strategic marketing solution

Generally, managers are hired for their strategic abilities to plan and problem-solve to achieve business goals. And that's what you spend your time doing, isn't it?

If you answered, "Right. Who are you kidding?" you probably belong to the vast majority of managers with the ability and expertise to bring tremendous value to their organizations. In reality, you just don't have time to make that strategic contribution to efficiency and productivity - you're too busy putting out fires.

Most managers can relate to this phenomenon. The number of problems in any business exceeds the number of people or the amount of time available to solve them. So people learn to juggle problems, patching here, patching there, all in a race to get that last patch on before the first one falls off again. And it invariably does, strategic marketing solution article.

When you look at it that way, it seems rather futile, doesn't it? Yet managers do it every day, week and month of the year, knowing full well it's a never-ending cycle. Why? Because they don't see any practical alternative. Doing anything else would take more time - and they don't have any of that to spare, strategic marketing solution article.

If this sounds uncomfortably familiar, it's time to rethink things. As leaders, we show our employees how we expect them to approach their work - and their problems. And if we already know what we're doing is ineffective, do we really want the next group of up-and-comers doing the same thing?

So how can we break the cycle? By taking a more effective approach to problem solving. After all, if that first patch had been a long-term solution, you wouldn't be rushing to get back to it now, would you?

The answer is to develop a problem-solving culture, and that means taking a different approach to problems as they occur. Start by reviewing each problem and assigning priorities based on business impact. Then establish strategic problem-solving teams that consist of various levels of employees and management. Their mandate? To determine the root causes of problems and solve them - permanently, strategic marketing solution article.

Training problem-solvers using a systematic approach is the best way to build the problem-solving skills required and ensure consistency of approach. This also allows standard measurement criteria to be established for the purpose of employee reward systems that reinforce the problem-solving culture, strategic marketing solution article.