Proactive Problem Solving: How Everyone Can Fix Problems & Find Ideas for Working Smarter!

Create your own success at work, at home, and in life with a proven system that teaches you to embrace more optimism and proactivity.

Proactive Problem Solving: The three little words of business success. The need for this book became real to Doug Hall as he experienced the thrills and challenges of leading a fast-growing manufacturing company, the Brain Brew Bourbon Distillery. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic, Brain Brew grew from shipping a few thousand cases to shipping over 100,000 cases a year.

Doug invites you to improve your work, home, and life in all facets. Instead of accepting life’s frustrations as ＂just the way it is,＂ discover how to break free of the comfortable relationships you’ve developed with problems that keep you from attaining the reward of achieving your goals and dreams.

Proactive Problem Solving begins by paying attention in the moment, ever mindful and curious. It involves experimentation and experiences that connect you to your sensory awareness, your curiosity, and your inherent mission for meaningfulness.

Proactive Problem Solving unveils the system that will teach you and your team how to move your mindset from ＂reactive＂ to embracing a more optimistic and proactive way of life. Doug’s insights and methods are abundant and immediately actionable. Everyone wins when you put Proactive Problem Solving to work.

Doug Hall graduated with a degree in chemical engineering at the University of Maine. Doug’s work from a mechanical, electrical, and chemical perspective, plus his innovation experiences, landed him a job at Procter & Gamble, first as an engineer at their Mehoopany Paper Mill, then in brand management at the company headquarters on 6th Street in Cincinnati. Over 10 years he was promoted up through the ranks as Brand Manager, Associate Advertising Manager, and eventually as leader of the P&G Invention Team. Working together with Eric Schulz, a kindred spirit, they invented and shipped a record nine innovations for P&G brands in a 12-month period. His success wasn’t because they were smarter. Rather, it was because they focused on creating systems that enabled them to work faster and smarter.

After 10 years, Doug retired as an ＂employee＂ and founded what is known today as the Eureka! Ranch, an innovation consulting and training company. Multiple television appearances and several books later, he found himself wondering why some Eureka! Inventing sessions were more productive than others. Working with three statisticians, he embarked on two research projects.

The first study focused on the creation of ideas. It included surveys every 45 minutes as teams from Nike, Walt Disney, American Express, Procter & Gamble, Pepsi-Cola, and others came to Eureka! Ranch to invent big ideas. A team measured them before, during, and after each project. From this analysis they discovered how Stimulus, Diversity, and Driving Out Fear impacted project success.

The second study focused on what made ideas successful in the marketplace. Here he studied quantitative data on more than 20,000 ideas from the Eureka! Ranch archives and the database of AcuPOLL, a market research company Doug founded and eventually sold. From this analysis, he discovered how to quantify Meaningful Uniqueness as well as how to improve how ideas are communicated.

The studies were supplemented with real-world research on more than ＄20 billion in active improvement projects in our Innovation Engineering portal and a literature review of more than 2,000 academic articles. This research led to more books and articles. It also resulted in Doug receiving honorary doctorates from the University of Maine and the University of Prince Edward Island.

The research gave birth to a new field of academic study, management science, and business leadership known as Innovation Engineering. The core Innovation Engineering curriculum involves nine college courses of content and leads to associate degrees, graduate certificates, and Blue and Black Belt certifications by the Innovation Engineering Institute.

A few years ago, Doug started doing experiments on how wood interacts with whiskey. This work led to the creation of Brain Brew Custom Whiskey and WoodCraft Bourbon Blender franchising with co-founder Joe Girgash. Leading the whiskey business through rapid growth caused him to rethink the importance of Proactive Problem Solving. And thus, early one winter morning, the idea for this book was born. Doug’s goal is to use what he’s learned from more than 50 years of innovation to help everyone fix problems and find ideas for working smarter.