for change.”

And then the last part, which is to describe a rigorous and optimistic way forward. It’s a simple past, present, future arc, which will be familiar to human beings. We love stories as human beings. It’s among the most powerful currency we have to make sense of the world.

CURT NICKISCH: Yeah. Chronological is a pretty powerful order.

ANNE MORRISS: Right. But again, the change leaders we see really get it right, are investing an incredible amount of time into the storytelling part of their job. Ursula Burns, the Head of Xerox is famous for the months and years she spent on the road just telling the story of Xerox’s change, its pivot into services to everyone who would listen, and that was a huge part of her success.

CURT NICKISCH: So Friday or your fifth step, you end with empowering teams and removing roadblocks. That seems obvious, but it’s critical. Can you dig into that a little bit?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah. Friday is the fun day. Friday’s the release of energy into the system. Again, you’ve now earned the right to go fast. You have a plan, you’re pretty confident it’s going to work. You’ve told the story of change the organization, and now you get to sprint. So this is about really executing with urgency, and it’s about a lot of the tactics of speed is where we focus in the book. So the tactics of empowerment, making tough strategic trade-offs so that your priorities are clear and clearly communicated, creating mechanisms to fast-track progress. At Etsy, CEO Josh Silverman, he labeled these projects ambulances. It’s an unfortunate metaphor, but it’s super memorable. These are the products that get to speed out in front of the other ones because the stakes are high and the clock is sticking.

CURT NICKISCH: You pull over and let it go by.

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah, exactly. And so we have to agree as an organization on how to do something like that. And so we see lots of great examples both in young organizations and big complex biotech companies with lots of regulatory guardrails have still found ways to do this gracefully.

And I think we end with this idea of conflict debt, which is a term we really love. Leanne Davey, who’s a team scholar and researcher, and anyone in a tech company will recognize the idea of tech debt, which is this weight the organization drags around until they resolve it. Conflict debt is a beautiful metaphor because it is this weight that we drag around and slows us down until we decide to clean it up and fix it. The organizations that are really getting speed right have figured out either formally or informally, how to create an environment where conflict and disagreements can be gracefully resolved.

CURT NICKISCH: Well, let’s talk about this speed more, right? Because I think this is one of those places that maybe people go wrong or take too long, and then you lose the awareness of the problem, you lose that urgency. And then that also just makes it less effective, right? It’s not just about getting the problem solved as quickly as possible. It’s also just speed in some ways helps solve the problem.

ANNE MORRISS: Oh, yeah. It really is the difference between imagining the change you want to lead and really being able to bring it to life. Speed is the thing that unlocks your ability to lead change. It needs a foundation, and that’s what Monday through Thursday is all about, steps one through four, but the finish line is executing with urgency, and it’s that urgency that releases the system’s energy, that communicates your priorities, that creates the conditions for your team to make progress.

CURT NICKISCH: Moving fast is something that entrepreneurs and tech companies certainly understand, but there’s also this awareness that with big companies, the bigger the organization, the harder it is to turn the aircraft carrier around, right? Is speed relative when you get at those levels, or do you think this is something that any company should be able to apply equally?

ANNE MORRISS: We think this applies to any company. The culture really lives at the level of team. So we believe you can make a tremendous amount of progress even within your circle of control as a team leader. I want to bring some humility to this and careful of words like universal, but we do think there’s some universal truths here around the value of speed, and then some of the byproducts like keeping fantastic people. Your best people want to solve problems, they want to execute, they want to make progress and speed, and the ability to do that is going to be a variable in their own equation of whether they stay or they go somewhere else where they can have an impact.

CURT NICKISCH: Right. They want to accomplish something before they go or before they retire or finish something out. And if you’re able to just bring more things on the horizon and have it not feel like it’s going to be another two years to do something meaningful.

ANNE MORRISS: People – I mean, they want to make stuff happen and they want to be around the energy and the vitality of making things happen, which again, is also a super infectious phenomenon. One of the most important jobs of a leader, we believe, is to set the metabolic pace of their teams and organizations. And so what we really dig into on Friday is, well, what does that look like to speed something up? What are the tactics of that?

CURT NICKISCH: I wonder if that universal truth, that a body in motion stays in motion applies to organizations, right? If an organization in motion stays in motion, there is something to that.

ANNE MORRISS: Absolutely.

CURT NICKISCH: Do you have a favorite client story to share, just where you saw speed just become a bit of a flywheel or just a positive reinforcement loop for more positive change at the organization?

ANNE MORRISS: Yeah. We work with a fair number of organizations that are on fire. We do a fair amount of firefighting, but we also less dramatically do a lot of fire prevention. So we’re brought into organizations that are working well and want to get better, looking out on the horizon. That work is super gratifying, and there is always a component of, well, how do we speed this up?

