If you’re a manager or you work with other people (That’s all of us in some way, right?) you’ve likely had teammates, other departments or your eaters come to you to share a problem they’d like you to fix. In the spirit of professional development, here are some quick tips for cultivating a culture of effective problem solving, not a culture of dumping problems on managers. How to Create a Culture of Effective Problem Solving
Make Problem Solving a Positive Sharing problems can feel negative. It’s essentially highlighting something that is wrong and can often turn into unproductive complaining. Share with your team that all employees should be focused on continuously improving the current status. Noticing something that could be done better is a good thing! Encourage your team to be detectives, always on the lookout to refine. Reframing problems in this light can help teammates remain positive in their outlook and see things as an opportunity, versus a burden. Gather Ideas for Experiments As a leader, it can be tiring to always be collecting problems that need fixing. Make it a practice with your team and others you work with that if they would like to bring a problem to the table for fixing, they also must bring an idea for an experiment to test to potentially fix the problem. Finally, they must be willing to participate in the experiment too! By asking teammates to be a part of the solution, you get
their buy-in and the burden to fix the problem won’t rest solely on your shoulders. Encourage Quick, Cheap Tests When you and your teammate are ready to brainstorm fixes to the problem, think of tests or experiments you can conduct that are cheap and quick to test. Make it a practice with your colleagues to “fail fast” and “test often”, rather than spending a lot of time and resources on an experiment that may not work. Bring In Outside Perspectives As you get in the habit of working together to create experiments to solve problems, practice bringing in others not on your direct team for a unique perspective. If you’re looking for a way to revamp an always-slow payment line, for example, ask a student or a faculty member to join the discussion. It will ensure you have captured how the problem might feel to another user and will bring out-of-the-box ideas to the table.
Director of Marketing & Brand Stewardship at Ready Foods in Denver, Colorado. Annelise is a Graduate of the Culinary Institute of America, Annelise has spent her career making sure food sounds appetizing on paper, looks good in pictures and tastes amazing when you order it. Her day-to-day consists of working at Ready Foods to connect food service operators with ready-to-use kitchen solutions that are easy to incorporate into a kitchen flow and bring great flavor to menu items. (We also use thousands of pounds of both Hatch and Pueblo chiles each year!) Her favorite hot lunch in elementary school was always nacho day. Ready Foods Annelise McAuliffe Soares
Powered by FlippingBook