Applying Creative Problem Solving to a Critical Business Problem

By Wayne Lewis

Originally appeared in the International Creativity Network Newsletter, volume 4, number 1, 1994, pages 1, 8-9.

Editor's Note: Wayne Lewis is an internal consultant in Bull Information Systems, Inc. (UK) who specializes in organizational interventions to improve business performance. This contribution describes a recent practical application of an intervention he facilitated.

I was recently asked to facilitate a two-day workshop for one of the newly formed divisions within my company. The division had recently restructured, and the team, consisting of new members and a new manager, was only about a month old. The ten person team and its manager, who was my client, were not specifically trained in Creative Problem Solving (CPS). The team was cross-functional, with representatives from sales, marketing and product delivery organizations.

The focus of the two-day event was to identify how to fill a multi-million pound revenue gap in the business and start the year in style. The venue for the event was a company location away from the normal divisional base. The team faced several challenges: (a) very aggressive revenue targets, well beyond their current forecasts of available business; (b) dramatically reduced cost base; and (c) almost no promotional budget. The goals were to over-achieve revenue numbers for the year, reduce costs and re-motivate an already "change fatigued" staff - all in two-days.

Task appraisal (Isaksen, Dorval, & Treffinger, 1994) with the client occurred the night before the event. I decided not to structure the event too heavily and to rely instead upon the descriptive use of CPS that would allow me to twist and turn as the needs and outcomes of the sessions dictated. The only structure that I put in place was for the first five hours during the morning of the first day. Because the success of this workshop was vitally important for the client, he was, to say the least, uneasy about this.

My company is full of innovators. The team and my client were keen to start brainstorming ideas quickly and not so keen on listening to a facilitator suggest something new. However, over the last year in over 70 CPS application sessions, I have proved to myself that innovative facilitators (me) prefer divergent tools and that this bias has introduced a lower degree of usefulness into some outcomes. I was convinced that this was one of those times when convergent technology was needed first. My experience told me that ideas generated first caused criteria to be developed that would allow personally favored ideas to be accepted later. With this in mind, I approached the planning task and negotiated with my client to end the second day with a host of new ideas, some of which would be detailed enough to be actioned the day after the event.

Day 1

One of the sub-agendas for the session was team development of a better sense of business qualification. The process agenda was thus directed toward creating a qualification tool for the team by the end of the morning session. This tool would be used for evaluating ideas that would be presented by the sub- teams for filling the revenue gap. Consequently, development of the qualification tool needed everyone's input so that ownership would be present when we broke into sub-groups later for idea generation.

I warmed the team up by asking them to imagine that another group within the division had already generated a huge number of ideas - some good, some crazy ó for extra revenue. I created an image with the team that the business belonged to them and that they had sunk all their personal cash into it. The team then brainstormed the criteria for accepting the new product, market and cost cutting ideas for about 30 minutes. We used a variation of the highlighting technique in which the facilitator takes a more proactive role to speed up the convergent selection process of the group. The clusters of ideas were then paraphrased and "sanity-checked" with the client. At this point we had nine criteria for new idea appraisal.

The team was happy that the nine criteria felt "right. " The criteria were checked for overlap and level to make sure they were parallel in abstraction and distinct from each other. The criteria were placed into a Paired Comparison Analysis grid and the team individually ranked them. The results of this exercise were placed in a matrix on a flip chart, with each person's weighting showing against the nine criteria. Total responses were tallied by adding up the accumulated points for each criteria. For fun we developed a "passion" index for each person showing how many points each person had given in total.

The team then discussed the major variances in how they had ranked their criteria and resolved all major differences and issues. They agreed to abide by the total weighting and to use it as the "team weighting" for selecting each criteria. These criteria were then placed in an evaluation matrix awaiting the ideas to be generated later. We tested the tool with a number of new ideas that were felt to be good, and it performed perfectly, ranking them in order. The team was now convinced that the tool would work.

