Why invest in developing your employee’s problem solving and innovation skills?

 

We know that problem solving is a desired competency at every level of an organisation but we don’t believe that many organisations want to develop this skill in isolation.

 

Problem solving and innovation are very different skill sets but are both equally important to get the results your organisation needs to see in the short and longer term.

 

Solving problems that already exist is a reactive response, and without any skill development, people often just react with their natural response in a crisis.  In organisational terms, this ensures that people will maintain the balance or re-establish the status quo, but will rarely stretch the boundaries of what is achieveable.

 

When the approach to solving a problem is to innovate and consider opportunities that may be possible a proactive approach that seeks to raise the bar and is strategic will achieve the greatest results.

Think of all the problems that you have encountered in your life.

You found some way to deal with them and, on reflection, you may feel that you dealt with some problems in a better way than others.

When tackling a problem, we all use some kind of structured approach but we don’t always recognise what that approach is.

 

This approach is probably automatic and has developed by accident as a result of our work and life experiences. This ‘automatic’ approach to problem solving saves thinking time but doesn’t allow us to really understand why sometimes we are less successful than we would like to be.

 

This is where innovative and creative thinking come into play. We offer a range of development programmes on how to harness creative thinking and innovation within your business, including how to apply this to problem solving.