Steve Haffner

Problem solving is an essential ingredient for success. Unfortunately, we often take an unstructured approach to solving problems—primarily relying on our own intuition and experience to find solutions.

As a former professional magician, my job was to disrupt the audience’s problem solving mechanisms to prevent them from discovering the solutions to my tricks. I learned how to engage the brain’s subconscious weaknesses and shortcuts and how those same mental illusions thwart problem solving in our work as professionals.

In this program, audience members become better problem solvers by learning proven techniques for mitigating our hidden assumptions, misperceptions, biases and other cognitive obstacles. Steve engages attendees by illustrating how magicians create the impossible by interfering with their audience’s problem solving processes.

After this session attendees will be able to:

• Ask the questions that are essential for success at each step of the problem solving process
• Use the “Climb Up/Look Down” method to identify core and associated problems
• Examine and adjust their current approach to gathering and assessing information
• Apply a more systematic approach to their problem solving process