Here's how you can cultivate a problem-solving mindset within your teams.

You need to use more channels to "embrace curiosity": 1. Use inner (in company) communication channel like discord/teams etc - public channel and team channels too. 2. Do the meeting where people can share ideas - initial planning meetings, cross-department workshops. 3. Involve people close to your customers (sales, support team, helpdesk). 4. Change/break routines, because routines are "curiosity" killers. 5. Use AI :)

Some of the most successful and impactful teams that I have been a part of were comprised of individuals with different professional backgrounds and experiences. Being able to look at or approach a project, problem, or challenge through a variety of lenses provides a much broader pool of options or solutions to choose from. For example, I've witnessed a group of manufacturing engineers get stuck trying to solve for a problem, despite years of schooling and experience, only to have the solution come from someone without any manufacturing engineering background, simply because they viewed the problem differently and therefore approached the solution differently.

There is no room for individual egos or closed mindedness on a good problem-solving team. All team members need to feel that they are seen, and that their voices are heard in order to create a safe and fully collaborative environment. Team members need to be willing and open to other ideas or perspectives. Too often individuals feel the need to be the one to find or come up with the solution, and egos and pride then start to get in the way of collaboration.

At first you need the list of problems you need to solve. And defined priorities. You cannot solve everything at same time. This habit is very common, but not working. You can use excel, task management tool of whatever you want. But for real solution you need collaborative tool, where people can describe the ideas and detail information. Use a template to not forget important things like who is the user, what is the outcome, what are limitations, non-functional requirements etc. This template can be reused and can make new-coming problems better manageable. And do not be afraid of experiments, PoC and/or user testing.

It is very easy to complete a project or solve a problem and then immediately jump right to the next one. In fact, I would say this is pretty standard in a lot of industries based on my experience. But if you and your team are not having a meeting or session to reflect on a project or problem-solving exercise after its completion, you are missing a huge opportunity to learn and improve. These types of sessions or meetings can go a long way to helping you and your team fine tune your problem-solving skills and processes, making solving future projects or problems that much more efficient and easier.

Those retrospectives (to identify lessons learned, what worked, what not, what was missing) are hard at the beginning. People are scared to share their ideas and feelings, but there is few options how to encourage them: - manager can start and say few examples, each person has to be involved - give them time for preparation - each idea is good idea, there is no stupid feedback or opinion - do feedback sessions regularly, after each delivery/milestone, because in time it can bring you better results - but the key recommendation is that your team, if you are manager/team leader, is really looking for action steps, for changes or improvements because if the feedback is not reflected then their engagement will fade away.

Coach. Question. Push for every "here's why we can't" to be a "here's how we could". We often get in the habit of solving problems for others -- whether it's because we perceive it to be easier/faster, we want to be helpful, etc. -- but this habit can be detrimental to cultivating a problem-solving mindset amongst our team. Asking questions instead of jumping to conclusions, is the best way to get others to start thinking of solutions.