What I love about that work is there’s often already a high foundation of trust, and so it’s, well, how do we maintain that foundation but move this flywheel, as you said, even faster? And it’s really energizing because often there’s a lot of pent-up energy that… There’s a lot of loyalty to the organization, but often it’s also frustration and pent-up energy. And so when that gets released, when good people get the opportunity to sprint for the first time in a little while, it’s incredibly energizing, not just for us, but for the whole organization.

CURT NICKISCH: Anne, this is great. I think finding a way to solve problems better but also faster is going to be really helpful. So thanks for coming on the show to talk about it.

ANNE MORRISS: Oh, Curt, it was such a pleasure. This is my favorite conversation. I’m delighted to have it anytime.

HANNAH BATES: That was entrepreneur, leadership coach, and author Anne Morriss – in conversation with Curt Nickisch on HBR IdeaCast.

We’ll be back next Wednesday with another hand-picked conversation about business strategy from Harvard Business Review. If you found this episode helpful, share it with your friends and colleagues, and follow our show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you’re there, be sure to leave us a review.

When you’re ready for more podcasts, articles, case studies, books, and videos with the world’s top business and management experts, you’ll find it all at HBR.org.

This episode was produced by Mary Dooe, Anne Saini, and me, Hannah Bates. Ian Fox is our editor. Special thanks to Rob Eckhardt, Maureen Hoch, Erica Truxler, Ramsey Khabbaz, Nicole Smith, Anne Bartholomew, and you – our listener. See you next week.

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Proactive Problem Solving and Creating Non-Events

By Christoph Goldenstern , Kepner-Tregoe

Problem Management Start reducing cost and improving IT stability with better problem management. Learn more

Proactive problem solving is all about identifying problems and resolving them before the impacts are felt by the business. What is the impact of an event that never occurs? There isn’t one. While not all problems can be avoided entirely, there are often early warning signs that indicate that a problem is developing. These ‘smoke signals’ are only of value to you if you know what to look for and can take preemptive action to avoid a firestorm.

Problem management is a process and the key to proactive problem solving is understanding each step in the process – what the signals are telling you and what you need to do with the information.

Monitoring and Instrumentation

The first step in the problem management lifecycle is all about keeping a lookout for signs of trouble. This requires having the right monitors, sensors and collectors in place to generate data about how activities and processes are performing. You need to monitor both individual components and entire workflows to ensure you don’t miss anything. Monitors can help you identify things like speed, accuracy, waste and operating environment characteristics that describe your process. They can also measure things like volume, speed and quality characteristics of your production outputs and business process outcomes.

Proactive problem-solving starts with generating the right set of data about your processes and systems to give you as much early warning as you can get. Many organizations are looking to new technologies like IoT devices, embedded sensors in manufacturing systems and standardized telemetry capabilities in their IT systems to offer additional real-time insights into their operations.

Turning Monitoring data into alerts

It’s great that you have monitors and instrumentation collecting data, but to identify problems, you will need to filter and organize the signal data to help you figure out what is ‘normal’ versus data signaling there is a problem. This is where process control and problem-solving methodologies come in. These methods can help you identify when something is outside of expected range of tolerance, analyze potential incidents and outages before they turn into crisis situations and identify patterns that indicate something in your process might need a deeper assessment.

The sooner you can separate incidents from events, the sooner you can diagnose and take steps to actually resolve them. Effective problem diagnosis eventually comes down to people and how well they are able to identify “deviations” from natural performance variation. This initial situational appraisal step is often times overlooked, but essential when wanting to take meaningful action.

There are 4 key components that your employees will put to use in diagnosing problems:

Of these components, knowledge and skill are typically the ones within your immediate control. Successful proactive problem-solving hinges on your staff, first and foremost of all, being able to gather the most relevant data, visualize the cause-effect relationships as well as the “environmental circumstances” and from there work towards the underlying root causes.

Decision Making

Once you understand the cause of a problem, there are likely different actions you can take to resolve it. Each alternative will likely have its own risks, costs, benefits, and implications to your organization so making informed decisions is essential. Some of the factors that your decision makers should consider are:

Cost/Benefit of each alternative
Risk of and confidence in the proposed solution
Balancing short-term and long-term effectiveness
Full vs. partial mitigation of the business impact
Negative impacts of not taking action

In proactive problem-solving situations, decision makers will often find themselves weighing the impacts of avoiding the anticipated problem event against the impact of disrupting operations to avoid the event. When this happens, risk management is essential to prepare for unintended consequences and their impact.

