How to Solve Difficult Problems

A shadow on your door; a buzzing in your bag; a popup on your screen — a problem arrives for you to solve. Maybe you understand the problem already, maybe you don’t. To find out, you talk to the person who brought it, and that’s when the real problems start…

We each have a unique set of skills and experiences that inform how we receive a new challenge, how we feel about it, how we turn it over and inspect it. We know (or we think we know) the people who come to us with requests or demands, and the people we go to for help ourselves.

But they don’t understand! Our expertise is undervalued, our advice dismissed. They go over us and around us and sometimes right through us to have things their way, even at the expense of their own goals.

It can be better. We can approach problems more wisely, solve them more frequently and more successfully, and feel better along the way. In this presentation I will share ideas and techniques that you can use every day in your work, and maybe even make yourself — and your customers — happier.

Slides