Abstract
Non-routine business problems, such as a sudden drop in performance a few months after a change of CEO, are hard to frame and involve a fuzzy combination of factors. Nevertheless, the human brain works in such a way that “obvious” conclusions immediately come to mind: putting the blame on the new CEO and firing him! Therein lies the core challenge of problem solving—the tendency to jump to conclusions, instead of investigating various facets of the problem, searching for missing information, and developing creative insights. While expertise, intelligence, and technology can help, they are not enough for solving non-routine, complex business problems. What one really needs is a disciplined and generalizable problem-solving process and a set of tools for each stage of the process.
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Garrette, B., Phelps, C., Sibony, O. (2018). The Most Important Skill You Never Learned. In: Cracked it!. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89375-4_1
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