novel problem solving

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• v.19(3); 2018

A Systematic Approach to Teaching Case Studies and Solving Novel Problems †

Carolyn a. meyer.

1 Department of Biomedical Sciences, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523

Heather Hall

Natascha heise, karen kaminski.

2 School of Education, Colorado State University, Fort Collins, CO 80523

Kenneth R. Ivie

Tod r. clapp, associated data.

Both research and practical experience in education support the use of case studies in the classroom to engage students and develop critical thinking skills. In particular, working through case studies in scientific disciplines encourages students to incorporate knowledge from a variety of backgrounds and apply a breadth of information. While it is recognized that critical thinking is important for student success in professional school and future careers, a specific strategy to tackle a novel problem is lacking in student training. We have developed a four-step systematic approach to solving case studies that improves student confidence and provides them with a definitive road map that is useful when solving any novel problem, both in and out of the classroom. This approach encourages students to define unfamiliar terms, create a timeline, describe the systems involved, and identify any unique features. This method allows students to solve complex problems by organizing and applying information in a logical progression. We have incorporated case studies in anatomy and neuroanatomy courses and are confident that this systematic approach will translate well to courses in various scientific disciplines.

INTRODUCTION

There is increasing emphasis in pedagogical research on encouraging critical thinking in the classroom. The specific mental processes and behaviors involved require the individual to engage in reflective and purposeful thinking. Critical thinking encompasses the ability to examine ideas, make decisions, and solve problems ( 1 , 2 ). The skills necessary to think critically are essential for learners to evaluate multiple perspectives and solve novel problems in the classroom and throughout life. Career success in the 21st century requires a complex set of workforce skills. Current labor market assessments indicate that by the year 2020, the majority of occupations will require workers to display cognitive skills such as active listening, critical thinking, and decision making ( 3 , 4 ). In particular, current studies show that the US economy is impacted by a deficit of skilled workers able to solve problems and transfer learning to any unique situation ( 3 ).

The critical thinking skills necessary to tackle novel problems can best be addressed in higher education institutions ( 5 , 6 ). Throughout education, and specifically in college courses, students tend to be required to regurgitate knowledge through a myriad of multiple-choice exams. Breaking this habit and incorporating critical thinking can be difficult for students. While the ability to recite information is helpful for establishing base knowledge, it does not prepare students to tackle novel problems. Ideally, the objective of any course is to encourage students to move beyond recognition of knowledge into its application ( 7 ). Considering this, the importance of critical thinking is widely accepted; however, there has been some debate in educational research regarding how to teach these skills ( 8 ). Research has demonstrated that students show significant improvements in critical thinking as a result of explicit methods of instruction in related skills ( 9 , 10 ). Explicit instruction provides a protocol on how to approach a problem. By establishing the necessary framework to work through unfamiliar details, we enable students to independently solve complex problems.

These skills, which are important in every facet of the workforce, are vital for students in the sciences ( 10 , 11 ). Here, we discuss a specific process that teaches students a systematic approach to solving case studies in the anatomical sciences. Case studies are a popular method to encourage critical thinking and engage students in the learning process ( 12 ). While the examples described here are specifically designed to be implemented in anatomy and neuroanatomy courses, this platform lends itself to teaching critical thinking skills across scientific disciplines. This four-step approach encourages students to work through four separate facets of a problem:

• Define unfamiliar terms
• Create a timeline associated with the problem
• Describe the (anatomical) systems involved
• Identify any unique features associated with the case

Often, students start by trying to plug in memorized facts to answer a complicated question quickly. With the four-step approach, students learn that before “solving” the case study, they must analyze the information presented in the case. The case studies implemented are anatomically-based case studies that emphasize important structural relationships. The case may include terminology with which the students are not familiar. They therefore begin by identifying and defining unfamiliar terms. They then specify the timeline in which the problem occurred. Establishing a timeline and narrowing the focus can be critical when considering the relevant pathology. Students must then describe the anatomical systems involved (e.g., musculoskeletal or circulatory), and finally list any additional unique features of the case (e.g., lateral leg was struck or patient could not abduct the right eye). By dissecting the details along the lines of these four categories, students create a clear roadmap to approach the problem. Case studies with a clinical focus are complex and can be overwhelming for unpracticed students. However, teaching students to follow this systematic approach gives them the tools to begin to carefully dismantle even the most convoluted problem.

Intended audience

This approach to solving case studies has been applied in undergraduate courses, specifically in the sciences. This curriculum is currently utilized in both human gross anatomy and functional neuroanatomy capstone courses. While it is ideal to implement this process in a course that runs in parallel with a lecture-heavy course, it can also be utilized with case studies in a typical lecture class.

Anatomy-based case studies lend themselves well to this problem-solving approach due to the complexities of clinical problems. However, we believe with an appropriately designed case study, this model of teaching critical thinking can easily be expanded to any discipline. This activity encourages critical thinking and engages students in the learning process, which we believe will better prepare them for professional school and careers in the sciences.

Prerequisite student knowledge

Required previous student knowledge only extends to that which students learn through the related course taken previously or concurrently. Application of this approach in different classroom settings only requires that students have a basic understanding of the material needed to solve the case study. As such, the case study problem and questions should be built around current topics being studied in the classroom.

Using unfamiliar words teaches students to identify important information. This encourages integration of information and terminology, which can be critical for understanding anatomy. Simple terms, like superficial or deep, guide discussions about anatomical relationships. While students may be able to recite the definitions of these concepts, applying that information to a case study requires integrating the basic definition with an understanding of the relevant anatomy. Specific prerequisite knowledge for the sample case study is detailed in Appendix 1 .

Learning time

This process needs to be learned and practiced over the course of a semester to ensure long-term retention. With structured and guided attempts, students will be able to implement this approach to solving case studies in one 50-minute class period ( Table 1 ). The course described in this study is a capstone course that meets once weekly. Each 50-minute class period centers around working through a case study. As some class sessions are reserved for other activities, students complete approximately 10 case studies during the semester. Students begin to show increased confidence with this method within a few weeks and ultimately are able to integrate this approach into their critical thinking skillset by the end of the semester. Presentation of the case study, individual or small group work, and class discussion are all achieved in one standard class session ( Table 1 ). The current model does not require student work prior to the class meeting. However, because this course is taken concurrently with a related, content-heavy lecture component, students are expected to be up to date on relevant material. Presenting the case study in class to their peers encourages students to work through the systematic approach we describe here. Each case study is designed to correlate with current topics from the lecture-based course. Following the class period, students are expected to complete a written summary of the discussed case study. The written summary should include a detailed explanation of the approach they utilized to solve the problem, as well as a definitive solution. Written summaries are to be completed two days after the original class period.

Anticipated in-class time to implement this model.

Learning objectives

This model for teaching a systematic approach to solving case studies provides a framework to teach students how to think critically and how to become engaged learners when given a novel problem. By mastering this technique, students will be able to:

• Recognize words and concepts that need to be defined before solving a novel problem
• Recall, interpret, and apply previous knowledge as it relates to larger anatomical concepts
• Construct questions that guide them through which systems are affected, the timeline of the pathologies, and what is unique about the case
• Formulate and justify a hypothesis both verbally and in writing

As a faculty member, it can be challenging to create appropriate case studies when developing this model for use in a specific classroom. There are resources that provide case studies and examples that can be tailored to specific classroom needs. The National Center for Case Study Teaching in Science (University at Buffalo) can be a useful tool. The ultimate goal of this model is to teach an approach to problem solving, and a properly designed case study is crucial to success. To build an effective case study, faculty must include sufficient information to provide students with enough base knowledge to begin to tackle the problem. This model is ideal in a course that pairs with a lecture-heavy component, utilized in either a supplementary course or during a recitation. The case study should be complex and not quickly solved. An example of a simplified case study utilized in Human Gross Anatomy is detailed in Appendix 1 .

This particular case study encourages students to think through the anatomy of the lateral knee, relevant structures in this area, and which muscle compartments may be affected based on movement disabilities within the case. While more complex case studies can certainly be developed for the Neuroanatomy course through Clinical Case Studies, this case study provides a good example of a problem to which students cannot immediately provide the answer. They must think critically through the four-step process to identify the “diagnosis” for this patient.

This approach to solving case studies can be integrated into the classroom with no special materials. However, we use a Power-Point presentation and personal whiteboards (2.5’ × 2’) to both improve delivery of the case study and facilitate small group discussion, respectively. The Power-Point presentation is utilized by faculty to assist in leading the classroom discussion, prompting student responses and projecting relevant images. As the faculty member is presenting the case study during the first five minutes of class ( Table 1 ), the wording of the case study can be displayed on the PowerPoint slide as a reference while students take notes.

Faculty instructions

It is helpful to first present an overview of the approach and to solve a case study together as a class. We recommend giving students a lecture describing the benefits of a systematic approach to case studies and emphasizing the four-step approach outlined in this paper. Following this lecture, it is imperative that faculty walk the students through the first case study. This helps to familiarize students with the approach and lays out expectations on how to break down the individual components of the case. During the initial case study, faculty must heavily moderate the discussion, leading students through each step of the approach using the provided Case Study Handout ( Appendix 2 ). In subsequent weeks, students can be expected to show increasing independence.

