“What’s the Problem!?”
After delivering over a thousand seminars there were rare if special occasions when things would pop-out and I would say something that I had never said before and I would stop and take notes on what I said. Such was the occasion a number of years ago while discussing some rather sophisticated problem solving techniques in a two-day project management seminar that I was conducting in Reno, Nevada. From those moments a keynote was born. It developed into what I called “The Formula” and I started using it in all my programs. So even though I am not known as a keynote speaker, I have given this particular keynote address several hundred times.
Often I would ask my audience what they spent most of their time doing. The most common response was Solving Problems. Hence the title of the keynote address, “What’s the Problem!?” Problems can span the spectrum from annoyance to annihilation. They can be funny or embarrassing or stultifying or worse paralyzing. Interestingly, unless I was in a room of full of engineers, when I asked the question “how many of you have had formalized training in problem solving?” considerably fewer than ten percent would respond affirmatively. Now what’s missing? You have managers managing away all day, solving one problem after another, or getting bogged down in nasty ones yet consistently shooting from the hip and missing the mark, Band-Aiding it, or worse stealthily burying it or ignoring it. The cost to organizations is mind boggling.
The fifty minute presentation is not only funny and entertaining but poignant, pithy and powerful.
Here are some of the key points the keynote contains
- Decision
- The Most Important Question
- Identity
- Awareness
- Recognizing and Capturing Opportunity
- Engagement
- Intention
- Focused Attention
- Creating Optimal Outcomes