{"id":1082,"date":"2014-08-12T10:00:24","date_gmt":"2014-08-12T08:00:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hatrabbits.com\/?p=1082"},"modified":"2019-10-22T15:19:25","modified_gmt":"2019-10-22T13:19:25","slug":"the-worst-solution","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hatrabbits.com\/en\/the-worst-solution\/","title":{"rendered":"The Worst Solution"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you want to come up with creative ideas, you have to be willing to think outside your comfort zone. You can find original and useful ideas everywhere. But\u2026usually they are easier to find in uncharted territory.<\/em><\/p>\n

Imagine you\u2019re a manager in a big organization. The entire company, including your department, has just moved to a new office building. Simultaneous with the relocation \u2018Alternative Workplace Strategies\u2019 have been introduced: a policy to stimulate new collaborations and reduce office costs. Consequently, nobody has a fixed desk. Everyone can work anytime, anywhere. Your employees love the changes, but express one big concern: the noise.<\/p>\n

People are walking in and out. Employees from other departments are getting their coffee nearby, talking loudly on their phones. Animated gossip, laughter and the tapping of high heels on the adjacent stairs are dominating the space. The well-intentioned policy is making it impossible for your team to stay focused, which has terrible consequences for the overall performance: a lack of concentration and a decrease in productivity.<\/p>\n

Of course, the architecture of the building cannot be changed easily. Neither can the senior management\u2019s decision to make use of flexible workers be revoked. You will have to come up with a creative solution to resolve the situation.<\/p>\n

Creativity is the ability to notice different things and to think differently. One way to challenge yourself to think in another direction, is to use a simple thinking technique called \u2018The Worst Solution\u2019. As the name suggests, the method is all about finding ideas that will worsen the situation completely. It\u2019s a fun thing to do and it helps to map out different starting points, that can be used later on for idea generation.<\/p>\n

Come up with bad solutions<\/strong>
\nAsk the simple question: How can we make this situation worse?<\/p>\n

People will come up with all kinds of ideas to aggravate the problem. Such as:<\/p>\n

– We set up an alarm that will go off whenever someone makes noise
\n– We set up our offices even closer to the coffee corner
\n– We oblige everyone to wear tap dance shoes
\n– We set up amplifiers so we can hear everything clearly
\n– We remove the walls so the sound waves cannot bounce away<\/p>\n

There are always a lot of ways to worsen a situation. That\u2019s why this tool is easy to work with for everybody. As you can imagine the ideas themselves are not very useful, unless we do something with them. To make the ideas usable we can do the following.<\/p>\n

The first thing to do is easy: reverse the idea. We look at the idea and we do the total opposite.<\/p>\n

\u2028\u2028Example <\/strong>
\n\u201cWe set up amplifiers so we can hear everything clearly\u201d will become \u201cWe place dampers for noise abatement\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe set up our offices closer to the coffee corner\u201d will become \u201cWe move the coffee corner further away from our desks\u201d.<\/p>\n

It works immediately. But of course not every idea is suitable for direct reversing. Sometimes you need a little more thinking to make an idea useful. By looking at the goal behind the idea you\u2019re able to liberate a concept. This concept can be used to generate useful ideas.<\/p>\n

Example<\/strong>
\n\u201cWe set up an alarm that will go off when people make noises\u201d.<\/p>\n

If we would flip this idea it still would not make any sense. However the concept behind this idea is crystal clear. Alerting people about their own noise. You don\u2019t even need to reverse this concept to make use of it. You could for example place a simple device next to the coffee corner that visualizes the nearby sound activity. This way, rowdy employees are subtly reminded of their volume.<\/p>\n

If you use the Worst Solution technique, challenge participants to come up with extreme ideas. Ask for provocative ideas. You are looking for ideas that captures people\u2019s imagination.<\/p>\n

The hunt for the Worst Solution is a cool way to kickstart a brainstorm. It\u2019s a good warm up tool and helps to get the creative juices flowing. It\u2019s fun, will make people laugh and sets a nice atmosphere. Because you ask participants to come up with bad ideas, it takes the pressure off. They won\u2019t be stressed out about finding that one good idea.<\/p>\n

The Worst Solution is a lovely way to find original ideas. The big advantage of this technique is that you can easily map out different focus areas. It leads you right to perspectives you wouldn\u2019t have discovered otherwise.<\/p>\n

Have you ever tried this technique, or something similar in your brainstorm? And did it work for your challenge? Please let me know in the comment box below.<\/span><\/p>\n

Was this article helpful?
\n<\/strong>If you enjoyed reading this article, feel free to share it with your network by hitting one of the\u00a0buttons below. This way other people can benefit from the article as well.<\/em><\/p>\n

Photo \u00a9 Murilo Cardoso<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you want to come up with creative ideas, you have to be willing to think outside your comfort zone. You can find original and useful ideas everywhere. But\u2026 usually they are easier to find in uncharted territory.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1120,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"mc4wp_mailchimp_campaign":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[315,1],"tags":[230,231,229],"class_list":["post-1082","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-problem-solving","category-thinking-techniques","tag-bad-ideas","tag-noise","tag-worst-solution"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Worst Solution - HatRabbits<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/hatrabbits.com\/en\/the-worst-solution\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"The Worst Solution - HatRabbits\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"If you want to come up with creative ideas, you have to be willing to think outside your comfort zone. 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