Problem-Free Problem Solving

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Make informed strategic decisions.

To help you achieve your store's strategic goals, managers must be able to participate in key decisions related to sales and service objectives, implement solutions to identified problems and evaluate their success.

Understanding your personal problem-solving style, allocating time appropriately and preparing yourself to deal with issues as they arise are critical to help you manage your workload. This course introduces analytical and creative techniques to solve problems independently or with a team.

After completing this chapter, managers should be able to:

  • Understand analytical and creative approaches to problem solving.
  • Assess their preferred problem-solving style.
  • Identify and define problems clearly.
  • Describe how to consider a problem from multiple perspectives.
  • Outline five tactics to generate alternative solutions and when to use them.
  • Apply five techniques to select the best option from a number of potential solutions.
  • Explain how to evaluate and fine-tune a solution.

The Problem-Free Problem Solving chapter introduces analytical and creative techniques to help managers make key decisions related to their store’s strategic goals. Topics include choosing a problem-solving style; preparing to solve problems independently or with a team; defining the problem; and generating, selecting, implementing and evaluating solutions.

The chapter also includes downloadable worksheets to help managers define problems, identify potential solutions and evaluate alternatives.