problem solving 101 free pdf

Problem solving 101

A simple book for smart people, by ken watanabe.

• ★ ★ ★ ★ 3.67 ·
• 64 Want to read
• 5 Currently reading
• 4 Have read

Preview Book

My Reading Lists:

Use this Work

Create a new list

My book notes.

My private notes about this edition:

Check nearby libraries

• Library.link

Buy this book

The fun and simple problem-solving guide that took Japan by stormKen Watanabe originally wrote Problem Solving 101 for Japanese schoolchildren. His goal was to help shift the focus in Japanese education from memorization to critical thinking, by adapting some of the techniques he had learned as an elite McKinsey consultant.He was amazed to discover that adults were hungry for his fun and easy guide to problem solving and decision making. The book became a surprise Japanese bestseller, with more than 370,000 in print after six months. Now American businesspeople can also use it to master some powerful skills.Watanabe uses sample scenarios to illustrate his techniques, which include logic trees and matrixes. A rock band figures out how to drive up concert attendance. An aspiring animator budgets for a new computer purchase. Students decide which high school they will attend.Illustrated with diagrams and quirky drawings, the book is simple enough for a middleschooler to understand but sophisticated enough for business leaders to apply to their most challenging problems.

Previews available in: English

Showing 5 featured editions. View all 5 editions?

Add another edition?

Book Details

Published in, table of contents, edition notes, classifications, the physical object, community reviews (0).

• Created November 16, 2008
• 16 revisions

Wikipedia citation

Copy and paste this code into your Wikipedia page. Need help ?

• Available now
• New eBook additions
• Most popular
• Executive Picks
• New audiobook additions
• Kindle Books
• Our Culture
• Français (Canada)

Problem Solving 101

Description.

The fun and simple problem-solving guide that took Japan by storm Ken Watanabe originally wrote Problem Solving 101 for Japanese schoolchildren. His goal was to help shift the focus in Japanese education from memorization to critical thinking, by adapting some of the techniques he had learned as an elite McKinsey consultant. He was amazed to discover that adults were hungry for his fun and easy guide to problem solving and decision making. The book became a surprise Japanese bestseller, with more than 370,000 in print after six months. Now American businesspeople can also use it to master some powerful skills. Watanabe uses sample scenarios to illustrate his techniques, which include logic trees and matrixes. A rock band figures out how to drive up concert attendance. An aspiring animator budgets for a new computer purchase. Students decide which high school they will attend. Illustrated with diagrams and quirky drawings, the book is simple enough for a middleschooler to understand but sophisticated enough for business leaders to apply to their most challenging problems.

Kindle Book

• Release date: March 5, 2009

OverDrive Read

• ISBN: 9781101029183
• File size: 7840 KB

Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook

Business Education Psychology Nonfiction

Publisher: Penguin Publishing Group

Kindle Book Release date: March 5, 2009

OverDrive Read ISBN: 9781101029183 Release date: March 5, 2009

EPUB ebook ISBN: 9781101029183 File size: 7840 KB Release date: March 5, 2009

• Ken Watanabe - Author
• Formats Kindle Book OverDrive Read EPUB ebook
• Languages English

Why is availability limited?

Availability can change throughout the month based on the library's budget. You can still place a hold on the title, and your hold will be automatically filled as soon as the title is available again.

The Kindle Book format for this title is not supported on:

Read-along ebook.

The OverDrive Read format of this ebook has professional narration that plays while you read in your browser. Learn more here.

Recommendation limit reached

You've reached the maximum number of titles you can currently recommend for purchase.

Session expired

Your session has expired. Please sign in again so you can continue to borrow titles and access your Loans, Wish list, and Holds pages.

If you're still having trouble, follow these steps to sign in.

Add a library card to your account to borrow titles, place holds, and add titles to your wish list.

Have a card? Add it now to start borrowing from the collection.

The library card you previously added can't be used to complete this action. Please add your card again, or add a different card. If you receive an error message, please contact your library for help.

