The Front Line Guide to Thinking Clearly

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Chapter 6

Identifying and Solving Problems

ost managers spend far too much time fighting fires,

rather than doing new and useful work. Worse, most

of the fires they’re busy fighting are of their own making:

They jump into action to try to solve ill-defined problems that

then refuse to stay solved, wasting the company’s time and

other resources. This does not reflect clear thinking, and it is

unlikely to result in effective action.

A Lesson from Two Educators

Robert F. Mager and Peter Pipe, two great educators of the

generation past, understood how to write small books that tell

big stories. In the preface to their classic Analyzing Perform- ...