Coming up with solutions is usually the most exciting and engaging part of any improvement activity.

As soon as an area for improvement is identified, everyone starts throwing their ideas in the ring. Releasing that creativity and giving it full reign gives everyone a buzz and is critical to innovative change.  However, like all steps in a structured approach, this creativity needs to be carefully harnessed, both to get the best out of the team and to identify the best way forward for stakeholders.

Here are our five top tips to get the right balance between unconstrained creativity and focused thinking!

Ensure that everyone understands that it doesn’t make sense to develop solutions until they fully understand what the problem is!

Taking the approach ‘Here’s the solution, now what is the problem’ runs the risk of introducing changes that make matters worse not better.  So, always kick off improvement sessions by sharing evidence of the problem, such as ‘voice of the customer’ or ‘voice of the process’.

Examples might be: ‘Look what our customers are saying – they like what we do, but feel we should reduce the time we take to do it’ or ‘Here are our quality results for last month – let’s see what’s causing the problem’. This helps set the context for ideas.

Recognise, but contain, ideas people may suggest during the problem diagnosis stage.

It is important that these early ideas are captured but you don’t want to go off at a tangent and start developing them before the problem is fully understood.  A good tactic is to ask people to make a private note of their thoughts (so they keep them to themselves) and tell them you will be coming back to them later. Alternatively, pop the thought on a different coloured post it note and keep it to one side for later.

Above all, ensure that people know their contribution is valued and then get everyone focused back on the investigation.

Carry out a robust root cause analysis to throw up the key areas to be tackled. Spending time exploring the reasons behind the problem ensures the team will have a sense of the potential scope and scale of improvement opportunities when the time comes for improvement ideas.

Be precise in defining the causes, for example: ‘people are unclear about their responsibilities’ is more likely to generate useful ideas than something vague like ‘poor staff’.

The clearer the causes, the more likely that the ideas will be relevant.

When you get to the point where ideas for changes are needed, use some structured tools.  This will both help generate lots of innovative thinking and also get everyone involved. Remember no idea is a bad idea – it just hasn’t been fully developed! Three favourite tools that work really well with groups are:

• Structured brainstorming – set the topic out on the top of a flip chart, give people a few minutes to start thinking and then go round the group, person by person, gathering the ideas. Write each idea on a post it, stick it on the chart and move straight on to the next one. If people don’t have an idea when it is their turn, just ask them to pass and carry on. Don’t stop to develop, evaluate or judge: just keep the momentum up. Go round the group as many times as you like, until ideas dry up - you can be sure that lots of ideas will spark even more.
• Negative brainstorming – people love this! Do the same as for a structured brainstorm, but turn the question round. For example you could ask: ‘what could we do to make people do a bad job?’ You will get loads of great suggestions that can then be turned back into positive ideas.
• Brainwriting – this involves people starting with three blank cards and them having 5-10 minutes to outline three ideas, each of which are put on to a separate card. The cards are then passed to the person on their right. This person then adds to or modifies the ideas they have been given: thinking all the time ‘how could this work?’.  Mind mapping type techniques are a great way to depict the thinking on the card as it develops. The process continues in this way until everyone has had the opportunity to apply their imagination to each other’s’ ideas. This tool works really well with small groups and, if people are not co-located, can even be done electronically.

Whatever tool you use, make sure that everyone has the chance to contribute, analysis is deferred during the creative phase, and capture everything, no matter how radical.

Once you have generated lots of ideas, work with the group to evaluate and prioritise them. A great tool to use here is the ‘Ease Benefit’ matrix. Again, engage the group and ask them to determine for each idea whether it would be easy or hard to implement; and whether doing so would give high or low benefit in tackling the root cause. The ‘easy, high benefit’ ideas are then developed further. Involving everyone in the decision-making helps build consensus across the group which, in turn, increases the likelihood of a workable solution being adopted.

 

Don’t discard the other ideas – defer them until the quick wins are in place, and finally check that that you have fully covered off the root causes.

Sticking to our top tips will ensure that people come away from an ideas generation session feeling energised and inspired. Chances are, you’ve also made effective use of everyone’s time and generated really productive and useful outputs.

Ideas problem solved!

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