About the Book

About the Author

CLASS #1: Problem-Solving Kid Basics

CLASS #2: Rock Bands and Root Causes

CLASS #3: Fishy Goals and Solid Achievements

CLASS #4: Football School Pros and Cons

PROBLEM-SOLVING TOOL BOXES:

Yes/No Tree

Problem-Solving Design Plan

Hypothesis Pyramid

Pros and Cons; Criteria and Evaluation

Acknowledgments

Problem Solving 101 started out as a simple guide to teach Japanese schoolchildren critical thinking skills. But it quickly became an international bestseller for readers of all ages, thanks to the powerful effectiveness of Ken Watanabe’s unique methods.

Full of useful diagrams and quirky drawings, Problem Solving 101 is packed with practical tools and techniques to train your brain to solve problems, create solutions and make faster, better decisions.

Simple enough for a high school student to understand but sophisticated enough for CEOs to apply to their most challenging problems, Problem Solving 101 has helped millions of people around the world to find successful solutions to even the toughest of problems.

Ken Watanabe grew up in Japan and studied in the United States at Yale and Harvard Business School. He was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company for 6 years. He is now the founder and CEO of his own education, entertainment and media company, Delta Studio. He lives in Tokyo.

what is your delta?

WHY PROBLEM SOLVING?

We all have to make decisions. Whether you’re a student, a parent, a businessperson, or the president of the United States, you face problems every day that need solving. The problems may vary. Maybe you need to pass a maths class, or decide where to live, or figure out how to improve your company’s bottom line. Maybe you want to lose some weight or simply get better at golf.

Whether the issue is big or small, we all set goals for ourselves, face challenges, and strive to overcome them. There’s a fundamental approach to solving these real-life problems, one that can consistently lead you to effective and satisfying solutions. And chances are, no one has ever bothered to show you how.

One of my missions in writing this book was to show everyone a simple way to deal with the problems they face in their everyday lives. But I wasn’t just trying to communicate a skill set. Being a problem solver isn’t just an ability; it’s a whole mind-set, one that drives people to bring out the best in themselves and to shape the world in a positive way. Rather than accepting the status quo, true problem solvers are constantly trying to proactively shape their environment. Imagine how different our world would be if leaders like Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr., Eleanor Roosevelt, JFK, and Steve Jobs lacked this attitude.

I hope this book will help inspire both children and adults to develop this proactive mind-set by first tackling the problems in their own lives. Once you learn this simple way to solve the personal challenges you face every day, you just might see that your bigger dreams and accomplishments are also within your reach.

WHY I WROTE THIS BOOK

Before I wrote this book, I was a consultant for the global management consulting firm of McKinsey & Company. For six years I worked with major companies all over the world to help solve their business challenges using a straightforward yet powerful set of problem-solving tools.

These are tools that anyone can use. They don’t require complicated computer software or a room full of expert analysts. They’re simply approaches to broaden and organize one’s thinking about a problem, so that more possible solutions become clear.

In 2007 Japan’s prime minister made education his nation’s top agenda. As the country turned its focus to the educational system, I felt compelled to do my part. Although Japanese business leaders, educators, and politicians have long talked about the need for Japan to shift from “memorization-focused education” to “problem-solving-focused education,” no one had figured out a concrete and effective way to make this happen.

So I left McKinsey to write this book and to teach kids. My aim was to teach Japanese children how to think like problem solvers, to take a proactive role in their own education and in shaping their lives. I tried to frame the tools we used at McKinsey in a fun and approachable way, one that would show kids what a practical approach to problem solving could help them accomplish. Although I don’t claim to be any kind of expert on education, I hoped that the book would at least provide a starting point, one that would help shift the debate from whether we should teach problem solving to how we should go about teaching it.

Then a surprising thing happened: The book took off—and not just with kids. It first caught fire in the business segment, becoming Japan’s number one business best-seller in 2007. Then it spread through the education community and to a wider general audience. It turned out that adult readers in Japan, from parents and teachers to CEOs of major corporations, had been craving a simple and useful guide to problem-solving techniques.