Following initial presentation of the case study in class, students begin work that is largely independent or done in small groups. This discussion has no grades assigned. However, following the in-class discussion and small group work, students are asked to detail their approach to solving the case study and their efforts are graded according to a set rubric ( Appendix 3 ). This written report should document each step of their thought process and detail the questions they asked to reach the final answer, providing students with a chance for continual self-evaluation on their mastery of the method.

Implementing this model in the classroom should focus not only on the individual student approach, but also on creating an encouraging classroom environment and promoting student participation. Student questions may prompt other student questions, leading to an engaging discussion-based presentation of the case study, which is crucial to increasing confidence among students, as has been seen with the data represented in this paper. When moderating the discussion, it is important that faculty emphasize to students that the most critical goal of the exercise is to learn how to ask the next most appropriate question. The questions should begin with broad concepts and evolve to discussing specific details. Efforts to quickly arrive at the answer should be discouraged.

Students should be randomly assigned to groups of two to three individuals as faculty members moderate small group discussion during class. Randomly assigning students to different groups each week encourages interaction between all students in the class and promotes a collaborative environment. Within their small groups, students should work through the systematic four-step process for solving a novel problem. Students are not assigned specific roles within the group. However, all group members are expected to contribute equally. During this process, it can be beneficial to provide students with a template to follow ( Appendix 2 ). This template guides their discussion and encourages them to use the four-step process. Additionally, each small group is given a white board that they can use to facilitate their small group discussions. Specifically, asking students to write down details of each of the four facets of the problem (definitions, timeline, systems involved, unique features) and how they arrived at these encourages them to commit to their answers. This also ensures they have concrete evidence to support their “diagnosis” and that they have confidence in presenting it to the class. Two or three small groups are chosen randomly each week to present their hypothesis to the class using their whiteboard.

Suggestions for determining student learning

The cadence of the in-class discussion can provide an informal gauge of how students are progressing with their ability to apply the systematic approach. The discussion for the initial case studies should be largely faculty led. Then, as the semester progresses, faculty should step back into a facilitator role, allowing the dialogue to be carried by the students.

Additionally, requiring students to write a detailed summary of their approach to the problem provides a strong measure of student learning. While it is important for students to document their final “diagnosis” or solution to the problem, the focus of this assignment is primarily on the process and the series of relevant questions the student used to arrive at the answer. These assignments are graded according to a set rubric ( Appendix 3 ).

Sample data

The following excerpt is from a student who showed marked improvement over the course of the semester in implementing this approach to solving case studies. The initial submission for the case study write-up was rudimentary, did not document the thought process through appropriate questions, and lacked an in-depth explanation to demonstrate any critical thinking. By the end of the semester, this student documented a logical thought progression through this four-step approach to solving the case study. This student, additionally, detailed the questions that led each stage of critical thinking until a “diagnosis” was reached (complete sample data are available in Appendix 4 ).

Initial sample

“Given loss of sensory and motor input to left lower limb, right anterior cerebral artery ischemia caused the sensory and motor cortices of the contralateral (left) lower limb to be without blood flow for a short amount of time (last night). The lack of flow led to a fast onset of motor and sensory paresis to limb.”

Final sample

“…the left vestibular nuclei which explains the nystagmus, and the left cerebellar peduncles which carry information that aids in coordinating intention movements. My next question was where in the brainstem are all of these components located together? I narrowed this to the left caudal pons. Finally, I asked which artery supplies the area that was damaged by the lesion? This would be the left anterior inferior cerebellar artery.”

Safety issues

There are no known safety issues associated with implementing this approach to solving case studies.

The primary goal of the model discussed here is to give students a method that uses critical reasoning and helps them incorporate facts into a complete story to solve case studies. We believe that this model addresses the need for teaching the specific skill set necessary to develop critical thinking and engage students in the learning process. By encouraging critical thinking, we begin to redirect the tendency to simply recite a memorized answer. This four-step approach to solving case studies is ideal for the college classroom, as it is easily implemented, requires minimal resources, and is simple enough that students demonstrate mastery within one semester. While it was designed to be used in anatomy and neuroanatomy courses, this platform can be used across scientific disciplines. Outside of the classroom, in professional school and future careers, this approach can help students to break down the details, ask appropriate questions, and ultimately solve any complex, novel problem.

Field testing

This model has been implemented in several courses in both undergraduate and graduate settings. The data and approach detailed here are specific to an undergraduate senior capstone course with approximately 25 students. The lecture-based course, which is required to be taken concurrently or as a prerequisite, provides a strong base of information from which faculty can develop complex case studies.

Evidence of student learning

Student performance on written case study summaries improved over approximately ten weeks of practicing the systematic four-step approach ( Fig. 1 ). As indicated by the data, scores improve and begin to plateau around five weeks, indicating a mastery of the approach. In the spring 2016 semester, a marked drop in scores was observed at week 8. We believe that this reflects a particularly difficult case study that was assigned that week. After observing the overall trend in scores, instructional format was adjusted to provide students with more guidance as they worked through this particular case study.

Grade performance in case study written summaries as measured with the grading rubric throughout the semester. A) Mean (with SD) grade performance in case study write-ups in the spring semester of 2016. B) Mean (with SD) grade performance in case study write-ups in the spring semester of 2017. Overall grade performance in case study written summaries improved throughout the 10 weeks in which this method was implemented in the classroom. Written summaries are graded based on a set rubric ( Appendix 3 ) that assigned a score between 0 and 1 for five different categories. Data represent the mean of students’ scores and the associated standard deviation. Improved student performance throughout the semester indicates progress in successful incorporation of this method to solve a complex novel problem.

After the class session, students were asked to provide a written summary of their findings. A set rubric ( Appendix 3 ) was used to assess students on their ability to apply basic anatomical knowledge as it relates to the timeline, systems involved, and what is unique in each case study. Students were also asked to describe the questions that they had asked in order to reach a diagnosis for the case study. The questions formulated by students indicate their ability to bring together previous knowledge to larger anatomical concepts. In this written summary, students were also required to justify the answer they arrived at in each step of the process. In addition to these four steps, students were assessed on the organization of their paper and whether their diagnosis is well supported.

Although class participation was not formally assessed, the improvements demonstrated in the written assignments were mirrored in student discussions in the classroom. While it is difficult to accurately assess how well students think critically, students demonstrated success in learning this module, which provides the necessary framework for approaching and solving a novel problem.

Student perceptions

Students were asked to answer the open response question, “Describe the process you use to figure out a novel problem or case study.” Responses were anonymized, then coded based on frequency of responses. Responses were collected at the start of the semester, prior to any instruction in the described systematic approach, and again at the end of the semester ( Figs. 2 and ​ and3). 3 ). Overall, student comments indicated that mastering this four-step approach greatly increased their confidence in tackling a novel problem. Below are some sample student responses.

Student responses to a survey regarding their approach to solving a novel problem. Data were collected prior to and following the completion of the spring semester of 2016. A) Student approach to solving a novel problem at the beginning of the semester. B) Student approach to solving a novel problem at the end of the semester. Student responses indicate that following a semester of training in using this method, students prefer to use this four-step systematic approach to solve a novel problem.

Student responses to a survey regarding their approach to solving a novel problem. Data were collected prior to and following the completion of spring semester of 2017. A) Student approach to solving a novel problem at the beginning of the semester. B) Student approach to solving a novel problem at the end of the semester. Student responses indicate that students overwhelmingly utilize this systematic approach when solving a novel problem.

“Rather than being intimidated with a set of symptoms I can’t explain, I’m now able to break them down into simpler questions that will lead me down a path of understanding and accurate explanation.” “I now know how to address an exam question or life problem by considering what is needed to solve it. This knowledge will help me to address each problem efficiently and calmly. As a future nurse, I will benefit from developing a logical and stereotypical approach to solving problems. I have learned to assess my thinking and questioning and modify my approach to problem-solving. While the problems may be different in the future, I am confident that I will be able to efficiently learn from my successes and setbacks and continually improve.” “I’m sure I’ll use this approach when I’m faced with any other novel problem, whether it’s scientific or not. Stepping back and establishing what I know and what I need to find out makes difficult problems a lot more approachable.” “Before, I would look at all the information presented and try to find things that I recognized. Then I would simply ask myself if I knew the answer. Even if I did actually know the answer, I had no formula to make the information understandable, cohesive, or approachable. I now feel far more confident when dealing with novel problems and do not become immediately overwhelmed.”

This approach encourages students to quickly sort through a large amount of information and think critically. Although students can find the novel nature of this method cumbersome in the initial implementation in the classroom, once they become familiar with the approach, it provides a valuable platform for attacking any novel problem in the future. The ability to apply this approach to critical thinking in any discipline was also demonstrated, as is evidenced by the two following student responses.

