Problem or Opportunity? No Round Pegs in Square Holes for Creative Thinkers!
Problem = something difficult to deal with or solve; question or puzzle set for solution
Opportunity = favourable time or condition; good chance
What are your problems?
As soon as you start thinking about the exact nature of your problems you’ll recognise that they come in two rather different shapes. In the first instance, you will tend to see problems occurring when the unexpected shows up, e.g. when something you haven’t predicted means that the project you are running will take longer than you have anticipated. In the second instance, you will identify problems when you aren’t where you want or expect to be. So, for example, your company may have been rather slow in coming up with a web solution for its range of products. The problem is seen as you needing to raise your game and get a first class web solution in place in order to remain competitive.
Change your mindset
In addition to how you see problems occurring, however, it’s also worth noting that many of the problems you are grappling with won’t have a correct solution. In fact, one useful mindset to have with problems is to consider that they may help you redefine your perspective and enable you to see other ways in which to proceed. And it is with this perspective that we, at Illumine, suggest that your problems can often be opportunities in disguise.
At Illumine we rather like working with problems and helping people to tackle them. As a result, we have developed various training approaches which enable people to leverage their thinking and address seemingly intractable problems. These approaches include the Edward de Bono Six Thinking Hats® model, his Lateral Thinking workshops and Direct Attention Thinking Tools (DATT) courses.
Using your mind
More than this, however, we also recognise the direct link between creative thinking and problem solving. For example, Mind Mapping is often seen to be most applicable in business as an alternative to note taking or as an effective planning tool but, just consider for a moment how Mind Mapping might also aid creative thinking and, in so doing, help you to solve your problems.
Mind Maps® utilise all the skills commonly associated with creativity including imagination, association of ideas and whole brain thinking, and they can help practitioners see ten connections where normally they might only see one. They can also help users to break out of their habitual linear thinking patterns and allow people to shift their perceptual position. In all these respects, Mind Maps help people to explore alternative possibilities around given problems. Why not take a look at our example Mind Map - it details all the possible elements to consider when exploring or attacking problems.
Mind Mapping can, of course, also be used in teams to aid the creative thinking process and this leads me onto another key aspect of the problem solving process - facilitation.
Learn more about mind mapping training courses here.
Reaching consensus in your decisions
We all know that in business the problem solving process is sometimes very ineffective and that sometimes the decisions made don’t make much sense to those who are asked to carry them out. So how do we address this issue? One answer is through a specific form of facilitation called RapidConsensus® which:
- Draws on the resources of all members of the team
- Engages people in teams to tackle problems
- Provides them with the mental state that makes them feel they own the decisions taken
- Empowers them to take positive action based on those decisions in order to accelerate projects.
The actual stages of the RapidConsensus® process are straightforward enough. The facilitator involved helps people to understand the issue at hand by winding back to the beginning. People who want to hurry through the problem-solving process and get straight into action miss the whole point - namely, that for a good team decision you need to engage the whole group and mine their collective intelligence. Following that, the facilitator gets the whole team to consider what their options are and to identify what actions they need to take to get there.
So where’s the magic?
The truth is that a group left to its own devices will tend to work on less than 50% of the information and knowledge available. So the inescapable conclusion here is that the best thinking comes when everyone has an input. More than this, however, it’s important to understand that people own what they help to create. In other words, people need to feel engaged in solving the problem at hand and enthusiastic about any outcome agreed before they commit to it. Managers who fail to engage people or who impose their own solution on a team will inevitably fail to engage their people’s energy or motivation.
So when you are next confronted by a tricky problem remember you have options. Get creative, use the latest problem-solving techniques and/or remember that ideas and solutions might be available in your team, if only you find out!
Mind Map® and Mind Maps® are trademarks of the Buzan Organisation.
MindManager® and Mindjet® are trademarks of Mindjet.
Tags: Creative problem solving, Creativity and Innovation, Decision making, Direct Attention Thinking Tools - Edward de Bono (Train, Facilitating Creativity Sessions, Facilitation Skills, Lateral Thinking™ (Training), Mind Mapping, Mind Mapping as a Creativity Tool, Problem-solving, Six Thinking Hats - Edward de Bono (Training)