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About
Innovation Network
- P r o f e s s i o n a l _ D e v e l o p m e n t -
Gerald Nadler, Ph.D.
Implementing creative and innovative ideas involves overcoming many situational barriers, constraints, limitations, and restrictions. The biggest barrier of all to progress and change is the conventional thinking and reasoning process about those barriers and constraints.
Conventional approaches involve the identification of all situational barriers at the *beginning* of a change effort. For example, the systems thinking of "Fifth Discipline" advocates the identification of barriers as an important first step and Lewin's model of change requires that "unfreezing" deal with barriers and limitations initially before making a changeand then refreezing (which can actually establish the next set of barriers to be overcome).
There is no doubt that every project or effort has barriers, constraints,limitations, and restrictions (BCLRs) and that every person brings some BCLR to each situation. The systems principle discussed in Breakthrough Thinking¨ focuses on this in one of its basic tenets: "Every system is a part of a larger system." Regardless of how large you think a system may be, it will always have barriers, constraints, restrictions and limitations from its larger systems. The purpose expansion idea explained in Breakthrough Thinking¨ always seeks to work on a system bigger than theone started with as a way of dealing with the fewest number of important barriers and limitations.
The major question to be answered, then, is: When *should* barriers and limitations be considered in working on a problem or issue or policy or strategy?
Most current problem solving, solution finding, planning, creativity and design literature advocates early identification of barriers and limitations. Then creativity processes are used to find ways of overcoming and eliminating those barriers. This reasoning makes it difficult both to develop breakthrough ideas and to implement those ideas.
Purpose focus vs. Problem focus
A fundamental concept of Breakthrough Thinking¨ is that the *worst* time to consider barriers is at the beginning of a problem solving process because it greatly increases the likelihood that they will be considered an indispensable part of the situation and actually direct the thinking only toward the problem as stated. The group will become "problem-focused" rather than "purpose-focused."
When we accept a problem as stated, that acceptance may become the most important constraint of the situation. Here's an example: the CEO of your parent company has stated that your subsidiary must reduce costs 4 percent for each of the next five years. Inadvertently, the CEO has created a barrier to even better performance.
The subsidiary executive in this real case responded by having his staff,managers and superintendents study all the energy, supplies, materials and equipment utilization in the three separate buildings on the site.
His response was based on conven- tional thinking -- "Everyone knows you have to start by finding out what exists and gathering all the facts, or find out what programs and solutions some other company used to accomplish the same objective so we can do the same thing."
The Breakthrough Thinking¨ approach starts with purpose -- find the biggest purpose that needs to be achieved, look for the solution-after-next that would accomplish that purpose, annd then develop a recommendation that stays as close as possible to it.
Breakthrough Thinking¨ looks at barriers and constraints only as they affect each step of the process:
- Develop purpose hierarchy -- Some broad community, customer, and industry barriers may shape the scope of purpose statements.
- Select focus purpose -- The selection criteria are often based on broad organizational limitations.
- Define measures of purpose accomplishment=9C -- These are selected in terms of the focus purpose and likely situational barriers and constraints.
- Identify major alternative solutions-after-next -- The only limitationis the imagination in developing possibilities for the focus and larger purposes.
- Select the solution-after-next target -- Evaluation of the alternatives with the less-confining BCLRs contained in the measures of purpose accomplishment.
- Each of the remaining steps -- similarly deals only with the barriers relevant to that step.
Breakthrough Thinking¨ acknowledges the reality of barriers, limitations and constraints but puts the focus first on purpose and is therefore likely to produce much better results than conventional approaches. In addition, a learning organization becomes virtually automatic because the perceptions of people are changed as they focus on their purposes and look for new ways to obtain the information necessary to achieve them.
Moral of this story: Change the way you think to break the barrier of how to cope with presumed project barriers.
Gerald Nadler is the President of The Center for Breakthrough Thinking¨ Inc. and coauthor with Shozo Hibino of "Breakthrough Thinking¨: The Seven Principles of Creative Problem Solving, 2nd Ed.," Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing, 1994, and "Creative Solution Finding: The Triumph of Full Spectrum Creativity Over Conventional Thinking," Rocklin, CA: Prima Publishing, 1995. Gerry can be reached at 213-740-4892; FAX: 213-740-1120 or online at nadler@mizar.usc.edu.
Copyright - The Center for Breakthrough Thinking¨, Inc., 1995.
Breakthrough Thinking¨ is a registered trademark of The Center.