Now I’m focusing on helping kids put Problem Solving 101 into practice. I think the experience kids get from having an idea, taking initiative, and learning from both their successes and their failures is what we have to put more emphasis on. So I’m creating more opportunities for them to learn more from real-life situations rather than just in the classroom.

When I work with kids, I don’t start by teaching the skills from Problem Solving 101 in a classroom. Instead, I let them learn the same way Warren Buffett did. Buffett got his first business experience when he was only six years old, buying Coke bottles from his grandfather’s store and selling them for a profit. The kids I work with get to run a food and drink business using a 1965 VW van I’ve renovated for use as a transportable shop. The kids decide what food and drinks to sell, where to sell, and how to compete against other teams by actually selling what they have cooked or prepared. The kids learn the importance of not just problem solving skills, but also leadership, teamwork, creativity, persistence, charm, and kaizen (continuous improvement) to make their vision come true. Only after this experience do I help them ask the important questions and provide them with the problem-solving tools that could help them with future projects.

The value of problem-solving-oriented thinking obviously extends far beyond the classroom into every facet of our lives. It enables us to take control of the challenges we encounter and to change the world in a positive way. My hope is that English-reading audiences will benefit from the book in the same way many Japanese readers have.

Best, Ken Watanabe

YOU’RE NEVER TOO OLD TO BECOME A PROBLEM-SOLVING KID

This is a book about kids solving problems. They face some pretty tricky challenges—the kinds of problems that might cause most people to throw up their hands and give up. But problem-solving kids aren’t like most people—even though most people should be more like them.

As you’ll see, problem-solving kids come in all ages, shapes, and sizes. They may seem to have special talents, or at least more than their fair share of luck. But the truth is, they’re people just like you, who have learned how to think, make decisions and act on their own, and to live proactive lives. They’ve also picked up some helpful problem-solving tools along the way.

If you follow the simple lessons in these pages, you too can become a problem-solving kid (even if you consider yourself a grown-up). Rather than feeling as though your life is out of your control, you can take charge and shape the world around you. Instead of being overwhelmed by the challenges you face every day, you can learn to enjoy them and overcome them.

In fact, you may even feel like a better person at the end of this course . Your dreams and goals will seem less out of reach. And you’ll be better able to accomplish whatever you’re passionate enough and imaginative enough to conceive and pursue.

It could be something as simple as becoming a better dancer or learning how to cook French cuisine. Or maybe it’s a bigger goal, like running for government or solving the global warming crisis. Whatever it is, you’ll learn how to tackle it.

Problem solving isn’t a talent limited to the lucky few. It’s actually a skill and a habit that you can learn. This book will introduce you to a basic problem-solving approach through three case studies:

• The Mushroom Lovers, a new band trying to improve their concert attendance numbers
• John Octopus, a bright young man with aspirations of becoming a computer graphics animator who needs to buy his first computer
• Kiwi, an aspiring football player looking for the best training school in Brazil

It will also give you a full toolbox of proven problem-solving techniques, the same techniques used by successful problem-solving people and companies all over the world. But before we start learning the problem-solving approach, let me introduce you to the problem-solving kids and their friends.

PROBLEM-SOLVING KIDS AND COMPANY

So by now you’re probably wondering what is it exactly that makes someone a problem-solving kid. First, let’s talk about what they’re not. There are several common attitudes that can get in the way of effective problem solving. While the following characters may sound like caricatures of real people, I bet these non-problem-solving kids also sound pretty familiar. Chances are you know people just like them at school or at work. Maybe they’re your friends or members of your family. Some of them may even remind you of yourself!

For instance, take Miss Sigh.

Miss Sigh is the kind of person who gives up immediately whenever she faces even the smallest challenge. She just sighs and says, “I’ll never be able to do that.” Which isn’t to say she couldn’t achieve things if she tried. Sometimes she has a great idea or notices a problem that can be fixed. But she’s terrified of failing and having people laugh at her. Instead of speaking up or taking action, she sits around feeling sorry for herself.

