Book Description
Become the greatest problem solver you can be!Bad problem solving costs individuals and society incalculable amounts of time, money, and sanity. In this book Nat Greene—who's been solving hard problems professionally for over twenty years—shares nine behaviors anyone can adopt to find solutions to even the most seemingly intractable problems.
The problem with most problem solving, Greene says, is that it's not problem solving at all: it's guessing. We have an idea of what might work and we try it out. If that doesn't work, we try something else. And so on. It's inefficient at best, and with really hard problems there are simply too many variables for guessing to work. Greene shows you how to adopt the behaviors great problem solvers use to arrive at solutions efficiently—without guessing. He illustrates them with examples ranging from everyday issues like fixing a malfunctioning garage door to stopping frequent breakdowns at a chemical plant (saving millions of dollars) to addressing the scourge of poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. So stop guessing and start solving today!
Table of Contents
- Cover
- Title Page
- Copyright Page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Preface
- Introduction: How to Be a Great Problem-Solver
- Chapter 1: Stop Guessing
- Chapter 2: Smell the Problem
- Chapter 3: Embrace Your Ignorance
- Chapter 4: Know What Problem You’re Solving
- Chapter 5: Dig Into the Fundamentals
- Chapter 6: Don’t Rely on Experts
- Chapter 7: Believe in a Simple Solution
- Chapter 8: Make Fact-Based Decisions
- Chapter 9: Stay on Target
- Chapter 10: How to Choose Your Method
- Chapter 11: Go Solve Some Problems
- Notes
- Acknowledgments
- Index
- About The Author