What is Creative Problem-Solving & Why Is It Vital?
Everyone needs to solve problems small and big throughout work and life. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a clear and precise way of solving things?
Developed by Alex Osborn (who coined the term “brainstorming”) and Sidney Parnes, Creative Problem-Solving is such a method.
What is Creative Problem-Solving?
Creative Problem Solving (CPS) is a structured yet flexible thinking process designed to help individuals and groups tackle challenges, seize opportunities, and generate innovative solutions. The CPS method balances two modes of thinking: divergent thinking, which generates many ideas without judgment, and convergent thinking, which selects and refines the best options.
Process & Stages of Creative Problem-Solving
The CPS process follows six clear steps
- Clarify the goal, challenge, or opportunity.
- Gather data to understand the situation fully.
- Formulate challenge questions that invite creative responses.
- Ideate to generate a wide range of ideas.
- Develop those ideas into workable solutions.
- Implement by building actionable plans.
Why is Creative Problem-Solving Important?
Creative Problem-Solving is used worldwide in businesses, education, and communities to improve decision-making, spark creativity, and drive innovation. The process is inclusive, accessible, and designed to unlock the creative potential in everyone.
There are many structured approaches to creativity and innovation, such as Design Thinking, Lean Startup, or Agile, but Creative Problem-Solving (CPS) has the essentials in place to potentially be the foundational process that people should understand first.
CPS builds the basic thinking skills that all problem-solving relies on: the ability to clarify complex situations, frame the right questions, generate options, evaluate possibilities, and build actionable plans. It teaches people how to think, not what to think. That thinking flexibility can be applied to any context, not just product or service design.
It introduces the core discipline of balancing divergent (open, exploratory) and convergent (focused, evaluative) thinking. This at the heart of all problem-solving. Once people master this methodology, they can apply it confidently to any other process.
Essential Creative Problem-Solving Skills
The CPS methodology balances on four basic principles, which could be developed as skills to make your problem-solving process more effective and friction-free. They are:
1) Divergent & Convergent Thinking
Diverge/Converge is the engine that drives the CPS process, is always done separately and is used at each step of CPS. It is arguably the most powerful concept in problem-solving and innovation. It means that when you generate options, during divergent thinking, you never judge them.
2) Posing Problems As Questions
Problems are always reframed as questions. For example: How might we write a great post on CPS? In what ways might we engage people in our content?
Framing a problem as a question moves us from a blocking mindset into one that offers options.
3) Defer or Suspend Judgement
Even if someone offers a suggestion or idea you think is wrong, you don’t critique it; you thank them for the thought starter and build off it. This is the opposite of what most people do most of the time.
We defer or suspend judgment because the CPS process is very deliberate about when we judge. And in a divergent phase, do not judge others or yourself!
4) Focus on “Yes, and…”
This mindset helps us look for the positive in every idea or interaction. It is used in improv. Try passing ideas back and forth between yourself and someone else. Start by answering “Yes, but…” and see what happens to the energy. Then, do the same exercise, but each time, respond to your partner with “Yes, and…”
Creative Problem-Solving Examples
A Russian businessman walks into a Swiss bank in Geneva and asks for a $100 loan …
This could be the start of a very old school joke, but instead, we think you’ll enjoy this popular anecdote as a light heartened example of the creative problem-solving method and how one uses, divergent, convergent, and what many would call a bit of lateral thinking to solve an issue you face.
Read about the creative Russian businessman in question here.
Creative Problem-Solving Training
Want to solve problems creatively yourself or want to train your team in the CPS method?
Make Happy conducts public and bespoke workshops and training sessions in the Creative Problem-Solving process. We give you all the skills and techniques to apply this tried and tested process to your own organisations and teams and to come out on top of your problems. Click for more.
