Unleash your creative potential: a guide to smarter idea generation
When it comes to solving business problems, do you ever feel like your organisation settles for the least terrible idea?
Almost as though, in the absence of anything more visionary, practical or cost-effective, you choose the idea that seems like it could get the job done?
That maybe, in the rush to keep moving forward, it’s better to take any action than step back and consider alternatives that might be more effective?
It may sound familiar, but it doesn’t have to be this way. There’s another way to approach problem-solving and idea generation that leads to more creative ideas, better outcomes and improved staff buy-in.
And best of all, you don’t need to be a creative genius or have an army of external consultants to make it happen.
What’s wrong with ‘typical’ problem-solving approaches?
Many organisations approach problem-solving like this:
Identify a problem.
Decide how to solve it.
While this approach makes sense, it’s also incomplete. Jumping straight from the research stage (what’s the problem) to the concept stage (solving the problem) doesn’t leave room for idea generation. And that makes it almost impossible to develop solutions with input from all parts of the business.
Why is this a concern?
Firstly, everyone should have the opportunity to provide feedback on changes that affect their work. It doesn’t make sense to design solutions in isolation, or to exclude those with specialist knowledge about the systems or processes those solutions affect.
Secondly, as the ‘Great Resignation’ turns into the ‘Great Retention’, keeping talented staff continues to challenge organisations across industries. Key methods for boosting staff retention include giving people a purpose, working towards measurable goals, and seeking input on things that are important to their work.
Testing ideas and bringing employees along on the journey may seem more expensive and time-consuming, but they’re cheaper and faster than consistently recruiting and training new hires.
Finally, if your organisation is spending a few million dollars on a project (or even a few thousand dollars), wouldn’t you rather be totally confident that your investment is sound?
It’s wise to test a bunch of ideas against a problem and understand which ones best serve the business before making a commitment.
A framework for smarter idea generation
This is the Design Council’s Double Diamond. It’s a framework for the design process that can also be applied to problem-solving and idea generation. The two diamonds “represent a process of exploring an issue more widely or deeply (divergent thinking) and then taking focused action (convergent thinking).”
In this framework, thinking diverges and converges twice – once to define the problem and again to come up with the solution. As you might have guessed, most organisations diverge and converge their thinking just once, finishing at the end of the first diamond.
To come up with the best ideas, diverging for a second time is critical. This typically involves a democratic design process where frontline staff, tech people, executives and even customers come up with ideas, rather than having a select few people in the business come up with an idea and deliver it.
Here’s what that might look like in real life:
1. Fostering an environment for creativity to thrive
At Arteri, we encourage our clients to approach problem solving in fresh ways, including exploring concepts through drawing, role play, storyboards. and pitching ideas.
As Sir Ken Robinson eloquently explains, you don’t need to be ‘special’ to be creative:
Creativity is putting your imagination to work. It is applied imagination. Innovation is putting new ideas into practice. There are various myths about creativity. One is that only special people are creative, another is that creativity is only about the arts, a third is that creativity cannot be taught, and a fourth is that it’s all to do with uninhibited “self-expression.”
None of these is true. Creativity draws from many powers that we all have by virtue of being human. Creativity is possible in all areas of human life, in science, the arts, mathematics, technology, cuisine, teaching, politics, business, you name it. And like many human capacities, our creative powers can be cultivated and refined. Doing that involves an increasing mastery of skills, knowledge, and ideas.
What do you need to be creative? You need an environment where people feel safe and supported to think differently.
Could your next great business idea come from something as child-like as making things out of paper or LEGO?
This might look like keeping the executive team out of the room, especially if they’re the types to inadvertently quash ideas. Or it might look like using unconventional approaches like LEGO or playdough or role-playing – anything that helps people get silly and think outside the box.
2. Ideation sessions
I facilitate ideation sessions with one specific purpose: helping people from across the business generate as many ideas as possible. It’s not unusual to come up with 250 ideas or more in one session.
Some are simple: what can we do now? What’s the low-hanging fruit that will get the business on track straight away? Others are more aspirational, impossible or impractical – but they’re all important.
3. Workshopping and testing ideas
At the end of the ideation session, we break ideas into themes such as incremental ideas, evolutionary ideas and far out ideas. I like to run a workshop for each theme and consolidate priorities. What’s realistic? What’s feasible? Which ideas align with the strategic roadmap and should be tested? How can we test these ideas?
Completing these steps takes an organisation to the end of the Double Diamond and ensures the concept they implement is truly the best fit for their needs.
How Arteri can help
I’ve written before about how having the right workshop facilitator can help you achieve better business transformation outcomes. Good facilitation is also essential for the ideation process.
At Arteri, we use design thinking to help organisations generate truly great ideas and creatively solve business problems. We use the Double Diamond framework to understand the issue, define the challenge, develop ideas through co-designing with a range of stakeholders, and test solutions before delivery. Our ideation sessions encourage diverse perspectives through cross-functional teamwork and expert guidance.
Want to know more? Contact us today.