If all you have is a hammer, everything else looks like a nail. The hammer nail analogy is a common business idiom. It describes the bias that we bring to solving problems based on our personal experience and background. Well, hammer meet nail. Nail says to hammer, “Hammer, meet screwdriver, pliers, wrench, saw and the entire toolbox of unique tools to solve different challenges. You see hammer, there’s more to fixing the problem than pounding nails.” Our Drive To Solve Problems We love … [Read more...]
Great Questions Define Great Conference Experiences
It is much more effective to provide opportunities for conference participants to solve their own problems, then telling them how to solve it. (Paraphrase Dr. A. Gidget Hopf, President & CEO of The Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired—Goodwill Industries.) Conference organizers automatically assume that if someone is attending their event, they expect the conference to help them solve their problems. They believe that the conference should provide the answers. Telling … [Read more...]
Problem Solving: Getting Unstuck And Thinking Out Of Corners
Problems are things that don't work the way we want them to. These can be as simple as having something you depend on break or as broad as a situation where there is a big gap between where you want to be and the current reality. Whether problems are full disasters or small inconveniences, they all spring from one common place--a disparity between expectations and reality. The History Of Problem Solving In the 1950s, William J.J. Gordon developed a problem solving process used by small groups. … [Read more...]
