Apply Critical Thinking for Complex Problem Solving Q & A

Information

source

Example

May be obtained by

Legislation

The corporation act and privacy act. 

The corporation act has described employee responsibilities and roles in the corporate world. Privacy acts have defined individual privacy safety and security in the company.

Organisational

policies and

procedures

Finance authorisation and privacy policy 

The authorisation is mainly the notice of the transaction being undertaken. In addition, privacy policy is to save the company employees' documents and gathered employee data and information. 

Stakeholders

Range and need for money and market value 

This mainly notices their company's current shares values and financial growth. 

Method

Description

Interview

This method uses a formal or informal interview process to obtain information about a workplace issue. 

Survey

 This process is collecting data and information from the participants, and this process to gain a piece of knowledge of the current situation in the company, determine the issues and take a problem-solving decision. This method determines the company's internal and external problems, scopes, and employees' situations. Not appropriate data and information were collected from the participants. 

Observation

 Observation is a method is observed the company environment and it helps to take situation-based decision-making procedures. These processes helps to develop the company’s growth and progress, find out the company’s interior and exterior issues and conflicts, reduce the company's problems and increased the company's production and reputation, sometimes the company does notice the marketing issues and conflicts.

Existing

information

 This procedure collects the information and analyses the company information and data collects data and information to gain knowledge about the company's culture and policy, find out the employee's problems and notify the employee's needs or the company's current situation in the share market, find out the current marketing problems. 

Performance

review

Reviewing the performances is giving feedback and verifying the company's stage and steps, Good performances give good feedback and positive feedback and review it helps to buy the employee's motivation and increase the employee's interest and work performance in the company. Mainly it’s increased the company employees' encouragement and recognition. It gives some benefits such as improving the employee's performance, better morale and providing good teamwork and increased job satisfaction, company workers' performances are not good based on the current economic condition.

Self-evaluation

 This method is good for employees' self-evolution, it is improved the employee's self-assessments and increased the employee's work performance, sometimes employees cannot adopt the evaluation process.

Critical thinking technique

Description

Brainstorming

This method uses a group of people to think of as many solutions in a pre-determined time.

Mind mapping

 This process notes every employee's good ideas and creates the link between the concepts and thinking. It can use to describe business ideas and finding the different types of procedures and increase informative recording. 

Lateral thinking

 These methods are use to overlook and focus on the company aspect of problems and current situation. various types of challenges and assumptions, and give alternative ways to think about the issues and internal and external conflicts. 

Opposite

thinking

 This method means the reverse thinking of the company; this method identifies the current situation based on the company's problems and possible solutions and comes up with “non-obvious” ideas. This method uses long terms problems to solve completely different thinking methods and processes. 

Analogy

thinking

 This thinking method is an efficient way for business leaders to make decisions about problems. It improved the company's decision-making process. This analysis of the process enhances the company's decision-making process. 

Type frisk

Description

Example

Strategic risk

 these risks could happen at any moment and stand to describe the company and business strategy

 This business management is not working properly its impacts the company's strategic management. 

Compliance risk

 These risks included the company rules and regulations; it is developing by the government's rules and policy. 

 During the pandemic, situation company create a safe and suitable plan for the company meeting policy. 

Financial risk

 This financial risk is affected the company's economic and financial condition, such as liquidity, cash flow and debt burden etc. 

 Company and customers receiving and paying time schedule or the cash investments

The operational risk

 These risks occur between the company and the company's systems procedures. 

Company target does not continue reason of the breakdown of the system. 

Name and overview of business

The of the business is “Worlducation”

This organisation is a social start-up that makes tablets for students in primary school. They are focused on creating hardware and software, activities and content for educating and engaging the students of primary schools. “Worlducation” was created in the year 2016 and is headquartered in CBD, Sydney. It is a multinational organisation, acquiring a development team in Bulgaria, a team of manufacturers in Hong Kong, and a marketing and operational team from Egypt, Columbia, Iceland, the Philippines and Russia. At the end of the year 2019, World Education expanded its business by selling over 35000 tablets in 23 countries nearly 550 schools. Their revenue is generated from selling subscriptions to software and technological hardware. 

