by Tom Cloyd - 10 min. read - (reviewed 2025-02-01:2026 Pacific Time (USA))
When we solve a problem, we usually do it quickly and without much thought. However, when the consequences of a decision are serious, a casual approach risks disaster. The alternative is to go forward more slowly, using methods we can expect to help us get better results - methods validated by the experience of other people faced with critical decisions.
These methods are well known and can be learned fairly easily. The whole process can be worked out with pencil and paper, but often it is convenient to use a computer-managed spreadsheet. Here, we will describe the process in detail, and give examples of how to use it.
PLEASE NOTE: You are reading a draft article. There may be significant changes made to it in the near future, but much of it is close to a final form. This applies to all articles in this problem-solving group. They are being developed as material for an online class.
The class will be interactive and discussion will be a key part of the process. This will likely lead to improvements in how the material is presented. At the same time, you should know that I have used this process with substantial success on multiple occasions in the past - personally and with some of my counseling clients. The procedure described here and on the following website pages is well-designed and works significantly better than the problem-solving methods most people commonly use.
A past-focused approach is looking for problem causes. A future-focused approach is looking for problem solutions.
Consider the following real-world situation:
I have an appointment 6 miles away, in 30 minutes. I have dressed, gathered essential materials, and gone to my car. But turning the ignition key does nothing. The engine does not respond.
There are two questions I can ask at this point, but it is likely that only one immediately matters:
How did this happen?
What can I do to get my car started?
Considering question one matters if I want to prevent another occurrence of this problem. It also might quickly indicate how I can answer question two, which is my immediate concern.
While this appears to be two separate questions - one focused on the cause of the problem and the other on remedies, there is actually only one KIND of question here:
How do I get from my present and undesired situation to a different, desired situation.
Let me clarify this.
“Why won’t my car start?” - If I’m only just curious, I still start with a situation of not-knowing and want to progress to one of knowing.
“How can I get my car running NOW?” - Clearly my initial situation is that of being in one place (here, with a useless car) and wanting soon to be in another (there, on time for my appointment).
I propose that this is the general form of all problems:
I am here, but I want to be there.
Another way of saying this is that I am in one situation and want to be in another.
Note the following:
This is a distance-minimization problem. We seek to reduce the distance between “here” and “there”. When they are the same - meaning that we have arrived at “there”, the problem is solved.
“There” cannot be approached without first being located, which means “described”. This always involves talking about “there” in terms that help us reduce the distance.
a. To get to my appointment on time, I need to know the time I should be there, and the physical location of the site for the meeting, and my various means of getting to that location.
b. To have a successful meeting (that's a different problem), I need to know what our objectives are and how to manage the people in the meeting so we constructively accomplish those objectives.
Notice that in both problems “a” and “b” above, we can readily identify several critical sub-problems, each of which need to be considered.
With a useful description of “there” we can then search for paths to it. Each path is a possible solution. In the beginning we usually do not know how many there are.
Once we have some paths to consider, we need to make a choice. If we have described “there” well enough, the best path - if there is one - can more easily be found. To choose a good solution (yet another problem), we need also to know what resource limitations we have. These typically involve limited time, space, money, staff, and so on. For example, we might want to get to an appointment with a doctor by a certain time, and without paying for a driver to take us.
Describe the problem, in terms of where you are and where you want to end up.
Identify possible solutions (paths to a solution).
Evaluate the solutions, in terms of their costs and probable results.
Choose a solution and implement it.
Evaluate the outcome, and if necessary refine the problem description, locate new solutions, and continue the process in this way, repeatedly, until we are satisfied with the outcome.
A key distinction is between problem solving and deciding on a solution. Deciding on a solution is part of problem solving - specifically steps 3 and 4. However, it is a distinct process in itself.
Because this problem-solving model consider multiple aspects (also called features or attributes) both of the desired goal and of various ways to achieve that goal, the decision-making part of it has been called a “multi-attribute decision-making” model. The acronym (abbreviation) for this is “MAD”.
This MAD model for problem-solving has four core steps,1 plus one more that is often added because in the real world many problems have to be solved by repeated efforts.
The problem-solving process described here is well-known and tested in high-level business, government, and technology worlds. There, urgent problems are frequently encountered and good procedures for solving them are essential. So, we do have excellent procedures, based on years of practical experience, to use for solving our problems.
These procedures are formal, which is to say a) carefully described, b) designed to promote careful thought, and c) more cautious and slow than methods people more often use. The steps are carefully laid out and described, so that skipping anything important is prevented. To make use of process, one must slow down, be patient, and wait for the good results that usually come.
Such formal procedures are used in several notably critical situations. Pause and notice a striking fact: Formal procedures are used in major surgeries in hospitals and in the cockpit of major airliners before takeoff and landing. In both situations, serious mistakes have serious consequences. If such procedures have been found to have benefits in these situations, and your situation is also a critical one, you should do what surgeons and commercial and military pilots do: employ a formal decision-making procedure to minimize risk of failure and increase likelihood of success.
