Problem Solving: Reflection Versus Action-part 1

By: Sergey Mamaev

Everybody has problems sometimes. Every day everyone works out a lot of different simple and complicated problems. How do you solve your difficulties? Do you muse on approaches, methods, techniques of problem solving? I will cover two opposite ways and means of problem-solving: reflection and action-based.

Thus is we have a problem, how will we tackle it? In the beginning we should define the problem. Some kinds of problems are resolved by very particular approaches. Sometimes we should not use the same effective means to solve diverse problems. Problem-solving is very general, but methods are very particular.

I do not have in view insoluble problems. Also it is not a worldly situation which has a lot of implicit solutions. There are not political, ethical or social problems that sound decisions could not be examined immediately. I am not thinking about a scientific problem which can alight on scientists. I will discuss a specific technical problem which always has a solution and we can therefore have a certainty of a correct problem-solution.

The weighty matter is who we are? Who will resolve a problem? It is very important to define the personality and background of people which we are talking about. People define themselves by the choices they make and vice versa. Humane acts and behavior describe and characterize people. So two different people probably will use different problem-solving methods. I would have in view a group of people, who have approximately the same skills, mastery, education, and background.

Well, twenty years ago I used to have one permanent problem at my work, and solving this problem every day my job. Also there was a job for fifteen engineers, a maintenance crew for a big computer named mainframe. Now everyone knows the PC, or personal computer. They are not corrupted often, maybe almost never. But the first computers were huge complicated sets of separated devices and contained millions of parts, so the their reliability was low. The first mainframes broke down almost every week, sometimes every day.

During seven years I used to see how different people solve similar problems. I split our maintenance command into two groups. There was a reflection group and an action group. My classification rested on approaches that were used for the problem-solving by our engineers. They were approximately equal, identical groups.

The first one is the action group. People of this group practiced the action ways and means for their work, for problem-solving. In the beginning they did a short one-two-three minutes though and then a powerful action. They were based on the skills and on the rough notion of a cause-and-effect relation. Sometimes they worked intuitively. They achieved a lot of success very fast.

to be continued...

About the Author: Sergey Mamaev is a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Expert, Internet Programmer and Webmaster/Designer; AzNet LLC Founder and CEO.