Proactive action

What makes proactive problems solving such a powerful tool for businesses is the ability to initiate actions BEFORE the business realizes that a problem is occurring (or reoccurring in another part of the business). The proactive action can take many forms, from preventative maintenance, tune-ups and optimization of operations to specific process changes resulting from problem analysis. Good hygiene practices, patching, data management and frequent health checks can prevent problems from occurring in the first place. Applying fixes in a timely manner can help mitigate the impact of problems that already occurred.

By paying attention to the signals coming from your environment, diagnosing them quickly and making data-based decisions – you will be able to implement proactive actions to turn your potential problems into non-events.

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26 Expert-Backed Problem Solving Examples – Interview Answers

Published: February 13, 2023

Interview Questions and Answers

Actionable advice from real experts:

Biron Clark

Former Recruiter

Contributor

Dr. Kyle Elliott

Career Coach

Hayley Jukes

Editor-in-Chief

Biron Clark , Former Recruiter

Kyle Elliott , Career Coach

Hayley Jukes , Editor

As a recruiter , I know employers like to hire people who can solve problems and work well under pressure.

A job rarely goes 100% according to plan, so hiring managers are more likely to hire you if you seem like you can handle unexpected challenges while staying calm and logical.

But how do they measure this?

Hiring managers will ask you interview questions about your problem-solving skills, and they might also look for examples of problem-solving on your resume and cover letter.

In this article, I’m going to share a list of problem-solving examples and sample interview answers to questions like, “Give an example of a time you used logic to solve a problem?” and “Describe a time when you had to solve a problem without managerial input. How did you handle it, and what was the result?”

Problem-solving involves identifying, prioritizing, analyzing, and solving problems using a variety of skills like critical thinking, creativity, decision making, and communication.
Describe the Situation, Task, Action, and Result ( STAR method ) when discussing your problem-solving experiences.
Tailor your interview answer with the specific skills and qualifications outlined in the job description.
Provide numerical data or metrics to demonstrate the tangible impact of your problem-solving efforts.

What are Problem Solving Skills?

Problem-solving is the ability to identify a problem, prioritize based on gravity and urgency, analyze the root cause, gather relevant information, develop and evaluate viable solutions, decide on the most effective and logical solution, and plan and execute implementation.

Problem-solving encompasses other skills that can be showcased in an interview response and your resume. Problem-solving skills examples include:

Critical thinking
Analytical skills
Decision making
Research skills
Technical skills
Communication skills
Adaptability and flexibility

Why is Problem Solving Important in the Workplace?

Problem-solving is essential in the workplace because it directly impacts productivity and efficiency. Whenever you encounter a problem, tackling it head-on prevents minor issues from escalating into bigger ones that could disrupt the entire workflow.

Beyond maintaining smooth operations, your ability to solve problems fosters innovation. It encourages you to think creatively, finding better ways to achieve goals, which keeps the business competitive and pushes the boundaries of what you can achieve.

Effective problem-solving also contributes to a healthier work environment; it reduces stress by providing clear strategies for overcoming obstacles and builds confidence within teams.

Examples of Problem-Solving in the Workplace

Correcting a mistake at work, whether it was made by you or someone else
Overcoming a delay at work through problem solving and communication
Resolving an issue with a difficult or upset customer
Overcoming issues related to a limited budget, and still delivering good work through the use of creative problem solving
Overcoming a scheduling/staffing shortage in the department to still deliver excellent work
Troubleshooting and resolving technical issues
Handling and resolving a conflict with a coworker
Solving any problems related to money, customer billing, accounting and bookkeeping, etc.
Taking initiative when another team member overlooked or missed something important
Taking initiative to meet with your superior to discuss a problem before it became potentially worse
Solving a safety issue at work or reporting the issue to those who could solve it
Using problem solving abilities to reduce/eliminate a company expense
Finding a way to make the company more profitable through new service or product offerings, new pricing ideas, promotion and sale ideas, etc.
Changing how a process, team, or task is organized to make it more efficient
Using creative thinking to come up with a solution that the company hasn’t used before
Performing research to collect data and information to find a new solution to a problem
Boosting a company or team’s performance by improving some aspect of communication among employees
Finding a new piece of data that can guide a company’s decisions or strategy better in a certain area

Problem-Solving Examples for Recent Grads/Entry-Level Job Seekers

Coordinating work between team members in a class project
Reassigning a missing team member’s work to other group members in a class project
Adjusting your workflow on a project to accommodate a tight deadline
Speaking to your professor to get help when you were struggling or unsure about a project
Asking classmates, peers, or professors for help in an area of struggle
Talking to your academic advisor to brainstorm solutions to a problem you were facing
Researching solutions to an academic problem online, via Google or other methods
Using problem solving and creative thinking to obtain an internship or other work opportunity during school after struggling at first

How To Answer “Tell Us About a Problem You Solved”

When you answer interview questions about problem-solving scenarios, or if you decide to demonstrate your problem-solving skills in a cover letter (which is a good idea any time the job description mentions problem-solving as a necessary skill), I recommend using the STAR method.