Selective, isolated focus is a critical tactic. The procedure we will be learning and using allows a problem-solver to focus on part of the process and, for a time, ignore the other parts. This limited focus brings one’s full mental powers to each part of the process, in sequence. It is a known limitation of human cognition that what we can pay attention to at any point in time is distinctly limited. Recognizing this, and adapting to this reality, is necessary and wise.
Quality results will come from two factors only: careful use of the process, and involvement of the problem-solver’s own values. The process does not have an inherent bias about what constitutes a good solution, other than this: the best solution is that which reflects the desires and values of the problem solver. At the end of the procedure, the indicated “best” solution to the problem will make sense because of this. In practice, using this problem-solving process both with myself and other people, this has invariably been the outcome.
“One-shot” problem solutions are those we do once. Examples:
With such problems, it is critical that we make the best choice of a solution that we can, given the various resource limitations we must deal with (time, money, etc.)
Repeated problem solutions are those we engage in repeatedly until we are satisfied with the outcome. Examples:
In reality, many problems are one-shots, if we consider rather short periods of time, BUT are iterative if we realize that we actually have more time than that to find a good solution, and thus have the opportunity for “do-overs”.
And, of course, if our initial problem solution works well-enough, we won’t have to choose another one, later. This is an ideal to be desired, and can motivate us to invest in the effort to make our first attempt to solve a problem a well-considered one.
Do this: Consider how important it is that you solve your problem well on your first (or next) attempt. The more important it is, then more of your resources you should invest in finding and implementing a truly good solution.
Extensive study by an economist who eventually was awarded a Nobel Prize for his work determined that people making choices for major purchases typically did NOT make ideal choices. Instead, they made “good enough” choices.
This is an important consideration, because striving for an ideal solutions can often prevent the implementation of ANY solution! In many cases, this is not a wise strategy.
Your problem may be fairly simple. An example might be that you need to buy a car that will be economical to acquire and use. This is a single problem with two aspects: acquisition and maintenance.
Alternatively, your problem may be a situation in which more than one sub-problem can be identified. An example might be that you need to get from where you live to some distant location, and that will require a means of transportation, plus money for the trip, plus a route that is safe and efficient. This is really 3 separate, although related, problems.
If, upon reflection, you see that your problem has distinct and critical sub-problems, then you actually have a sequence of problems to solve, and must approach the matter that way.
Research on people solving real-world problems has revealed a number of mistakes they often make. Among the most critical ones are these:
Failure to adequately describe the problem. Trying to solve the wrong problem not only won’t make things better, it is likely to make things worst. Getting a good problem description is absolutely critical to success in problem-solving.
Failure to search carefully for solution possibilities. We may be over-focused on relieving the anxiety of not having a solution, resulting in a failure to careful search for possible solutions. One cannot find the best solution if it is not included in the initial group of possible solutions!
Failure to thoughtfully evaluate each possible solution relative to each essential aspect of the problem. It is common to decide on a solution well before all solutions have been carefully evaluated, because a usable way to do complex evaluation is not known.
1. We get overwhelmed by information. Problem-solving is complicated. More than anything else, we fail to do as well as we might because management of the information involved exceeds the functional capacity of our mind. The wealth of information involved is almost always greater than we can easily hold at one time in our awareness. The result is that we lose track of information, or just ignore some of it. This does NOT produce a better solution, compared retaining valuable information and making good use of it.
2. We lack knowledge about how to use the information we gather. Even if we can retain all the information we gather, we don’t know how to relate it to our goal in a way we can trust.
The MAD procedure described here is structured to avoid these mistakes, and this is a major reason why it works so well. It is a simplified, easily-understood version of a process that can be quite complex but usually works well when applied in simple form.
Part 1: Describing the problem, and finding possible solutions
8-Step Problem Solving Process | University Human Resources—The University of Iowa. (n.d.). Retrieved June 3, 2024, from https://hr.uiowa.edu/development/organizational-development/process-change/8-step-problem-solving-process
Brill, R. (n.d.). Research Guides: Team Dynamics: Problem-Solving and Decision Making. Retrieved June 3, 2024, from https://guides.himmelfarb.gwu.edu/teamdynamics/problem-solving-and-decision-making
Evidence-Based Problem Solving to Improve Student Outcomes. (2024, April 16). https://www.erblearn.org/blog/evidence-based-problem-solving-improve-student-outcomes/
Framework for Problem-Solving: 5 Best Examples for Product Teams. (2022, September 10). Thoughts about Product Adoption, User Onboarding and Good UX | Userpilot Blog. https://userpilot.com/blog/problem-solving-framework/
What is Problem Solving? Steps, Process & Techniques | ASQ. (n.d.). Retrieved June 3, 2024, from https://asq.org/quality-resources/problem-solving
Different variations on this basic process can be found in the serious literature on problem-solving (see the References list above), but these variations seem always to be merely adaptations to a specific class of problems. This is useful to those faced with those sorts of problems, but tend to obscure the general problem-solving model in use. Reviewing these discussions of problem-solving in several specific domains, I have extracted the general underlying model and present it here. ^
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