The 9 Key Behaviors of Top Problem Solvers, Expert Tips and Advice

Nat Greene

Nat Greene, the Co-Founder and current CEO of Stroud International & author of his new book: Stop Guessing: The 9 Behaviors of Great Problem-Solvers joins Enterprise Radio.

This episode of Enterprise Radio is working in conjunction with the Author Channel.

Listen to host Eric Dye & guest Nat Greene discuss the following:

  • What prompted you to write this book?
  • You’ve probably heard this question before, but what’s wrong with guessing?
  • Can you explain what it means to smell the problem?
  • Anyone who’s led a team has faced that inevitable brainstorming session that veers far off course. How do you steer everyone back to the central issue?
  • Why are some people convinced that complicated problems require equally complicated solutions?
  • When a team is tackling a problem, it does seem like the most powerful people in the room dominate the process. Any advice on how to make sure everyone gets heard?
  • You talk about the need to find the root cause in order to solve a problem for good. What happens if you can’t, and have to engineer some kind of fix anyway? Is there any way to temporarily but effectively solve a problem?
  • As a global problem solving expert, what’s the hardest problem you’ve ever faced?

Tip: It helps to understand that many people don’t believe they’re guessing, even when they are. This is because people want to believe they’re sophisticated, and they understand at a gut level that guessing is not a sophisticated way of solving problems. People will dress up guessing in fancy language: they might be brainstorming, coming up with ideas, listing possible root causes, hypothesizing, ideating, or the like. All of these are guessing. They may even tell you that they’re using a specific problem solving methodology, but if you look closely enough you’ll see that many of these include guessing. To help people–including yourself–break out of guessing you first need to be honest with yourself and identify that’s what you’re doing. As soon as you’re no longer attached to justifying your old approach to problem solving, you’ll be able to take steps to improve it.

Nat Greene is the co-founder and current CEO of Stroud International, and author of Stop Guessing: The 9 Behaviors of Great Problem-Solvers. Nat earned a Masters of Engineering from Oxford University and studied design, manufacturing and management at Cambridge University, in addition to executive education coursework in Harvard Business School’s Owner/President Management program.

stopguessingbookcover

Websites: www.stroudinternational.com | www.stopguessingbook.com

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