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Five Creative Problem-Solving Techniques Creative problem-solving requires more than giving lip service to "thinking outside of the box." Coming up with new ways to solve a particular challenge often demands that you come up with new ways to approach it that can spur your thinking and generate creative solutions. Try these techniques: Think without words Most people tend to use verbal skills to conceptualize ideas, but having to come up with the right words can sometimes limit your thinking. Instead, using materials can give you a better way to formulate an idea. Sketching – or even doodling – can promote this creative thinking. Don't worry about creating pictures that can be easily recognized – the sketch itself is less valuable than the process of creating it. It spurs your thinking and advances new ways to approach an issue. Other creative materials can include clay, play dough, putty, Lego® blocks, rod-and-ball magnets and the like. Borrow concepts from other areas Many great ideas come from observing how things work in totally unrelated areas – taking a bath led to understanding water displacement as a measurement tool; seeing a wasp nest spurred the concept that paper could be made of wood. The idea is to be open to applying concepts from other areas to solve the problem you are facing. One way to tap into this is to use analogies to explain concepts you're trying to develop or to communicate information on a subject the listener knows little about. This can encourage you to take a broader view of the issue and its possible solutions. Identify the root Getting to the root of a problem certainly is a cliché, but it can be a useful problem-solving technique. Often an issue arises from a wide range of interrelated factors, so it may be difficult to tell whether you're looking at "symptoms" rather than roots. The way to tell the difference? If you solve a symptom, it shifts the problem to a different form. If you solve the root problem, the symptoms go away. One way to tell the difference is to break a big problem down into smaller ones – by identifying similarities in these various components, the actual root may appear more clearly. Change perspective You may not be able to identify the solution to a challenge because you're looking at it from only one angle. New ideas can emerge when you force yourself to view it from a new perspective. One method used by creativity consultants and brainstormers is to come up with a list of unrelated jobs and ask how that person might view the same problem. This can help you to get past biases that may be blocking your thinking and open you up to creative new ideas. Trust your intuition In looking for ways to solve a problem, you often know more than you think you do, especially when the solution you've come up with is particularly complex. When these kinds of situations occur, it may be time to use your intuition. The clues to intuition are often subtle. For instance, when faced with a difficult choice between two options, you might want to flip a coin. But your reaction to those results ("hooray, it's heads!") signals how you actually feel. These gut-level reactions might not be the way to make all decisions, but it can help you assess options that don't always appear to be logical. |
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