Intelligence - Factual problem solving

Factual problems have facts, data, and information such as:

• writing and reading memos or reports;
• constructing or analyzing a set of financial statements;
• understanding the legal requirements for a regulated business;
• writing a proposal for a new product line;
• evaluating the creditworthiness of a corporation

To deal with factual problem, we need to:

• understand the meaning of facts;
• see the implications of facts, the patterns and relationships;
• reason to conclusions from a set of facts with deeper thinking and develop reasoned arguments (discerning the cause and effect, address the pros and cons, generalizing from specifics and using specifics to support generalization);
• communicate facts and their implications (organizing facts and ideas in an orderly way, use word precisely, maintaining clarity and directness, presenting reasoned arguments, summarizing details and conclusions concisely, hearing the message from the audience view)

The hallmarks of high-performance factual problem-solving include:

• perceiving facts clearly (focus on finding, absorbing and cocmprehending facts without distortion from emotion or preconception)
• thinking deeply and broadly and in terms of relationships and patterns
• reasoning soundly, sometimes by applying a framework
• communicating clearly, directly, and concisely