“When I first thought about this question and when solving case studies I tried to find the answer immediately. I’m good at memorizing information and spitting it back out but not working through an issue and having a method. I definitely have a more successful way to think through complex problems and being patient and coming up with an answer.” “I already use it in many of my other classes and life cases. When I take an exam that is asking a complicated question or is in a long format, I work to break it down like I did in this class and try to find the base question and what the answer may be. It has actually helped significantly.”

Possible modifications

Currently, students are randomly assigned to groups each week. In future semesters, we could improve small group work by utilizing software that helps to identify individual student strengths and assign groups accordingly. Additionally, while students are given flexibility within their small groups, if groups struggle with equality of workload we could assign specific roles and tasks.

We are also using this model in a large class (100 students) and assessing understanding of the case study through instant student response questions (ICLICKER). While this model does not allow for the valuable in-depth classroom discussions, it still presents the approach to students and allows them to begin to implement it in solving complex problems. Preliminary data from these large classes indicate that students initially find the method difficult and cumbersome. Further development and testing of this model in a large classroom will improve its use for future semesters.

SUPPLEMENTAL MATERIALS

Appendix 1: sample case study, appendix 2: case study handout, appendix 3: case study grading rubric, appendix 4: student writing sample, acknowledgments.

Use of anonymized student data and student responses to surveys was approved by the Institutional Review Board at Colorado State University. The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest.

† Supplemental materials available at http://asmscience.org/jmbe

New Model for Solving Novel Problems Uses Mental Map

Summary: The cognitive map allows people to compute on the fly with limited information to solve abstract problems.

Source: UC Davis

How do we make decisions about a situation we have not encountered before? New work from the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, shows that we can solve abstract problems in the same way that we can find a novel route between two known locations — by using an internal cognitive map.

The work is published Aug. 31 in the journal  Nature Neuroscience .

Humans and animals have a great ability to solve novel problems by generalizing from existing knowledge and inferring new solutions from limited data. This is much harder to achieve with artificial intelligence.

Animals (including humans) navigate by creating a representative map of the outside world in their head as they move around. Once we know two locations are close to each other, we can infer that there is a shortcut between them even if we haven’t been there. These maps make use of a network of “grid cells” and “place cells” in parts of the brain.

In earlier work, Professor Erie Boorman, postdoctoral researcher Seongmin (Alex) Park, Douglas Miller and colleagues showed that human volunteers could construct a similar cognitive map for abstract information. The volunteers were given limited information about people in a two-dimensional social network, ranked by relative competence and popularity. The researchers found that the volunteers could mentally reconstruct this network, represented as a grid, without seeing the original.

The new work takes the research further by testing if people can actually use such a map to find the answers to novel problems.

Matchmaking entrepreneurs

As before, volunteers learned about 16 people they were told were entrepreneurs, ranked on axes of competence and popularity. They never saw the complete grid, only comparisons between pairs.

They were then asked to select business partners for individual entrepreneurs that would maximize growth potential for a business they started together. The assumption was that an entrepreneur scoring high in competence but low on popularity would be complemented by one with a higher popularity score. 

“For example, would Mark Zuckerberg be better off collaborating with Bill Gates or Richard Branson?” Boorman said. (The actual experiment did not use real people.)

While the volunteers were performing the decision task, the researchers scanned their brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. 

If the volunteers were using the grid cells inside their head to infer the answer, that should be measurable with a tailored analysis approach applied to the fMRI signal, Boorman said.

“It turns out the system in the brain does show the signature of these trajectories being computed on the fly,” he said. “It looks like they are leveraging the cognitive map.”

Computing solutions on the fly

In other words, we can take in loosely connected or fragmentary information, assemble it into a mental map, and use it to infer solutions to new problems.  

Scientists have considered that the brain makes decisions by computing the value of each choice into a common currency, which allows them to be compared in a single dimension, Park said. For example, people might typically choose wine A over wine B based on price, but we know that our preference can be changed by the food you will pair with the wine.

“Our study suggests that the human brain does not have a wine list with fixed values, but locates wines in an abstract multidimensional space, which allows for computing new decision values flexibly according to the current demand,” he said.

The cognitive map allows for computation on the fly with limited information, Boorman said.

“It’s useful when the decisions are novel,” he said. “It’s a totally new framework for understanding decision making.”

The navigational map in rodents is located in the entorhinal cortex, an “early” part of the brain. The cognitive map in humans expands into other parts of the brain including the prefrontal cortex and posterior medial cortex. These brain areas are part of the default mode network, a large “always on” brain network involved in autobiographical memory, imagination, planning and the theory of mind.

Funding: The work was supported by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. 

About this cognition research news

Author: Andy Fell Source: UC Davis Contact: Andy Fell – UC Davis Image: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Closed access. “ Inferences on a multidimensional social hierarchy use a grid-like code ” by Seongmin A. Park, Douglas S. Miller & Erie D. Boorman. Nature Neuroscience

Inferences on a multidimensional social hierarchy use a grid-like code

Generalizing experiences to guide decision-making in novel situations is a hallmark of flexible behavior. Cognitive maps of an environment or task can theoretically afford such flexibility, but direct evidence has proven elusive.

In this study, we found that discretely sampled abstract relationships between entities in an unseen two-dimensional social hierarchy are reconstructed into a unitary two-dimensional cognitive map in the hippocampus and entorhinal cortex.

We further show that humans use a grid-like code in entorhinal cortex and medial prefrontal cortex for inferred direct trajectories between entities in the reconstructed abstract space during discrete decisions. These grid-like representations in the entorhinal cortex are associated with decision value computations in the medial prefrontal cortex and temporoparietal junction.

Collectively, these findings show that grid-like representations are used by the human brain to infer novel solutions, even in abstract and discrete problems, and suggest a general mechanism underpinning flexible decision-making and generalization.

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Unlocking Creativity in Solving Novel Mathematics Problems Cognitive and Non-Cognitive Perspectives and Approaches

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Description

Unlocking Creativity in Solving Novel Mathematics Problems delivers a fascinating insight into thinking and feeling approaches used in creative problem solving and explores whether attending to ‘feeling’ makes any difference to solving novel problems successfully. With a focus on research throughout, this book reveals ways of identifying, describing and measuring ‘feeling’ (or ‘intuition’) in problem-solving processes. It details construction of a new creative problem-solving conceptual framework using cognitive and non-cognitive elements, including the brain’s visuo-spatial and linguistic circuits, conscious and non-conscious mental activity, and the generation of feeling in listening to the self, identified from verbal data. This framework becomes the process model for developing a comprehensive quantitative model of creative problem solving incorporating the Person, Product, Process and Environment dimensions of creativity. In a world constantly seeking new ideas and new approaches to solving complex problems, the application of this book’s findings will revolutionize the way students, teachers, businesses and industries approach novel problem solving, and mathematics learning and teaching.

Table of Contents

Carol R. Aldous , BSc (Hons) developmental genetics, PhD (mathematics education and creative problem solving) is a senior lecturer in science and mathematics education at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. She leads a South Australian government-funded STEM industry engagement project and passionately researches the role of creativity in problem solving.

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40 problem-solving techniques and processes

All teams and organizations encounter challenges. Approaching those challenges without a structured problem solving process can end up making things worse.

Proven problem solving techniques such as those outlined below can guide your group through a process of identifying problems and challenges , ideating on possible solutions , and then evaluating and implementing the most suitable .

In this post, you'll find problem-solving tools you can use to develop effective solutions. You'll also find some tips for facilitating the problem solving process and solving complex problems.

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What is problem solving?

Problem solving is a process of finding and implementing a solution to a challenge or obstacle. In most contexts, this means going through a problem solving process that begins with identifying the issue, exploring its root causes, ideating and refining possible solutions before implementing and measuring the impact of that solution.

For simple or small problems, it can be tempting to skip straight to implementing what you believe is the right solution. The danger with this approach is that without exploring the true causes of the issue, it might just occur again or your chosen solution may cause other issues.

Particularly in the world of work, good problem solving means using data to back up each step of the process, bringing in new perspectives and effectively measuring the impact of your solution.

Effective problem solving can help ensure that your team or organization is well positioned to overcome challenges, be resilient to change and create innovation. In my experience, problem solving is a combination of skillset, mindset and process, and it’s especially vital for leaders to cultivate this skill.

What is the seven step problem solving process?

A problem solving process is a step-by-step framework from going from discovering a problem all the way through to implementing a solution.

With practice, this framework can become intuitive, and innovative companies tend to have a consistent and ongoing ability to discover and tackle challenges when they come up.

You might see everything from a four step problem solving process through to seven steps. While all these processes cover roughly the same ground, I’ve found a seven step problem solving process is helpful for making all key steps legible.

We’ll outline that process here and then follow with techniques you can use to explore and work on that step of the problem solving process with a group.

The seven-step problem solving process is:

1. Problem identification 

The first stage of any problem solving process is to identify the problem(s) you need to solve. This often looks like using group discussions and activities to help a group surface and effectively articulate the challenges they’re facing and wish to resolve.

