Alternative Explanations

A young man pouring a can of beer into a gasoline tank of his car. - Explain rationally

what this is supposed to be?

Creativity is the generation of alternatives. Any number of explanatins is possible. For instance, the car may have stopped. The beer can may have been the only receptacle he could find to collect gasoline. Or it could be a new type of experimental car which could run on water. Ask the team to generate alternative solutions to a large number of problems. Give them a certain number of alternatives to be suggested. For example, ‘Do not stop till you have fifty solutions.’ Usually, insisting on a certain number of alternatives results in getting that number.

I am much more willing to jump to a trial conclusion about something confusing that I see. I believe that my tolerance of the approximate in seeing is the primitive need to see danger very early. For early man, survival probably depended on quickly jumping to conclusions. Today, we need to unlearn this facility and train ourselves out of jumping to conclusions to help our understanding of different situations.

Set your teams to practice generating alternative solutions on a regular basis. This will improve their capacity to become fluent in the generation of ideas.