Overcoming Inhibitions is the Key to Solving Difficult Problems

Imagine you were at a kids party and you were doing the entertainment, playing the fool and talking nonsense, it probably wouldn’t make you feel awkward.

Now imagine doing the same thing at work.  Feels a bit different doesn’t it?

Talking about stuff that doesn’t make sense is not easy for most people at work – because work is ‘more important’ than a kids party. You either don’t want to look silly in front of your boss, or you don’t want to look silly in front of your subordinates.  It’s probably worse for managers as they are the ones we look to for making sense. 

Creative problem solving sessions can be hampered because sometimes people have difficulty in engaging with a process that requires people to be fanciful.

Our education and upbringing condition our minds to disregard what we see as nonsense or irrelevant to the problem at hand, our minds inhibit irrelevant ideas.  Creative people are known to pay much more attention to ‘irrelevant’ ideas; they are ‘cognitively disinhibited’. 

Therefore to become more productive in creative problem solving, we need to overcome our inhibitions.  Fortunately, there are some exercises that we can do to help.  Storytelling is one example; each member of the group contributes a line to a story, without reference to the preceding line.  Another example, is to read a sentence out and get each member to finish it so that it does not make sense  (this is an exercise that has been used as a test for conditions such as Alzheimer’s, where people have difficulty inhibiting their normal cognitive processes).


When we can feel free to make outlandish suggestions and ask silly questions, we are able to break away from the limitations that logic imposes on our thinking.

Complexity

Finding solutions to difficult problems is not always about struggling to find a novel solution.  Sometimes the difficulty is a matter of complexity.  A problem might comprise of a large number of factors, each of which has a complex interaction with the other factors.  Complex problems may also be difficult to deal with because it may not be clear what the ideal solution looks like.  For example, social mobility is a burning political issue, but how do you measure it, what constitutes success?

The goal is to reveal the key relationship(s) that may be obscured by too many complex interactions. 

There is more than one approach to these problems.  Here is an example from a TED talk detailing the complex problems facing the NATO forces in Afganistan (its amazing what you can get into 3 minutes).  As Eric Berlow stresses, the idea is to see relationships that cause you to ask new questions.  From a highly detailed map of the factors, he extracts three basic principles.

Alternatively, there is an approach called Concept Mapping which was developed by  William M. Trochim.  This endeavours to discover underlying structures and relationships using a ‘qualitative’ statistical approach.   I showed that in Assumption Mapping, the idea was to place factors within a grid depending upon how they rated against defined key parameters.  Concept Mapping enables us to discover the key criteria amongst an array of confusing and complex factors.  Discovering these parameters enables us to simply the problem and gain new insights.

Problems come in all shapes and sizes, and ‘qualitative’ problems are amongst the most intractable.  These are useful tools that can help cut through the confusion and provide clarity and enlightenment.

The Awkward Squad

One of the things that fascinates me about creative problem solving, is its contrary nature. 

For example, over the years I have run countless meetings and I rather pride myself in being quite good at keeping the meeting moving along, sticking to the agenda and getting input from all concerned.  One of the things that I think I am particularly good at, is not letting people wander off the point.  Every now and then someone will have bee in their bonnet about something and want to make a point that is not relevant.  I wish I had a pound for every time I said “we digress”, or “can we deal with that in ‘any other business’” -  I’m sure we all know people who have a bit of a reputation for wandering all over the place. 

This control works well for ‘process driven problems’ which are encountered at most meetings.  But when you need a creative solution to a problem, this is what you DON’T want.  A tight logical process is not helpful.   You want ideas that are not obviously relevant, because they might spark a better idea in someone else.

So, if you need a creative solution to a problem, invite all those people who find it impossible to stick to the point, disrupting peoples thought processes and not sticking to the point is exactly what you want. 

Powerpoint Poisoning- Killing Creativity

I read an interesting article* about ‘what kills meetings’ – why meetings became unproductive and boring.   One of the symptoms was ‘lack of engagement’; people either took no part, or became hostile to the process.

It turned out that the main factor was the use of Powerpoint presentations.  This is because they imposed too much structure.  They provided a ‘fait accomplis’, in which people were either not required to participate, or had not been given a chance to contribute.  The people were either indifferent or energised for the wrong reasons.

This is not dissimilar to what can happen when people are supposed to be creative, they don’t want to sound foolish – they are used to coming up with sensible, logical ideas, not ridiculous ones and they dismiss the process and do not engage.

What particularly interested me was that one of the ways for overcoming this was the use of questions.  Questions energise.  People cannot resist reacting to a question (it is the reason why quiz shows have been so popular since the beginning of television).  When somebody asks a question in a meeting, people are being asked to contribute – it engages people and the meeting becomes more interactive.

