No matter what professional background or industry an entrepreneur comes from, having the right problem-solving skills can make or break the business. An entrepreneur will develop and improve problem-solving skills with all the ups and downs along the entrepreneurial journey. Continue reading to see what problem-solving skills a strong entrepreneur should possess, develop, and improve through experience.
Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is an important problem-solving skill when it comes to data processing. An entrepreneur relies on critical thinking skills to identify potential threats, turn them into opportunities, and steer the business in a growing direction.
Critical thinking helps an entrepreneur arrive at decisive intentions and great business plans. This skill also develops business intelligence, financial aptitude, forecasting, planning, and strategic execution of projects. Thinking critically means looking at a problem in a logical, objective, analytical manner without making any judgment about the problem.
Having the right tools to look at and analyze data is important to critical thinking skills. Python is a general-purpose coding language used for types of programming and software development besides web development. Python users can create basic plots and break them down into subplots using the import matplotlib.pyplot feature. It takes the number of rows and columns, returns a tuple (fig, ax), and gives a single figure fig with an array of axes ax.
Nick McCullum provides a great overview of plt.subplots and how to import pandas as pd and import matplotlib.pyplot as a plot. Learn how to create a grid of subplots within an individual plot, including scatter plots and histograms. The overview shows how to use the x-axis and y-axis variables to create subplots and hide x labels when they overlap. Coding terms like axes object, tick labels, loc, plt import, ax1, and ticks may not be a skill an entrepreneur has. Review code language basics and take the mystery out of 2d array and returned figure object plots.
Creative/Lateral Thinking
Creative or lateral thinking allows an entrepreneur to think outside the box when solving problems. Imitator entrepreneurs think with a one-dimensional view and think that there is a one-size-fits-all solution to all problems. Innovator entrepreneurs think differently about all problems by asking questions and making strong conclusions that result in strong solutions.
Creative or lateral thinking lets the mind wander and turn over all sides of the problem at hand. It encourages an entrepreneur to look below the surface and critically think to analyze each issue. Looking at a problem from a fresh, original perspective allows an entrepreneur to arrive at uncommon but practical solutions.
Initiative
Being proactive helps an entrepreneur find new ways of doing things, new ways to communicate with their team, and improvements to their product or service. Taking initiative reduces the risk of problems coming up along the way. Investors like to see an entrepreneur who has initiative, as this shows passion for a product or service and a determination to succeed.
People Skills
Starting a business requires interacting with customers, teammates, investors, and more. An entrepreneur needs to have strong people skills and understand how to approach people and handle employees, customers, suppliers, etc. Building team spirit and channeling your colleagues’ skills, and learning to work in synergy with them is important. People skills help an entrepreneur research, find commonalities between themselves and others, and take the initiative to find good solutions.
Decisiveness
A successful entrepreneur is a good decision-maker, able to make a firm decision and take timely action. An entrepreneur needs to think quickly in the face of a problem, get all the facts quickly, and analyze the situation. It’s important to think about all potential approaches to arrive at a solution and quickly decide on an action to take. Decisiveness requires an entrepreneur to be confident, optimistic, and resolute.
An entrepreneur needs to be able to earn the support of team members for the decision and help put it into action. Second-guessing or poor support could undermine the results. When an entrepreneur is firm, decisive, and confident, the team will support their leader and work to reach organizational goals.
A successful entrepreneur never stops learning and developing new skills. The above problem-solving skills are just some of the necessary skills a determined entrepreneur needs to have.
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