The aim of the organisation “Worlducation” is to bring a change in the way of learning among children and for that, they want to implement technology like Artificial Intelligence (AI) to follow up the learning progress of each child by adjusting according to their requirements along their pathway of learning. “Worlducation” wishes to create an experience of learning by following an optimal path. This organisation's vision is to see a world with no illiteracy and for that, they created an innovative mission where they donate and train another classroom from the revenue that they gain from selling their product in one classroom.

 Describe the complex issue and affected stakeholders

 "Worlducation" manages a supply chain that is more complex than other businesses. This supply chain started by selling via a representative and enquired online and this process is handled entirely by the sales team.

The entire sales record, taken into account, and stored by an “internal Enterprise Resource Planning System (ERP System). Then this system is intended to inform the team of operations about the delivery of that order. The team of operation then secure the order and authorize the request for manufacturing to be delivered to Hong Kong, where the factory is situated. The order of sale is manufactured in the factory with the incorporation of technologies as per the request of specifications and then the team of operations made sure to arrange to ship to the customer directly. During the lockdown in 2020, there are new leads and possibilities of sale brought into sight that tend to increase the business revenue but along with that, some operational issues were raised. Due to the restrictions of the government, the manufacturing company in Hong Kong was shut down for over one month, the sale team faced many issues, the team tech-support had to do the software re-adaptations for the remote learning, and this was a big transition for the company. The supply of hardware components had a great impact on the industry of manufacturing. For the lockdown, the shipping and delivery also cannot be completed in time. 

The major issue that is raised due to the lockdown is the pressure on cash flow at the end of the year 2020 due to the expected decline of the margin of profit. As the higher management authority was uncertain about the future trend of education due to the worldwide lockdown and closed down of schools, they need to adapt the business of the company to the new normal. 

The stakeholders of the company are its debtors and inventory, which includes its manufacturing them, sale team, marketing team, supplier, security team, software development team etc. The fund required for the future growth of projects, and organisation required funds. However, the closing down of manufacturing facilities, improving the newly adapted technology, and decline in the margin of profit put pressure on the stakeholders. 

 Numerical and Financial data related to the issue

The objective of solution pursuing 

Advantage of solution

Risks on solution implementation

Up to 2019, the company sold over 35,000 tablets but starting from lockdown in early 2020, the sale decreased. During April, only about 2000 tablets were shipped from the manufacturing facility in Hong Kong and from that, just 500 tablets were possible to deliver in the scheduled time. 

In 2019, the net revenue generated was $35 million with a profit of $7 million and $4 million cash flow in net. Following these statistics, the net revenue is expected to be $45 million with $9 million and $5 million net profit and net cash flow respectively in 2020. The phenomenal growth in order and supply chain disruption in conjugate made the industry to the newly projected revenue of $55 million, which is remarkable. However, due to the disruption of the supply chain, the close of the manufacturing hub and the newly adapted technology causes a decrease in net profit and net cash flow to $5 million and $3 million respectively. This causes considerable pressure on the cash flow of the organisation in late 2020.

Two objectives in pursuing a solution are to increase the net cash flow and profit of the organisation and resolve the issue of manufacturing. For attaining the solution, the company wanted to secure another facility of manufacturing with an estimated cost of $5 million and discovering the potential of third-party outsourcing of manufacturing. The new introduction of a solution that is cloud-based can support the customers to access the company's software in a remote version on their devices. In future, the company tend to repurpose the tablets that are used and shelf tablets purchasing off to expand their business. 

Three advantages of solving those issues will be, the business can be expanded with a newly established manufacturing hub, outsourcing of manufacturing and other new ventures. The company will accompany the rapid rate of technology updates and changing industry. Remote use of cloud-based software will be able to provide cyber security to the customers' systems. 