Think about it, in a presentation, all you are required to do is listen, you want people to think and the best way to make people think is to question.

 But, as the article notes, this can be a source of uncertainty – you never quite know where it will take you.

Powerpoint presentations are great if you want to explain something, but should play no part in complex problem solving.  If you have a problem to solve, then one of the ground rules should be
- no Powerpoint presentations.

http://blogs.hbr.org/bregman/2011/04/the-1-killer-of-meetings-and-w.html

The Parent's Dilemma - Intractable Problems

Difficult problems do not always require a creative solution.  Some problems are seemingly intractable and all the solutions on offer are undesirable.

The parent’s dilemma can be described as follows.

Their child wants something that may not be in their best interest, what does the parent do?

a.    Give them what they want, knowing that it could be harmful in the long term,
b.    Deny the child’s request, knowing they will be upset and unhappy.

This is a classic situation that many parents will be familiar with, and typifies many problems -  how to choose between two unacceptable solutions.  (I recognise that some parents will have no problem resolving this problem either way, but hopefully we can see the principle).

Rene Descartes advised that when dealing with problems, ‘to examine every part of the problem in the smallest detail’.  If we apply this dictum to this problem, we find that each option combines three factors, an emotional outcome, an act and an immediate link between them.  The key to dealing with the problem is to separate the link between the two. 

For example, we could link an undesirable factor with a counterbalancing factor.  So, we could grant the child’s wish on condition that it is dependant on something that is in the child’s interest.  This will probably generate a few moans, but no outrage and the good deed will offset the harm - and assuage the parent’s guilt.

This may sound like a flippant example, but the principle is sound.  By examining every element of the problem and breaking the assumed link between factors, it is possible to bring about an acceptable solution to a difficult problem.

Questioning Assumptions

The singlemost important device for solving problems is,
- the question.

When Edwin Land's daughter was a small child, she wasn't highly educated and she wasn't especially clever.  However, she once asked her father why they had to wait for photographs to be developed.  Edwin Land was a scientist and started thinking about the problem.  As a consequence, the Polaroid camera was developed.

It would have been very easy to take for granted the fact that you had to wait for photographs to be developed, as it had always be so.  But because she knew nothing about the process, she was not inhibited by her experience (so much for received wisdom).

The questions we ask need not be complex, technical or brilliant.  If the daughter had qualified the question by asking if it was possible to get the photos 2-3 days quicker, a better process may have been developed, but it is unlikely that a revolutionary one would have resulted. 

It is the simple questions that provoke the richest ideas because they do not constrain our thinking and they test our fundamental assumptions.

Questions enable us first to identify our assumptions, and then to ask why they are so.

Solving a difficult problem is not a matter of 'scientific breakthrough' but of questioning your assumptions and breaking away from habitual thinking. When faced with a particularly difficult problem, we need to be bold with our questions. 

Your goal is to find a gap, an inconsistency, an exception, a condition whereby your assumptions do not hold.   This provides you with a new perspective and a path a solution.

There is a hierarchy of questioning that will challenge your assumptions

1. Find out what assumptions you are making
2. Ask if they are true
3. Doubt that they are true
4. Deny that they are true

Mapping as a Tool for Solving Problems

Who was the greatest medical doctor?   Hippocrates?  Pasteur?  In 2003 a poll named Dr John Snow as the greatest doctor ever.

Who?

In 1854, an outbreak of cholera had claimed 500 lives in London.  This was before the  germ theory of epidemic diseases and the prevailing theory was of ‘miasma’ or ‘bad air’.  Snow believed the cause of a local outbreak was related to the water supply.   In a ground-breaking study, he used a map to show how the deaths were clustered about a street water-pump.  This convinced the authorities to remove the pump handle and the outbreak was contained.

Snow used a map to create a new understanding.  There was nothing new in the data he had, but by mapping it using geographical co-ordinates, he was able to gain a new insight into the problem.

Maps enable you to take a new view of your information.  By using different map axes, you can display the data in different ways.  They display the relationships between the data. Any clusters in the data, begs the question ‘why are they clustered’.   Similarly, gaps in the data beg different questions. 

There are two main considerations in the use of mapping

1. What axes to use. 
2. What questions to ask.

In my blog about Assumption mapping, the axes used are ‘strength of belief’ and ‘relative importance’.  This could show, for example, which assumptions are not strongly held, but important, which gives considerable scope for exploration.  Furthermore, if you were to colour-code the assumptions by stakeholder groups, you could see clusters of a different type.  You need new ways to think about the data.

The key is to create a map that reveals something new and significant.