Why we all need to develop complex problem-solving skills
In this next selection of Melius insight posts, our team explores how to develop the essential skills required by organisations and professional over the coming decade.
These are those human skills that are most difficult to automate, digitise or offshore and most required by organisations utilising technology to drive or disrupt their marketplace.
This weeks insight explores the need to develop complex problem solving skills by learning to harness a combination of analytical and creativity skills.
Melius helps our clients develop their problem-solving skills by raising awareness of the set of mental processes that help us work through complexity. These include:
• How to understand concepts
• How to generate original ideas
• How to use logic to rationalise information
• How to see connections between incomplete data and trends
• How to construct and defend arguments based on available facts and evidence
• How to draw inferences and make decisions based on limited information
The tactical dimension to these thought processes is supported by developing each persons ability to talk through complex scenarios with colleagues, develop effective questioning skills and think on their feet.
Participants learn how to consider context and uncertainty in all situations, and to develop their reflexive thinking skills to improve speed and accuracy of decision making.
If you’re reading this thinking you’d like to find out how your rate. Spare a few minutes to explore this problem, reportedly designed by Albert Einstein and solvable only by 2% of population. See if you can figure it out:
There are five houses in five different colours in a row.
In each house lives a person with a different nationality.
The five owners drink a certain type of beverage, smoke a certain brand of cigar and keep a certain pet.
No owners have the same pet, smoke the same brand of cigar, or drink the same beverage.
Other facts:
1. The Brit lives in the red house.
2. The Swede keeps dogs as pets.
3. The Dane drinks tea.
4. The green house is on the immediate left of the white house.
5. The green house's owner drinks coffee.
6. The owner who smokes Pall Mall rears birds.
7. The owner of the yellow house smokes Dunhill.
8. The owner living in the centre house drinks milk.
9. The Norwegian lives in the first house.
10. The owner who smokes Blends lives next to the one who keeps cats.
11. The owner who keeps the horse lives next to the one who smokes Dunhill.
12. The owner who smokes Bluemasters drinks beer.
13. The German smokes Prince.
14. The Norwegian lives next to the blue house.
15. The owner who smokes Blends lives next to the one who drinks water.