Quotes About Problem-solving

To the man with only a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

An artist is a man of action, whether he creates a personality, invents an expedient, or finds the issue of a complicated situation.

The bureaucrat's favorite strategy: Pass a problem on down the line.

This was my first real lesson in politics… If you are cast on a desert island with only a screwdriver, hatchet, and the chisel to make a boat with, why, go and make the best one you can. It would be better if you had a saw, but you haven't, so with men.

A system administrator sometimes needs to be a business-process consultant, corporate visionary, janitor, software engineer, electrical engineer, economist, psychiatrist, mindreader, and, occasionally, bartender. As

Keep on the lookout for novel ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you're working on.

Just because something doesn't do what you planned it to do doesn't mean it's useless.

By operating without a leader the scout bees of a swarm neatly avoid one of the greatest threats to good decision making by groups: a domineering leader. Such an individual reduces a group's collective power to uncover a diverse set of possible solutions to a problem, to critically appraise these possibilities, and to winnow out all but the best one.

Mothers are the necessity of invention.

Growing up, I feel like my character was so much about being a problem-solver and a truth-seeker and always needing to get to the bottom of everything.

There's nothing like necessity of needing to do something to cause you to come up with abstractions that help you break through the forms.

Sometimes a problem will seem completely insurmountable. Then someone comes up with a simple new idea, or just a rearrangement of old ideas, that completely eliminates it.

I try to get to the heart of the issue, address it, and go on to the next thing.

The first and best way to say 'no' to anyone is, 'How am I supposed to do that?' Now the other side actually has no idea as to the number of things you've done with them at the same time. You conveyed to them you have a problem.

If he [Thomas Edison] had a needle to find in a haystack, he would not stop to reason where it was most likely to be, but would proceed at once with the feverish diligence of a bee, to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. … Just a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.

Each day we go to our work in the hope of discovering,—in the hope that some one, no matter who, may find a solution of one of the pending great problems,—and each succeeding day we return to our task with renewed ardor; and even if we are unsuccessful, our work has not been in vain, for in these strivings, in these efforts, we have found hours of untold pleasure, and we have directed our energies to the benefit of mankind.

If Edison had a needle to find in a haystack, he would proceed at once with the diligence of the bee to examine straw after straw until he found the object of his search. I was a sorry witness of such doing that a little theory and calculation would have saved him ninety percent of his labor.

If that isn't typical male stupidity! If something doesn't work, kick it or swear at it!

She wasn't the type to sit around ticking off the negatives of her life to see if she could make them outweigh the positives. If something was wrong, something was missing, she acted. Fix the problem and move ahead. Or if the problem couldn't be fixed, she found the best way to live with it.

What am I supposed to do? Beat her to death with my tripod?

Necessity remains the mother of invention.

In the early stage, managers are puzzle solvers, not number crunchers. Passive

Adopting new technologies can improve the way we solve Jobs to Be Done. But what's important is that you focus on understanding the underlying job, not falling in love with your solution for it.

People don't want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole. It's a profound insight—first popularized by legendary Harvard marketing professor Ted Levitt decades ago.1