Be sure to align with your team on the exact definition and nature of the problem you’re solving. An effective process is one where everyone is pulling in the same direction – ensure clarity and alignment now to help avoid misunderstandings later.

2. Problem analysis and refinement

The process of problem analysis means ensuring that the problem you are seeking to solve is  the   right problem . Choosing the right problem to solve means you are on the right path to creating the right solution.

At this stage, you may look deeper at the problem you identified to try and discover the root cause at the level of people or process. You may also spend some time sourcing data, consulting relevant parties and creating and refining a problem statement.

Problem refinement means adjusting scope or focus of the problem you will be aiming to solve based on what comes up during your analysis. As you analyze data sources, you might discover that the root cause means you need to adjust your problem statement. Alternatively, you might find that your original problem statement is too big to be meaningful approached within your current project.

Remember that the goal of any problem refinement is to help set the stage for effective solution development and deployment. Set the right focus and get buy-in from your team here and you’ll be well positioned to move forward with confidence.

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 techniquess 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 often 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 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 front-running 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 and planning

Nearly there! Once you’ve got a set of possible, you’ll need to make a decision on which to implement. This can be a consensus-based group decision or it might be for a leader or major stakeholder to decide. You’ll find a set of effective decision making methods below.

Once your group has reached consensus and selected a solution, there are some additional actions that also need to be decided upon. You’ll 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.

Set clear accountabilities, actions, timeframes, and follow-ups for your chosen solution. 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 processes have the end goal of implementing an effective and impactful solution that your group has confidence in.

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. For some solutions, you might also implement a test with a small group and monitor results before rolling it out to an entire company.

You should have a clear owner for your solution who will oversee the plans you made together and help ensure they’re put into place. This person will often coordinate the implementation team and set-up processes to measure the efficacy of your solution too.

7. Solution evaluation 

So you and your team developed a great solution to a problem and have a gut feeling it’s 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 also 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.

What does an effective problem solving process look like?

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

The format of a workshop ensures that you can get buy-in from your group, encourage free-thinking and solution exploration before making a decision on what to implement following the session.

This Design Sprint 2.0 template is an effective problem solving process from top agency AJ&Smart. It’s a great format for the entire problem solving process, with four-days of workshops designed to surface issues, explore solutions and even test a solution.

Check it for an example of how you might structure and run a problem solving process and feel free to copy and adjust it your needs!

For a shorter process you can run in a single afternoon, this remote problem solving agenda will guide you effectively in just a couple of hours.

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

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

Complete problem-solving methods

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

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

Six Thinking Hats

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

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

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

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.

Lightning Decision Jam

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

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

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

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

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

Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ)   #action   #decision making   #problem solving   #issue analysis   #innovation   #design   #remote-friendly   It doesn’t matter where you work and what your job role is, if you work with other people together as a team, you will always encounter the same challenges: Unclear goals and miscommunication that cause busy work and overtime Unstructured meetings that leave attendants tired, confused and without clear outcomes. Frustration builds up because internal challenges to productivity are not addressed Sudden changes in priorities lead to a loss of focus and momentum Muddled compromise takes the place of clear decision- making, leaving everybody to come up with their own interpretation. In short, a lack of structure leads to a waste of time and effort, projects that drag on for too long and frustrated, burnt out teams. AJ&Smart has worked with some of the most innovative, productive companies in the world. What sets their teams apart from others is not better tools, bigger talent or more beautiful offices. The secret sauce to becoming a more productive, more creative and happier team is simple: Replace all open discussion or brainstorming with a structured process that leads to more ideas, clearer decisions and better outcomes. When a good process provides guardrails and a clear path to follow, it becomes easier to come up with ideas, make decisions and solve problems. This is why AJ&Smart created Lightning Decision Jam (LDJ). It’s a simple and short, but powerful group exercise that can be run either in-person, in the same room, or remotely with distributed teams.

Problem Definition Process

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

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

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

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

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

The 5 Whys 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Discovery & Action Dialogue (DAD)

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

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

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

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

Design Sprint 2.0

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

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

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

Open space technology

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

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

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

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

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

Techniques to identify and analyze problems

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

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

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

Let’s take a look!

Fishbone Analysis

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

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

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

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

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

Problem Tree 

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

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

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

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

SWOT Analysis

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

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

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

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

Agreement-Certainty Matrix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Journalistic Six

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

LEGO Challenge

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

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

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

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

What, So What, Now What?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Journalists  

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

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

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

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

Problem-solving techniques for brainstorming solutions

Now you have the context and background of the problem you are trying to solving, now comes the time to start ideating and thinking about how you’ll solve the issue.

Here, you’ll want to encourage creative, free thinking and speed. Get as many ideas out as possible and explore different perspectives so you have the raw material for the next step.

Looking at a problem from a new angle can be one of the most effective ways of creating an effective solution. TRIZ is a problem-solving tool that asks the group to consider what they must not do in order to solve a challenge.

By reversing the discussion, new topics and taboo subjects often emerge, allowing the group to think more deeply and create ideas that confront the status quo in a safe and meaningful way. If you’re working on a problem that you’ve tried to solve before, TRIZ is a great problem-solving method to help your team get unblocked.

Making Space with TRIZ   #issue analysis   #liberating structures   #issue resolution   You can clear space for innovation by helping a group let go of what it knows (but rarely admits) limits its success and by inviting creative destruction. TRIZ makes it possible to challenge sacred cows safely and encourages heretical thinking. The question “What must we stop doing to make progress on our deepest purpose?” induces seriously fun yet very courageous conversations. Since laughter often erupts, issues that are otherwise taboo get a chance to be aired and confronted. With creative destruction come opportunities for renewal as local action and innovation rush in to fill the vacuum. Whoosh!

Mindspin  

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

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

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

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

The Creativity Dice

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

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

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

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

Idea and Concept Development

Brainstorming without structure can quickly become chaotic or frustrating. In a problem-solving context, having an ideation framework to follow can help ensure your team is both creative and disciplined.

In this method, you’ll find an idea generation process that encourages your group to brainstorm effectively before developing their ideas and begin clustering them together. By using concepts such as Yes and…, more is more and postponing judgement, you can create the ideal conditions for brainstorming with ease.

Idea & Concept Development   #hyperisland   #innovation   #idea generation   Ideation and Concept Development is a process for groups to work creatively and collaboratively to generate creative ideas. It’s a general approach that can be adapted and customized to suit many different scenarios. It includes basic principles for idea generation and several steps for groups to work with. It also includes steps for idea selection and development.

Problem-solving techniques for developing and refining solutions 

The success of any problem-solving process can be measured by the solutions it produces. After you’ve defined the issue, explored existing ideas, and ideated, it’s time to develop and refine your ideas in order to bring them closer to a solution that actually solves the problem.

Use these problem-solving techniques when you want to help your team think through their ideas and refine them as part of your problem solving process.

Improved Solutions

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

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

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

Four Step Sketch

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

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

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

Ensuring that everyone in a group is able to contribute to a discussion is vital during any problem solving process. Not only does this ensure all bases are covered, but its then easier to get buy-in and accountability when people have been able to contribute to the process.

1-2-4-All is a tried and tested facilitation technique where participants are asked to first brainstorm on a topic on their own. Next, they discuss and share ideas in a pair before moving into a small group. Those groups are then asked to present the best idea from their discussion to the rest of the team.

This method can be used in many different contexts effectively, though I find it particularly shines in the idea development stage of the process. Giving each participant time to concretize their ideas and develop them in progressively larger groups can create a great space for both innovation and psychological safety.

1-2-4-All   #idea generation   #liberating structures   #issue analysis   With this facilitation technique you can immediately include everyone regardless of how large the group is. You can generate better ideas and more of them faster than ever before. You can tap the know-how and imagination that is distributed widely in places not known in advance. Open, generative conversation unfolds. Ideas and solutions are sifted in rapid fashion. Most importantly, participants own the ideas, so follow-up and implementation is simplified. No buy-in strategies needed! Simple and elegant!

15% Solutions

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

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

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

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

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

Problem-solving techniques for making decisions and planning

After your group is happy with the possible solutions you’ve developed, now comes the time to choose which to implement. There’s more than one way to make a decision and the best option is often dependant on the needs and set-up of your group.

Sometimes, it’s the case that you’ll want to vote as a group on what is likely to be the most impactful solution. Other times, it might be down to a decision maker or major stakeholder to make the final decision. Whatever your process, here’s some techniques you can use to help you make a decision during your problem solving process.

How-Now-Wow Matrix

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

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

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

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

Impact and Effort Matrix

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Straddling the gap between decision making and planning, MoSCoW is a simple and effective method that allows a group team to easily prioritize a set of possible options.

Use this method in a problem solving process by collecting and summarizing all your possible solutions and then categorize them into 4 sections: “Must have”, “Should have”, “Could have”, or “Would like but won‘t get”.

This method is particularly useful when its less about choosing one possible solution and more about prioritorizing which to do first and which may not fit in the scope of your project. In my experience, complex challenges often require multiple small fixes, and this method can be a great way to move from a pile of things you’d all like to do to a structured plan.

