Fasten your seat belt - we’re preparing to brainstorm!
Fasten your seatbelt – we’re preparing to brainstorm!
(Pic by rawpixel.com on Freepik)
Safety First: Do this for successful brainstorming
Welcome to another post in this series that dives deeper into the Brainstorming Playbook.
There are several actions to take to make sure you’ll have a successful and psychologically safe brainstorming session, where everyone feels engaged and where unique and valuable solutions are produced. They are:
Identifying the correct problem
Planning the logistics of the session
Setting the scene
Since the first one is so important, this post will focus exclusively on identifying the correct problem. The next post in the Brainstorming Playbook series (two weeks from this one) will cover logistics and setting the scene. If you missed the previous post in this series, you can catch up here.
What’s more important than brainstorming?
While brainstorming is an important phase in the creative problem-solving process, it overshadows a critical stage—identifying the problem itself.
“The formulation of a problem is often more important than its solution”
Another way of putting it is that, the problem may not be the problem.
I’ve seen how, when brainstorming, people address the symptom rather than the cause. I’ve witnessed teams who were committed to solving problems creatively yet set about it in the wrong way, or whose good ideas failed because the problem they aimed to solve wasn’t fully understood.
When it comes to creative problem-solving, we’ve been cultured to leap into action and to celebrate the number and variety of ideas that emerge through brainstorming as the measure of creativity and innovation. Creative problem solving is as much about correctly identifying the problem as coming up with the ideas meant to solve that problem.
But correctly identifying the problem isn’t always easy because of the way our brains function.
Let me explain: Any deviation from what’s familiar triggers a survival response in the brain of either fight, flight, or freeze. This response is a natural defense mechanism to keep us safe and it’s a tendency we all have, particularly when we’re addressing a question or problem that causes uncertainty or stress. This survival response creates a roadblock when we try to engage in creative thinking because the brain’s natural fallback when it’s in survival mode is to approach problems the same way it always has. This habitual behavior reinforces existing neural pathways, which means you’re more likely to continue using the same approach to address problems over and over. When the brain thinks it’s looking at an issue it’s seen before, it thinks it already knows the solution. Wrong problem, wrong solution.
Without correctly identifying the problem, you may end up wasting a significant amount of time, money, and mental energy. Health care is a great example of the need to identify the problem correctly. I’m not a health care professional, but I do know it’s important to examine different factors that may contribute to the symptom – not just what’s going on in the body, but diet and lifestyle as well for instance.
Here’s another example…
In a previous life, I was a professional organizer, a Marie Kondo clone. People often told me their problem was that they couldn’t organize their papers, or that their problem was they didn’t know how to keep their home tidy. Through working with them, they came to realize that the problem wasn’t that they couldn’t organize their papers, the problem was that they didn’t know what their priority life or business goals were, so how could they possibly purge papers if they didn’t know what was important to keep and what wasn’t?! The problem wasn’t that they couldn’t keep their home tidy, the problem was that they didn’t focus on what they needed their home to do for them (be a sanctuary, get them out the door in time, be a fun learning zone for the kids).
One more story…
At a technical school that I worked with, the leadership team described their problem as poor student attendance – kids were bunking off school left and right. The staff had come down heavy with rules and penalties, and they put the responsibility on the students for changing their attitude. They felt bad about that, but they couldn’t figure out what else they could do. I quickly saw that they were perpetuating the myth that problems can be effectively addressed by throwing the same ideas at it that they always had. I helped the school’s leadership team see that the problem wasn’t kids bunking off of school, the problem was how to engage and support students in their academic journey. The result was that they shifted their mindset from that of students being responsible for their success, to the teachers and administration being responsible. The ideas they implemented led to higher grade point averages, a significant reduction in absenteeism, and in the order of a 20% increase in students graduating. Oh, did we celebrate when these results came in!
When you prioritize identifying the problem or opportunity rather than diving straight into seeking solutions, the results are often more effective, more meaningful, and are achieved more quickly.
I invite you to make a paradigm shift in your approach to problem-solving, where creative problem identification is adopted as the default first step, and becomes as instinctive as generating solutions.
What’s the problem?
The first thing to do when you want to solve a problem is to make sure you’re solving the right problem.
Here are some ways that you can creatively discover the right problem:
1. Try this! The Word Blitz
• Write down individual words or very short phrases associated with the problem. A team can do this on a whiteboard or virtual whiteboard all at once, or on post-it notes if you’re all in the same place. If you’re working on your own, you can use pen and paper, Post-It notes, or a Word document. Don’t stop to analyze - at this point you’re just getting thoughts out.
• Next, group words together and look for similarities or patterns. Which group looks like it’s highlighting the right problem?
2. Try this! Someone Else’s Shoes
Choose a person that you look up to – living or not, real or fictitious. Put yourself in their shoes – how would they see the problem?
3. Try this! The Five Whys
This technique was developed at Toyota in the 1930’s. It’s still used there today, and is part of the Six Sigma methodology. It can often direct you quickly to the root cause of a problem. The 5 Whys works well because your brain can’t resist trying to answer a question.
a. Clearly state the problem as you currently see it.
b. Ask "Why?" or “why is that a problem?” five times. Each time takes you a bit deeper until you either get to the heart of the issue or it reveals an incorrect assumption. Here’s an example of how I used the 5 Whys with one client’s team:
The Problem: We aren’t coming up with new ideas
Why is that a problem? That’s a problem because if we don’t have new ideas we keep doing the same old thing.
Why is that a problem? That’s a problem because it keeps us exactly where we are.
Why is that a problem? We’re not coming up with new products or services and, as a result, we’re losing customers to our competitors.
Why is that a problem? We won’t get those customers back with our existing catalogue and it’s not so easy to find new customers to replace them.
…Listen to what happens next…
Why is that a problem? It means that our existing catalogue is not as relevant as it used to be.
This is the heart the problem, and leads to the more accurate problem of “how to retain our existing customers through new products and services that are meaningful for them.” Now they have the right focus for their brainstorming.
The Problem Statement
Once you’ve identified the problem, the next step is to create a problem statement. Problems are phrased:
• Beginning with ‘How to…’
• And In the positive
For example, “How to help our students succeed”.
Display the problem statement prominently in the brainstorming session.
Till next time,
Ellia
I believe that, with the right support anyone can learn creative ways to solve problems. If you’d like to see what tapping into creative potential could look like at your place of work, contact me at Ellia@ThePotentialCenter.com to arrange a call.