Stop Guessing

The 9 Behaviors of Great Problem Solvers

By: Nat Greene

Narrated by: Tom Dheere

Length: 3 hrs and 25 mins

Publisher's summary

Most problems are fairly easy: they have a few likely potential root causes. The most important problems often have hundreds or thousands of potential root causes within very complex systems. Such problems are hard problems, and are highly resistant to guessing, brainstorming, or problem-solving methodologies that require conjuring a list of possible causes. Great problem-solvers are armed with a set of behaviors that allows them to avoid guessing. They consistently solve hard problems to root cause in a way that can seem magical to most people.

In Stop Guessing, you will learn nine behaviors that are critical to success and how to adopt them from Nat Greene, who has 20 years' experience leading great problem-solvers. Developing your strength in these behaviors will help you to:

• Have confidence to solve the hard problems you face
• Easily build alignment to implement the right solution
• Identify more important and valuable opportunities that are being ignored
• Help others to be better problem-solvers
• Stop wasting time and money, and trying your patience

Each of the nine behaviors comes with stories of great problem-solving in action, including a best-in-class chemical processor that had hundreds of millions of dollars of upside hidden behind a hard problem, a losing baseball team without the budget for star players, and the scourge of poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa.

©2017 Nat Greene (P)2017 Nat Greene

How NOT To Solve Problems

As well as how to solve problems, this book also goes into some common ways that humans try to solve problems the wrong way, and how to avoid those pitfalls.

Through effective story-telling and numerous examples, this book illustrates many ways to approach a problem. It's a nice, easy read, and it gets you thinking outside the usual ways of problem solving. I found myself thinking about some of the examples long after I had stopped listening.

The narrator did a great job reading and got really into the stories. His enthusiasm for some of the stories was infectious and I found myself nodding along, thinking, "Awesome! Give me more!" based solely on the energy of the reader. That being said it wasn't sooo energetic that he was trying to sell you something. He clearly believed in what he was reading, and I loved that.

I was provided with a free copy of this book by the publisher, narrator or author in exchange for this unbiased review, but I must say that I would have happily spent the money for this book and will gladly look for more by this great author in the future because I love his approach to being the smartest one in the room and getting things fixed!

Practical and Uplifting

What did you love best about Stop Guessing?

The unique behaviors and techniques to problem solving. Very practical and applicable to today.

Any additional comments?

This review copy audiobook was provided by the author, narrator, or publisher at no cost."

Best problem solving book EVER!

I've been working in the field of quality and continuous improvement for a decade and this is hands down the best book on problem solving I have ever read!

It's made me look back on projects I've run or been involved in and think "well now it's obvious why we didn't succeed", hindsight is feeling a little painful right now.

I love that this book deals with behaviors rather than methods, different methods work for different problems/groups but behaviors work for everyone.

This book would be useful for anyone who ever has to solve problems (you know... everyone) because the behaviors will work for all sizes and types of problems.

Tom's narration is excellent, I fund it very engaging and the enthusiasm of the author really came through in the narration.

This book was supplied free by the author/narrator/publisher and I voluntarily wrote this honest review.

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Held on for as long as I could

45m left and I still do not know how to solve problems outside of “don’t rely on experts”, “solve problems with facts”, and I can answer my friends questions with questions. Ok.

I wanted to like this and would love to expand my tool belt here. However, My problem was not solved. I’m now faced with the problem of returning this book to find a good problem solving book.

I think this is another authority marketing ploy. Give it a go, maybe you’ll get something out of it.