Problems are bound to come up, If it is not today or tomorrow, you can pretty much guarantee that the day after you will be faced with some sort of problem either at home or work. My good friend, Rem Jackson the CEO of
Top Practices says that you can expect 2-3 big stink bombs a year. I have found this to be very true in my business and personal life.Since we all know that there is no getting away from problems and difficult situations we then need to put on our “creative thinking helmet” and get to work on solving problems and not dwelling on them. Creative thinking is the ability to imagine or invent something new or coming up with new ideas by changing existing ones or merging a few ideas together.When you do this with others in your family or co-workers you are expanding the limits of what possibilities there are to solve the issue. Not only is this great but it can be exhilarating when you see what you have come up with. Here are the four basic steps to creative problem solving;1. The first is being able to define what the problem is so that everyone understands it or if it is just you, that you really know what the problem is.2. The next step is to come up with as many solutions as you (and others) can think of. Write them down and don’t try to analyze them yet, just get the ideas out and down on paper.3. Once this is done then you can go through them keeping the ones that may be possibilities or possibly even a combination of a couple of them.4. Lastly you need to make a choice of what solution makes the best sense to resolving the problem and take action on it.Creative thinking does take practice, but the more you do it the better you will get and easier it will be. The sky is the limit to what you can come up with to help you make decisions about those “great opportunities brilliantly disguised as impossible situations” or “stink bombs.”The sooner you jump into the creative thinking mode when a problem arises the sooner it can be solved. One thing is for sure when you practice this and that is you will spend more time being productive than wallowing in your problems.
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