Problem Solving: The Complete Guide

Fear is one of the main obstacles to solving problems effectively, often linked to impostor syndrome and the fear of asking for help. This lecture explains why facing a problem rather than avoiding it reduces stress over time, and why collaborating with colleagues instead of struggling alone leads to faster, more efficient problem solving.

This lecture reframes what a problem actually is, comparing the emotionally loaded everyday definition with the neutral scientific definition of a question to resolve. You learn to distinguish between a drift, when a situation used to work and has degraded, and an opportunity for improvement, a distinction that changes how you investigate causes and search for solutions.

Learn how simply changing your vocabulary, replacing the word problem with challenge or opportunity, shifts your focus from what is wrong to what can be improved. This lecture lists concrete ways a new challenge can become a chance to demonstrate leadership, creativity, or teamwork rather than a source of stress.

A reflective exercise inviting you to revisit a past problem you faced: your reaction, the emotions involved, whether it was a drift or an opportunity, and what you actually gained from resolving it, whether new skills, a stronger client relationship, or better collaboration. This exercise reinforces the mindset shift covered in the previous lecture.

When a colleague or client reports a problem, active listening is essential to understand it fully before jumping to a solution. This lecture covers asking open questions, listening in silence, staying present, rephrasing to confirm understanding, and paying attention to non-verbal communication, illustrated with a negotiation example about two people needing the same lemon for different reasons.

Discover the QQOQCCP method, based on the journalist's questions Who, What, Where, When, How, How much, and Why, to fully scope a problem before analyzing its causes. This lecture walks through a concrete example of late deliveries in an online store to show how to apply the method to any business problem.

A guided exercise to practice the QQOQCCP method on your own problem, systematically answering the Who, What, Where, When, How, How much, and Why questions to build a complete, factual picture before searching for causes and solutions.

Learn how the Pareto principle, or the 20/80 rule, helps you prioritize which problems and causes to tackle first when you are facing multiple issues at once. This lecture explains how to build a Pareto chart from customer satisfaction data and shows, with a real example from Tim Ferriss, how focusing on the 20 percent of causes responsible for 80 percent of the impact prevents burnout and increases productivity.

A common mistake in problem solving is treating symptoms instead of root causes, which means the same issue keeps coming back. This lecture explains the difference between a symptom and a root cause with everyday and workplace examples, setting up the root cause analysis techniques covered next in the course.

Discover the 5 Whys technique, developed at Toyota, which consists of asking why five times in a row to move from a surface symptom to the true root cause of a problem. Two worked examples, a headache and a missed automated email, show how to apply the method and turn the root cause into an actionable solution.

Learn how to build an Ishikawa or fishbone diagram, also known as the 5M method, to visually map the causes of a problem across five categories: environment, equipment, method, materials, and workforce. This visual root cause analysis tool is widely used in quality management and can be adapted to almost any business or personal challenge.

A practical exercise to build your own Ishikawa or fishbone diagram, applying the 5M categories, environment, equipment, method, materials, and workforce, to a real problem you want to analyze, before comparing your work with a suggested solution.

A worked example solution for the fishbone or Ishikawa diagram exercise, illustrated with everyday and workplace cases, to help you check your own root cause analysis and refine how you use the 5M categories.

Using the classic nine dots puzzle, this lecture illustrates how self-imposed mental limits, based on assumptions never actually stated, hold back creative problem solving. You learn why thinking outside the box means questioning your own beliefs, past experiences, and biases in order to unlock innovative solutions.

Discover Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats method, a structured brainstorming technique where a group explores a problem through six distinct modes of thinking: facts, emotions, caution, optimism, creativity, and process control. This method helps teams generate and evaluate innovative solutions while avoiding the self-censorship that limits traditional group discussions.

A downloadable visual summary of the Six Thinking Hats method, listing what each colored hat represents, to help participants remember and apply the technique during a real brainstorming or decision-making session.

This lecture shares ten practical tips for running an effective brainstorming session, from preparing the right environment and materials to clearly stating the question, banning judgment during idea generation, and prioritizing quantity over quality. Essential facilitation skills for any manager or team leader who wants to generate innovative solutions collectively.

Learn how to use mind mapping to visually organize the ideas generated during a brainstorming session, starting from a central question and building branches for each related theme. This technique makes it easier to spot patterns, group similar ideas, and prepare for the next step of selecting solutions.

