Creative Thinking and Problem Solving, from a Project Manager’s Perspective (Part I of 2)

Recently I participated in a training seminar focused on creative thinking, brainstorming and problem solving. I was the only project manager in attendance at the training, along with a full complement of experience design, creative and strategy types. I thought maybe I’d get a couple days of relaxing and lying on a mat in a dimly lit room, listening to new age music and thinking deep thoughts. It turned out to be rather different than that… in a good way.

First, I don’t intend to use this forum to describe the specific creative thinking process itself, since that information is easily transferrable through existing training documents. What I hope to do is describe the impression the training made on me as a project manager, and present a few thoughts on how the principles taught can influence my day-to-day work of delivering projects for clients more effectively.

No crazy ideas allowed

What I found interesting about an intentional “creative problem solving process,” as a project manager, is that it really challenges the way I often behave in my job. I often feel my unstated role is to limit what gets added into a project, make sure the list of activities and deliverables is finite, and make sure that all crazy new ideas are immediately relegated to a Post-it Note in a “project parking lot” in such a way that they are sure to never see the light of day.

For better or worse, we usually do some form of requirements definition at the very beginning of the project, when stakeholders are least sure of what they can even hope for, and don’t fully know what they need. Once those requirements are written down, it’s my job to stick to them—or bury the client in an annoying paper blizzard of change requests. But I can’t believe products such as the iPhone or the light bulb came about through such a rigid linear process of thinking.

So, how can a project manager take full advantage of a creative thinking process and yet not completely throw the realities of scope control and timeline and budget management out the window?

The following post is the first of a two-part series that will discuss how creative thinking and problem solving can impact the way projects are managed.  Part one examines the project delivery process, and will look to answer the question, should my existing project management process change at all as a result of what I’ve learned about an intentional “creative problem solving process”?  In part two of this series, I’ll explore the ways we can change our behavior for the better within the existing processes we already use each day.

1. Should my project management process change at all?

In short, yes. At a bare minimum, we should plan for and budget against a brief internal session (partial day or full day) designed to stretch our thinking about potential solutions to the business problem. This session should occur before the real requirements gathering work starts, in any medium to large project. Beyond this bare minimum, we should aim to do a client version of an intentional “creative problem solving process” as well, also prior to the start of locking in formal project requirements. Usually enough initial data has been gathered in the sales process that there is at least some idea of what the project involves, and this data can provide the initial insight for an internally-facilitated creative thinking session. But too often we jump straight from the sales process into a stodgy set of stakeholder interviews or a “canned” facilitated requirements definition workshop and miss a huge opportunity to understand what the project could be if implemented optimally. Let’s look at one example from the training.

Putting it into practice

The class was asked to look at a color photo of the stairway between floors in an office building, and come up with ideas to improve them. Well, I am guessing that a client-generated RFP for a project to improve the stairway would have listed several standard items like repainting, making a safer and less slippery step surface, and improving the lighting in the stairwell. If I, as the project manager, had taken that level of insight into a requirements gathering session, I could probably quite accurately scope a boring, low-risk, low-reward project.

Once we went through a 15-minute exercise in the training, however, we had about fifty to eighty unique ideas for ways to improve the stairs. Some were a bit outlandish, which is fine and is part of the creative process of stretching our thinking. Some were practical, inexpensive improvements that were unexpected and which probably never would have been considered in a more “normal” requirements definition process.

This exercise made me very uncomfortable for the following reason: if we hadn’t taken the time to think a bit creatively (for well under an hour), we would never have come up with about 90% of the ideas we generated. It both scared and encouraged me to think it might be that easy to improve the pool of potential solutions we bring to our clients. Scared me because I’ve been managing big projects for a long time now, and might have missed out on recommending a whole lot of great ideas… I might have missed an iPhone opportunity somewhere in there. Encouraged me because with a little effort and minimal cost, we can at least make some real improvements in our thinking.

Quality out of Quantity

One of the principles of a good creative thinking process is that quality comes out of quantity, at least in the realm of idea generation. An intentional creative problem solving process gives us a framework to generate a ton of ideas without worrying whether they are good, bad, neutral, crazy, expensive, offensive, or perfect. It strives to get a high quantity of thought onto paper, and gives us a way to bring some informed thinking into the requirements definition process.

Intentionally forcing some unconventional brain activity at the outset might radically alter the expected outcome of the project, but if it happens before requirements are gathered, so what? On one hand we might quadruple the scope of the project; on the other hand, we might decide the project we had in mind isn’t even necessary and there’s a better way to solve the client’s real need.

In any case there is a real possibility – even a likelihood – of discovering something valuable and unexpected, and that’s what our clients will find sets us apart and makes us valuable to them, especially (but not only) in this uncertain economy.

How this fits into a project delivery process

As a practical process matter, the change I would contend is needed is to consistently hold at least an initial / internal version of an intentional creative problem solving process before we ever hit the “record” button in a stakeholder interview or build version one of a client-facing scope document.

I also think the client version of this exercise should come well before the end of the requirements definition process, so that there will be the most openness to building the right scope, timeline and budget expectations at the outset. It takes a lot of work on the client side to overcome organizational inertia and get a project going, and if we force our clients to do all that work twice (once for the project we initially define requirements for, and again for the improved project we creatively imagine), we may have cost them valuable capital or even credibility inside their organization. This is the main process area that struck me as necessary, having gone through the training and considering it from a project manager’s point of view.

I suspect there are additional areas where we could add a valuable level of more detailed change to our project delivery processes, as a result of using the intentional creative problem solving process in the best possible way. This could involve doing small internal workshops at key project milestones, in an effort to identify and problem solve around the key project issues particular to each phase. This type of change, however, may not even need to be built into our formal process.  Stay tuned for part 2 of this post where we will look to answer the question, how can project managers work the principles of a creative thinking process into our roles?