Why Communication and Idea Generation are Best Buddies

1. What is the Question?

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Hidden Solutions starts with finding an issue, a question, a problem or a challenge – we call these opportunities. Clients know their business best and we gather up the participants’ thoughts on potential opportunities that could be tackled. We want a simple and concise statement of what we want to achieve, we call this an Opportunity Statement.

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In our experience, teams often do any given task or project very well, but was it the right project to do? So, what really is the question? Are we dealing with the problem or a symptom of it?  To get to the root of the opportunity, we explore, challenge and clarify so that we have a transparent opportunity; free of solution, constraint, assumption and bias. Taking these in turn:

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If the opportunity contains a solution, frankly, why generate ideas at all? That’s a ‘task’ – just go do it!

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A constraint is a boundary around the scope of an activity. Constraints can be real and beneficial, such as the practical constraints regarding the amount of time, resource or cost we have available. However, the down-side of setting constraints too early is that the pool of ideas created may be unnecessarily limited.

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Bias is an unconscious or conscious form of prejudice that colours our thinking and action. It is like looking through a filter that distorts what you see. Recognising and eliminating harmful bias improves the Opportunity Statement.

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Assumption is an energy-saving mechanism our brain employs when we accept something as true, without proof. We examine each opportunity and recognise, explore and eliminate assumption, without drama!

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The team select which opportunity to work on using criteria they create and then apply one or more voting techniques to make a group decision, so that we can move on to generating ideas.

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2. Freely Create Many Ideas

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The heart of idea generation is the step in which we Freely Create Many Ideas for the chosen opportunity. These sessions are high energy, fun and are set-up to suspend judgement and create ideas without the handbrake on.

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is natural to believe in our ideas and to judge our own and others’ ideas immediately. We co-create as a team an environment where these potential negative impacts are minimised.

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How do we do this?

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In our ideas sessions, you will see individuals writing ideas on sticky notes and pairs questioning, listening, recapping and clarifying those ideas. In teams we develop those ideas further and use light-hearted application of thinking tools to change perspective and find new ideas. The result – a large pool of ideas and a real sense of group ownership.

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Experience can be dangerous! Having a wealth of knowledge of prior solutions can colour judgement and limit our creativity for the future. Thinking tools help us break away from the usual way of thinking and see beyond the predictable solutions. We examine a range of simple, new perspectives to create further ideas. For example, ‘what would this idea be if we created the smallest or largest version of it?’. Our experience is very useful later, when we come to evaluating ideas.

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Freely Create Many Ideas is a divergent session where we create as much and as quickly as possible. Later, we evaluate ideas. The two require different mindsets and approaches. Putting constraints on idea generation is a pragmatic way to limit ideas to more viable ones, however we are looking to uncover solutions that are not yet known or are ‘hiding’ and we need to push further. Allowing stimuli such as ‘do this project on the moon’ could be a seed that when developed results in something more achievable and desirable giving the greatest pool of material to work with. When evaluation takes place, we re-enter the real world.

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3. Idea Evaluation

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In the Freely Create Many Ideas step we have been proliferating ideas i.e. ‘diverging’. In idea evaluation, we are narrowing down the choices i.e. ‘converging’ towards a set of ideas to take forward. When creating, we set no limits on the number of ideas In Freely Create Many Ideas we agree to suspend judgment and we work quickly, whereas in idea evaluation we bring our experience and judgment to bear in order to make choices between ideas and converge to those we wish to take forward.

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How do we do this?

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In a first step we quickly remove duplicates, sticky notes that are not ideas (sometimes a question or statement is sneaked in!) and we can now remove any stimuli ideas that are illegal or unethical. We have started converging.

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As our ideas are potentially quite different, we group ideas that are mostly easily judged against each other. Within groups we apply criteria, that are standards by which the ideas can be assessed. Criteria can be objective and measurable or they may be subjective. Decision-making is more straightforward when an idea can be objectively assessed against a criteria as yes or no. When criteria require subjective decision-making, anomalies can be smoothed out but never eliminated. We might do this by increasing the pool of judges and by applying different voting systems. Listening, recapping and questioning skills developed throughout the programme truly enhance the quality of idea evaluation.

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Throughout idea evaluation, one may note gaps appearing in the results. Similarly, a group may have too few ideas for converging. Hidden Solutions encourages continuous application of idea generation, so one could set new opportunities for either of these situations and run the process to Freely Create Many Ideas to increase the pool.

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In idea evaluation we benefit from different perspectives and experiences. When there are many ideas to consider, a considerable investment in time is required to fairly evaluate everything. However, by sharing the workload around a group of participants, we can make progress and increase the cross-functional collaboration.

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The final number of ideas we aim for depends on the client and their wishes One approach is for the Hidden Solutions team to converge from hundreds of ideas, to tens of ideas and then present those to a wider group to promote discussion, share experience, check and challenge and thus evaluate further. This approach reinforces the culture of collaboration and continuously striving for better and better results.

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Co-facilitation

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Hidden Solutions is a bespoke programme, designed to meet the client’s needs and delivered by Jon Ben, of ConvergePD Limited, a product specialist, and Nick Simmonds of Conscious Communication a human communication specialist. We co-deliver our hands-on workshop to groups typically sized from six to 12 people, where we share and practice the process and tools in a very active way. Co-delivering brings our different and complementary skills to bear and allows us to demonstrate some of the tools together. We share and alternate the roles of facilitator to maximise the support given to the participants.

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Wrap up

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To summarise, when we take the most efficient idea generation process and combine it with creating the most effective culture - of support, collaboration and creativity - it brings out the potential of each individual and the entire group.

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The organisation benefits both from the ideas generated and from the culture change.