STAR stands for:

It’s a simple way of walking the listener or reader through the story in a way that will make sense to them.

Start by briefly describing the general situation and the task at hand. After this, describe the course of action you chose and why. Ideally, show that you evaluated all the information you could given the time you had, and made a decision based on logic and fact. Finally, describe the positive result you achieved.

Note: Our sample answers below are structured following the STAR formula. Be sure to check them out!

EXPERT ADVICE

Dr. Kyle Elliott , MPA, CHES Tech & Interview Career Coach caffeinatedkyle.com

How can I communicate complex problem-solving experiences clearly and succinctly?

Before answering any interview question, it’s important to understand why the interviewer is asking the question in the first place.

When it comes to questions about your complex problem-solving experiences, for example, the interviewer likely wants to know about your leadership acumen, collaboration abilities, and communication skills, not the problem itself.

Therefore, your answer should be focused on highlighting how you excelled in each of these areas, not diving into the weeds of the problem itself, which is a common mistake less-experienced interviewees often make.

Tailoring Your Answer Based on the Skills Mentioned in the Job Description

As a recruiter, one of the top tips I can give you when responding to the prompt “Tell us about a problem you solved,” is to tailor your answer to the specific skills and qualifications outlined in the job description.

Once you’ve pinpointed the skills and key competencies the employer is seeking, craft your response to highlight experiences where you successfully utilized or developed those particular abilities.

For instance, if the job requires strong leadership skills, focus on a problem-solving scenario where you took charge and effectively guided a team toward resolution.

By aligning your answer with the desired skills outlined in the job description, you demonstrate your suitability for the role and show the employer that you understand their needs.

Amanda Augustine expands on this by saying:

“Showcase the specific skills you used to solve the problem. Did it require critical thinking, analytical abilities, or strong collaboration? Highlight the relevant skills the employer is seeking.”

Interview Answers to “Tell Me About a Time You Solved a Problem”

Now, let’s look at some sample interview answers to, “Give me an example of a time you used logic to solve a problem,” or “Tell me about a time you solved a problem,” since you’re likely to hear different versions of this interview question in all sorts of industries.

The example interview responses are structured using the STAR method and are categorized into the top 5 key problem-solving skills recruiters look for in a candidate.

1. Analytical Thinking

Situation: In my previous role as a data analyst , our team encountered a significant drop in website traffic.

Task: I was tasked with identifying the root cause of the decrease.

Action: I conducted a thorough analysis of website metrics, including traffic sources, user demographics, and page performance. Through my analysis, I discovered a technical issue with our website’s loading speed, causing users to bounce.

Result: By optimizing server response time, compressing images, and minimizing redirects, we saw a 20% increase in traffic within two weeks.

2. Critical Thinking

Situation: During a project deadline crunch, our team encountered a major technical issue that threatened to derail our progress.

Task: My task was to assess the situation and devise a solution quickly.

Action: I immediately convened a meeting with the team to brainstorm potential solutions. Instead of panicking, I encouraged everyone to think outside the box and consider unconventional approaches. We analyzed the problem from different angles and weighed the pros and cons of each solution.

Result: By devising a workaround solution, we were able to meet the project deadline, avoiding potential delays that could have cost the company $100,000 in penalties for missing contractual obligations.

3. Decision Making

Situation: As a project manager , I was faced with a dilemma when two key team members had conflicting opinions on the project direction.

Task: My task was to make a decisive choice that would align with the project goals and maintain team cohesion.

Action: I scheduled a meeting with both team members to understand their perspectives in detail. I listened actively, asked probing questions, and encouraged open dialogue. After carefully weighing the pros and cons of each approach, I made a decision that incorporated elements from both viewpoints.

Result: The decision I made not only resolved the immediate conflict but also led to a stronger sense of collaboration within the team. By valuing input from all team members and making a well-informed decision, we were able to achieve our project objectives efficiently.

4. Communication (Teamwork)

Situation: During a cross-functional project, miscommunication between departments was causing delays and misunderstandings.

Task: My task was to improve communication channels and foster better teamwork among team members.

Action: I initiated regular cross-departmental meetings to ensure that everyone was on the same page regarding project goals and timelines. I also implemented a centralized communication platform where team members could share updates, ask questions, and collaborate more effectively.

Result: Streamlining workflows and improving communication channels led to a 30% reduction in project completion time, saving the company $25,000 in operational costs.

5. Persistence

Situation: During a challenging sales quarter, I encountered numerous rejections and setbacks while trying to close a major client deal.

Task: My task was to persistently pursue the client and overcome obstacles to secure the deal.

