I can't think of two more important activities of Executive Leaders. In my opinion, solving strategic problems and change leadership should not only go hand in hand, but should be fused into a powerful framework that an Executive Leader can easily execute in a repeatable fashion. The trick is to understand how change leadership thinking can be utilized to uncover systemic root causes of problems. Once you see the magic of easily identifying the systemic root cause, you will never look at a problem the same. In fact, you will sower your environment for additional strategic problems to solve. Why doesn't this already exist? Because our culture is based on solutions and not on taking the time to understand the problem. Albert Einstein was quoted as saying: If I had only 1 hour to save the world, I would spend 55 minutes defining the problem and only 5 minutes finding the solution. However, our culture is so enamored with solutions that spending the adequate time to clearly understand the problem has become a lost art. By combining over 20 years of experience in Accounting, Finance, Project Management, and Lean in a variety of company environments (small, medium, and large corporations) I've been able to develop a unique approach that utilizes some of the most powerful methodologies available. The first lays the foundation. This is a disciplined problem solving process that was spawned from the Toyota Production System. This foundation is critical, because without it we tend to skip some of the most powerful steps with other methodologies. Once this foundation is laid, we can turn our attention to the strategic problem with the targeted milestone of identifying the systemic root cause of the problem. To accomplish this we'll utilize one of the most powerful change management methodologies being employed today. This is based on ADKAR thinking. ADKAR (Awareness, Desire, Knowledge, Ability, and Reinforcement) wa