The risks that are involved in solution implementation are, outsourcing will lose the margin by $200 per entity that is per year, $2 million (if sold units are 10,000). Execution of new technology of cloud-based solutions will cost approximately, $2 million. Self-tablet purchasing and repurposing will cost r $3 million and $1 million per year respectively. This may cause pressure on the net profit margin. Economic downtown can also be a risk in the implementation of new ventures. Expanding businesses shall always have a chance to lose customer satisfaction over the delivered products.

Legislative and organizational requirements related to the solution of the issues

 For protecting and handling the information that is personal to the organisation, it will follow the “National Privacy Principles (APPs) contained in the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act)”. This will provide internet and digital security, information storage security, security of information collecting etc. for their new ventures. 

The associated policies and procedures of the organisation related to the issues are, policies and procedures of finance authorization that involve restricting of use of business credit cards for the employees of the organisation to control the expenditure of the company. 

The policy and purpose of a new supplier are to make sure good service, and delivery of quality products with efficient and competitive pricing. Ensuring the understanding of the employees and supervisor about the opportunities and expectations available in the organisation for managing, planning, recognising, reviewing, and improving the performance, hence of the individual employee, the procedure and policy of performance management are applicable to achieve the successes of the company. 

Relevant policy

 “Privacy Policy and Procedures”

“Finance Authorisation Policy and Procedures”

“New Supplier Policy”

“Performance Management Policy and Procedures”

Resource calculation

 Launch a new facility for manufacturing - approximately $5 million

Launching cloud-based software solutions - approximately $2 million

For manufacturing outsourcing, the company will face a loss of $2 million per year.

For purchasing and repurposing of shelved and used tablets respectively the total loss will be ($3 million+$1 million) $4 million per year

The required resource of the company for the process of development of solutions is approximately $13 million.

Generate alternative solutions for your issue

 In the meeting with stakeholders regarding the issues that arise for the company in recent circumstances, various techniques of critical thinking were used to delineate various strategies other than the existing ones, for solving the issues faced by the company. For analyzing the issues and generating solutions for that the first technique that was used in the meeting was 

"Mind Mapping”.  In this technique, there are several notes have been taken every time an idea came into the mind of any stakeholders. Irrespective of the effectiveness, all thoughts and conceptions were written down. At the end of the meeting, the notes will help to link the concept and ideas of each stakeholder regarding finding solutions to the issue. Out of all ideas, the few most effective ones will be selected regarding the solution to those issues. 

The next technique that was used to find solutions was “Lateral Thinking” (Successatschool. org, 2022) which helps to think out of the box by thinking laterally rather than linearly, to find proper efficient solutions.

By applying these techniques of lateral thinking, the meeting found several suggestions, which are, increasing customer relationships and engagement, branding, changing the strategy of marketing, implementing new policies. In addition, to engage more suppliers, and implementing new and updated HRM policies to boost the confidence of the sales team, engage new delivery service agencies for quality and in time delivery, implementing an integrated system to get feedback from users of the company's product. 

The four alternative solutions that were taken into consideration in the meeting with stakeholders are, 

• Implementing an integrated system to get feedback from users of the company's product
• Updated HRM policies to boost the confidence of the sales team and increase their productivity at work.
• Engage new delivery service agencies for quality and on-time delivery to the customers. 
• Increasing customer relationships by increasing engagement and manufacturing products with features as per their requirements 

Evaluate alternative solutions

 The alternate solutions that were taken into account are mainly considered to increase the reputation and integrity of the organisation to its customers and value the human resource of the company. 

According to the stakeholders, the implementation of an integrated system to get feedback from users about the company's product will increase the company's loyalty towards the customers and the organisation can execute necessary changes as per the requirement and future vision in order to achieve credibility to the customers and increase company's longevity. The implementation of the new system and maintenance of the system will require costs and that may increase in the future with the increasing number of users. However, this cost can be managed by increasing demand and sales. 

