The creative approach to problem-solving, in the company and outside of it.
A problem is a situation that a person deems bad or, in the best of cases, that requires rectification, it is considered an insufficiency, a deficit, a lack of harmony, an enigma, an inconvenience.
A solution to the problem implies what is desirable to achieve harmony, is to select the best alternative among several, it means comfort, knowledge, certainty, or the objective or intended or ideal result.
How do you define a problem?
There are many ways to define a problem. The path to creative reflection that seems fastest is to “start from the end”. Which is the end? The specific measurable result you intend to achieve.
When a person sees a deficit in some situation, he has an intuitive picture of the future situation in which the deficit has been eliminated and harmony or goal achieved.
Possess a reasonably clear mental picture of what a solution will look like if you find one. Once the end is clear, then the creative challenge is to discover ways to achieve it.
What are the solutions?
Solutions are possibilities. Solutions are ideas. Solutions to a problem answer the question: “How is it possible that I (we) make (we) make that happen?” This is the desired result.
What, ideally, distinguishes a college/university is that it employs scholars whose job it is to find new solutions to problems.
But in many colleges and schools, teachers get excited about the solutions they’ve learned and mastered and don’t want to consider new ways of doing things.
When people fall for their solutions and force them on others, obedience becomes a desirable virtue. A problem is taught and a test is taken on a similar problem.
The difficulty is that the solutions of one person, group, or society often become problems of another person, group, or society. Furthermore, is the solution found the optimal one?
Thus we are faced with the terrible natural phenomenon that solutions cause problems and sometimes they are not the best. Whatever solutions we arrive at, they represent experimental responses. We have to understand and accept that there is no stable situation.
Like death and taxes, problems will always be with us and normally, like viruses, they reproduce by mutating to reappear. Thus our method of solving problems leaks.
We need problems to motivate us, to accept the challenge of solving them as a positive way of life and the source from which joy can flow. Sometimes we experience problems and yet we delay in resolving them or simply ignore them. We discovered that they usually do not go away and in many cases, they get worse.
First of all, it is important to understand that two things motivate a person to do something: the prize or the pain. Individuals will act to get a reward for the action or to avoid the pain they will experience if they do not act. Strange as it may seem, human beings will do more to avoid pain than to obtain the positive reward derived from a given action.
We have verified that the main problem of the participants is that they do not know how to pose problems and that they want to focus on solving something that they do not know how to present. They attach great importance to trying to resolve a “threatening” situation, without defining what they want to resolve and to what extent they want to do it. No less do they think of exploring various alternatives.
People recognize that they have a problem because they experience the consequences of a situation that they perceive as “uncomfortable”, but this desire to solve it impulsively sometimes causes them to not be able to define it exactly or to define it in the wrong way.
Whatever how a problem is posed, it will define our course of action, and if we do not stop to reflect a little on this important aspect (its definition), we will run the risk of solving problems that we do not have.
Let’s reflect on the content of these sentences:
“It is not about looking for new solutions, but about asking new questions”
Einstein.
“The true creator is a trouble maker.”
Machado.
Do you consider that the statement of the problem is less, equal, or more important than its solution?
Justify your answer
Problem Statement
As we mentioned before, the absence of work on the starting point of a problem puts people at a disadvantage concerning finding the solution to the problem. The approach to the problem is analogically the compass that will somehow lead us to the search for the solution.
The problem is essentially relative and various aspects of a subjective nature intervene in its approach: tolerance to ambiguity, and its scale of values, among others. Likewise, it is very common that aspects such as magnitude are not specified (and problems are posed in a very general or very particular way), and the feasibility of the problem.
Problems arise as a consequence of needs and these, in turn, are the result of a discrepancy between what one would like to achieve and what happens in reality, it is “the distance between what is and what should be”.
This way of approaching the problem allows us to identify the present aspects of a situation that we can call “real” and clarify expectations or identify what could be called an “ideal situation”.
The first manifestation of a problem is not necessarily the most suitable for finding its solution.
To solve a problem, an adequate representation of it is necessary, either internally or externally. Said representation will allow the person to interpret and understand said problem in a better way. In addition, there is the motivation and his experience in the subject.
The three factors work together, your creative capacity (which can be improved through appropriate techniques), your motivation, and your experience in the chosen topic.
problems, solve problems creatively, creativity and innovation, troubleshoot,
