| What
would be a realistic but unusual answer to this 'lateral thinking'
problem?
Grandma is knitting but her three
year old granddaughter keeps playing with the wool. Father suggests
putting the child in the playpen. Mother comes up with a better
idea - what is it?
Some people suggest taking the child
out of the room or telling Grandma to stop knitting. Better than
that is to give the child a spare ball of wool. All these solutions
are acceptable - but a bit boring, a bit obvious. The point of the
exercise is not simply to solve the problem, but to solve it in
a realistic but unusual way. A better answer is then to put Grandma
in the playpen. Doing that would mean Grandma could carry of knitting
without interruption and the child can be in the room with everyone
but doesn't feel imprisoned. It works, it's simple, but something
odd is going on.
Grandmas don't belong in playpens
you cry! That's a convention yes, but not the law. There's nothing
to say we can't do it. The point of this problem and the solution
is that there are many answers to the problems in your life and
in your business. Most are obvious - they are the ones your competition
have already thought of. You cannot afford to be obvious.
So when you have a problem and you
need a solution don't be concerned with convention. Don't be concerned
with what's expected. Don't be concerned with what people will think.
Don't even be concerned with what's possible. If you put constraints
like these on your ideas or if you judge your ideas during th e
brainstorming phase you might was well give up and join the legion
of mediocrity because these things will prevent you from having
the best ideas at best, but will more than likely totally kill the
process at worst.
Working out what is actually possible
and allowed is done later, in the planning phase, not in the creative
ideas phase. Learn to play, to make new associations, swap things
around, wonder, be silly, experiment. These are the attributes that
will enable you to solve the problem with a unique solution and
to think of that elusive winning idea.
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