Problem Solving

If you’re looking to improve your problem-solving skills, Problem Solving, by Dandi Daley MacKall, might be a good investment of time. While the intended audience is college students and new professionals, business people of any age will benefit from the techniques discussed in Problem Solving.

“The first problem for all of us, men and women, is not to learn, but to unlearn” –Gloria Steinem

One of my favorite quotes from the book discusses the curious nature of children (yes, I was one of those kids who always asked, “why??”

Children are curious by nature. They ask questions and come up with wild ideas. They can imagine what it might be like to fly like a bird or sit on a cloud. Now is the time to recapture that child-like curiosity. Have some fun. Let yourself be ridiculous. (p. 41)

You can’t brainstorm creative and effective solutions if you restrain yourself to thinking inside the box. To solve a problem creatively, you have to think outside the box.

If your high school history lessons were anything like mine, you might be familiar with the phrase, “Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it” (George Santayana). Well, it’s really applicable to all areas of life. Why waste time learning from your own mistake, or even worse, learning from the same mistake twice? Problem Solving suggests an innovative way to make sure you don’t repeat history:

Learn from your mistakes, from the mistakes of others, and from the mistakes of your company as a whole. Keep a notebook of what went wrong and right during the project. Use these notes to help you learn from your mistakes (p. 120)

So, in case you were wondering about my final verdict…. here it is. I checked this book out from my local library, and while I didn’t feel the need to add it to my library, I would still say it was a worthwhile read.