Practice building your own mind map to answer a question such as how to find new clients, using a central topic and branching sub-themes, either on paper or with a free online mind mapping tool, before comparing your result to a suggested solution.

A worked example of a mind map built from a brainstorming question, showing how ideas can be grouped into branches and sub-branches, to help you compare and refine your own mind mapping practice.

A simple but often overlooked decision making technique: listing the advantages and disadvantages of each possible solution before choosing between them. This lecture also introduces the idea of setting non-negotiable criteria in advance to narrow down your options and make the decision easier.

Discover the weighted vote technique, a democratic method for a group to choose between several solutions by ranking and scoring each option. This lecture explains how to set up the scoring system, break ties by factoring in the number of voters, and choose between an open or anonymous voting process to avoid influence from senior team members.

Learn how to build a decision matrix to evaluate solutions against clearly defined, weighted criteria instead of relying on subjective group opinion. Using a hiring example with experience, qualifications, and language skills as criteria, this lecture shows how to calculate a final score to choose the best option rationally.

Discover how to use a decision tree to compare options by weighing their probability of success against their potential gains and losses, illustrated with a business example of opening your own restaurant versus a franchise. This visual decision making tool can also be applied to structure a customer service escalation process step by step.

Learn the SCAMPER method, a creativity technique built around seven prompts, Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse, that you can apply to any product, process, or idea to generate innovative solutions. A practical tool for entrepreneurs, project managers, and designers looking to innovate systematically.

Discover the DMAIC cycle, Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control, a core framework of the Six Sigma methodology used to structure problem solving in a rigorous, data driven way. This lecture explains each of the five steps with a manufacturing quality example, showing how organizations use this model to reduce defects and improve processes.

Learn the PDCA cycle, Plan, Do, Check, Act, also known as the Deming wheel, a flexible and iterative continuous improvement model. Using a customer support chatbot example, this lecture compares PDCA to Six Sigma and explains when each framework is best suited to your problem solving project.

Discover how to use a SWOT analysis, Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats, to evaluate a situation, a product launch, or even your own career from both an internal and external perspective. Two detailed examples, a connected home device launch and a junior developer's career plan, show how to turn a SWOT analysis into concrete action.

A complete case study applying Six Sigma, SWOT, and PDCA together to solve a real operational challenge in a hospital emergency department facing long wait times. This lecture walks through defining the problem, analyzing root causes, evaluating solutions, and testing them, showing how the frameworks from this course combine in practice.

Once a solution is chosen, this lecture explains how to document your decisions and assumptions, define clear performance indicators, and track them regularly so a resolved problem does not resurface. A practical guide to turning a decision into a monitored action plan.

Inspired by Eric Ries's Lean Startup concept of the minimum viable product, this lecture explains when to keep improving your current solution and when to pivot in a new direction based on feedback and results, illustrated with the well known example of Instagram's pivot from a check-in app to a photo sharing app.

Discover the Sailing Boat retrospective, a visual technique borrowed from Agile teams to regularly review what is working well, what is slowing progress down, and what risks lie ahead. A practical way for teams to reflect, adjust their approach, and keep improving after implementing a solution.

Learn to recognize common cognitive biases that distort decision making at work, including anchoring bias, availability bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect, status quo bias, confirmation bias, attribution bias, and the halo effect. Understanding these biases is essential for managers who want to make more objective, well informed decisions.

This lecture covers common logical fallacies that undermine decision making at work, including ad hominem attacks, false dilemmas, hasty generalizations, and the post hoc fallacy of confusing correlation with causation. Workplace examples show how these reasoning errors create conflict and lead teams to flawed conclusions.

Building on the previous lecture, this session shares practical strategies to avoid logical fallacies in the workplace: practicing active listening, asking open questions instead of framing false dilemmas, examining the evidence behind claims, and actively searching for counter-examples before drawing conclusions.

Discover five practical debiasing techniques to reduce the impact of cognitive biases on your decisions: the pre-mortem exercise, consulting peers with different viewpoints, diversifying your sources of information, distinguishing facts from opinions, and using a multi-criteria evaluation grid. Practical tools for managers who want more objective decision making.

Group decisions are vulnerable to groupthink and other collective biases. This lecture shares techniques to improve team decision making, including fostering psychological safety, appointing a devil's advocate, collecting anonymous input, running post-decision reviews, and setting clear discussion norms so every voice is heard.