Siobhan Meaker from Better Strategic Consultancy Ltd considers the literal power of flipping things around to unlock new solutions.
When I was a kid, my Dad gave me an insight into creativity via that excellent father-daughter bonding technique of forgery.
He challenged me to try and copy his signature, which was a wild loop of swirls and strokes that perhaps once-upon-a-time resembled the letters in his name.
Gamely, I picked up his fountain pen and tried to copy every mark.
He looked at my attempts and shook his head.
‘You’re trying to copy it. Your brain is too fixed on how you would write the letters. Turn my signature upside down and try again.’
Now, before the police come after me or him my new attempts were not perfect and neither did they end up on any official documents or homework diaries.
However, they were better. And they felt a heck of a lot freer. The swirls and curls flowed, as I moved away from the focus of creating the letters how I thought they should be.
If you keep approaching a challenge or problem from the same direction, it’s very hard to get a different solution. One of my favourite techniques in ideation sessions is The Reverse. Come up with a series of questions that flip your premise around. How could we make this project fail? What would we write in an appeal letter to turn our donor off? You get some cracking answers and people quite enjoy the freedom of saying things that would normally provoke an emergency 1-2-1.
Once you’ve given yourself some time in the wrong way space, the trick is to pick out the themes you want to flip back around and see what you might have been missing before.
Try it next time you’re looking to come up with some ideas and let me know how you get on.
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