Creative Problem Solving on Demand

?Is it a contradiction in terms to have a structure for creativity??Well, yes and no.?I certainly don’t think you can put an appointment in your diary for creativity. ‘Thursday, 2.30PM, Be Creative’.?But, I do think a structure, or at least a process, can support and channel creativity.

At university and at work we are often tasked with developing answers and solutions, and in many situations this can require thinking creatively and coming up with new solutions.?We might find ourselves in a situation where we don’t know where to start, and this is where a process can come in useful.?The creative problem solving model gives structure to our thinking.

I’ll walk you through the model and suggest tools or exercises that you could use for certain stages.??But?these tools are sometimes interchangeable and there are many more you could use, so experiment and develop an approach that works for you.

Define

I know this sounds obvious, but it’s critical that we solve the right problem.?Sometimes what seems to be the issue can change when we dig into it, and if we skip this stage we can end up addressing the symptom of a problem rather than the cause.?Use the ‘5 Why’s Technique’ to drill down.?It might be more or less than 5 but keep asking why this is a problem until there are no more why’s to ask.?This should get you to the heart of the issue you’re trying to solve.

Analyse

Once we have the real issue identified we need to analyse it and get into the details.?This puts us in a much better position to explore all the potential options (and even some novel new ones).?A good technique here could be a mind map as it lets us expand and explore an issue without constraints on our thinking.?Yes, there will be some blind alleys and some routes that lead no-where, but there might be others that drift, connect and lead us to new insights.

Develop

When we have a deep and detailed understanding of the issue, we can turn our attention to developing potential solutions.?Again we don’t want anything to constrain our thinking at this point so brainstorming (where there are no wrong answers or suggestions) can be a good way to create a raft of possible solutions.?That ridiculous idea that will never work might just spark another idea for something creative that will.

Decide (& Do)

Time to focus and select our solution (or at least the one we will try first).?Now we want to get analytical so something like an impact grid that plots ideas on two axis (Cost/Resources and Impact/Return) can be a useful way of both defining and justifying our decision.?And of course, once we have decided what we’re going to do, we then need to do it!?Again, I know it sounds obvious, but you’d be surprised…?

Evaluate

And once we’ve implemented our solution we need to evaluate it.?It would be great to think we will get it right first time (and I’m sure you do 90% of the time) but everything is about learning.?It might be that your solution is perfect, or there might be some tweaks that can improve it, or it might work now but not in the future, or it might be a disaster.?As long as we capture the learning then we can’t fail, we just feed that learning into the cycle and go round again.

Written by Dave Jarrold, Skills Development Consultant.