Miss Sigh can’t take control of her own life. She feels as though no one understands her, and she blames anything bad that happens on everybody else. Over and over, she says the same kinds of things:

• “I’ll never be able to do that. I’m just not that talented.”
• “I’m not going to try. What if I fail? Everyone will make fun of me!”
• “I blame my parents. I blame society. I blame you!”
• “Nobody understands me. Nobody cares about me. Everybody is out to get me.”

• Find a Library
• Browse Collections
• Problem Solving 101

ebook ∣ A simple book for smart people

By ken watanabe.

Add Book To Favorites

Is this your library?

Sign up to save your library.

With an OverDrive account, you can save your favorite libraries for at-a-glance information about availability. Find out more about OverDrive accounts.

9780091929664

Ken Watanabe

Ebury Publishing

06 July 2010

Find this title in Libby, the library reading app by OverDrive.

Search for a digital library with this title

Title found at these libraries:.

Problem Solving 101 started out as a simple guide to teach Japanese schoolchildren critical thinking skills. But it quickly became an international bestseller for readers of all ages, thanks to the powerful effectiveness of Ken Watanabe's unique methods. Full of useful diagrams and quirky drawings, Problem Solving 101 is packed with practical tools and brain training techniques that will improve your problem-solving and decision-making ability, and enable you to find better solutions faster. Simple enough for a high school student to understand but sophisticated enough for CEOs to apply to their most challenging problems, Problem Solving 101 has helped millions of people around the world to find successful solutions to even the toughest of problems. Once you've mastered the problem-solving skills in this book, you'll wonder how you ever got by without them.

Problem Solving 101 Summary

1-Sentence-Summary:   Problem Solving 101  is a universal, four-step template for overcoming challenges in life, based on a traditional method Japanese school children learn early on.

Favorite quote from the author:

Audio Summary

Listen to the audio of this summary with a free reading.fm account*:

I recently co-authored a piece gathering 303 life lessons we all eventually learn, but often forget. The list reminded me of all the important subjects we never study in school: human behavior, work habits, creativity, relationships, communication, love, and personal finance, for example. The skill Ken Watanabe explains in this book ranks highly on that list: problem solving.

Having a methodical approach to how you deal with problems, as opposed to just going by gut and feelings, can make a big difference in how successful you are in overcoming your obstacles. What’s interesting is where Watanabe found this approach: in school.

The Japanese education system has long had a leg up on its Western counterpart , and they also have a much better concept of retirement, called “ ikigai .” When it comes to problem-solving, Japanese children learn a very basic, universal template in their first years of school. Those are some smart schools !

After growing up in Japan, then studying in the US, it is exactly this template that Ken Watanabe decided to share in  Problem Solving 101 . Here are the 3 underlying activities you need to use it:

• Instead jumping straight from finding a problem to attempting to solve it, break it down first.
• Gather data to analyze all potential root causes and solutions.
• Formulate hypotheses and methodically test them to find what works.

If you often find yourself jumping head first into solutions that don’t really fix your problems, this one’s for you! Welcome to Problem Solving 101!

If you want to save this summary for later, download the free PDF and read it whenever you want.

Lesson 1: The first step of properly tackling any problem is to break it down.

Let’s say you and your partner want to move in together and start a family. You’ve both entered the working world a couple years ago and are now looking to buy a home. However, once you look at your salaries and expenses, you realize you can’t afford the kind of home you want your future kids to grow up in. What could you do?

In this situation, most people would either resign to waiting for their next promotion or force themselves to randomly cut back on a big spending point. However, the trick to solving such a seemingly complex problem elegantly is to not jump at the above question in the first place. Instead, break down the problem into various aspects . In this example, “not enough money to pay mortgage for desired house” can be divided into “too little income,” “too high expenses,” and “expectations of future house.”

