3 Approaches to Problem Solving (and why there’s a big difference between #1 and #2)

There are 3 main approaches to solving a problem:

• Intuitive
• Analytical
• Experimental

For gut feel, there’s really no clear, easily communicated reasoning behind the decision. A fire chief might get to a burning building and know exactly what needs to happen. He might have a hard time explaining why something needs to be done, but he’s seen thousands of fires and he just knows what will work and what won’t. Gut feel is great when you need to be reactive.

Analytical reasoning may involve

• methodically weighing several strategic options
• understanding the pros and cons
• gathering supporting (but inconclusive) data
• evaluating strengths and weakness of yourself and/or your competition
• modeling

It’s easily communicated to others and it’s much easier to learn from your mistakes than by going by gut feel. This is the camp you want to be for innovation. It’s biggest downside is it doesn’t touch reality and can easily be derailed if you miss 1 key variable.

Experimental involves running tests and getting statistically significant results. It’s costly, slow, and expensive but it has the most predictive power. It’s ideal for optimizing.