First, be aware of your pain and constraints

Some time back, I had met the small business owner, and when I asked him, " what is your business pain areas?". He responded that everything is fine. When I asked about his sales turnover, he said almost the same for the last 3 years. When I asked about profitability, he immediately responded, ok as of now, but when I showed him different trend patterns of profitability, he started opened out.

some of the signs as mentioned  by the business head 

• Business profitability had been in a declining trend,
• No sign for new customers order,
• People are not engaged and not listening to his instructions
• Not aware of the monthly performance as he was working based on the customer's pressure and somehow delivering.

Here the key point is as business head, you must know your pain point or constraint in your business which is affecting your delivery performance.

The constraint could be your manufacturing process, flow, equipment downtime, capacity imbalance, material shortage, people non-availability, and so on ... Even at the business level, the constraints could be your marketing or order procurement process or planning process or engineering function, and so on.

You must learn the techniques of identifying the constraints in your business through the following organizational capability.

1.Data collection and Transparency across all levels and functions on plant utilization, People efficiency, and product quality performance 
2.Review  / Communication mechanism at levels about performance 
3.WIP data 
4. The capacity and limitation of each function/process that could be manpower, equipment, working capital  or competency gap 

Developing those systems and process help you to be aware of your constraints 

once you know the constraints very well, you are almost towards the solution since with your expertise, once you the constraints clearly, you could figure out the answers quickly.

The point is, as a business head, you need to sure enough about your pain areas and constraints!

How do you measure organizational maturity in terms of problem solving competency?

One of the differentiators between the organization is people and their problem-solving competency inside the organization. Developing the organization towards performance culture or problem-solving orientation is the biggest challenge for the business head and also the responsibility of the business head.

Unlike, capacity enhancement or technology upgrade, bringing the culture of problem-solving will not happen overnight as this calls for systematic, consistent people development and creating an environment inside the organization.

Any organization can be measured by maturity level regarding problem-solving competency using the below framework.

Level 0: No data availability
Level 1: Availability of data
Level 2: No structured Analysis
Level 3: Gaining Insight from Analysis
Level 4: Converging  into solutions approach
Level 5: Implementation focus
Level 6: Track performance through metrics

Relook at your organization' problem-solving competency based on the above maturity framework. Be aware of your current status and actions required to move to the next level!

Steps in Structured Problem Solving Process

As you are aware that any chronic problem in the organization can be solved only through structured problem-solving methodology. The tactic or ad-hoc solutions won't work, that is why the problem became chronic!

The chronic problem could be stagnant in sales turnover, the repeated quality problem in the product, High attrition rate, high failure rate of new products and so on.

In those chronic problems, if you systematically approach the problem, you can arrive at the right solutions.

Typical steps in solving chronic problem-solving method as follows

1.Define the problem and set the desired target
2.Data collection from the past  few  months or years
3.Analysing the data and finding the pattern or prioritizing
4. For identified pattern, collect further data to understand the reality
5.Identifying the causes of the occurrence
6.Validating the causes with real-time experiments or documents
7.Propose the solutions approach
8. Make an ACTION PLAN to implement
9.Implementation on trial basis
10.Learn from the Implementation
11.Track for the progress or improvement
12.Make the new solutions as standard

Irrespective of the problem-solving methodology you choose to solve the problem like 6 sigma approach, QC tools approach, 8D approach, A3 approach, the essence of steps are almost the same as above.

To learn more about problem-solving methodology, tools and techniques with real case study example from the manufacturing organization, pl visit.

https://www.udemy.com/structured-problem-solving-methodologytools-and-techniques

How to develop problem-solving competency inside the organization?

Irrespective of industry and size of the organization, one of the common scenarios we observe in most of the organization is the inability to converge into the solutions approach for the chronic problems. Alternatively, we can say that most of the organizations lack on the problem-solving competency. When we say competency, it encompasses the knowledge of recognizing the problem, analyzing the causes from the reliable data, proposing the actions plan, implementing the measures and ensuring the problem does not recur.

Organization differs on the level of competency steps. If the senior management brings this one competency across levels and functions, then the organization sails through any business challenges.

In most of the organizations, we observe that lack of problem-solving competency prevails not due to lack of awareness on the problem-solving methodologies or tools and techniques. In fact, most of the organizations are aware of structured problem-solving methodologies like QC tools and its applications, 8D approach, A3 approach, six sigma methodologies, etc.

In my opinion, the inculcating problem-solving competency is more of mindset and culture building issues rather than on awareness issue. It is due to the lack of conducive environment or winning mindset culture as developed by the senior leadership team.

Clarity on the term “problem.”

Any gap between the target or desired status and reality or current status is a problem. The problem can be into tangible targets vs. actual as in sales turnover, profitability, launch timeline, etc. or in intangible areas like people expectations and the reality.

Whatever may be the gap or problem case, people across the functions and levels of hierarchy in the organization must have the mindset, competency to solve the problem. But in reality, in most of the organizations, senior leadership team struggles to bring the culture of continuous problem solving inside the organization.

Reason for not able to create the problem-solving culture

Some of the factors or behaviors of senior leadership team do not allow the people to get into structured problem-solving mindset.

1.    Not realizing the problem or trend 
2.    No structured, authentic data 
3.    Culture of jumping to quick solutions, once problem is identified
4.    Busy in firefighting and “somehow” resolving issues
5.    Hesitate to conclude the solutions approach or options
6.    No facilitation on arriving solutions approach
7.    No risk taking or rewarding risk takers

Solutions approach to create problem-solving mindset and culture inside the organization 

Obviously, the people have to be given education exposure to different problem-solving methodologies, tools, and techniques. Assuming that education or awareness part is taken care, the senior leadership team has more responsibility to create a conducive environment or demonstrate consistent behavior towards solving problems. The following solutions approaches are recommended

1. Building an environment to collect authentic, consistent data from source
2. Encouraging discussion based on facts rather than opinions.
3. Creating a routine forum or reviews to discuss the problems and solutions approach
4. Encouraging open debate and idea generation by keeping ego aside
5. Allowing others to talk and listen more for insights
6. Encouraging people to take risk and experiment with solutions approach
7. Differentiating and recognizing problem solvers 

In today’s competitive environment, one of the differentiators and competitive edge for the organization is to create more problem solvers and to create a culture of problem-solving mindset across levels and functions!