Tricks To Increase Innovative Thinking

I recently had a coaching role in two critical improvement events centered on changing long-standing practices. One had to do with the leadership structure that had served an organization well for many years but was no longer working and another a process with a similarly long and successful history that was becoming too costly and producing quality issues.

In both cases the teams had tried unsuccessfully prior to the events to come up with new and innovative ways to operate. In both cases some easy and effective ‘tricks’ helped them come up with breakthrough ideas.

Our brains work using patterns. These patterns can be a big help when we need to learn or understand things. As an example, understanding and recognizing patterns is a key to how we learn to talk. Those same patterns can become so rooted in our brains that new ways of achieving something can seem impossible.

There are a number of good techniques for helping to break the patterns. One of the easiest is setting up cues and priming the participant’s minds for innovation and creativity.

One way is priming the mind for something new. In both events I had the participants make a drawing representing the current state of what they were trying to improve. Draw it and own it completely. Then I had them describe their picture to the rest of the team. Once they had all shared the good, the bad and the ugly of the current state and their drawings representing the way things were, I asked them to consciously give it up by crumpling the paper and throwing it away. I had placed a wastebasket in the middle of the room where they could easily and visibly throw away the current state. Some hesitated at first while others energetically threw the current state in the trash. Eventually they all embraced the opportunity to start completely fresh.

Following that I asked the participants to remember a time when they had changed something in their lives that was very different from what they had done before. It could be a relationship, a job or the way they did oil painting. Whatever it was I asked them to remember all of those steps that made that change possible and recall how they accomplished the change and then imagine taking those same kinds of steps to create a new leadership structure (for the other team a new way to underwrite insurance policies).

By priming their minds with past success in driving change and by cueing them to give up the current state they were more open to change. In both cases the teams expressed a freedom to explore new ways of operating and a confidence based on past experience that they could come up with those innovations.

The next thing involved a visual aid, lab coats. Studies have shown increased creativity in people who are given lab coats to wear and told the lab coats are the kind worn by scientists, Nobel Prize winners and doctors. The studies showed a 23% increase in creativity in participants wearing the coats even when they were told it was a ‘trick’ to get them to feel more creative. The participants enjoyed the lab coats and would put them on whenever they need to be ‘creative’ throughout the event week.

Conversely studies have shown things like placing people in cubicles and closing them in, i.e. inside the box as opposed to outside, reduced creativity by similar amounts. Needless to say we didn’t place the teams in a closed cubicle.

Finally I asked each of them to think of a time when they were really creative or innovative. Embrace that time and feeling. Visualize what they did and how they felt. Again, this is priming their minds for attitudes and approaches to think differently.

Those weren't the only things we did of course. We utilized our A3 process, Lateral Thinking and some 3P steps. Leveraging priming and cueing innovation mindsets, telling the brain where to focus, increased the effectiveness of those tools.

Both teams had their doubts about success going into the events. In the end they came up with breakthrough ideas or strategies and credited, at least in part, the effects of the innovation mindset to that success. There are many opportunities to drive improvement beyond the usual tool kits of Lean, Six Sigma and Agile. Once in a while it is as simple as putting on a lab coat.

#lean #leanmanagement #continuousimprovement #innovation #marlowmethod #leanleadership