By Dennis E. Hensley, Ph.D.

       No company, corporation, store, firm, practice, office, church, club, volunteer organization or family can avoid problems. Problems come in the form of customer demands, financial crises, conflicting person agendas, and business competition.  But by dissecting a problem, you can resolve it.  Here’s a four-step process by which to do just that:

        First, constantly be looking for problems.  By talking to customers about what upsets them, you can make corrections. By interviewing your employees about why they are disgruntled, you can take steps to appease them. By analyzing your competition’s ad campaign, you can see where yours does not measure up. By holding family counsels where concerns are “put on the table” regularly, you can diffuse annoyances.

         Always remember that the easiest problems to solve are the problems on the lowest level.  So, catch problems early.  Marriott Hotels ask that guests fill out an evaluation card each time they stay at a Marriott.  Jiffy Lube gives clients a mail-back prepaid postcard that allows them to use a checklist to critique the service they received. Politicians send surveys and conduct polls to discover the concerns of voters on key issues.  These are simple but effective ways of discovering problems and resolving them quickly and easily.

        Second, discern whether you are facing a problem or just being asked to handle someone’s private agenda.  Oftentimes employees will come to you and state what they feel should be done for the betterment of the company.  However, many times their suggestions are really private desires.  For example, you must ask yourself if more vending machines in your waiting room really will be of value to the customers or if they are just extra luxuries your employees would enjoy for themselves.  Likewise, are state of the art computers really a valid updating expense for your business, or just something the guys in accounting want because they could play more sophisticated video games on them during coffee breaks and lunch hour?  Be discerning.  Someone else’s personal desires are not necessarily your business problems.

        Third, gauge the resolution of a problem by establishing specific measurements.  Don’t state your problem in ambiguous phrases such as, “We need to increase sales this year.”  Instead, say, “Before the end of the year we need to increase total sales by 16% in order to stay competitive. Thus, by the end of each quarter, we will need to be up 4%. If we aren’t, there will be layoffs.”  The workers will now know what their specific goal is and what will happen if they don’t meet it.  Business is like sports. Without a scorecard, you cannot tell if you are winning or losing.

         Fourth, adequate resources must be provided to help with problem solving.  It is unrealistic for a manager to tell his sales workers to widen their territories if he is relegating them to drive antiquated, unreliable company vehicles. Similarly, if a finance manager demands that a credit union’s records be made current, yet she refuses to upgrade the computers or software the employees are using, the job simply cannot get done.  Quality materials lead to quality results.

          In summary, the problem with problems is, they appear in new forms each day. The good new is, however, that this same four-step process will put you on the path to problem solving in virtually any difficulty.   Hey…no problem!
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Dr. Dennis E. Hensley is a professor at Taylor University Fort Wayne and the author of 50 books, including The Power of Positive Productivity (www.PossibilityPress.com) and How to Write What You Love and Make a Living at It (Random House).

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