Action: I maintained regular communication with the client, addressing their concerns and demonstrating the value proposition of our product. Despite facing multiple rejections, I remained persistent and resilient, adjusting my approach based on feedback and market dynamics.

Result: After months of perseverance, I successfully closed the deal with the client. By closing the major client deal, I exceeded quarterly sales targets by 25%, resulting in a revenue increase of $250,000 for the company.

Tips to Improve Your Problem-Solving Skills

Throughout your career, being able to showcase and effectively communicate your problem-solving skills gives you more leverage in achieving better jobs and earning more money .

So to improve your problem-solving skills, I recommend always analyzing a problem and situation before acting.

When discussing problem-solving with employers, you never want to sound like you rush or make impulsive decisions. They want to see fact-based or data-based decisions when you solve problems.

Don’t just say you’re good at solving problems. Show it with specifics. How much did you boost efficiency? Did you save the company money? Adding numbers can really make your achievements stand out.

To get better at solving problems, analyze the outcomes of past solutions you came up with. You can recognize what works and what doesn’t.

Think about how you can improve researching and analyzing a situation, how you can get better at communicating, and deciding on the right people in the organization to talk to and “pull in” to help you if needed, etc.

Finally, practice staying calm even in stressful situations. Take a few minutes to walk outside if needed. Step away from your phone and computer to clear your head. A work problem is rarely so urgent that you cannot take five minutes to think (with the possible exception of safety problems), and you’ll get better outcomes if you solve problems by acting logically instead of rushing to react in a panic.

You can use all of the ideas above to describe your problem-solving skills when asked interview questions about the topic. If you say that you do the things above, employers will be impressed when they assess your problem-solving ability.

More Interview Resources

3 Answers to “How Do You Handle Stress?”
How to Answer “How Do You Handle Conflict?” (Interview Question)
Sample Answers to “Tell Me About a Time You Failed”

About the Author

Biron Clark is a former executive recruiter who has worked individually with hundreds of job seekers, reviewed thousands of resumes and LinkedIn profiles, and recruited for top venture-backed startups and Fortune 500 companies. He has been advising job seekers since 2012 to think differently in their job search and land high-paying, competitive positions. Follow on Twitter and LinkedIn .

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Self Evaluation Comments for Problem Solving (30 Examples)

By Status.net Editorial Team on May 19, 2023 — 9 minutes to read

Self-evaluation is an essential aspect of professional development. It helps you to identify areas of improvement and measure your progress towards achieving your goals. By evaluating your problem-solving skills, you can identify your strengths and weaknesses and take steps to improve your performance.

Problem Solving Self-Evaluation Comments Examples

I was able to identify the root cause of the problem and develop a solution that addressed it effectively.
I was able to think outside the box and come up with a creative solution to a complex problem.
I was able to collaborate effectively with my team members to solve a challenging problem.
I was able to prioritize tasks and allocate resources efficiently to solve a problem within a tight deadline.
I was able to remain calm and composed under pressure while solving a critical problem.
I was able to analyze data and information to identify patterns and trends that helped me solve a problem.
I was able to communicate clearly and effectively with stakeholders to understand their needs and solve their problems.
I was able to adapt to changing circumstances and adjust my problem-solving approach accordingly.
I was able to learn from my mistakes and apply those lessons to future problem-solving situations.
I was able to use critical thinking skills to evaluate multiple options and select the best solution to a problem.
I was able to break down a complex problem into smaller, more manageable parts and solve each part individually.
I was able to identify potential obstacles and develop contingency plans to overcome them while solving a problem.
I was able to leverage my technical expertise to solve a problem that required specialized knowledge.
I was able to use my creativity and innovation to develop a unique solution to a problem.
I was able to gather and analyze feedback from stakeholders to continuously improve my problem-solving approach.
I was able to use my leadership skills to motivate and guide my team members towards a successful problem-solving outcome.
I was able to effectively manage competing priorities and still solve a problem within the given timeline.
I was able to use my communication skills to explain complex technical solutions to non-technical stakeholders.
I was able to use my analytical skills to identify patterns and trends that helped me solve a problem more efficiently.
I was able to use my problem-solving skills to identify opportunities for process improvements and implement them successfully.
I was able to use my research skills to gather information that helped me solve a problem more effectively.
I was able to use my project management skills to break down a large-scale problem into smaller, more manageable tasks.
I was able to use my negotiation skills to reach a mutually beneficial solution to a problem.
I was able to remain objective and unbiased while evaluating potential solutions to a problem.
I was able to use my attention to detail to identify small but critical issues that were contributing to a larger problem.
I was able to use my interpersonal skills to build strong relationships with stakeholders and work collaboratively towards a solution.
I was able to use my problem-solving skills to find a solution that balanced the needs of multiple stakeholders.
I was able to use my persistence and determination to keep working towards a solution even when faced with obstacles.
I was able to use my time management skills to prioritize tasks and allocate my time efficiently while solving a problem.
I was able to use my empathy and understanding of others’ perspectives to develop a solution that met everyone’s needs.

