Secrets of Power Problem Solving

There's awesome advice in here...everything from "don't pay your bills" to "do nothing and hope the problem goes away". This is 10 bucks that would have been better spent on just about anything else. Run, do not walk away from this one.

Never realized that so many techniques are out there to solve problems. A must read book for everyone regardless of business / management profession!

Secrets of Power Problem Solving by Roger Dawson provides an insightful examination of the theories and practices associated with decision-making. Throughout his book, Roger challenges commonly held beliefs about the decision-making process and provides actionable methods to effectively address problems of all types... of which he indicates there are only two, people and money issues.In Secrets of Power Problem Solving, Roger presents methods for answering several key decision-making questions:- Does the Problem Deserve a Solution?- Is the Problem Real or Imagined?- How Quickly Should You Choose?- Intuition or Rapid Reasoning?- What Makes You a Great Problem Solver?I like Secrets of Power Problem Solving because of its logical, well-structured approach to everyday decision-making that will be of value to new and seasoned professionals. Roger provides immediately implementable methods for effectively dealing with both people and money challenges. Furthermore, each chapter is summarized by a "Key points from this chapter" list that makes periodic review of his book for principles reinforcement easy and fast.If I had one suggestion to offer it would be that the flow of the book and its recommendations would be more easily synthesized by the reader if an overview of the decision-making process was presented in the beginning of the book. This is a very minor point as a moderately experienced decision-maker can easily follow Roger's line of thinking throughout the book.Effective decision-making is both a role and challenge for today's professionals. Secrets of Power Problem Solving's methods provide new and seasoned professionals with a collection of decision-making practices that will help them become better decision-makers. Additionally, the recommendations Roger presents throughout his book are very well aligned with StrategyDriven's decision-making best practices; making Secrets of Power Problem Solving a StrategyDriven recommended read.All the Best,Nathan IvesStrategyDriven Principal

Roger Dawson offers valuable information about solving problems, making decisions and thinking through a dilemma. But with all that, his book surprisingly also contains numerous redundant quotes, poorly constructed sentences and other editorial gaffes. Such faux pas aside, Dawson, a widely-published senior authority in this field, has probably forgotten more about problem solving and decision making than most authors on these topics ever learned. getAbstract urges you to ignore the rough patches and learn how to upgrade your solutions.

I must say that I've read Roger Dawson's other books and thought that they were brilliant. I didn't feel the same with this thin slice of simplistic observations to problem solving. If you have a reasonable sense of logic, reasoning skills, and common sense then this book will seem dumbed down to you. I couldn't finish it so I hope there was some insights that came on the later half of the book but it certainly wasn't in the first half before I couldn't continue reading. Its unfortunate because Roger Dawson is quite knowledgeable and skilled, as can be seen from his other books, but this is not one of his shining examples of his experience and intellect.

Roger comes through again with a short and powerful book on tools you can use to manage the problems that inevitably come up in work and personal situations! Roger encourages his readers to take the time to define problems well before attempting to solve them, so that the reader solves the right problem instead of the problem he may imagine he has.I especially enjoyed Roger's writing on managing people problems, as these are often complex and frequently we feel an urgent need to solve them. He points out that while we can't ignore these kinds of problems, we can make them worse by overreacting to them and failing to keep talking to people who disagree with or upset us.Another chapter that is worth more than the cost of the book is Roger's writing on creative thinking. While I won't give away all his secrets, here are a few worth noting:1. Visualize the opposite of the situation that is causing the problem.2. Examine the environment in which the problem occurs; sometimes this is more of a problem than the original problem.3. Imagine all the assumptions you have about the problem are wrong.In this day of data-driven, logical problem-solving strategies, this creative thinking may help you solve problems that logic alone can't resolve.I still have a few chapters to go before I finish the book, but I would strongly recommend it to anyone who wants to learn how to think about problems in new and creative ways.

I found this title to be very helpful. Just the little nugget of people problems vs money problems helped quite a bit. This is a good book on problem solving. It is just enough to get you thinking about problems and solutions in a new way.

I bought this for a MBA student and she enjoys reading it. I too read and I like it for the style and language, Very simple, easy to understand, interesting to read. Recommend this book to all MBA students.