The creative approach to problem solving, in and out of the company.
A problem is a situation that a person considers bad or in the best of cases, that requires a rectification, it is considered an insufficiency, deficit, a lack of harmony, a puzzle, an inconvenience.
A solution to the problem involves 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 quickest lies in “starting from the end”. Which is the end? The specific measurable result you intend to achieve.
When a person observes a deficit in some situation, they have an intuitive picture of the future situation in which the deficit has been eliminated and harmony or goal has been achieved.
Possess a reasonably clear mental picture of what a solution will look like, if found. 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 we (we) can make that happen?" This is the desired end result.
What ideally sets a college / university apart is that it employs scholars whose task it is to find new solutions to problems.
But in many colleges and schools, teachers are excited about the solutions they have learned and mastered and do not want to consider new ways of doing things.
When people fall in love with their solutions and impose them on others, obedience becomes a desirable virtue. A problem is taught and a similar problem is tested.
The difficulty is that the solutions of one person, group or society often become problems of other people, of another group or society. Also is the solution found, the optimal ?.
Thus we are faced with the terrible natural phenomenon that solutions cause problems and sometimes they are not the best. Whatever solutions we come up with, they represent experimental responses. We have to understand and accept that there is no stable situation.
Like death and taxes, the problems will always be with us and normally as viruses reproduce by mutating to reappear. Thus our method of solving problems makes water.
We need problems to motivate ourselves, to accept the challenge of solving them as a positive way of life and the source from which enjoyment can flow. Sometimes we experience problems and yet we delay their resolution or simply ignore them. We discovered that they generally do not disappear and in many cases they worsen.
First of all, it is important to understand that there are two things that motivate a person to do something: the reward or the pain. Individuals will act to get a reward for action or to avoid the pain they will experience if they don't act. Oddly enough, human beings will do more to avoid pain than to obtain the positive reward derived from a certain action.
We have verified that the main problem of the participants is that they do not know how to pose problems, that they want to focus on solving something that not even they can expose themselves. They attach great importance to trying to resolve a “threatening” situation, without delimiting what it is they really want to solve and to what extent they want to do it. No less think about exploring various alternatives.
People recognize that they have a problem, because they experience the consequences of a situation that they perceive as “uncomfortable”, but that desire to solve it in an impulsive way sometimes causes them to be unable to define it exactly or to define it in the wrong way.
Whatever the way in which a problem is posed, this will define our course of action, and if we do not pause a bit to reflect on this important aspect (its definition), we will run the risk of solving problems that we do not really have..
Let us reflect on the content of these phrases:
"It is not about looking for new solutions, but asking new questions"
Einstein.
"The true creator is a problem maker."
Machado.
Do you consider that the problem statement is less, the same or more important than its solution?
Justify your answer
As we mentioned previously the absence of work at the starting point of a problem, places people at a disadvantage with respect to finding the solution to it. The problem statement is analogically the compass that will somehow lead us to search for the solution.
The problem is essentially relative and various subjective aspects intervene in its approach: tolerance of ambiguity, its scale of values, among others. Likewise, it is very common that aspects such as magnitude (and problems in a very general or very particular way) and the feasibility of the problem are not specified.
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 actually happens, is "the distance between being and what should be".
This way of approaching problems 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 a solution.
To solve a problem, an adequate representation of it is necessary, either internally or externally. Such representation will allow the person to interpret and understand this problem in a better way. In addition there is the motivation and her experience on the subject.
The three factors work together, their creative ability (which can be improved through appropriate techniques), their motivation and experience in the chosen topic.