Updated HRM policies to boost the confidence of the sales team and increase their productivity at work will help to handle the overwhelming pressure of individuals of the sales team caused by the huge demand for products created all around the world due to the lockdown in 2020. For handling, the depression among the manufacturing team and technology group for closing down the manufacturing facilities and implementing new software and information technology services to meet the demand of the customers, HRM policy updating and execution is necessary. This will directly help to increase the productivity of the company and build an employee-friendly work culture. Implementation of a new and updated HRM policy does not show any constraints other than building an experienced team will not be a problem in Australia to find an experienced HRM person or team. 

Engagement of new delivery service agencies for quality and on-time delivery to the customers will also increase the credibility of the company among its customers. Engaging other delivery service partners with less liability and less margin can increase the profit of the company. Efficient and on-time delivery service is a much-needed quality that customers demand from the company during the lockdown period and this strategy can provide help in the future in terms of elevating the level of satisfaction of the customers about the service of the company and will engage more customer base to the company in future. Collaborating with new delivery services will decrease the liability of the company as well as decrease the margin of operation. This will support the organisation in a positive way. 

Increasing customer relationships by increasing engagement via promotion, market branding, executing different offers and promoting the newly adapted technologies with the new situation after the lockdown may solve the issue of low-profit margin. The company already have demand for their products in the market but to eliminate the competition, newly updated information technology in their tablets and remotely accessible cloud-based software for increasing the security of the device and securing the privacy of the users can aid to incline customers to the company's product more than others. Manufacturing customized products according to the need of the consumer may help the company to gain the trust of the customers over any other competitors in the same market and contribute to an increment of profit for the company. Increasing customer engagement and elevating their satisfaction will help to build a customer base and that will increase the sale and profit of the company. However, the branding, promotion, and implementation of the new marketing strategy will cost extra monetary resources from the company's profit. 

Compare feasible solutions

The tools used to compare the feasible solutions are the success criteria of each of the solutions and the number of restraints to affect the viability and relevancy of each of the feasible solutions. 

For making a decision, the first step is, to evaluate all the knowledge obtainable (including decrees, guidelines and principles of most useful practice). The decision maker should be conscious of any prejudices made during the evaluation that can influence the decision. The second step involves the evaluation of available options individually to be certain of their feasibility. This step involves several criteria for success, which are, “clarity, stability, scalability, usability, profitability and integration”. The third step is to compare every feasible solution with the characters of one another. 

For comparing the feasible solutions along with their success, criteria there are other constraints of several numbers that can affect the viability and relevancy of the solutions that seem to be potential for solving those complex issues. These are the implementation timeframe for the solutions, the cost of implementation, required resources, the capability of manufacturing and production of content, the capability of designing, storage and logistics, the required technology to be executed etc. 

Choose the best solution for your complex issue

 The best solution for the complex issues that arise in the organisation is

Implementation of updated HRM policies to boost the confidence of employees and increase their productivity at work 

Reason for choosing

 The reason for choosing this solution is for fulfilling all the criteria of decision making which are “clarity, stability, scalability, usability, profitability and integration”. 

In any organisation, the execution of an updated “Human resource management service (HRM)” is very crucial. The above idea of implementing updated HRM in the organisation has a clear outline of the strategy of execution with definite objectives. Properly accomplished HRM in the organisation with updated values and policies will surely be stable for a longer period. The scale of implementation is not very useful because the targeted sector will be the sale, technology development and manufacturing team. So according to the scalability of the strategy, this plan is feasible. This strategy is very useful because it will help to boost the confidence of the sales team and increases their productivity at work will help to handle the overwhelming pressure of individuals in the sales team caused by the huge demand for products created all around the world. Along with that, it will help handle the depression among the manufacturing team and technology group for closing down the manufacturing facilities and implementing new software and information technology services to meet the demand of the customers. The integration of this strategy is very easy compared to other feasible solutions because the execution of this strategy does not need any monetary resources but a team of experienced human resource management executives to create the appropriate policies and properly and effectively implement them among the targeted team. The profit of execution of this strategy is inclined to the longer vision of the organisation which is to increase the productivity, service and profit margin and all of that can be achieved by increasing the productivity of the employee by providing them with a healthy and employee-friendly work environment.

