The Right Way to Solve Complex Business Problems

HBR IdeaCast

Harvard Business Review

Leadership, Entrepreneurship, Communication, Marketing, Business, Business/management, Management, Business/marketing, Business/entrepreneurship, Innovation, Hbr, Strategy, Economics, Finance, Teams, Harvard

4.4 • 1.9K Ratings

🗓️ 4 December 2018

⏱️ 21 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Corey Phelps, a strategy professor at McGill University, says great problem solvers are hard to find. Even seasoned professionals at the highest levels of organizations regularly fail to identify the real problem and instead jump to exploring solutions. Phelps identifies the common traps and outlines a research-proven method to solve problems effectively. He's the coauthor of the book, "Cracked it! How to solve big problems and sell solutions like top strategy consultants."

Transcript

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0:00.0	If you work with early career professionals, my colleagues at
0:03.8	HPR have a great new podcast for you. It's called New Here. Think of it like the
0:08.4	Young Professional's Guide to Building a Meaningful Career on your own terms.
0:11.9	Share New Here with the Young Professionals in your life. a meaningful career on your own terms.
0:12.8	Share new here with the young professionals in your life.
0:15.9	Listen for free wherever you got your podcasts.
0:18.6	Just search new here. Welcome to the HBR Ideacast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Kurt Nickish. Problem solving is in demand. It's considered the top skill for success at management consulting firms, and it's increasingly desired for everyone, not just new
0:56.2	MBAs. A report from the World Economic Forum predicts that more than one-third of all jobs
1:01.8	across all industries will require complex problem solving
1:05.6	as one of their core skills by 2020.
1:09.3	The problem is, we're often really bad at problem solving. Our guest today says even the most educated and
1:15.1	experienced of senior leaders go about it the wrong way.
1:19.6	I think this is one of the misnomers about problem solving. There's this belief that because we do it so frequently
1:26.4	and especially for senior leaders, they have a lot of experience. They solve problems for
1:31.0	living and as such we would expect them to be quite good at it and I think what we find is that they're not
1:37.6	They don't solve problems well because they fall prey to basically the foibles of being a human being they fall prey to basically the foibles of being a human being. They fall prey to the
1:44.8	cognitive biases and the pitfalls of problem solving. That's Corey Phelps. He says
1:50.1	fixing these foibles is possible and almost straightforward you can
1:54.7	improve your problem-solving skills by following a disciplined method.
1:59.2	Corey Phelps is a strategy professor at McGill University. He's also the co-author of the book
2:04.9	Cracked it. How to solve big problems and sell solutions like top strategy consultants.
2:11.1	Corey, thanks for coming on the show.
	...

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