Busting the Three Biggest Misconceptions in Problem Solving Thinking

Breaking through the three major misconceptions in problem-solving thinking is especially important because for us humans, the first step in any active behavioral change requires a change in cognition.

Cognition is the knowledge and understanding of things that we have developed from childhood to adulthood, and much of it is biased. Wrong cognition can't lead us to the right path, and it will waste a lot of our time and energy. Therefore, in all the courses outside the circle, our first subsection, is to break the misconceptions. We hope to help you adjust the bias in the original cognition, so as to avoid stepping on the pit.

I helped you summarize the three most common types of misconceptions people have when facing problems. I have also prepared three corresponding scenarios for you, so let's take a look at the following three scenarios to see if there is any shadow of what you used to do.

Your work is done well, and your performance has been up to par. At the end of the year, the company again announced the list of employees promoted this year, you found that there is still no himself. At this time, you are very angry, think the boss really biased; on the other hand, very aggrieved, feel that their own strength are not seen by the boss.

As a result, after the continuous week, you think of going to work every day is very repulsive, and communication with the boss is always with a complaining mood. You realize that you don't know what the problem is or how to solve it.

I don't know if you've noticed that on a daily basis, almost all problems carry emotions. And very often, we are also easily controlled by emotions, and can not calm down to analyze the problem.

For example, before, I give a lot of people to do career development counseling, the other party's first words are often: "I am very confused ......" Or "I'm in pain ........ Then I need to keep asking questions, and eventually the conversation can start to move from the emotions to the "thing" that really needs to be addressed.

Why is it so easy to get caught up in negative emotions when faced with a problem?

Human beings themselves are very afraid of change, the emergence of problems, breaking the balance of our lives, so that we have to face change: at the same time, also affected by traditional education, we are afraid of becoming a teacher in the eyes of their parents, "the problem of the youth".

In fact, there is never a problem that is absolutely good or absolutely bad.

The emergence of any problem will have a negative impact, but at the same time, it also brings us the opportunity to think and adjust. People who think that "problems are a bad thing" can easily fall into a fixed mindset, which is terrible in the long run. In such a fixed mindset, people will reject the emergence of the problem, either choose not to face the problem, or choose to shirk the problem, these are not conducive to the ultimate solution of the problem.

When we change our perception from "a problem is a bad thing" to "a problem is a threat but also an opportunity", we move from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. We then shift from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset, and a growth mindset can turn every problem solving into an opportunity for you to grow.

It's as if in the case just described, if you were facing the problem of not getting promoted with a growth mindset, you might be thinking about saying:

While you're thinking about these problems, you'll realize that the problem is already being dismantled more and more the smaller you are.

In fact, I believe that you will also be faced with problems that keep coming up, and you can take this opportunity to practice just that, to use a growth mindset to look at the problems as they come up, and to respond positively to them.

Okay, let's look at the second scenario.

You have just been responsible for doing the company's recent large-scale online promotional activities, the boss told you to let you do a review of the activities, summarize the experience of the activities, and see how to do better next time. For review and analysis of what, love to learn you have been very good, so soon began to pull data from all dimensions of a very detailed analysis, and summarized the activity did not meet the expectations of the reasons.

You are full of confidence to a perfect review report to the boss, the boss looked at your report, shook his head and said: "your review all only we did not do well enough, this is the first time our team to do this kind of large-scale promotion, in the absence of experience and resources, has done very well, you think there is really no redeeming features? Moreover, your review summarizes the reasons, why there is no corresponding action plan for the next time?" You later realize that the boss is going to take the review report to the big boss and wants to use the event as a proof of the department's innovation. Therefore, the boss needs you to write some of the highlights of this activity, what you have achieved and how specifically you can do better next time.

In your career, has something similar happened?

At work, the last thing we want to encounter is a situation where the work that has been done is rejected wholesale by the boss and needs to be punched back and redone. This is mainly because we did not clarify the problem before we started to solve the problem, the problem has not been clarified, the action will not have direction.

Similarly, you will have the opportunity to ask questions to the big teachers of the live broadcast, and to the assistant teachers of the Q&A. In the past, we will also find that, before learning and training outside the circle, many students start out with questions that are vague. Essentially, this is a sign of not clarifying their questions. We have found that along with the content learning, people will also consciously clarify their questions before asking them, and the overall quality of the interactions has increased dramatically.

In the next section, you'll learn more about the first step in the five-step problem solving process: clarifying the question, and we hope that throughout the learning process, you'll be able to use clarification to ask more insightful questions about each of your questions.

We've talked about the first two misconceptions, which are: we tend to think that having a problem is a bad thing; we get a task and start doing it without thinking about it; and let's look at the last one.

Recently, the company released a new product, the boss asked you to research the user satisfaction situation, to see where there is a need to improve. You think this is a very simple question, you have done satisfaction questionnaires before to run activities, so you modified that questionnaire, and then distributed it in various user groups. After collecting the questionnaires back, you find that the users have a very high opinion of this new product, with almost no negative comments. So you happily report to your boss and say, "User satisfaction with our new product is now as high as 90%, and I think our new product will be a big seller. "After hearing this, the boss asks you to describe to him how you got this data, and you explain the whole process. The boss said: "According to your questionnaire distribution, those who use the product is not satisfied with the user, will come to fill out this questionnaire?"

In fact, this is the norm for many of us in our day-to-day work: solving problems based on personal experience and feelings, and a lack of logical reasoning.

This is a very common logical fallacy, called "survivor bias".

During World War II, commanders found that the bullet holes in the wings of airplanes flying back from the war were always particularly large, and the bullet holes in the cabin were not many, so they decided to reinforce the wings of the airplanes.

Think about this for a moment, is this logic correct? The decision seemed logical, but it actually went against the goal, so it was opposed by the researchers at the time.

The researchers suggested that the fact that the planes that made it back had a lot of bullet holes in their wings proved that for this group of planes, having their wings shot didn't matter, and they could still fly normally. The planes that didn't make it back were probably hit by bullets not in the wings but in the nacelles, so they crashed and didn't make it back.

Later, in order to verify the researchers' hypothesis, they first chose to reinforce the cabin, and as a result, the rate of airplane crashes dropped significantly.

So, people call this "not counting if the subject is dead" survivor bias.

So you see, there are logical fallacies in much of people's experience and common sense. Because there are so many logical fallacies in our daily thinking, we can't take things for granted when we analyze problems, but we need to analyze the facts and refer to the data rationally.

You may have many moments where you deal with a problem based on your personal experience and feelings, so I hope you can remain reflective and aware of your own thinking, and ask yourself when you encounter a problem: Is my solution based on facts or on personal guesses? This can help you avoid falling into logical fallacies to a great extent.

Well, having said that, I'd like to summarize: in the process of problem solving, we often fall into the misunderstanding, which leads us to fail to solve the problem, and there are three major misunderstandings:

For the three misunderstandings, the way to break them corresponds to the first four of the five steps of problem solving.

Through this subsection, we have taken the first step together, and I believe that after studying this subsection, you have been more positive, clear, and calm in the face of problems than before. Starting with the next subsection, we will learn together the first step of the five-step approach to questions: the question of clarification.

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