I’ve been taking Creativity and AI courses. The final project is to define a topic to research, gather inputs from people around you, immediate and extended community then apply the intervention and observe outcome, learning. I chose to work on ‘Creative problem solving’. We solve problem everyday and I’m interested in learning people’s different thinking and approaches. I asked 36 people across functions these questions…
How do you creatively solve problem and what has made it effective?
I received many good inputs; here are top 3 of my favorites:
Look at error, think what is the problem – solve 90% of the problem. If it doesn’t fix, I talk to someone else, often before the other person respond, I’ve found the solution ‘expose to somebody else solve the problem itself’. If it doesn’t, 2 minds is better than one as people think differently
=> I like the idea to get to the roots, talk it out, and leverage the difference of each other
Have empathy and capacity to listen to all stakeholders, transparency and discussion; you don’t always need to agree to be productive; Question assumptions and build environment of trust: constructive element of dissent
=> Interestingly, soft-skills play a critical role in addition to hard-skills. I also like the point of trust to be able to agree on disagreement while moving things forward
The biggest issue is that we are fully aware of most problems and the required solutions but struggle with implementation: dev bandwidth, cost of solution, attrition issues in team/transformation, etc…
=> This highlights the importance of execution besides the good strategy and intent
I shared the result with people who contributed. I hope it’s a good exercise to help people reflect, learn from each other’s different thinking and approaches, and experiment in his/ her life and work. Most importantly, be open-minded, trust each other, and work together to solve problem/ make things happen!