A better way to problem-solve.

Everyone in business needs to generate new ideas for any variety of projects. 

• What new products should we offer? 

• How might we promote this event? 

• Where should we sell our services?

• What pages should we include on our website?

These are the kinds of big and small questions your business might need to answer on a daily basis. Unfortunately, most businesses don’t have a process in place for addressing them.

More often than not, people will dive right into the first idea that comes to mind and try to make it work, usually through brute force. Interestingly, in my experience, this can be as true in major international enterprises as it is in brand new mom-and-pop shops. 

The downfall of this “method” is that it fails to provide a structured way of considering the problem, which often leads to weak ideas and inconsistency in goals, understanding, and execution of the plan – even if there’s just one person involved. 

Many people shy away from structured problem-solving because they fear it will be stifling and time-consuming. However, this should not be the case and in fact, it should result in the exact opposite.

So what’s a better way of tackling a new project? Here’s a few steps that I’ve found to have great success across nearly any kind of decision-making process.

1. Determine your core goals and constraints
   Do you need to generate a certain amount of revenue? Do you have to stick to a specific budget or deadline? Do you have to reach a certain audience? These kinds of details need to be agreed upon and understood before anyone can develop or judge the viability of a possible solution. With these objectives in place, it makes it easy to point yourself in the right direction because you know the boundaries within which you must stay.
   

2. Start broad
   Once you know what you’re aiming for, you can begin to develop ideas. And the best way to come up with good ideas is to start with A LOT of ideas. These should be very high-level - something that you can easily capture on a Post-It note - and quite different from each other so that you get a lot of breadth. The trick is to give yourself a challenging quantity of options to come up with. Say 10-20. This will make you push past the low-hanging fruit that is often uninspired and unoriginal, so you can get to the novel and interesting.
   

3. Evaluate ideas
   Now that you have a wide array of ideas to consider, you can begin to evaluate them based on how well they address your pre-determined goals and constraints. The beauty of this step is that you can reduce the influence of personal biases because your list of essential qualities enables you to make more impartial and objective decisions.
   

4. Manage the execution
   Once you’ve selected the best option to meet your goals and constraints, you can hit the ground running with your final option. As you develop the idea from Post-It note to fully realized gameplan, you can refer back to your objectives to ensure everything is staying on target. You can also use those objectives to explain your project to others within the process - be they your boss, the manufacturer, or an employee. This keeps everyone on the same page from start to finish, ensuring that you successfully solve the problem you set out to tackle.

Final word

The key with this method is to use it wherever possible. Too often, people will let their process slide on tasks they consider to be non-critical. But that’s where many businesses begin to falter in overall quality control. Even if it’s just a quick scribble on a notepad before starting your next newsletter blast or developing your seasonal menu, these simple steps can upgrade the quality of your work considerably.