Improving Problem Solving Skills

To become a better problem solver, you need to develop critical thinking skills, effective communication skills, prioritize tasks, and use brainstorming techniques. Here are some tips to help you improve your problem-solving skills:

Developing Critical Thinking Skills

Critical thinking is the ability to analyze a situation, identify problems, and come up with creative solutions. To develop critical thinking skills, you need to:

Ask questions: Don’t be afraid to ask questions to clarify the problem or gather more information.
Challenge assumptions: Don’t accept things at face value. Question assumptions and look for evidence to support them.
Evaluate evidence: Look for evidence that supports or contradicts your assumptions. Evaluate the quality and reliability of the evidence.
Consider alternative perspectives: Try to see the problem from different angles and consider alternative solutions.

Effective Communication Skills

Effective communication is essential for problem-solving because it helps you:

Understand the problem: Good communication skills help you clarify the problem and understand what is expected of you.
Collaborate with others: Effective communication skills help you work with others to find solutions.
Express your ideas clearly: Clear communication helps you convey your ideas and solutions to others.

To improve your communication skills, you need to:

Listen actively: Listen to others and try to understand their perspective.
Speak clearly: Speak clearly and concisely to avoid confusion.
Use nonverbal cues: Pay attention to body language and other nonverbal cues to understand what others are saying.

Prioritizing Tasks

Prioritizing tasks is essential for effective problem-solving because it helps you:

Focus on the most important tasks: Prioritizing helps you focus on the tasks that will have the most significant impact.
Manage your time: Prioritizing helps you manage your time more effectively.
Avoid procrastination: Prioritizing helps you avoid procrastination by breaking down large tasks into smaller, more manageable ones.

To prioritize tasks effectively, you need to:

Identify the most important tasks: Identify the tasks that will have the most significant impact.
Break down large tasks: Break large tasks into smaller, more manageable ones.
Set deadlines: Set deadlines for each task to help you stay on track.

Brainstorming Techniques

Brainstorming is a technique used to generate creative ideas and solutions. To brainstorm effectively, you need to:

Generate a lot of ideas: Don’t be afraid to come up with as many ideas as possible, even if they seem silly or unrealistic.
Encourage creativity: Encourage creative thinking by allowing everyone to contribute ideas.
Avoid criticism: Don’t criticize or judge ideas during the brainstorming process.

To brainstorm effectively, you can use techniques like mind mapping, free writing, or group brainstorming sessions.

Time Management and Productivity

Managing time effectively.

One of the biggest challenges when it comes to problem-solving is managing your time effectively. It’s easy to get bogged down in the details and lose track of the big picture. To avoid this, set specific goals and deadlines for yourself. Make a to-do list and prioritize your tasks based on their importance and urgency. Use a timer or a stopwatch to keep track of how much time you spend on each task, and try to minimize distractions as much as possible.

For example, if you’re working on a project that requires a lot of research, set a goal to finish the research phase by the end of the day. Break the research down into smaller tasks, such as reading a certain number of articles or books, and set deadlines for each task. This will help you stay on track and ensure that you’re making progress towards your goal.

Overcoming Overwhelm

Feeling overwhelmed is a common problem when it comes to problem-solving. When you’re faced with a complex problem, it’s easy to feel like you don’t know where to start. To overcome this, break the problem down into smaller, more manageable parts. Identify the key issues or questions that need to be addressed, and focus on one at a time.

For example, if you’re trying to solve a problem with a product or service, start by identifying the key issues that are causing the problem. Once you’ve identified these issues, break them down into smaller, more manageable parts. Focus on one issue at a time, and come up with a plan to address it. Once you’ve addressed all of the key issues, you’ll have a better understanding of the problem as a whole, and you’ll be better equipped to come up with a solution.

Being Proactive

Being proactive is an important part of problem-solving. Instead of waiting for problems to arise, take a proactive approach and try to anticipate potential problems before they occur. This will help you stay ahead of the curve and avoid potential roadblocks.

For example, if you’re working on a project with a tight deadline, don’t wait until the last minute to start working on it. Instead, start working on it as soon as possible, and set specific goals and deadlines for yourself. This will help you stay on track and ensure that you’re making progress towards your goal. Additionally, be proactive in identifying potential roadblocks or issues that could arise, and come up with a plan to address them before they become a problem.

Performance Review and Goal Setting

Setting objectives.

