DO IT – A Simple Process for Creativity
How to use tool:
DO IT is a process for creativity.
Techniques outlined earlier in this chapter focus on specific aspects of creative thinking. DO IT bundles them together, and introduces formal methods of problem definition and evaluation. These help you to get the best out of the creativity techniques.
DO IT is an acronym that stands for:
D – Define problem
O – Open mind and apply creative techniques
I – Identify best solution
T – Transform
These stages are explained in more detail below:
1. Define Problem
This section concentrates on analyzing the problem to ensure that the correct question is being asked. The following steps will help you to do this:
Check that you are tackling the problem, not the symptoms of the problem. To do this, ask yourself why the problem exists repeatedly until you get to the root of it.
Lay out the bounds of the problem. Work out the objectives that you must achieve and the constraints that you are operating under.
Where a problem appears to be very large, break it down into smaller parts. Keep on going until each part is achievable in its own right, or needs a precisely defined area of research to be carried out. See Drill-Down for a detailed description of this process.
Summarize the problem in as concise a form as possible. Robert W. Olsen suggests that the best way to do this is to write down a number of 2 word problem statements and choose the best one.
2. Open Mind and Apply Creative Techniques
Once you know the problem that you want to solve, you are ready to start generating possible solutions. It is very tempting just to accept the first good idea that you come across. If you do this, you will miss many even better solutions.
At this stage of DO IT we are not interested in evaluating ideas. Instead, we are trying to generate as many different ideas as possible. Even bad ideas may be the seeds of good ones.
You can use the whole battery of creativity techniques covered earlier in this section to search for possible solutions. Each tool has its particular strengths and benefits, depending on the problems that you want to solve. While you are generating solutions, remember that other people will have different perspectives on the problem, and it will almost certainly be worth asking for the opinions of your colleagues as part of this process.
3. Identify the Best Solution
Only at this stage do you select the best of the ideas you have generated. It may be that the best idea is obvious. Alternatively, it may be worth examining and developing a number of ideas in detail before you select one.
The Decision Making Techniques section of Mind Tools explains a range of excellent decision making techniques. Decision Tree Analysis and Force Field Analysis are particularly useful. These will help you to choose between the solutions available to you.
When you are selecting a solution, keep in mind your own or your organization’s goals. Often Decision Making becomes easy once you know these.
4. Transform
Having identified the problem and created a solution to it, the final stage is to implement this solution. This involves not only development of a reliable product from your idea, but all the marketing and business side as well. This may take a great deal of time and energy.
Many very creative people fail at this stage. They will have fun creating new products and services that may be years ahead of what is available on the market. They will then fail to develop them, and watch someone else make a fortune out of the idea several years later.
The first stage in transforming an idea is to develop an Action Plan for the transformation. This may lead to creation of a Business or Marketing Plan. Once you have done this, the work of implementation begins!
NB: DO IT was devised by Robert W Olsen in his book ‘The Art of Creative Thinking’.
Key points:
DO IT is a structured process for creativity. Using DO IT ensures that you carry out the essential groundwork that helps you to get the most out of creativity tools.
These steps are:
Problem Definition: During this stage you apply a number of techniques to ensure that you are asking the right question.
Open Mind: Here you apply creativity techniques to generate as many answers as possible to the question you are asking. At this stage you are not evaluating the answers.
Identify the best solution: Only at this stage do you select the best solutions from the ones you came up with in step 2. Where you are having difficulty in selecting ideas, use formal techniques to help.
Transform: The final stage is to make an Action Plan for the implementation of the solution, and to carry it out. Without implementation, your creativity is sterile.
Simplex – A Powerful Integrated Problem-Solving Process
How to use tool:
Simplex is an industrial-strength creativity tool. It takes the approach of DO IT to the next level of sophistication.
Rather than seeing creativity as a single straight-line process, Simplex sees it as the continuous cycle it should be. Completion and implementation of one cycle of creativity leads straight into the next cycle of creative improvement.
Simplex uses the following eight stages:
How ideas are processed...
These are explained below:
1. Problem finding
Often finding the right problem to solve is the most difficult part of the creative process. When using Simplex, actively seek problems out. Wherever they exist you have opportunities for change and improvement.
Problems may be obvious, or can be flushed out using trigger questions like the ones below:
What would your customers want you to improve?
What could they be doing better if we could help them?
Who else could we help using our core competences?
What small problems do we have which could grow into bigger ones?
What slows our work or makes it more difficult? What do we often fail to achieve?
How can we improve quality?
What are our competitors doing that we could do?
What is frustrating and irritating?