Once you have categories, it’s very easy to continue digging. Watanabe recommends decision trees . For example, you could now list causes for the “too little income” category, like “my company pays less than the industry average,” or “I didn’t get the promotion.” When going along these sub branches, you can mark each one with yes or no, to determine whether it’s actually part of the problem.

With a proper breakdown in hand, it’s much easier to analyze the causes and potential solutions of your problem.

Lesson 2: Make sure you analyze all potential root problems and solutions by gathering data and reflecting.

Of course it’s impossible to be 100% objective when judging what lead to your problem, but that’s where analysis comes in. For each root cause that you marked with a yes in your decision tree, ask what data you need to verify your answer. For example, to see if your salary is below industry average, you can use Google to compare it to several statistics. And to figure out why you didn’t get promoted, ask coworkers when they were last promoted and come up with your own, company-internal data.

The point of analysis is to never accept statements at face value, including your own . It gets you to pause and reflect before moving on, which is what makes it so valuable.

That’s why it also applies to all potential solutions you subsequently brainstorm. If you want to confront your boss with the below average salary claim, you better bring lots of data from good sources to back it up. At the same time, if you find it’s easier to collect data for other solutions, like cutting your expenses on monthly subscriptions, because you still have all your receipts, analysis also helps you determine which solutions have the best cost-to-benefit ratio .

Lesson 3: When trying to find a solution, formulate multiple hypotheses, then test them one by one.

Analysis helps you separate the wheat from the chaff when it comes to the sources of your problem, as well as your options to get rid of it. However, the pool of choices you’re left with is still just a set of ideas. There are no guarantees that you’ve identified the correct causes or that executing a chosen solution will actually bring relief.

That’s why you should think of your selection as hypotheses. A hypothesis is defined as a currently accepted statement that could be proven wrong later . What’s great about approaching your plans this way is that you’ll stay flexible. Maybe confronting your boss won’t work. If it doesn’t, what matters is that you can quickly switch to a different path of action, rather than circling back to your initial hopelessness.

Whenever you feel lost or don’t know what to do, take an intermediary step of analysis. Get more data, reflect on new information, then change course. With an approach like this, you’ll never really get stuck. Even if problems won’t disappear over night, you’ll always have some sense of what to do next.

Problem Solving 101 Review

Breakdown, analysis, hypothesis, execution . What Watanabe has described here is the scientific method , except he did it in a way everyone can understand. Teaching children this from a young age helps them think on their feet decades later. When they enter the working world, they’ll find real-world problems less complex and confusing. If I ever do come up with a school of life, there’ll definitely be a class called Problem Solving 101 .

Who would I recommend the Problem Solving 101 summary to?

The 9 year old third grader, who has a chance to learn proper problem solving right from the start, the 30 year old young professional, who could use a reset on how she tackles problems after college, and anyone who tends to jump to conclusions.

Last Updated on August 15, 2022

Niklas Göke

Niklas Göke is an author and writer whose work has attracted tens of millions of readers to date. He is also the founder and CEO of Four Minute Books, a collection of over 1,000 free book summaries teaching readers 3 valuable lessons in just 4 minutes each. Born and raised in Germany, Nik also holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration & Engineering from KIT Karlsruhe and a Master’s Degree in Management & Technology from the Technical University of Munich. He lives in Munich and enjoys a great slice of salami pizza almost as much as reading — or writing — the next book — or book summary, of course!

*Four Minute Books participates in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising commissions by linking to Amazon. We also participate in other affiliate programs, such as Blinkist, MindValley, Audible, Audiobooks, Reading.FM, and others. Our referral links allow us to earn commissions (at no extra cost to you) and keep the site running. Thank you for your support.

Need some inspiration? 👀 Here are... The 365 Most Famous Quotes of All Time »

Share on mastodon.

Problem Solving 101

• The super simple first step to solving any problem, no matter how big
• Why you need a “yes/no tree”
• How to achieve even your biggest dream

Popular books summaries

New books summaries.