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How to Develop Creative Problem-Solving Skills

"The Art of Innovative Thinking"

"Stop bringing me the same old thing. We need to be thinking differently to resolve this issue. All I hear are things we have already tried or something someone else did. Innovate - please innovative!!"

We are all faced with problems - challenges that we must resolve in order to move us forward to our goals. Even worse, our problems are becoming more complex and require more people to solve! And leaders want new answers - innovation is a new drug. Yet Canada scores a D+ only for our innovation (from the Conference Board of Canada) so we have some work to do.

A recent survey of executives reported that the average organizational problem now takes almost two years to solve - as compared to six months about ten years ago.

Decision-making and the ability to find strategic solutions to problems has become one of the top three leadership development needs in organizations. Senior executives highlight the need for organizational thinking and the ability to see beyond the tactical issues.

The question is how do managers and executives make better decisions. Is strategic thinking nature or nurture? How do leaders think better with more innovation?

The ability to resolve pivotal challenges with a strategic perspective requires creativity. The good news is that creativity is practical and can be developed and improved with practice.

Creative thinking is simply the ability to generate a novel idea or approach. It has often been confused with artistic skills or having imagination. For problem-solving, creativity is a practical skill that generates ideas following a process that can be learned and applied in any situation. Practical creativity is a management approach that targets innovation to specific problems or challenges.

Applying creative thinking to solving organizational challenges involves five steps: first and foremost, state the problem, then understand the different problem-solving approaches that could be used, followed by understanding the best creative pathway for the situation, generating ideas, and then evaluating the ideas for the optimal solution to the problem.

Every leader can find original and creative solutions to challenges - there is no single best creative approach to problem-solving. But ... leaders need to be open and move beyond current thinking as the process of creative thinking requires a change in approach. Creativity is not "managed" as it requires room and a free hand - something new to many leaders.

The real truth is that most leaders in management positions see creativity as "light-bulb moments" and aesthetic rather than productive. Managers maintain systems where creative thinking requires leaders to challenge existing thinking and look at problems and situations with different lens and from varying perspectives. Managers often do not believe they have the time to indulge in such un-constructed processes. So, managers continue using existing thinking to make decisions and end up with the same problems a few months later. The practical truth of creativity is that managers who can't spark creative thinking in others constrain the organization and dampen innovation and productivity. The end result from "management thinking" applied to problem-solving is a loss in competition as other forward-thinking organizations applying creativity to their challenges develop new and better ways of doing things. In Canada, we are sadly becoming a leadership society of "management thinkers" letting other organizational leaders innovate their way beyond us.

Yes, leaders in management roles are trained to minimize risk (very Canadian) and value predictability with the focus being to project the short term. And creativity can involve risk and unpredictable outcomes - which are essential to innovation and long-term organizational success. We live in a paradox. Senior organizational leaders want creative thinking in their managers but contradict their ability to foster innovation through practical creativity by focusing on the short-term. We need a new approach to supporting creative thinking in our leaders to innovate our way back to the top.

Embracing creativity provides time and room for reflecting, thinking, and discussing different ideas to solve a problem.

The creative thinking process starts with a simple and critical step - stating the problem. The language and style of the problem statement is vitally important as it sets the stage for generating ideas that will ultimately bring about a solution. The most effective way to state a problem is to do so plainly - without judgmental additions and implied solutions. Problems should be stated as open-ended questions that encourages many possible answers.

For example, we could state the problem as "We need to reduce manufacturing costs by 10%" which implies a cost-cutting solution or "How can we make manufacturing more profitable?" which opens up many avenues for problem-solving. Similarly, we could say our problem is to "Design a new service that we can implement in two years" or "How can we service our products differently in the next two years to improve sales?"

So, the key to stating the problem is to avoid closed statements that imply a specific solution with open questions that pave the way for unexpected perspectives and innovative solutions.

We have the problem statement and now we need to determine the best problem-solving approach to yield a solution. We are all different and certain approaches work best for certain people or situations. The right approach is a question of fit to the person and the situation. There are two general styles of problem-solving:

Incremental thinking where we choose to improve on an original situation while not changing the existing approach.
Breakaway thinking where we challenge the current approach, go outside of it without constraints, and not know what the end might look like.

