Problem Solving: Effective Needs Assessment

Problem solving is an art as well as a science. Directing your attention to a good resource "Thinkertoys" a book which helps engage your creative and mind attention to attract good solutions to everyday and complex problems.

The book is also a tool which helps you creatively attract good ideas along the way. Along with effective problem solving, it can be as easy as asking probing questions to get to the appropriate answers. It can be as complex as an organizational development performance gap, which will need a thoughtful and probing needs assessment to get to the root issue.

A good resource to help effectively map a good needs assessment is "A practical guide to needs assessment" by Kavita Gupta.

A good needs assessment requires the practitioner to ask questions to close the gap to arrive at a solution. A 10 or 12 question survey would be sufficient as well as thoughtful interviews with 4-6 people. The interview questions would be different from the needs assessment survey. Together, combined with these thoughtful questions would allow the practitioner to collect "data" to analyze the problem and solve and close the gap. Therefore: problem solving is based around asking the right questions and a needs assessment analysis can help you get you from point A to point C and find out what is going on by finding out point B.

All rights reserved (2010) and my not be duplicated or refernced without written permission of author: John Errigo, M.S., by corporate authorization, HODT, Inc. (synergy@hodtinc.com)