When preparing for a performance review, it’s important to set specific objectives that will guide the conversation. Start by reflecting on your current role and responsibilities, and consider areas where you could improve or grow. These objectives should be measurable and achievable, and should align with your personal and professional goals.

For example, one objective might be to improve your communication skills by attending a workshop or taking an online course. Another objective might be to take on more leadership responsibilities within your team or department.

Measuring Performance

During the performance review, your manager will likely evaluate your progress towards meeting your objectives. It’s important to come prepared with concrete examples of how you’ve worked towards your goals, as well as any challenges or obstacles you’ve faced.

For example, if your objective was to improve your project management skills, you might share how you’ve successfully led a project from start to finish, or how you’ve implemented new tools or processes to streamline your workflow. If you’ve faced challenges, be honest about what went wrong and what you learned from the experience.

Creating an Action Plan

After reviewing your performance, you and your manager should work together to create an action plan for the next review period. This plan should include specific goals and objectives, as well as a timeline for achieving them. It’s also important to identify any resources or support you may need to reach your goals.

For example, if your objective is to improve your technical skills, you might discuss opportunities for additional training or mentorship. If your goal is to take on more leadership responsibilities, you might discuss ways to gain experience through shadowing or cross-functional projects.

Overall, the performance review and goal setting process is an important opportunity to reflect on your progress and set a course for future growth and development. By setting specific, measurable objectives and working collaboratively with your manager, you can ensure that you’re on track to achieve your personal and professional goals.

When writing self-evaluation comments, it is important to be honest and objective. Avoid making exaggerated or false claims about your abilities or achievements. Instead, focus on specific examples that demonstrate your skills and accomplishments.

Innovation and Creativity Self Evaluation Comments (30 Examples)
Self Evaluation Sample Answers: Strengths and Weaknesses
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IMAGES

Proactive Problem Management: Examples, Benefits & How to Implement (2024)
Learning about proactive problem management
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8 Steps For Effective Problem Solving
Proactive problem management: examples, benefits and implementation (2023)
Proactive approach to solving problems

VIDEO

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ONE skill
Find a solution, stop worrying
"Three Paths to Problem Resolution" #motivation #problems #life
How does proactive problem solving contribute to a freelancer's differentiation?