A key point is that both styles work. We all can apply creative thinking and can use both styles and each style has advantages and disadvantages. Again, it is important to fit the style to the people involved and the specific situation.

In making the decision on the specific style to use for creative problem-solving, leaders can choose among four pathways for making decisions:

Direct ... the most incremental approach based on simply addressing the problem directly with "what else can we do?"
Supplementary ... a little less incremental where leaders look for different slants on the original or existing approach
Modification ... more breakaway in approach by involving a structural change in how things are done to get to a new solution
Tangential ... the most breakaway approach by going down any avenue and having little to do with the original approach

In selecting the creative pathway that best fits the decision-makers and the situation, the constraints also need to be identified - almost always dealing with time and money.

What can we afford to lose?
What can we afford to spend?
Who has to like or endorse the solution?
How bad are things now?
How good are things now?
How much time do we have to make a difference?

With the right creative pathway, the creative thinking can begin. Setting the environment for generating ideas and possible avenues to solutions can take many forms. Again, depending on the people involved different idea generating approaches can be considered to get to a solution. The key issue here is that you want to support the generation of as many ideas as possible so the environment needs to provide room for people to reflect and think first - and then debate.

Brainstorming is the primary route most leaders use to work together on problem-solving to creatively generate potential solutions. Brainwriting is another option. If the people involved are introverted or certain people can dominate the discussions, brainwriting is simply brainstorming on paper where each individual writes out as many potential ideas as possible for a solution and then the ideas can be discussed and assessed. Bringing in people in totally different areas can also provide creative perspectives. Using visuals - pictures - can stimulate tremendous creative thinking. The old saying that "a picture is worth a thousand words" holds true. If each person finds a picture that describes how they see the problem or how they see the perfect outcome, it can help others see ideas in the pictures and generate incredible thinking.

In creative thinking, the foundation revolves around the ability to brainstorm. Effective brainstorming needs the right environment to be most effective - leaders need to provide room where everyone involved suspends judgments initially on ideas (the word "no" or phrase "that won't work" need to be banished) and encourage freewheeling down avenues to see "what if" to generate the most number of ideas possible and the cross-fertilize or build on each other's ideas for even more possibilities.

With ideas generated, the last step in the process of creative thinking is to evaluate the ideas for merit in providing the solution. Setting criteria for a successful outcome or solution would be of the original problem statement and ideas would be screened, separated, and selected against these criteria.

Two quick ways to assess ideas against criteria is plotting the different possibilities against cost and usefulness or implementation and acceptability (or through both sets sequentially). In the first criteria assessment, you would plot potential solution ideas against the cost to create or implement against the usefulness of the idea to provide an effective solution - clearly those ideas that plot to the lower left corner offer the most potential.

Usefulness

A second, or further, option is to plot the potential ideas against two further criteria ... the difficulty to implement against the acceptability or attractiveness to the client.

acceptability

The table template can be used to evaluate ideas against any two criteria that are important to the solution for the organization. The key is to use the tables to evaluate and select ideas while removing as much personal bias and negativity as possible.

Creative decision-making is simply a process that can work for any organization or team with the right environmental supports. Creativity is not owned by the lone, quirky genius in a closed office through a "eureka" moment. Finding innovative solutions to challenging problems is simply working effectively with others to strategically assess avenues to resolve an issue by:

Stating the problem clearly with an open-ended question and being specific about what success would look like for the solution.
Decide on the style of creativity that fits the situation - are you building an incremental solution or throwing it to the wind for a breakaway innovation? Define the constraints that will direct the thinking here as well.
How will you generate ideas? From brainstorming to visuals, provide an environment where people can generate as many ideas as possible without judgment.
Sort the ideas for themes and fit and then evaluate the best solution against a fair set of criteria.
Eureka - you have a creative solution!

Creative problem-solving is deeply entrenched in what it means to be human. We all have ideas and enjoy thinking about possibilities. It is in our DNA. More than ever, businesses in Canada - and Atlantic Canada in particular - need to invest time to practice creative thinking. We need to innovate and find new ways to solve old problems that continue to plague us.

Bring practical creativity to your organization's problem-solving and find how innovative you and your team actually are. Make creativity a part of your leadership.

For further information on our creative thinking and decision-making modules through our customized leadership development programs, please contact us at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it (or 902-425-0467) and make a difference for your organization.