MoSCoW   #define intentions   #create   #design   #action   #remote-friendly   MoSCoW is a method that allows the team to prioritize the different features that they will work on. Features are then categorized into “Must have”, “Should have”, “Could have”, or “Would like but won‘t get”. To be used at the beginning of a timeslot (for example during Sprint planning) and when planning is needed.

When it comes to managing the rollout of a solution, clarity and accountability are key factors in ensuring the success of the project. The RAACI chart is a simple but effective model for setting roles and responsibilities as part of a planning session.

Start by listing each person involved in the project and put them into the following groups in order to make it clear who is responsible for what during the rollout of your solution.

• Responsibility  (Which person and/or team will be taking action?)
• Authority  (At what “point” must the responsible person check in before going further?)
• Accountability  (Who must the responsible person check in with?)
• Consultation  (Who must be consulted by the responsible person before decisions are made?)
• Information  (Who must be informed of decisions, once made?)

Ensure this information is easily accessible and use it to inform who does what and who is looped into discussions and kept up to date.

RAACI   #roles and responsibility   #teamwork   #project management   Clarifying roles and responsibilities, levels of autonomy/latitude in decision making, and levels of engagement among diverse stakeholders.

Problem-solving warm-up activities

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

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

Check-in / Check-out

Solid processes are planned from beginning to end, and the best facilitators know that setting the tone and establishing a safe, open environment can be integral to a successful problem-solving process. Check-in / Check-out is a great way to begin and/or bookend a problem-solving workshop. Checking in to a session emphasizes that everyone will be seen, heard, and expected to contribute. 

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

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

Doodling Together  

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

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

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

Show and Tell

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

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

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

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

Constellations

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

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

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

Draw a Tree

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

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

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

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

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

Closing activities for a problem-solving process

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

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

One Breath Feedback

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

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

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

Who What When Matrix 

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

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

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

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

Response cards

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

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

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

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

Tips for effective problem solving

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

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

Clearly define the problem

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

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

Don’t jump to conclusions

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

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

Try different approaches  

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

Don’t take it personally 

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

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

Get the right people in the room

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

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

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

Create psychologically safe spaces for discussion

Identifying a problem accurately also requires that all members of a group are able to contribute their views in an open and safe manner.

It can be tough for people to stand up and contribute if the problems or challenges are emotive or personal in nature. Try and create a psychologically safe space for these kinds of discussions and where possible, create regular opportunities for challenges to be brought up organically.

Document everything

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

Bring a facilitator 

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

Develop your problem-solving skills

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

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

Design a great agenda

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

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

Save time and effort creating an effective problem solving process

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

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

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

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

Over to you

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

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

James Smart is Head of Content at SessionLab. He’s also a creative facilitator who has run workshops and designed courses for establishments like the National Centre for Writing, UK. He especially enjoys working with young people and empowering others in their creative practice.

thank you very much for these excellent techniques

Certainly wonderful article, very detailed. Shared!

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

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New Model for Solving Novel Problems Uses Mental Map

• by Andy Fell
• September 02, 2021

How do we make decisions about a situation we have not encountered before? New work from the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis, shows that we can solve abstract problems in the same way that we can find a novel route between two known locations — by using an internal cognitive map. The work is published Aug. 31 in the journal Nature Neuroscience .

Humans and animals have a great ability to solve novel problems by generalizing from existing knowledge and inferring new solutions from limited data. This is much harder to achieve with artificial intelligence.

Animals (including humans) navigate by creating a representative map of the outside world in their head as they move around. Once we know two locations are close to each other, we can infer that there is a shortcut between them even if we haven’t been there. These maps make use of a network of “grid cells” and “place cells” in parts of the brain.

In earlier work , Professor Erie Boorman, postdoctoral researcher Seongmin (Alex) Park, Douglas Miller and colleagues showed that human volunteers could construct a similar cognitive map for abstract information. The volunteers were given limited information about people in a two-dimensional social network, ranked by relative competence and popularity. The researchers found that the volunteers could mentally reconstruct this network, represented as a grid, without seeing the original.

The new work takes the research further by testing if people can actually use such a map to find the answers to novel problems.

Matchmaking entrepreneurs

As before, volunteers learned about 16 people they were told were entrepreneurs, ranked on axes of competence and popularity. They never saw the complete grid, only comparisons between pairs.

They were then asked to select business partners for individual entrepreneurs that would maximize growth potential for a business they started together. The assumption was that an entrepreneur scoring high in competence but low on popularity would be complemented by one with a higher popularity score. 

“For example, would Mark Zuckerberg be better off collaborating with Bill Gates or Richard Branson?” Boorman said. (The actual experiment did not use real people.)

While the volunteers were performing the decision task, the researchers scanned their brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI. 

If the volunteers were using the grid cells inside their head to infer the answer, that should be measurable with a tailored analysis approach applied to the fMRI signal, Boorman said.

“It turns out the system in the brain does show the signature of these trajectories being computed on the fly,” he said. “It looks like they are leveraging the cognitive map.”

Computing solutions on the fly

In other words, we can take in loosely connected or fragmentary information, assemble it into a mental map, and use it to infer solutions to new problems.  

Scientists have considered that the brain makes decisions by computing the value of each choice into a common currency, which allows them to be compared in a single dimension, Park said. For example, people might typically choose wine A over wine B based on price, but we know that our preference can be changed by the food you will pair with the wine.

“Our study suggests that the human brain does not have a wine list with fixed values, but locates wines in an abstract multidimensional space, which allows for computing new decision values flexibly according to the current demand,” he said.

The cognitive map allows for computation on the fly with limited information, Boorman said.

“It’s useful when the decisions are novel,” he said. “It’s a totally new framework for understanding decision making.”

The navigational map in rodents is located in the entorhinal cortex, an “early” part of the brain. The cognitive map in humans expands into other parts of the brain including the prefrontal cortex and posterior medial cortex. These brain areas are part of the default mode network, a large “always on” brain network involved in autobiographical memory, imagination, planning and the theory of mind.

The work was supported by the National Science Foundation and National Institutes of Health. 

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Media Contacts:

• Seongmin Park, Center for Mind and Brain, [email protected]
• Erie Boorman, Center for Mind and Brain and Department of Psychology, [email protected]
• Andy Fell, News and Media Relations, 530-304-8888, [email protected]

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Problem Finding

• Living reference work entry
• First Online: 11 December 2019
• Cite this living reference work entry

• Roni Reiter-Palmon 2 &
• Sanaa Ahmed 2  

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Problem finding or problem construction is commonly seen as the first step in creative problem-solving. Problem construction consists of two main aspects. The first aspect focuses on the identification of problems in the environment. The second aspect of problem construction focuses on the structure and description of a problem in order to then create a solution. The problem construction process most often occurs quickly and automatically; however, actively engaging in problem construction has been linked to an increase in creativity. Additionally, problem construction has been associated with creativity across a wide range of domains. There are a variety of factors that may affect problem construction, such as expertise and personality variables, as well as the amount of time or information provided to the problem-solver. While problem construction tends to be automatic, training in problem construction or instructions to actively engage in problem construction increase creativity. Engaging in the problem construction process takes time and requires effort on the part of the problem-solver. Problem construction provides a road map for the possible. Goals identified in the problem construction process relate to what is possible, which constraints relate to what is impossible.

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Reiter-Palmon, R., Ahmed, S. (2020). Problem Finding. In: The Palgrave Encyclopedia of the Possible. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98390-5_72-1

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12 Best Problem Solving Books to Read

By: Angela Robinson | Updated: June 30, 2023

You found our list of top problem solving books .

Problem solving books are guides that improve critical thinking capability and the ability to resolve issues in the workplace. These works cover topics like bias and logical fallacies, problem prevention, and prioritizing. The purpose of these books is to help workers remain calm under pressure and come up with solutions more quickly.

These guides are similar to decision making books , negotiation books , and conflict resolution books . To improve competency in this area, one can also play problem solving games .

This list includes:

• problem solving books for adults
• creative problem solving books
• business problem solving books
• problem solving books for programmers

Here we go!

List of problem solving books

Here is a list of books to improve problem solving skills in the workplace.

1. Fixed: How to Perfect the Fine Art of Problem Solving by Amy E Herman

Fixed is one of the most useful new books on problem solving. The book calls for problem solvers to look beyond instinctual and obvious answers and provides a framework for more creative thinking. While most folks think about problem solving in terms of logic, reason, and disciplines like math and science, this book shows the role that art and imagination play in the process. Amy Herman consulted on leadership training with Silicon Valley companies and military organizations and brings this expertise into the text to train readers on how to adopt a more innovative critical thinking approach.

Notable Quote: “Working through problems is critical for productivity, profit, and peace. Our problem-solving skills, however, have been short-circuited by our complicated, technology-reliant world.”

Read Fixed .

