6.3 Sorting out complex situations 176
➥Deals with the multicausal nature of complex situations; their need to be broken
into their constituent parts and then prioritized; and subsequently, how to plan
action for highest-priority areas.
6.4 Dealing verbally with complexity 179
➥Provides an on-the-spot, effective questioning strategy for verbally sorting out com-
plex situations with others.
6.5 Force-field analysis: Organizing and understanding complexity 183
➥Helps leaders to analyze and act on problems that are difficult to measure, by com-
paring the driving and restraining forces of leadership problems.
6.6 Optimizing your thinking—A hat 6-pack 186
➥Unscrambles thinking, surfaces hidden assumptions, keeps discussion from drifting,
generates a wide range of innovative possibilities, and leads to better decisions and
plans.
6.7 Creativity and innovation: The leader’s role 189
➥Provides overviews of some typical creativity tools, including their use and imple-
mentation
6.8 Mind mapping: A breakthrough tool 193
➥Promotes creative problem solving by helping participants to visualize data, see
interrelationships among data elements, and look at new solutions.
6.9 Brainstorming: Generating ideas quickly 196
➥Describes a commonly used group process and innovation tool, usually used to gen-
erate a lot of ideas quickly.SECTION7—TOOLS FORPROBLEMSOLVING, DECISIONMAKING, ANDQUALITY
7.1 Reframing: Working the realproblem 200
➥Helps leaders put problems into a new frame to ensure that the time people spend
solving problems is well invested, and that their efforts are highly leveraged.
7.2 A general problem-solving model for leaders 204
➥Outlines a general problem-solving process that provides leaders with a way to deal
with problems, decisions, or concerns.
7.3 Problem solving: A systematic approach to finding cause 207
➥Describes a systematic process for getting at the most probable cause of a problem
beforetaking expensive and often misdirected action.
7.4 Polarities: Dealing with intractable problems 212
➥Provides a model for handling any situation in which two people or groups defend
two ends of a spectrum in a mutually exclusive way.
7.5 Decision making: Making decisions logical and defensible 215
➥Describes a general-purpose decision-making tool that helps meets two criteria: (i)
it’s logically defensible and (ii) it’s supported by key stakeholders.
7.6 Potential problem analysis: Dealing with risk to a plan 219
➥Shows how to protect any plan in a systemic way.
7.7 Total quality leadership overview 223
➥Provides an overview of some key quality tools and principles.ANNOTATEDCONTENTS xv