By lunchtime, team members were ecstatic. The could not believe that they had created a qualification tool to appraise new business opportunities that made sense, that they all agreed with and that the task had only taken four hours. Several members mentioned that it would have taken at least ten management meetings to achieve a similar tool and noted that the pain would have been unbearable.

After discussions with the client, we broke the team into two sub-groups and ran brainstorming sessions to generate new ideas for revenue growth. Each sub-group had a facilitator and process buddy. The teams spent approximately 40% of the afternoon on divergence and the remaining time clustering the ideas and passing them through the evaluation matrix. At 5:00 PM each group gave a presentation of its work showing which ideas had worked well in the exercise. In total, the groups developed eight potential new business ideas that passed the qualification tool with flying colors. To end the day on a high, the teams selected two ideas that they would like to take to more detailed action planning work the next day.

Day 2

In the morning, one of the sub-groups worked on its two selected ideas, we used the traditional CPS strengthening and selecting tools (ALU, Assistors and Resistors, Ladder of Abstraction) to develop a set of action plans for the two solutions. Each plan was detailed, showed clear ownership and timing and was resourced at a headcount and cost level. In each case, a project plan was created showing critical paths, inter-project dependencies and critical success factors.

The second sub-group took a different route. One of their solutions was to distribute other companies' products and services and to take a margin on the sale with the source company to deliver. Whilst this concept is common in some industries, it was unusual in this area and therefore very novel. The team was excited with the idea and wanted to quickly identify which products and companies they should focus on for action planning during the remainder of the day.

As the facilitator, I was concerned about the effects of an early content focus before they had clearly examined the necessary process contingencies. I explained the benefit of using the available time to determine how they would go about doing this in the future, rather than focusing energy on doing it there by using the analogy of a sausage factory: We could either make sausages now, or we could design and plan how a sausage factory might look and develop a plan to create it. This would allow them to make sausages and select products and companies to do business with at a later stage. The discussion on the merits of this approach took some time, but on the basis that they would be producing "transportable technology" again, just as they had in developing the qualification tool the previous morning, they agreed.

Use of imaging techniques helped me clarify the point for them. I asked them to image what a successful company doing business in this way might look like and they then brainstormed the constituent parts of such a business. By highlighting the component parts of the business, the team generated a map of all the necessary pieces and processes of a successful product dealership. At this point, pleased with their progress, the team decided to generate a qualification tool for supplier and product selection. They did this by the identical method they had used the previous morning. At this stage, they had the components of a new business. By use of gap analysis, we identified the key differences between what they had now in terms of business processes, resources and structure, and what they needed to have. Each gap led to an element of a project plan which they built carefully over the next two hours. The content outcome was a complete project plan, showing resources, people, process improvements and likely business results.

The net result of going through this experience was "a plan to build a sausage factory. " They were now convinced of the merits of looking at process and much more clear on the difference between content and process.

At the end of the day, the two groups came together to present their results - each very different ó but of enormous value to the team. They were so pleased with their results that they decided to spend a little more time on creating a communications plan to tell their colleagues and staff about new proposals and plans.

Outcomes of the Two-Day Event

This was a particularly successful CPS session. The key learnings that came out of it for me were enormous, and I know that the facilitation team learned at least as much as the team we were working with. Specific outcomes were:

• A qualification tool for new business opportunity appraisal;
• A project plan to process reengineer a part of the business;
• At least eight new revenue generating ideas, with low risk and high potential;
• Four detailed action plans for taking forward immediately;A communications plan;
• Over twenty further ideas to examine more closely and appraise at their leisure;
• One very tired, but satisfied and motivated team;
• One very happy and relieved client; and
• A team of exhausted facilitators.

Resolving critical business problems in an organization is never easy. The success of sessions like this, however, are encouraging. With hard work, skill, and practical tools, it can be done.

Contact information:Wayne LewisManager Organizational Development Bull Information Systems, Inc. Computer House, Godfrey WayHanworth Road, HounslowMiddlesex, TW4 5PX United Kingdom Phone: (011) 44 81 479 3459Fax: (011) 44 81 479 3206.