Solution Mapping II, The Purpose of Nonsense

I once took part in a brain storming session in which I felt particularly uncomfortable. On the one hand, I was an experienced manager, I was responsible for significant revenue, had a number of capable people reporting to me, and I was someone who was expected to deal with problems responsibly and effectively – and I felt I had something useful to contribute.

On the other hand, I was sitting there being expected to come up with wildly improbable solutions to problems and it didn’t really sit well with me as it just felt silly, and I didn’t engage with the process.

This does not seem to me to be an isolated example, I am sure that this happens to any number of participants in a similar position. However, this is a serious obstacle to finding creative solutions to problems. So how should we deal with it?

The problem is that ‘silly’ suggestions have no obvious practical purpose, they have no value.

However, if you use the ‘solution mapping matrix’, then even the most wildly improbable suggestions play a part – they acquire a value.

In Part I of this blog, I showed that you will not get ‘breakthrough’ solutions from possible/desirable ideas. These come from the impossible/undesirable segments, therefore, you need improbable ideas.

If each segment of your map is equally populated then the process is working well, if not, people may still be operating within their comfort zone and you need to stretch them further.

You can do this by asking for more impossible/undesirable solutions and give a purpose to nonsense ideas.