2. Cracked it!: How to solve big problems and sell solutions like top strategy consultants by Bernard Garrette, Corey Phelps, and Olivier Sibony

Cracked it! is one of the best creative problem solving books. Drawing inspiration from the tactics of consultants, this guide is a practical playbook for approaching business problems. The authors outline a “4S” method– State – Structure – Solve – Sell– to tackle obstacles and get support from stakeholders. While many problem solving books simply focus on how to think through issues, this guide also demonstrates how to gain approval for ideas and get others onboard with the solution. The book explains how to best use these techniques, and presents case studies that show the theories in action. Cracked it! is a handy reference for any professional that faces tough challenges on the regular.

Notable Quote: “If you want to know how a lion hunts, don’t go to a zoo. Go to the jungle.”

Read Cracked it!

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3. Upstream: The Quest to Solve Problems Before They Happen by Dan Heath

Upstream takes a proactive approach to problem solving. The book urges readers to not only be responsive to issues, but also try to prevent obstacles from occurring. The guide opens with an exploration of “problem blindness,” and the psychological factors that cause folks to be oblivious to issues, along with a reminder that many problems are more controllable and avoidable than first assumed. The pages that follow outline a series of questions leaders can ask to fine-tune the system and steer clear of major headaches, for instance, “How Will You Unite the Right People?” and “How Will You Avoid Doing Harm?” Upstream is full of real world examples of how minor tweaks achieved major results and allowed organizations to sidestep serious holdups.

Notable Quote: “The postmortem for a problem can be the preamble to a solution.”

Read Upstream .

4. Problem Solving 101: A Simple Book for Smart People by Ken Watanabe

Problem Solving 101 is one of the most fun problem solving books for adults. Written by Ken Watanabe, the guide draws on Japanese philosophy as well as the author’s experience as a consultant at McKinsey to help readers understand and approach problems in productive ways. The pages provide blueprints for problem-solving methods such as logic trees and matrixes, and include scenarios and illustrations that help readers visualize the process more clearly. Problem Solving 101 breaks down the problem solving procedure into the most basic parts and lays out step-by-step instructions for choosing the best action in any situation.

Notable Quote: “When you do take action, every result is an opportunity to reflect and learn valuable lessons. Even if what you take away from your assessment seems to be of small consequence, all of these small improvements taken together make a huge difference in the long term.”

Read Problem Solving 101 .

5. What’s Your Problem?: To Solve Your Toughest Problems, Change the Problems You Solve by Thomas Wedell-Wedellsborg

What’s Your Problem? insists that the most important step in the problem solving process is to start by honing in on the correct problem. The root of much frustration and wasted efforts is that professionals often pick the wrong points to focus on. This book teaches readers how to reframe and approach issues from a different perspective. The guide outlines a repeatable three step process “Frame, Reframe, and Move Forward” to ensure that workers prioritize effectively and stay on track to achieve desired results. What’s Your Problem? teaches professionals of all levels how to be less rigid and more results-focused and adopt a more agile approach to fixing issues.

Notable Quote: “The problems we’re trained on in school are often quite different from the ones we encounter in real life.”

Read What’s Your Problem?

6. Sprint: How to Solve Big Problems and Test New Ideas in Just Five Days by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, et al

Sprint is one of the best problem solving books for programmers. The authors are the creators of the five-day-process at Google. This guide describes best practices for conducting sprints and solving problems in limited timeframes. The book provides a day-by-day breakdown of tasks for each day of the workweek, with the final steps being designing a prototype and a plan for implementation. Though this idea originated in the tech world and is most widely used in the software industry, this problem-solving and product design approach can be useful for any position that needs to find fixes in a time crunch.

Notable Quote: “We’ve found that magic happens when we use big whiteboards to solve problems. As humans, our short-term memory is not all that good, but our spatial memory is awesome. A sprint room, plastered with notes, diagrams, printouts, and more, takes advantage of that spatial memory. The room itself becomes a sort of shared brain for the team.”

Read Sprint , and check out this guide to virtual hackathons and this list of product design books .

7. Think Like a Rocket Scientist: Simple Strategies You Can Use to Make Giant Leaps in Work and Life by Ozan Varol

Think Like a Rocket Scientist lays out formulas and instructions for thinking more strategically. The guide reveals common problem solving approaches used by rocket scientists when exploring the unknown and testing new technology. The book is split into three sections– launch, accelerate, and achieve– with deep dives into concepts such as moonshot thinking and overcoming failure. The anecdotes revolve around space exploration and rocket science yet the methods can be applied to more commonplace and less complex problems as well. Think Like a Rocket Scientist proves that one does not need to be a genius to be a genius problem solver and lets readers learn tricks from one of the most complex professions on the planet.

Notable Quote: “Critical thinking and creativity don’t come naturally to us. We’re hesitant to think big, reluctant to dance with uncertainty, and afraid of failure. These were necessary during the Paleolithic Period, keeping us safe from poisonous foods and predators. But here in the information age, they’re bugs.”

Read Think Like a Rocket Scientist .

8. Bulletproof Problem Solving: The One Skill That Changes Everything by Charles Conn and Robert McLean

Bulletproof Problem Solving is one of the best business problem solving books. This workbook-style-guide breaks down a “bulletproof” method of problem solving favored by consultants at McKinsey. The authors distill the process into seven simple steps–define the problem, disaggregate, prioritize, workplan, analyze, synthesize, and communicate– and give numerous examples of how to follow this cycle with different dilemmas. The chapters explore each stage in depth and outline the importance and finer points of each phase. The book also provides practical tools for readers to build skills, including an appendix with exercise worksheets.

Notable Quote: “Problem solving doesn’t stop at the point of reaching conclusions from individual analyses. Findings have to be assembled into a logical structure to test validity and then synthesized in a way that convinces others that you have a good solution. Great team processes are also important at this stage.”

Read Bulletproof Problem Solving .

9. Think Like a Programmer: An Introduction to Creative Problem Solving by by V. Anton Spraul

Think Like a Programmer is one of the top problem solving books for programmers. The guide lays out methods for finding and fixing bugs and creating clean, workable code. The text emphasizes that programming is not merely a matter of being competent in the language, but also knowing how to troubleshoot and respond to unexpected occurrences. The chapters present examples of problems and puzzles and work through the answers to help strengthen professional competencies. The book provides an introductory crash course and practical toolkit for beginning coders, with a focus on C++. Yet since the text outlines general theory and approach, the book is also helpful for dealing with other programming languages, or for solving problems in non-tech industries as well. The point of the text is to provide a proper mindset and attitude for reacting to these developments, and the book can be a benefit for folks in any field.

Notable Quote: “Don’t Get Frustrated The final technique isn’t so much a technique, but a maxim: Don’t get frustrated. When you are frustrated, you won’t think as clearly, you won’t work as efficiently, and everything will take longer and seem harder. Even worse, frustration tends to feed on itself, so that what begins as mild irritation ends as outright anger.”

Read Think Like a Programmer .

10. The Founder’s Dilemmas: Anticipating and Avoiding the Pitfalls That Can Sink a Startup by by Noam Wasserman

The Founder’s Dilemmas lays out the most common problems entrepreneurs face and gives advice on how to avoid or solve these issues. The book tackles topics such as managing relationships, hiring, and rewarding or correcting employees. The chapters outline the mistakes inexperienced leaders often make and offer strategies for handling these tough situations with more smarts and skill. By reading this book, founders can learn from predecessors and avoid making obvious and avoidable errors in judgment. The Founder’s Dilemmas is a problem-solving resource for startup leaders and team members who lack more traditional guidance.

Notable Quote: “Ideas are cheap; execution is dear.”

Read The Founder’s Dilemmas , and check out more entrepreneurial books .

11. The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don’t by Julia Galef

The Scout Mindset challenges readers to move beyond gut reactions and preconceptions and rethink problems. The book offers instructions for overcoming bias and central beliefs to gather more objective data. Julia Galef encourages readers to act more like scouts than soldiers and gather information without judging to make more informed decisions. The text outlines the common reasons folks jump to conclusions and offers advice on how to avoid incorrect assumptions and conduct level-headed analyses. The Scout Mindset is a call to action for objectivity and an instruction manual for breaking away from unhelpful mental patterns that can lead to poor choices.

Notable Quote: “Discovering you were wrong is an update, not a failure, and your worldview is a living document meant to be revised.”

Read The Scout Mindset .

12. Super Thinking: The Big Book of Mental Models by Gabriel Weinberg and Lauren McCann

Super Thinking is a comprehensive resource that explains various mental models for problem solving. The book identifies logical fallacies and shows readers how to avoid these pitfalls. The pages also lay out appropriate strategies, tools, techniques to use in different situations, such as matrices, pointed questions, and philosophies. The point of the guide is to teach readers how to evaluate information and make quick yet accurate judgements. The guide helps readers decide the best approach to use for each circumstance. Though packed with information, the pages also contain images and humor that prevent the material from getting too dry. Super Thinking is the ultimate cheat sheet for thinking rationally and acting with intention.

Notable Quote: “Unfortunately, people often make the mistake of doing way too much work before testing assumptions in the real world.”

Read Super Thinking .

