“What should you do if you can’t solve the customer’s problem?”
That was the question asked of me in a training session today.
I was thrown momentarily. Then another attendee jumped in and asked ‘what exactly is this problem was that can’t be solved?’
The answer?
It was a problem around providing eco-friendly visitor facilities for one-off events in remote locations.
Within seconds of the answer, the group had come up with four or five new ideas that hadn’t previously been considered!
One of those ideas elicited an excited “that could be exactly what we need” from the questioner.
Hang on a moment…
An unsolvable problem? Seemingly solved in seconds? How is that possible?
So often I find it comes down to diversity.
Diversity comes in many kinds of guises. Diversity that you can see, like ethnicity, gender and physical ability. And diversity you can’t see, like background, experience, expertise and values.
Even when we work hard to get a diverse group, if we are working in pizza-sized teams there’s a limit to the range of perspectives available.
So if you get stuck trying to solve a particular problem, try going outside your core team. Open the problem up to wider audience. You might be surprised at the new ideas you uncover.
