ArticlesIdeation
A room full of elephants
Author
Martin in't Veld
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Imagine a room. The room is your creative space. The space you have to move freely from idea to idea, and let creativity happen. This room could be a brainstorm session, or just some time to yourself to think. In a perfect world, ideas would just float in and out of that room, and your prepared mind would be able to make those connections that create value.
But people aren’t perfect, and therefore perfect hypothetical scenario’s aren’t perfect. Most of the time, ideas don’t start flowing freely through this creative space. Brainstorm magic doesn’t automatically happen, and even the best sources of inspiration can find fierce opposition making it difficult to create those Great Ideas.
The problem is most of these creative spaces don’t start out empty. People don’t come to a brainstorm session without presumptions or pre-made solutions they’ve already made up their minds about. You don’t start without presumptions about a problem and its solution.
These assumptions and ideas are the elephants. The elephants can be identified by 4 factors:
- They’re big and heavy crowding up the room, blocking the flow of ideas
- They trample any new ideas that do slip past
- They remember everything, clinging to the ways of yesterday
- They’re not easy to get rid of
Getting rid of the elephants
When addressing a problem, it’s important to get rid of the elephants first. These heavy weight ideas that linger in the back of your mind, or your brainstorm attendees will become the lens through which one will see the ideas of others: Compatible or not compatible, instead of being able to look at ideas objectively, and see them as individual sources of inspiration.
The elephants won’t leave easy however, in fact, it’s safe to say they will never completely leave at all. We all look at things a certain way, and have assumptions about things, which is in fact our contribution, not a handicap in ideation. But in order to avoid the elephants wandering around and trampling new ideas, just line them up nicely and park them outside for a moment.
In practice, I find one of the most successful ways to get rid of the elephants is to just ask for these heavy weight ideas up front. Present the problem, then ask yourself or the participants what you/they think is the ‘big issue’ – the one thing that needs to get solved in order to create an effective solution. These ‘big issues’ represent perception. Then ask for their solution to the ‘big issue’ – these are the elephants based on individual assumptions.
List the elephant(s) and acknowledge them as valid suggestions. This will stop the elephants trying to trample new ideas that endanger them, because they’ve already been acknowledged. Furthermore, identifying the assumptions at this early stage could be a way to fuel the brainstorm or ideation process later on. The assumptions often represent fundamentals that follow ‘the way it’s always been done’, and therefore would be ‘foolish to question’. But part of a brainstorm is to question the way things have been done. It’s essential in order to create room for new ideas.
In summary:
- Realize your ideation process is always hampered by your own or others assumptions
- Assumptions kill or hinder new, creative ideas
- Locate these assumptions
- Use the assumptions to ask questions about the way things have been done
Here Here Martin! Thanks for pushing this ideal. In the design world, sometimes you just have to get things done, but you also have to make time for elephant hunts.
I’d like to think of my blog as a place for hunting elephants. Sorry to indulge in such direct self promotion, but my blog’s tagline does fit this idea really nicely. thinksketchdesign.com – “Because Today’s Great Ideas start with Yesterday’s Foolish Thinking” thanks -
Great read Martin! How about a 5th way to recognize elephants: They are obvious and grey: Meaning they are usually brought fourth from existing patterns/context instead of being creative ideas.
@thinksketch
Hi and thanks for commenting
Rick already pointed me towards your blog once, really enjoyed reading it, keep up the great work. I do like your slogan too, though I guess you can read it two ways:
- Great Ideas find their origins in ‘yesterdays foolish thinking’ (meaning there is value in yesterdays ‘different’ thinking) or
- Great Ideas start by questioning ‘yesterdays foolish thinking’ (meaning we need to change the things yesterdays foolish thinking has brought us)
@Rick
True! I like that one, but not all Elephants are Bad Ideas, so judging them up front would not really help getting rid of the Elephant, even though you are probably right.
@thinksketch
Oh wow, complete revamp! Like the design and posting frequency in the ‘new and improved’ thinksketch blog. By the way, speaking of hunting, how is that job hunt going?
“how is that job hunt going?” Thanks for asking Rick – it seems pretty tough out there. Product Design/Mechanical engineering jobs are pretty scarce. Ive been working on some web-development skills, and I’m thinking of trying to break into that arena. Definitely let me know if you hear of any job openings!
Very insightful.
I’m reminded of ideation sessions I’ve attended in the past where the facilitator was very open-minded about all suggestions, accepting them, asking for clarification and writing down the clarified idea on the flip-over. That is, including the ones where my own first response was more along the lines of ‘what a silly idea’.
This had many good effects: the atmosphere always stayed positive, all participants felt like they were heard and taken seriously, and it lowered the barrier to spout ideas that hadn’t been thought through completely, or articulated perfectly. In other words: it cleared the room, and I can see how explicitly asking for the ‘big issue’ and its solution can do the same thing.
I’m looking forward to trying this technique when we need to tackle the next interesting problem at work.