 In terms of other constrain to influence the viability and relevancy of the solutions, implementing this strategy is very easy and less time consuming, required no mo9netory resources but only skilled employees that can be easily accessible to Australia, the capability of designing the strategy is very prospective and no storage or logistics is required for implementing this strategy. For the execution of this strategy, the new guidelines need to be updated on the official website of the organisation and that can be done easily with less effort. 

Prepare a brief

 Whole Idea: This section deals with critical thinking about the different possible alternative solutions coming from the different stakeholders of the organisation to the raised issues and decision-making about the most feasible solution. 

Mode of Interaction: “Zoom platform” meeting with all the stakeholders

The goal of the meeting: To find the most feasible alternative solution to the raised issue of the decline of profit margin

 Alternative solutions: 

• Implementing an integrated system to get feedback from users of the company's product
• Updated HRM policies to boost the confidence of the sales team and increase their productivity at work.
• Engage new delivery service agencies for quality and on-time delivery to the customers. 
• Increasing customer relationships by increasing engagement and manufacturing products with features as per their requirements

Most feasible alternative solution: Updated HRM policies to boost the confidence of the sales team and increase their productivity at work

Develop a feedback register

Create the marketing plan, determine the company's current marketing situation and share market value, and notice every price of the share. Evaluate the stalk and notice the current marketing strategy and plan. Mention the company resources plan and give a previous and current strategy. Established the share market-based questions, and mention the share market's main strategy and purposes. Identifying the share market plan advantages and disadvantages and outlining the share market targets holders, determining the share market issues and solving the conflict and implementing the beet share marketing share value increasing plan and procedure. Highlighting main purpose of share market plan including the plan, data, marketing strategy, pros or cons, research shareholders' issues and demands and company-based review are crucial for feedback. After mention, the company share market value and one-year analyses result in the feedback register, and mention benefits of the share market holders plan and objectives. This feed register must include the shareholder's and share values and demands. 

Incorporate feedback

 Mention the goals of the share market in the company, including the company-marketing plan and procedure, sharing the market and holders' aims and purpose, and creating action between the share market plan and shareholder. Focusing on the current thing based on the company situation. Create the state systematically, looking at the prospects, reviewing all performances, focusing on the effects, outcomes and influences, and creating a positive way and directions. Mention the option, such as the person's interest assumption and value of the company products, company needs and requirements, focused on the company's growth and development in the current market policy based. Create the process of the small experiment and mention the team of the share market and hits showing up the front of the company shareholders. 

Seek approval

 Including the company-based appropriate implementation process and mentioned process. Notice the company's current production and gaping between the company and the management and employees. After notice, the company gap and issues create a good plan for implementation of the company's current market plan and strategy. Creating the treating process and focusing on the company conflict, and mentioning the process improvements help in seeking approval. Developed the plan and must be included the company purpose and this training pour and benefits for the company management and training programme process. Limitations on the training process are included the approval process and mentions of the stakeholder's value and share market values. Involve the company's economic condition and the approval target member. Mention the pros and cons of the training periods and follow the guideline for the shareholder's departments. Notice the one-year current make and notice or mention of the company share market loss and profit. Mention the approver person list, make a list of the company and shareholders' needs and requirements, better strategy implementation, and focus on the company's economical increases. The seek approval process also mentions the company stake limitation and provides the stake value company's present situation based.

Self-evaluate your performance

Performaself-evaluation:

· Complete the self-evaluationchecklist

· Listyourstrengthsandweaknesses.

· Identifyareasneeding improvement.

The weakness is inexperience on software that need to implement to update the information technology and software to cope up with the new technology requirements.

The scope of improvement involves, taking ideas and feed backs from the stakeholders, customers, and try to improve those areas with expert’s knowledge.

The strength is , good leadership skills that include proper evaluation of problem, apply critical thinking techniques to delineate the solution strategies for those problems and critically analyze by comparing those strategies and be able to find the most effective and feasible solution.

Attach:

Self-evaluationchecklist

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Refinedbrief

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Completedfeedbackregisterandrelatedorganisationalpolicies

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Prooftoseekapproval

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