COMMENTS

When to Take Initiative at Work, and When Not To
Proactive workers are in high demand, and it's easy to understand why. When it comes to creating positive change, these employees don't need to be told to take initiative. Research confirms ...
Proactive Problem-Solving Culture: 10 Key Strategies
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.
Taking Initiative: A How-To Guide In 10 Steps
Taking initiative means thinking proactively about tasks— not just to check them off a list, but to get them done well. It's about going the extra mile on the basic tasks you're assigned, thinking through complications, and taking on work before someone asks you to. Taking initiative means noticing opportunities and taking action.
Taking Initiative at Work: Proactive Approaches to Problem-Solving and
By encouraging employees to take initiative, companies can create a culture of innovation and continuous improvement that can drive success in the long term. Here are three proactive approaches to problem-solving and innovation that propel workplaces toward success: 1. Cultivate a Culture of Ownership and Initiative.
9 Ways To Take Initiative at Work
Here are nine ways to take initiative at work: 1. Be proactive. You can be proactive by anticipating what work needs to be done and doing it before you are asked to. Use your knowledge of the job to determine whether you have the competencies to make decisions on your own or whether you should present your ideas to your supervisors before ...
Proactive Problem Solving: Identifying and resolving issues ...
Proactive problem-solving is a strategic approach to identifying and addressing issues before they escalate. It involves anticipating challenges, developing plans to reduce them, and taking ...
How to improve your problem solving skills and strategies
Initiative . The problem solving process is multi-faceted and requires different approaches at certain points of the process. Taking initiative to bring problems to the attention of the team, collect data or lead the solution creating process is always valuable. You might even roadtest your own small scale solutions or brainstorm before a session.
Proactive Problem Solving as a Soft Skill
Understanding proactive problem solving as a soft skill equips you with tools to tackle challenges effectively. Anticipating issues and taking initiative are essential. Proactive problem solvers adapt swiftly, persist, and think creatively for innovative solutions. This skill enhances collaboration, boosts confidence, and leads to improved ...
17 Tips On How To Take Initiative At Work (With Examples)
Practice developing your self-awareness with exercises such as meditation and journaling. From there, begin to notice patterns in your behavior. Acknowledge and accept internal factors that are preventing you from taking initiative. Once you understand what the problem is, you can work to improving your situation.
15 Tips To Become A Proactive Business Problem-Solver
10. Develop A 100-Day Plan. Planning ahead requires you understand what types of challenges your team is facing. Spend time on the floor observing, listening and talking to your team. Then, use a ...
Taking Initiative
Once you know what you want to achieve, integrate your career goals with your personal goals so that you have something to work towards. (In your personal life, the key to developing initiative is to set clear personal goals, and then to work steadily towards achieving them.) 2. Build Self-Confidence.
9 Interview Questions About Initiative (With Sample Answers)
3. Tell me about a time you improved a process or system. This question helps employers gain insight into your problem-solving skills. They want to see that you can come up with ingenious solutions to everyday problems. Think about a time you took it upon yourself to make something better and more efficient.
25 Examples of Taking Initiative at Work
Taking the initiative is a proactive approach in which individuals anticipate tasks or challenges and take action, even if it falls beyond their prescribed duties. In many organizations, certain leaders and team members stand out for their innate drive. ... Solving a problem without anyone asking you to do it. Reduces potential future issues ...
142 Employee Performance Evaluation Examples (Initiative, Flexibility
It is an essential part of being able to take initiative, be creative, and problem solve. These are all qualities that are essential for success in any position or field. When employees have initiative, they are more likely to be proactive and take action on tasks or projects. This leads to better productivity and overall higher levels of ...
Proactiveness, Initiative and Creativity Self Evaluation Comments
Proactiveness, initiative and creativity are essential skills that are highly valued in the workplace. They are often considered as the driving forces behind innovation, problem-solving, and growth. However, assessing your own level of initiative and creativity can be a challenging task, especially when it comes to providing self-evaluation comments. When evaluating your initiative, it is...
Proactiveness: 25 Performance Review Phrases Examples
Her proactive approach to seeking feedback and applying it to improve her performance surpasses the expectations for her role. In addition, Emma displays exceptional problem-solving abilities and takes the initiative in seeking out new opportunities for personal and professional growth.
How to build a proactive workforce: Training problem solvers or
Employees who take a proactive approach at work - who speak up with suggestions, try to bring about improvements, and take initiative - generally perform better, are more satisfied with their job, and progress more quickly in their career. For organizations, a proactive workforce which anticipates changes and is willing to contribute to ...
Boost Career Goals with Assertive Problem Solving
5 Seek Feedback. Soliciting feedback is an integral part of professional growth and advocating for your career goals. Constructive criticism helps you understand how others perceive your ...
Initiative vs Proactive: Meaning And Differences
3. Problem-solving Scenarios. When faced with complex problem-solving scenarios, the choice between initiative and proactive can significantly impact the outcome. In situations where time is of the essence and immediate action is required, being proactive becomes crucial.
31 examples of problem solving performance review phrases
Use these practical examples of phrases, sample comments, and templates for your performance review, 360-degree feedback survey, or manager appraisal.. The following examples not only relate to problem-solving but also conflict management, effective solutions, selecting the best alternatives, decision making, problem identification, analyzing effectively, and generally becoming an effective ...
A Better Framework for Solving Tough Problems
Start with trust and end with speed. May 22, 2024. When it comes to solving complicated problems, the default for many organizational leaders is to take their time to work through the issues at hand.
Proactive Problem Solving and Creating Non-Events
Proactive problem-solving starts with generating the right set of data about your processes and systems to give you as much early warning as you can get. Many organizations are looking to new technologies like IoT devices, embedded sensors in manufacturing systems and standardized telemetry capabilities in their IT systems to offer additional ...
Initiative: 25 Performance Review Phrases Examples
He can be proactive at times, but struggles with consistency. Bob should work on developing his independence and problem-solving skills to boost his initiative." 1 - Unacceptable Example Phrases. Rarely shows initiative, often waiting for direction before taking action; Demonstrates a lack of independence and problem-solving ability
Proactive Leadership: Master Problem-Solving Skills
Finally, proactive problem-solving leadership requires a commitment to continuous learning. The landscape of business and technology is always changing, and staying informed about new trends ...
26 Expert-Backed Problem Solving Examples
The example interview responses are structured using the STAR method and are categorized into the top 5 key problem-solving skills recruiters look for in a candidate. 1. Analytical Thinking. Situation: In my previous role as a data analyst, our team encountered a significant drop in website traffic.
White House to announce new actions to modernize America's aging
The White House on Tuesday announced steps to modernize a major roadblock to the clean energy transformation: America's aging electrical infrastructure . The new initiative between the feds and ...
Impress Your Boss with Creative Problem-Solving Skills
Here's how you can showcase your worth to your boss by employing your creative problem-solving abilities. Powered by AI and the LinkedIn community. 1. Identify Issues. Be the first to add your ...
Self Evaluation Comments for Problem Solving (30 Examples)
Problem Solving Self-Evaluation Comments Examples. I was able to identify the root cause of the problem and develop a solution that addressed it effectively. I was able to think outside the box and come up with a creative solution to a complex problem. I was able to collaborate effectively with my team members to solve a challenging problem.