Final Thoughts

Problem solving is one of the most essential skills for modern industry. With the breakneck pace at which the current business world changes, there is no shortage of new developments that professionals must contend with on a daily basis. Operating the same way for years at a time is impossible, and it is almost guaranteed that workers at every level will have issues to unravel at some point in their careers.

Books about problem solving help professionals predict, prevent, and overcome issues and find more viable and sustainable solutions. These guides not only provide skills, but also methods for survival in a highly competitive business landscape. These texts show workers that they are more capable than may first appear and that sometimes, seemingly insurmountable obstacles are beatable with a combination of creativity, teamwork, and proper process.

For more ways to beat the odds, check out this list of books on innovation and this list of books on business strategy .

We also have a list of the best communication books .

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FAQ: Problem solving books

Here are answers to common questions about problem solving books.

What are problem solving books?

Problem solving books are guides that teach critical thinking skills and strategies for resolving issues. The purpose of these works is to help professionals be more creative and strategic in problem solving approaches.

What are some good problem solving books for work?

Some good problem solving books for work include Sprint by Jake Knapp, John Zeratsky, et al, Upstream by Dan Heath, and Think Like a Rocket Scientist by Ozan Varol.

Author: Angela Robinson

Marketing Coordinator at teambuilding.com. Angela has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and worked as a community manager with Yelp to plan events for businesses.

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Angela has a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing and worked as a community manager with Yelp to plan events for businesses.

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The Bowerbird

Deep Dive: On (novel) problems & finding solutions

I’m deep in the problems and working-out phase of a new novel. I’m plotting and getting words down and deleting them and moving things about. This isn’t a new process for me, but the way I am approaching it is: trying to nut out problems and find solutions earlier than I usually do. In the past, I’ve written my way into the work - more like ‘pantsing’ than ‘plotting’ - which works for me but also takes a lot of time, lots of words and lots of dead ends. I’m trying to be more efficient this time around - in part because I have a shorter deadline, but also because I reckon it’s a good creative experiment.

In his Story Club post this week, writer George Saunders (who I had the great privilege of interviewing for the First Time podcast here ) wrote about his approach to solving a ‘potentially book-ruining problem’ as he wrote Lincoln in the Bardo . It’s an excellent post and well worth a read if you’re a paid subscriber (which I highly recommend becoming if you can!).

Why me? Why this? Why now?

As part of my doctoral research on shape and structure and how I put The Hummingbird Effect together, I’ve been writing about the ‘problem’ of realising the novel I wanted to write was something altogether different from the manuscript I had produced and how I was inspired by the work of artist Paul Klee to try a different form.

When I talk about this process at events and with other writers there are always lots of questions and sometimes even aha moments, so I thought I’d share a little of that work here. If you’ve read The Hummingbird Effect and look closely at the images you’ll notice that I made many more changes after this process - to shape and plot, words and characters. For example, there’s no longer a monk’s clock, or Percy’s 1917 story - which I referenced in my last post . But as a ‘slice of the process’ (which we sometimes call it in PhD land) I’m hoping this is helpful to other writers looking at restructuring their work, or creatives looking to other mediums for inspiration for their own art.

Finding Klee

Klee was a new-to-me discovery; I didn’t know his famous painting Angelus Novus , and yet as I read his collected notebooks The Thinking Eye (1961) and The Nature of Nature (1973) and pored over his drawings and paintings online, I felt I could see the kind of shape my novel-in-progress might eventually take. Specifically, the way in which that shape might help create connection between ideas of cause and effect, progress, circular time and inheritance that were key to the novel.

I came to Klee via an Encyclopedia of Philosophy entry on progress where I first read the words of Walter Benjamin in his Theses on the Philosophy of History :

A Klee painting named ‘Angelus Novus’ shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. This storm is what we call progress.   Benjamin, 1941, p. 257–8

Benjamin’s description and the eerie Klee painting both spoke to the ideas I wanted to explore in the novel: how we are shaped by the past, who we are now and who we might become, the idea of the ‘storm of progress’, turning one’s back on the future and being blind to the consequences of the damage we sow today. And kind of magically I thought, the word ‘chain’ appeared, a touchstone of the novel in terms of automated factories, labour and generational inheritance. The words and image had the elements of ‘heat’ I associate with material I need to pay attention to during the creative process. Charlotte Wood describes this ‘heat seeking’ aspect of the creative process as “the way artists separate promising from unpromising material by sensing and following the ‘power’ or ‘energy’ coming from any part of the work” ( The Luminous Solution , p 27). Going to the heat is a big part of how I write.

I was immediately drawn to Klee’s deep interest in form and structure and his articulation of the creative process in phrases which I madly copied into my working journal: 

Genesis as formal movement is the essence of the work of art. (17) The truly creative person works with the lapidary quality of language not with its multiplicity. (449) …do not think of form but of formation. Hold fast to the path, to the unbroken connection with the original ideal. Thence carry the formative will onward with the force of necessity, until it permeates the particles and parts. Step by step, carry it from the smallest to the larger, press forward until you have penetrated the whole; keep the formative line in hand, hold fast to the creative stroke . (454) Klee. Paul Klee Notebooks Volume 1: The Thinking Eye. trans. Ralph Manheim, with Charlotte Weidler and Joyce Wittenborn, London: Lund Humphries, 1961; New York: Wittenborn, 1961

This new ‘Klee’ lens of looking at the freshly exploded novel opened up possibilities of forming the material of the novel into a shape that best expressed its internal logic and meaning; questions on the nature of progress (destructive or benevolent), chains of women’s connection through labour over time, machines, entropy and resistance in all its forms.

As I read and worked, I experienced what friend and writer Penni Russon, described as a ‘haunting’ by Klee; references and mentions leapt out of texts I picked up, even those I have read before when I had not recognised Klee’s presence. Writer and blogger Austin Kleon creates images which visually present complex ideas, and his books on the creative process – Steal Like an Artist (2012), Show Your Work (2014) and Keep Going (2019) – are ones I often recommend.

In Kleon’s post, Inscrutable Blueprints , he references Klee’s diagrams and also those of John McPhee , a writer whose work was hugely influential during my research for The Mother Fault – both the geological content of his epic Annals of the Former World and his writing on structure in Draft No.4: On the Writing Process. Seeing these two thinkers together in Kleon’s post validated my feeling of ‘being in the right place.’ Likewise, only when it was pointed out to me, did I realise I had seen a reference to Klee’s Angelus Novus before; it appears in Ruth Ozeki’s The Book of Form and Emptiness , a book I had read and admired , and also a writer I’d been reading specifically for her interest in abattoirs in her novel My Year of Meats . Yet another Klee ‘haunting’ occurred when I went back to reread Annie Dillard’s descriptions of observing the stunt pilot Dave Rahm in the final chapter of The Writing Life , and how the experience shifted her ideas of beauty and human possibility. She describes the pilot and plane as being like “a Klee line, it smattered the sky with landscapes and systems” (95). I’d read this chapter many times and never before had this reference made such perfect sense to me, nor had I fully appreciated the fact that Dillard was conceptualising form and line in a new way after witnessing Rahm’s flights;

he furled line in a thousand new ways, as if he were inventing a script and writing it in one infinitely recurving utterance until I thought the bounds of beauty must break . Dillard, The Writing Life , 2009. p.109

These different Klee hauntings lead to a feeling of serendipity or ‘rightness’ and suggested that my circling of ideas and images for this novel might serve as some kind of map. The postscript to these Klee hauntings came during my Michael King Writing Residency in October 2022, where I found a first edition of Klee’s notebook in second-hand bookshop Bookmark after much searching. The smile says it all.

The reshaping experiment

Using Klee’s idea of formation over form, I approached this new shaping of the novel as an experiment, with no expectation that the structure I arrived at would be anything other than a part of a longer process. I wanted to begin this restructure with a printed copy of the manuscript laid out on the floor and worried that the only space big enough to do this at home was the hallway, which would artificially force me to think about the layout in a linear or chronological way, so I went to my parents’ house and used a room large enough to allow me to spread the manuscript out in different shapes.

The physical laying out of a manuscript has been part of my creative process since writing The Mother Fault, when I was struggling with managing the size and complexity of the novel within a word document. I’d read and loved Anne Lamott’s chapter ‘Plot Treatment’ in Bird by Bird where she lays out her ‘failed’ manuscript on the floor and moves it around until it makes sense to her. I thought trying this process myself might help. I’ve also participated in a number of workshops with one of my faves, US writer Sarah Sentilles who often talks about her ‘cut and tape’ writing process where she prints out her writing fragments, arranges them by theme and then ‘Frankensteins’ them back together. I’ve always written straight into word documents, and while I’ve tried software such as Scrivener and Trello which give visual organisational structure to work in progress, I find them difficult to work in and ultimately unhelpful for me. Touching the material itself – printed paper, index cards, the pen and highlighter – allows me to see the whole work more clearly.