These questions deal with problems that exist now. It is also useful to try to look into the future. Think about how you expect markets and customers to change over the next few years; the problems you may experience as your organization expands; and social, political and legal changes that may affect it.
At this stage you may not have enough information to formulate your problem precisely. Do not worry about this until step 3!
2. Fact Finding
The next stage is to find out as much information relating to the problem as possible.
This gives you the depth of knowledge you need to:
Use the best ideas your competitors have had
Understand customers needs in more detail
Know what has already been tried
Fully understand any processes, components, services or technologies that you may need to use
Ensure that the benefits of solving the problem will be worth the effort you will put into it
This stage also involves assessing the quality of the information that you have. Here it is worth listing your assumptions and checking that they are correct.
3. Problem definition
By the time you reach this stage, you should know roughly what the problem is and should have a good understanding of the facts relating to it. From here the thing to do is to crystallize the exact problem or problems you want to solve.
It is important to solve a problem at the right level. If you ask questions that are too broad, then you will never have enough resources to answer them effectively. If you ask questions that are too narrow, you may end up fixing symptoms of a problem, rather than the problem itself.
Min Basadur (who created the Simplex Process) suggests using the question ‘Why?’ to broaden a question, and ‘What’s stopping you?’ to narrow it. For example, if your problem is one of trees dying, ask ‘Why do I want to keep trees healthy?’. This might broaden the question to ‘How can I maintain the quality of our environment?’.
A ‘What’s stopping you?’ here could be ‘I do not know how to control a disease killing the tree’.
Big problems are normally made up of many smaller ones. This is the stage at which you can use a technique like Drill-Down to break the problem down to its component parts.
4. Idea finding
The next stage is to generate as many ideas as possible. Ways of doing this range from asking other people for their opinions, through programmed creativity tools and lateral thinking techniques to brainstorming.
Do not evaluate ideas during this stage. Instead, concentrate on generating many ideas as possible. Bad ideas often trigger good ones.
5. Selection & Evaluation
Once you have a number of possible solutions to your problem, it is time to select the best one.
The best solution may be obvious. If it is not, then it is important to think through the criteria you will use to select the best idea. Particularly useful techniques may be Decision Trees, Paired Comparison Analysis and Grid Analysis.
Once you have selected an idea, develop it as far as possible. It is then essential to evaluate it to see if it is good enough to be considered worth using. It is important not to let your ego get in the way of your common sense. If your idea does not give big enough benefit, then either see if you can generate more ideas, or restart the whole process. You can waste years of your life developing creative ideas that no-one wants.
There are two excellent techniques for doing this. One is Edward de Bono’s 6 Thinking Hats, which is an excellent tool for qualitative analysis. The other is Cost/Benefit Analysis, which gives you a good basis for financially based decisions.
6. Planning
Once you have selected an idea, and are confident that your idea is worthwhile, then it is time to plan its implementation.
The best way of doing this is to set this out as an Action Plan, which lays out the who, what, when, where, why and how of making it work. For large projects it may be worth using more formal planning techniques.
7. Sell Idea
Up to this stage you may have done all this work on your own or with a small committee. Now you will have to sell the idea to the people who must support it. This might be your boss, a bank manager or other people involved with the project.
In selling the project you will have to address not only the practicality of the project, but also things such internal politics, hidden fear of change, etc..
8. Action
Finally, after all the creativity and preparation, comes action! This is where all the careful work and planning pays off.
Once the action is firmly under way, return to stage 1, Problem Finding, to continue improving your idea.
Min Basadur’s book, The Power of Innovation, explores this process in much more detail.
Key points:
The Simplex Process is a powerful, sophisticated approach to innovation. It is suitable for projects and organizations of almost any scale.
The Process is an eight-stage cycle. Upon completion of the eight stages you start it again to find and solve another problem. This helps to ensure continuous improvement.
Stages in the process are:
Problem finding
Fact finding
Problem Definition
Idea Finding
Selection and Evaluation
Planning
Selling of the Idea
Action
By moving through these stages you ensure that you solve the most significant problems with the best solutions available to you. This process can help you to be intensely creative.
Action Plans – Small Scale Planning
How to Use Tool:
An Action Plan is a list of tasks that you have to carry out to achieve an objective. It differs from a To Do List in that it focuses on the achievement of a single goal.
Wherever you want to achieve something, draw up an action plan. This allows you to concentrate on the stages of that achievement, and monitor your progress towards it.
To draw up an Action Plan, simply list the tasks that you need to carry out to achieve your goal. This is simple, but still very useful!
Key points:
An Action Plan is a list of things that you need to do to achieve a goal. To use it, simply carry out each task in the list!
