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A Problem Well-Stated Is Half-Solved

March 17, 2015, 9:01 pm
Posted by Lacy in Productivity
A Problem Well-Stated Is Half-Solved By Scott Hayes, President and Founder, DBI Software

Doctors deal with problems - sometimes life threatening ones, and sometimes in emergency situations. When your database is sick and needs intensive care, knowing the root cause is only half the solution.


Doctors are always talking about eating right, getting lots of exercise, drinking plenty of fluids, and getting the right amount of rest - but most of their time is spent working with people who have ignored most or all of that advice. That is to say, they deal with problems - sometimes life threatening ones, and sometimes in emergency situations.

I’m in the database business, and when a business’s database is sick, the organization is unhealthy, its customers are unhappy, and its reputation suffers. We have patented, award-winning technology that keeps databases healthy - but most of the calls I get are from people whose databases are sick - and sick databases are always an emergency.
Don’t get me wrong - I’m glad they call us, and we’re eager to help. But because we’ve been called into so many emergency situations, I’ve learned something important about leading in an emergency that will help you lead in an emergency, and lead your team out of an emergency. Here it is: a problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.

You can’t solve a problem you don’t understand - unless you do it accidently, and it’s much more likely that flailing around will make the situation worse instead of better. Furthermore, in the general fog of an emergency, the first information you receive is almost always wrong - so if you work off of this information, you’ll be wasting your time.

That’s why you must insist on getting to the facts, cutting through the fog, and establishing with great precision both what is going wrong and how you know that to be true. I’ve built my company into one of the Top 100 Companies that Matter Most in Data by creating tools that precisely frame problems - and rapidly solve them. So trust me, a problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.

What You Need to Know
In the general fog of an emergency, the first information you receive is almost always wrong - so if you work off of this information, you’ll be wasting your time - and possibly making a bad situation worse.

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