Circles and stars had been shapes resonating with me during the writing of the novel. The star shape was introduced to me by Brian, who I met on the beach during a writing retreat at RMIT’s McCraith House where I exploded my manuscript and accepted that the novel was the not the straight, chronological historical narrative I had initially intended it. When I described the problem of not knowing how to put my manuscript back together Brian drew me a star shape. ‘It’s simple,’ he said as he drew the first line in the sand, ‘you start here and then follow the line.’

Still sandy and wet from my swim, I went back to my desk and laid out the sketchy index cards of each narrative in this shape. It was the first of many lightbulb moments.

Another image I’d saved was of a wind rose diagram I used as part of my research for the far-future narrative strand which (at that stage) involved wind power.

There was immediate synergy with the visual similarity between the wind rose diagrams and Klee’s colour wheel:

Both shapes show pattern and repetition with a randomness that appealed to me. When I noticed how often circles appeared in various forms in Klee’s notebooks I decided that the circle was the shape which might best ‘hold’ my novel-in-progress. Both of these images were ones I used as part of an Artist Statement created in a Sentilles workshop , and which became a touchstone for the rest of the writing.

On the floor at my parent’s place, I began by splitting each narrative into four sections - a ‘teaser’ plus three act structure. I then laid each out narrative as if the parts were spokes on a wheel, or sections of a clock. I placed the fifth ‘lecture’ narrative between the spokes (the ‘lecture on a cruise ship’ narrative morphed into the AI story later). While the balance in this shape was aesthetically pleasing and made sense for the narrative, I wondered how to translate this into the constraints of the codex - reading from first page to last. Where does a shape like this begin, and end? Does it follow each spoke out and back in? Or circle out from the centre?

As I played with the position of the narrative sections I continued to return to Klee’s notebooks, skimming for ideas relating to movement, chronology or direction. I was looking for possible arrangements and sequencing of the narrative parts that might illuminate new meaning, or help me feel like the puzzle had been put together. I looked for arrows, unbroken lines and the kinds of shapes and connections that had already appeared in the work and process. With new pencils (I don’t know why new pencils are essential but they are!) and paper, I drew the shape I had mapped out on the floor and then tried to connect it with an ‘unbroken line’ as per some of the instructions in Klee’s lectures and notes.

Moths and butterflies are recurring images within the novel, something I had only really recognised during the reading of the full draft. Combined with the imagery of the angel with outstretched wings from Klee’s Angelus Novus , I could see how the messy line I had followed was reminiscent of wings. I tried the drawing again and was exhilarated by the clear wing shape the arrangement formed.

While the wing shape was satisfying and introduced the idea of the novel being separated in two mirror halves, it did not solve the direction or sequencing of each of the narrative threads. My original arrangement had each ‘spoke’ beginning with the 1933 story closest to the centre then moving outward through near future (2031) back to 2020 and finally to 2300, with the lectures interspersed between each spoke. I wondered if the mirror image might offer some clue as to how I might arrange these narratives in a way that added more meaning to the story, both in the sequence, the places the stories ‘touched’ and in the gaps between. Further skimming of Klee’s notebooks led me to this lemniscate figure:

Particular words and phrases in Klee’s accompanying description - ‘balance’, ‘interlocking’ and ‘polyphonic overlap’ - resonated with the connection I wanted to make between the separate narratives. Creative writing scholar, Kate Cantrell , describes the lemniscate figure as a

horizontal figure eight… a curve that moves continuously forward as it moves continuously backward. This movement elicits a non-linear narrative that is characterised by a forward progression through space and a backward passage through time . (2014 2) Cantrell, The Sideways Hourglass: Establishing the Lemniscate as a Narrative Structure for Writing and Reading Non-Linear Stories.” Phd, Queensland University of Technology. 2014

I attempted my own version of the figure, and then blocked in how the narratives might fit in this sequence.

I rearranged the floor map to reflect this drawing; now the first ‘wing’ started in 1933 (Peggy & Lil), moved to 2031 (La & Cat), back to 2020 (Hilda) and then to 2300 (Maz & Onyx), before coming to the central point (the lecture) then moving back through 2300, 2020, near future and 1933 and returning to a lecture at the centre or midpoint of the novel. The opposite wing began in 2300, moved to near future, then to 2020 and 1933, the lecture point, and returned for the final part of the novel via 1933, 2020, near future and finally 2300. Immediately there were new and satisfying juxtapositions and connections between the narrative parts.

The speed and playfulness with which I did this entire restructuring activity over one day allowed me to hold the novel’s shape and content in mind and I finished satisfied that I could begin the new redraft of the novel in its entirety with this shape as a guide. The final act of this restructuring experiment was to create a contents print out of the manuscript reflecting the new structure.

During the various phases of writing the novel, I printed out these chapter outlines at points where I have made significant changes, additions or deletions to the manuscript, so that I had physical documentation of key points in the process, and to be able to mark up during the next phase of writing and editing. This post-restructure print out was the thirteenth in the documentation of the novel (there were many more to come!).

As noted, there was lots more movement and change in the draft after this process, but it remains a transformative point in the writing process of The Hummingbird Effect - where I finally understood how the seemingly unconnected narratives could become a whole.

Creative experiment

What experiments and strategies do you use when shaping your work?

Do you draw from other artistic mediums for inspiration at this phase?

How has playing with shape helped you find meaning in your work?

Try sketching out the shape of your work in progress. Or, the shape of a book you love (Michael Christie’s Greenwood was another touchstone for me - helpfully his contents page shows the shape as a cross section of a tree trunk, something we talk about in this interview ).

Write the sections of your work in progress on index cards or post it notes and shuffle them around in different shapes . Experiment with unlikely or ‘impossible’ shapes. Jane Allison’s Meander, Spiral, Explode: Design and Pattern in Narrative is an excellent read if you want inspo.

Take a narrative - your own or someone else’s - you know well and play with new shapes you might use to tell it. What meaning do the new gaps or meeting places between sections reveal? How does the new shape change the pacing, the reading experience, the character arcs?

Pay attention to shapes you encounter in your day: in the natural world (I took much inspo from leaves and flowers at one point!), from science or other fields outside your own (as a final moment of serendipity, last night in an ABC radio studio I noticed this image - wings, wind roses, colour wheels!):

Would love to hear from you if any of this resonates or if you’d like to share your own experiments in the comments!

Until next time and with love, K xx

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Improving examples to improve transfer to novel problems

Affiliation.

• 1 School of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta 30332.
• PMID: 7968556
• DOI: 10.3758/bf03198399

People often memorize a set of steps for solving problems when they study worked-out examples in domains such as math and physics without learning what domain-relevant subgoals or subtasks these steps achieve. As a result, they have trouble solving novel problems that contain the same structural elements but require different, lower-level steps. In three experiments, subjects who studied example solutions that emphasized a needed subgoal were more likely to solve novel problems that required a new approach for achieving this subgoal than were subjects who did not learn this subgoal. This result suggests that research aimed at determining the factors that influence subgoal learning may be valuable in improving transfer from examples to novel problems.

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

• 01 Feb 2022

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

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

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

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Creative Problem-Solving?

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

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

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

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

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

1. Balance Divergent and Convergent Thinking

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

2. Reframe Problems as Questions

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

3. Defer Judgment of Ideas

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

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

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

Creative Problem-Solving and Design Thinking

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

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

The four stages are:

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

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

Creative Problem-Solving Tools

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

Creating a Problem Story

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

1. Identify a UDP

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

2. Move Forward in Time

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

3. Move Backward in Time

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

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

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

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

4. Break the Chains

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

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

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

Brainstorming

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

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

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

Alternate Worlds

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

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

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

Continue Developing Your Skills

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

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

About the Author

Crime & Mystery

4 New Crime Novels Thrumming With Menace

Our mystery columnist reviews books by Scott Phillips, Morgan Richter, Snowden Wright and Jamie Harrison.

Credit... Pablo Amargo

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By Sarah Weinman

• Aug. 28, 2024

If you’re going to write about seedy underbellies and strange subcultures, then follow the road map created by Scott Phillips: Make it funny, make it ribald, make it memorable. That’s what Phillips has been doing ever since his lauded 2000 debut, “The Ice Harvest.”

THE DEVIL RAISES HIS OWN (Soho Crime, 368 pp., $27.95) is his latest novel to feature the photographer Bill Ogden, who was first seen in “Cottonwood,” set on the Kansas frontier in 1872.

Now, more than four decades removed from his “Cottonwood” shenanigans, he’s living in Los Angeles, still able to work (and score), albeit more slowly. His granddaughter, Flavia, fresh off killing her husband back in Kansas (“I recently collapsed Albert’s cranial vault,” she says), has taken on partner/successor duties at his photography studio. Both are pulled into the orbit of the “blue movie” industry — milder in 1916, to be sure, but still prone to violence — where they encounter a vivid, pungent cast of scoundrels and flimflam artists, from a film star named Magnolia Sweetspire to a mousy postal inspector named Melvin de Kamp.

Phillips always adopts a wonderfully deadpan air, but beneath his black humor is a steely emotional core. “The Devil Raises His Own” is a romp, but it’s also a poignant exploration of chosen families, broken homes and desperate dreams.

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