Building district problem-solving capacity requires learning, collaboration, and a commitment to excellence. It takes time, investment, and effort—but the benefits are enormous.

Research-base and Background

In the late 1950s, Benjamin Tregoe and Charles Kepner, research scientists at the RAND Corporation, were conducting decision-making research with radar station crews at the Air Defense Command. They observed that certain Air Force officers, despite having the same training and information as other officers, made consistently better decisions. Intrigued by this observation, Kepner and Tregoe continued their study. They discovered that successful decision-makers more consistently used a logical thinking process to gather, organize and analyze information before taking action. However, these decision-makers were unaware of the approach they used and unable to articulate it. Therefore, they were unable to teach it to others.

Continuing their research, Kepner and Tregoe identified four types of thinking situations—each requiring its own unique approach. These four situations are the kinds of situations leaders face every day:

Complex situations require sorting out the issues involved, breaking them down, and imposing order where all has been disorder, uncertainty or confusion. We need to establish priorities and identify next steps.

Problem situations are those where something has unexpectedly gone wrong. They require cause and effect thinking. We need to be able to understand the problem and observe its effects so that we can determine and take appropriate actions.

Decision situations imply that some choice must be made. We need to clarify what we need and want in a final result so that we can decide on the course of action most likely to accomplish a particular goal.

Implementation situations involve upcoming plans, changes or actions to be implemented. We need to know what could go wrong so that we can prevent and/or prepare for it.

Since 1958, when Kepner-Tregoe, Inc. was founded, more than 20 million people in over 1,400 of the world’s most influential organizations have been trained in its problem-solving and decision-making processes. In 1993, the non-profit Tregoe Education Forum began adapting these same processes for use in the K-12 workplace and classroom.


Read about the payoff for increasing analytic thinking capacity >