As Daniel Kahneman suggests in his book Thinking Fast and Slow, the human mind tends to take the easiest path when trying to resolve issues and make a decision. This never more true when we are trying to solve process problems.

When your organization is faced with these problems the tendency is to either claim that there is no problem or decide that this problem is similar to a previous problem and so you select the same resolution even if it is not a good match.

Francesca Gino in the Harvard Business Review suggests that we need to begin thinking out of the box and consider what you could do to resolve the problem at hand. Consider the first two question from the Design Thinking Model and ask yourself what is and then what if? Not every problem s going to e the same. Each process improvement effort must be worked through from the beginning. Do the Gemba walk and take the process journey from beginning to end keeping your mind open to potential new opportunities for meeting the needs of the customer.

We understand the tendency to take the easy way out when presented with conflict but the VUCA age that we are all faced with requires us to be willing to get out of our comfort zones and look at the full spectrum of potential solutions to resolve the process obstacles.

Contact us at dan@dbaiconsulting.com if we can assist you in obtaining tools to think out of the box.