2.1 Tower Building; 2.2 Personalized Crossword; 2.3 Picture Pieces Puzzle Game; 3 Problem Solving Activities for Adults. When someone offers up an idea, everyone emphatically says “Yes!” and then the group continues to generate ideas, often building off the last idea that was just offered. The problem with anything that requires creative thinking is that it’s easy to get lost—lose focus and fall into the trap of having useless, open-ended, unstructured discussions. Dotmocracy is a simple method for group prioritization or decision-making. Check-in / Check-out #team #opening #closing #hyperisland #remote-friendly. You might remember some version of Show and Tell from being a kid in school and it’s a great problem solving activity to kick-off a problem solving workshop. With the right problem solving techniques and a mix of activities designed to strengthen problem solving skills and generate solutions, we hope we’ve given you the tools to find the best solutions as simply and easily as possible. But how do you help a group go from ideation to putting a solution into action? Remember the importance of helping people become engaged in the process – energizing problem solving games like Mindspin can help ensure your team stays engaged and happy, even when the problems they’re coming together to solve are complex. Journalists is a problem solving activity that can avoid a group getting stuck in the problem identification or problem analysis stage and see the big picture. Also good for defining a vision. With Who/What/When matrix, you can connect people with clear actions they have defined and have committed to. Often, a change in a problem or situation comes simply from a change in our perspectives. You can help individuals or groups avoid the frequent mistake of trying to solve a problem with methods that are not adapted to the nature of their challenge. Using abstractions such as a diagram of a fish can really help a team break out of their regular thinking and develop creative approach to both the problem and solution. Flip It is one of the problem solving techniques we love in that it is both simple to understand and run, and allows groups to understand how their perspectives and biases are formed. A loose analogy may be used to describe these differences: simple is like following a recipe, complicated like sending a rocket to the moon, complex like raising a child, and chaotic is like the game “Pin the Tail on the Donkey.”. This process incorporates much of what has already been discussed and provides a clear template to addressing problems and quickly resolving them. Humor That Works Required fields are marked *. Creative thinking and visual ideation does not need to be confined to the opening stages of your problem solving strategies. The purpose of the above problem solving activities is to get you to think about the problem in a different way and have some fun while solving it–both of which will enhance your creativity in finding and implementing a solution. It emphasizes group communication, leadership dynamics, conflict, cooperation, patience and problem solving strategy. The primary purpose of any problem solving workshop is to generate solutions and then implement them. By passing cards and adding additional items as they go, the workshop group gets into a groove of co-creation and idea development that is crucial to finding solutions to problems. By going from simple notes to a crazy 8s round that involves rapidly sketching 8 variations on their ideas before then producing a final solution sketch, the group is able to iterate quickly and visually. In this section, we’ll look at in-depth problem solving techniques that provide a complete end-to-end process for developing effective solutions. Apr 14, 2019 - Ideas and resources that support project and problem based homeschooling. Get to the Core of The Core . You give everyone an opportunity to provide feedback on what they’ve done but only in the space of a single breath. They get individuals and the group to focus on what is within their discretion instead of what they cannot change. There are four basic steps in problem solving : defining the problem, generating solutions, evaluating and selecting solutions, and implementing solutions. To maintain objective detachment, you deal with a different problem during each of six rounds and assume different roles (problem owner, consultant, basher, booster, enhancer, and evaluator) during each round. By beginning with the creation of a problem statement and going through five stages to refine it into a root cause problem statement, The 5 Whys provides everything you need to guide a group through a root cause analysis with ease. Do you sometimes feel that the good old pen and paper or the MS Office toolkit combined with email leaves you struggling to stay on top of managing your workshop preparations and delivery? It can be scary for people to stand up and contribute to the problem solving process, especially if the problems or challenges are emotive or personal in nature. #6. The best solutions can take refinement, iteration and reflection to come out. From there, the team are then invited to vote on which problems to solve and the team is then guided through the problem solving steps that allow them to reframe those problems, create solutions and then decide what to execute on. The four-step sketch is an exercise that helps people to create well-formed concepts through a structured process that includes: Your email address will not be published. And join 70,000+ professionals already using SessionLab. Determine the Causes. Each person votes for the options they think are the strongest, and that information is used to inform a decision. #issue analysis #innovation #liberating structures. 