Strategic problem solving is critical for growth in every organisation. Decision makers need put a long-term view to identify future problems they may face and come up with an action plan to effectively avoid these problematic situations.
To ensure that you’re making the right decisions consider the following:
Aligning with your organisational goals, vision and mission
It is very important to understand where your organisation sees itself in say five to ten years’ time. What do you aspire to? How would you like to grow and develop the business? Being aligned with your vision, mission and goals are key to successful strategic problem solving. Moving sight away from these could potentially lead to bigger problems of their own.
Assess your organisation’s strengths and weaknesses
Before you action any plan, you need to have a good understanding of what you are good at as a business and which areas need more work. This way you can create a plan that harnesses your strengths while sourcing additional support to fill any gaps and weak-spots. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses also helps to minimise risk by ensuring you have the right people assigned to each task.
Involve experts to help you draft an effective action plan
Strategic problem solving and decision-making is not something to be taken lightly and therefore any expert opinions you can draw from will help to ensure that you have a bulletproof plan. In most instances, an outside expert opinion is the best option to get the most honest and unbiased feedback and insights. Internal experts or leaders are usually too close to the problem to clearly see what’s needed to fix it.
Draw data to support the decision-making process
A decision taken without any supporting data is most likely going to lead to the action plan stagnating or failing. To make an informed decision you have to analyse all of the data you can get and identify trends over time, perform root cause analysis, and create management reports which provide valuable business insights. If you don’t have sufficient data internally, draw from market research or generate data through surveys and interviews.
The underlying message behind all of the above is the following: When it comes to strategic problem solving, it is very important to take your time, make use of all of the resources you have at your disposal and to properly assess the challenges and opportunities that each problem presents.