Explore your ingenuity

When we’re faced with a problem or challenge, things may not work the way we’d like them to. We can become frustrated about that; we might complain, wish it were perfect, give up or... we can explore our ingenuity.

Ingenuity is our very own Department of Clever. Ingenuity is when we’re resourceful, using what we have. It’s how we fix or juggle things and make them work.

It could be how we make things fit in a cupboard or shelf, or how we prop up a computer screen on books or boxes so the camera is level with our eyes.

Ingenuity could be how we’re cleverly using space at home, or how we throw a few ingredients together for a kind of meal we’ve never made before.

Some of the best, most practical solutions come about when we explore our own resources of clever. And even if you don’t think you’re clever all the time, your ingenuity is still there ... waiting to go to work the next time you challenge it.

Try the ‘explore’ option next time a struggle or challenge is upon you and see what your mind delivers up to you in order to solve it. Ingenuity is a different resource to creativity, and it’s part of how we learn, survive and adapt in the world.

Clever you!

Willing to stay with the problem

We can work with people who are so keen to leap to a solution, they’re not willing to stay with a problem for a little longer.

Why is that? Is it

- pressure to deliver?

- discomfort with the perceived negativity?

- drive to get it done?

- impatience to listen, learn or consider?

It’s so very powerful though, to feel the feels, to really get the empathy and experience of the problem and its consequences. We then give those people experiencing the problem acknowledgement and respect as we sit with the discomfort and inconvenience of the problem.

Try to allow it. For longer. To really explore it, understand it, tease it out or scope it out. Wider and deeper. Not for weeks and months, but at least some hours and days.

Your collective thinking about the solution will most certainly be better. Allowing more time to come up with more ideas and getting more heads, hearts and hands onto it. Don't brush it aside or move on too quickly. A better expression and experience of the problem will elicit a better solution and resolution to the problem.

Enlarge the problem space

I'm enjoying having a read through John Kuprenas' book 101 things I learned in Engineering School

It's a lovely hardcover edition and has plenty of great explanations of concepts applicable to normal life beyond engineering.

I'm no engineer, so I think there's something about how engineers, designers and architects think and problem solve that can be helpful to us, no matter the setting. 

One of John's 'things' is to 'Enlarge the problem space'. He says that "almost every problem is larger than it initially appears. Explore and enlarge it at the outset - not to make more work, but because the scope of the problem almost certainly will creep - it will grow larger - on its own. It's easier to reduce the problem space later in the process than to enlarge it after starting down a path toward an inadequate solution".


It's right in line with one of the creative and innovation tools I use in workshops which I call 'It's Bigger'.
I use the A4 visual I've shared with you this week to firstly write the issue, and then add in thoughts about what the bigger issue is, then the b-i-g-g-e-r issue ... and then the BIGGER issue.

From there you can come up with some totally new solutions.
The page is designed as a worksheet, great for thinking alone, in a group or mapping out some possibilities.

John Kuprenas say there is the problem, then the cause of the problem, then the cause of the cause of the problem and the cause of the cause of the cause... you get it! 

It's a process that let's you look at creativity, innovation and problem solving by making it bigger before you get your hands dirty.  And this is a tool I'll be using with a large retailer this week as we workshop some of their new ideas and initiatives. See, you don't need to build bridges or roads or machines to be an engineer!