Every organisation is a collection of unsolved problems. The people who solve them best are not the smartest — they are the most structured.

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About this course

Problem-solving sounds like something everyone already knows how to do. Most people approach problems the same way — they identify a symptom, jump to the most obvious solution and implement it before the real cause is understood. This course teaches you a different way.

You will work through a structured four-step problem-solving process, six analytical tools that help you diagnose problems at their root rather than their surface, and four decision-making frameworks that remove subjectivity from complex choices. You will also learn to recognise the five cognitive barriers — confirmation bias, mental set, functional fixedness and others — that cause smart people to arrive at wrong conclusions despite good intentions.

Every tool in this course is immediately applicable. Whether you are dealing with an operational failure, a strategic challenge or a people issue — the framework changes how you approach it.

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Skills you will learn

• Define problems correctly before attempting to solve them — the step that separates structured problem-solvers from everyone else, and the one most frequently skipped

• Apply six analytical tools to diagnose root causes — using Drill Down, 5 Whys, CATWOE, Fishbone Diagrams and Flow Charts to find where problems actually originate

• Recognise and overcome five cognitive barriers — identifying when confirmation bias, mental set or functional fixedness is distorting your analysis before it leads you to the wrong conclusion

• Generate a genuine solution space — creating enough alternatives that the best answer is actually among them, not just the first one that came to mind

• Make better decisions under uncertainty using four structured tools — Decision Matrix, Pareto Analysis, Futures Wheel and Force Field Analysis

• Think beyond the immediate outcome — mapping second and third-order consequences so that solving one problem does not silently create three others