Stay away from your problem to solve it!
decompose the problem to solve it!
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Today I attended a meeting of a small company that wanted to find a solution on how to find new clients. They were trying to have a brainstorming session on this question and (not much to my surprise) started struggling with it, becoming entangled in a very unstructured discussion. Soon they were so deep in the jungle of their problem that they were unable to find a way out.
What had happened? It is fairly simple: They had been staring the problem in the face without looking at it with more distance. This is a typical mistake when people try to generate ideas. But what is the solution. Simple, buit it needs a fair amount of training: Instead of trying to solve the question, first de-compose the question and work on subquestions.
For instance, if you are trying to find new clients, here are just a few examples of what you might want to look at:
- potential channels of communication
- different target audiences
- strengths in working with current clients
- totally whacky ideas on how to get meetings with potential clients
- ideas for mailings
- how are other companes finding new clients
- etc.
The difference is that you first look at subquestions to your greater problem, and that gives you the possibility to build great ideas using that raw material.
Another issue is who you involve in the generation of ideas, but this is yet another subject that we will need to discuss later.
There is an African saying: If you want to eat an Elephant, you have to cut it in small pieces. It’s the same with ideas, really.
