Everyone knows that a \u201csecret ingredient\u201d can turn an otherwise \u201cho-hum\u201d recipe into a crowd favorite. Companies continue to invest significant resources in IT year after year because they acknowledge the potential to improve employee productivity and make business processes more efficient.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the returns they often experience on these investments often fail to meet expectations.\u00a0 This is partly because technology isn\u2019t fail-proof and doesn\u2019t last forever \u2013 it breaks, requires care and feeding, and must continuously evolve to meet the changing needs of the organization.\u00a0 What if there was a \u201csecret ingredient\u201d that could help companies increase the value from their IT investments?\u00a0 There is \u2013 Problem Solving skills!<\/p>\n
As the role of technology within companies expands from an employee enabler to an embedded part of core business processes, the impact of technology failures can be catastrophic.\u00a0 Diagnosing issues when they occur quickly, restoring service, identifying underlying cause(s) and implementing preventative solutions to avoid recurrence is critical to ensure both the preservation of value from IT investments and the continuity of business operations.<\/p>\n
Companies also need to understand that they don\u2019t receive value when IT systems are implemented \u2013 they receive value through the operation and use of IT systems to support business activities.\u00a0\u00a0 Ironically, most IT organizations focus staff training and process improvement efforts on the creation and changing of systems, not on the activities that take place when systems are operated.\u00a0 Most IT organizations are staffed with skilled professionals, rich in technical expertise but lacking the Problem Solving skills needed to operate and support critical IT investments at the level that modern companies demand.<\/p>\n
Without solid Problem Solving skills in the organization, each system failure is treated as something new with staff figuring out \u201chow to ride a bike\u201d while they are in a hurry to get somewhere.\u00a0 The result is a high stress \/ chaotic environment often involving a lot of head-scratching and guessing and after frustration begins to build, some sort of \u201creboot\u201d is undertaken to try and restore service to users.\u00a0 Amid the chaos, it is not uncommon for critical data to be lost or destroyed that is needed later for analyzing the root cause of why the failure occurred and identify actions that can be taken to prevent a similar failure from happening again.<\/p>\n
The same Problem Solving skills used to respond to failures can be applied to usability issues as well.\u00a0 As organizations evolve, the behaviors of users and the automation needs of business processes change.\u00a0 These changes in the business often result in diminishing value of the IT systems used to support the operations.\u00a0 By applying Problem Solving skills to identify, diagnose, mitigate impact, and apply corrective changes quickly, IT systems can be more adaptive to business change \u2013 resulting in an extension of the expected useful life of the organization\u2019s technology assets and IT investments.<\/p>\n
A robust and consistently applied Problem Solving methodology just may be the \u201csecret ingredient\u201d to help organizations maximize the value of their IT investments by breaking the cycle of \u201efire-fighting\u201c behavior and replacing it with a culture of \u201econtinuous improvement\u201c.\u00a0 By utilizing a structured approach to Problem Solving, the time to resolve failures and address changing business needs can be significantly reduced (because staff know their role and are prepared to respond) and the recurrence of issues can be avoided through a focus on information gathering and prevention.<\/p>\n
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Kepner-Tregoe (KT) provides a suite of tools that give IT professionals the ability to solve the most pressing issues with speed, clarity and confidence. Founded in 1958 and based on ground-breaking research on how people think, solve problems and make decisions KT offers a suite of tools that help individuals and organization reach and often exceed their goals.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Everyone knows that a \u201csecret ingredient\u201d can turn an otherwise \u201cho-hum\u201d recipe into a crowd favorite. Companies continue to invest significant resources in IT year after year because they acknowledge the potential to improve employee productivity and make business processes more efficient.\u00a0 Unfortunately, the returns they often experience on these investments often fail to meet […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"ppma_author":[98],"class_list":["post-25026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n