Discovering solutions together

What really happens in a Creative Problem Solving workshop

Hi Reader

Last week I ran a public Creative Problem Solving workshop, where twelve of us got to grips with creative problem solving, and tried it out.

Here's what we did, and what happened.

The Creative Problem Solving framework

The framework we follow is similar to the innovation double-diamond, or Problem / Solution space - where we start by immersing ourselves in the challenge, then generate informed ideas for solutions.

Creative problem solving is a shorter process, and shifts to an Idea / Experiment space, first reframing the challenge, then prototyping ideas.

At its heart, creative problem solving is about developing a flexible mindset where creative connections can be made. Each activity in the framework builds on the last, expanding our thinking about the challenge.

As one participant said,
“You don’t need to have bright ideas or thoughts from the get go”.

Discovering solutions together

When I run these workshops in an organisation, the teams already have a shared understanding of the challenge, and the different ways they’ve tried to solve it.

Their aim is to get past the limits of their current thinking, and find new ways to approach the challenge (spoiler alert: they always do).

In a public workshop, the focus is more on the process than solving a specific challenge. But to understand how it works, we have to try it out.

We selected a challenge that was familiar to everyone, but none of us had been directly involved in (used with permission from one of my coachees).

Without a common perspective on the challenge, how could our online group get to a fit-for-purpose solution?

Our challenge was a distributed team with different time zones and communication styles, who were experiencing a lot of confusion and rework. They had introduced many good practices but these had not shifted the overall experience.
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With creative problem solving, insights arrive differently in every workshop.
In this case, this case, the magic happened as we combined characteristics of the challenge with characteristics of another random word (waffle).

The collective ‘aha’ moment

Even online, we could feel the shift in the room as we all lent into a new perspective that felt intuitively right - Slow down to work through the confusion - with a variety of practical experiments to try.

By the end, we were all really engaged.
We’d laughed, we’d puzzled, we’d discovered each others’ perspectives.
And we’d learnt a ton.

The key insights from the group were that:

And the realisation that creative problem solving is a great route to ‘working smarter, not harder’ 💭💡

Do you have a stubborn problem you want to unblock?

If you'd like to try this out, let’s connect for a no-commitment conversation about applying creative problem solving to your challenges.

Wishing you playful creative breakthroughs!
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Cara Turner
Innovation & Agile Coach
M: +27 84 500 4425
​E: coach.caraturner@gmail.com | www.caraturner.com​
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