Problem-solving at NC State
Brigadier General Jennings talks about problem-solving skills--especially the importance of defining the problem--that he learned as an NC State student, and he reflects on how that affected his professional, personal and military careers.
Interview on 2015-03-27 00:00:00 -0400
Transcript
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I think the biggest thing I learned when I was a student here that served me my whole life, both professionally and personally, is the problem-solving process.
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We had that in Physics, I remember, 101, and I tell people what's so key about that, it's the first step of the problem-solving process that most people do not accomplish, and the first step is to define the problem.
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I don't know how many times - I mean I spent another twenty-three years in the Army after I came back and graduated - how many times we would be working on something and you would spend sometimes days, weeks, solving something that was not the problem.
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So I always tell people, when-. I mean we would be in meetings and, as I got a little more rank and could enforce these things,
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typically what happens, the senior person says what they're going to say, what they want you to do, and people rush out to go, and I say, "Okay, everybody stop. Take a deep breath. What did he say?
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Let's define the problem," because it's so easy to just see what you think was the problem
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and that may not be actually what the problem is, but once you define the problem then you can start working on the other elements to solve the problem.
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You can solve a problem that was not the problem, that that person didn't bring forward, so that's why I say in a lot of cases just take your time.
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It works in your personal life or it can work professionally: what is the problem? Sometimes people oversimplify or they miss what is really the problem and try to go straight to solving something else.
This video is an excerpt from a longer interview. Contact the Special Collections Research Center to request the transcript of the full interview.
