Speaking of problem solving, this week’s podcast at Negotiating Tip of the Week poses a fun problem-solving puzzle, featuring a debt-ridden merchant, his beautiful and clever daughter, an unscrupulous moneylender–and pebbles.

Back in December I introduced readers to ChangeThis, which I described this way:

ChangeThis…[is] a web site born of a radical and hopeful idealism: to virally transmit ideas through a culture medium of community, respect, and dialogue.

Recognizing that “the best discussions in science, medicine, business and politics have always been the civil ones”, ChangeThis publishes what it calls manifestos–proposals for change which serve as “a reasoned, rational call to action, supported by logic and facts”. The goalis to provide a forum for “the rational and thoughtful arguments that help people change their minds to a more productive point of view.“

Sound intriguing? Be sure to visit this site. And while you’re there, download “Thinking Through Problem Solving” a recently published manifesto written by Valarie A.Washington, CEO of Think 6, a strategic consulting company. Washington’s manifesto offers fresh ideas on problem solving which conflict resolution practitioners will find value in.

Of particular interest are Washington’s insights into the obstacles that inhibit successful problem solving. These include the Einstellung Effect–the extent to which habit or experience hampers our ability to see alternative solutions to a problem–and the Dispositional Effect, which accounts for the disconnect between our ability to address the problem and our will to do so, along with our difficulty in recognizing that there’s a problem in the first place.

Washington ultimately proposes a new model for addressing problems: the Ladder of Problem Solving, a non-linear way of thinking about problems which provides impetus for groups “to develop personal accountability, collaborative problem solving, and growth.”

As Einstein once said–and Washington quotes–”We cannot solve our problems with the same level of thinking that we used when we created them. “