40-20-10-5 – Explain your problem in up to 40 words. By using who, what, when, where, why and how to facilitate the conversation and encourage creative thinking, your team can make sure that the problem identification and problem analysis stages of the problem solving process are covered exhaustively and thoughtfully. Idea Mock-ups – Create a mock-up of the solution. Ask the group to first come up with a series of questions connected to their best guess of how to approach the topic. Explore Scientific Projects Host a … By asking your participants to tell stories about why they chose to bring a particular item to the group, you can help teams see things from new perspectives and see both differences and similarities in the way they approach a topic. Creative problem solving requires creative problem solving activities. The good news is that exposing a child to regular problem-solving activities and games in preschool can greatly help him to solve word problems later on in school. 1 Group Problem Solving Activities. Make a leprechaun trap. The techniques introduced below provide a solid architecture for problem solving that takes a group through all the problem solving steps necessary to go from accurately identifying issues and challenges to developing, rolling out and recording appropriate solutions. In Speed Boat, the approach is to consider what anchors and challenges might be holding an organization (or boat) back. Identifying a problem accurately requires that all members of a group are able to contribute their views in an open and safe manner. This can be a great problem solving activity for bringing our individual perceptions about a problem or challenge and contextualizing it in a larger group setting. 1) Take a deep breath. As the title suggests, the group defines a problems, then asks the question “why” five times, often using the resulting explanation as a starting point for creative problem solving. Remember that everyone in a group is likely to have differing perspectives on the exact nature of a problem and all problem solving strategies require a degree of alignment on this in order to help the group move forward. If the group is too large, you can go round and round during the ideation stages. It’s also great for showing existing beliefs, biases and patterns that can come into play as part of your problem solving process. The How-Now-Wow Matrix from Gamestorming is a great problem solving activity that enables a group to stay creative and think out of the box when it comes to selecting the right solution for a given problem. Problem solving activities are only one part of the puzzle. Example: What’s the deal with airline peanut butter? Aim for a typed presentation with visual aids, such as pictures or physical examples. A problem they want to solve; A process or physical design they want to improve ; Select a problem below to be presented with starter design questions. The Constantly-Updated List Of Ideas For Project-Based Learning. Lego Serious Play is a facilitation methodology that can be used to improve creative thinking and problem solving skills. This simple and powerful method is useful for getting to the core of a problem or challenge. In problem solving workshops, there is often a need for both creative and critical mindsets and empowering a group to switch between these is something a facilitator can really help with! is when the context is too turbulent to identify a path forward. 100 points earns you the Gripper Badge, 500 points earns you a pudding cup. 6 Problem Solving Strategies for Kids. Great when trying to instill a problem solving mindset across your organization! When we understand those conditions, we can influence what comes next. While it’s good for participants to be engaged in the problem solving process, ensure that emotions don’t run too high and that blame isn’t thrown around while finding solutions. The 5 Whys is one such process and is highly effective in helping a group go find the root cause of any problem or challenge and conduct root cause analysis that will deliver results. #15. Thinking creatively and not being afraid to make suggestions are important problem solving skills for any group or team, and warming up a problem solving workshop by encouraging these behaviors is a great way to start. Example: Tell me you wouldn’t buy this incredible product. Have the project board choose the winner. The success of any problem solving process can be measured by the solutions it produces. support@sessionlab.com. I wanted to include an example to facilitate understanding and it happened to be around snack time. Reduce stress and increase your mental wellbeing with humor that works from around the center of a problem solving action. You achieved and the group to quickly see which options are most popular or relevant developing solutions solutions and... Celebrate milestones and dates in reverse order, starting with the end of Lightning decision Jam ( LDJ ) idea. This creativity framegame, you can help generate momentum and appetite for large. 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