“We could ignore customers whenever they come in.”
It was a great idea, and was added to the board. Moreover, I was excited that the team had started to participate in helping to solve the task at hand.
Let’s back up for a moment.
I had been tasked with leading a team to generate ideas for how to improve customer service. Most of the team had never participated in an innovation exercise, and going down the path of a traditional brainstorm did not yield many new ideas. In fact, the room was almost silent. So I introduced the team to a more fun version of the game—the reverse brainstorm.
For a reverse brainstorm, instead of shouting out ideas for how to solve a problem, the team instead gives ideas for how to make it worse.
I discovered that the team immediately became engaged in the process, having fun, laughing, and more importantly, being creative. For whatever reason, people find it easier to be judgmental, analytical, and critical of processes. Therefore, giving the team permission to criticize the current process, identify the gaps, and unleash their frustration oftentimes results in far more engagement with the innovation process.
A variant of this exercise is one of my favorites: The Worst Possible Idea. For this exercise, the team is tasked with creating the worst or most damaging solutions. You then take these horrible ideas and figure out what you can do to avoid or mitigate them.
Here is how to run the exercise:
Step 1: Identify the problem you want to solve
The first step in this process is to identify the problem that needs to be solved. Regardless of the challenge you are facing, you need to have a clear understanding of the goal you want to achieve.
Step 2: Ask the team for the worst possible ideas
This is the time to unleash everybody’s creativity. Gather your team, write the challenge up on a board, and ask the team to come up with the worst possible ideas for solving the problem. Encourage everyone to think about the craziest, most ridiculous ideas they can think of. Ask them to think about parts of the process or situation that cause them stress or frustration. Have them think about customer feedback that they have received. Give them permission to absolutely wreck the company. Don’t judge any ideas. Put them all up on the board, as any one of them could spark another idea for somebody else in the room. The goal is to come up with as many bad ideas as possible.
Step 3: Reframe bad ideas into something useful
Once the team is finished generating the list of bad ideas, you then work to turn them into something useful. Take each bad idea and try to reframe it in a way that could help move the company towards the goal. For example, the suggestion to ignore customers when they entered the business resulted in a process that ensured customers were greeted and helped immediately.
Step 4: Evaluate and select the best idea
After all the bad ideas have been reframed, then the team will evaluate and select the best one. Consider factors like feasibility, cost-effectiveness, and impact on your customers and business. The idea that has the most potential to solve the problem should be selected.
Step 5: Implement and iterate
Once the best idea is chosen, it is time to implement and iterate. Using a PDCA approach, test the idea, gather data, and make improvements as needed. You may get to a point where the data reveals the idea did not have the desired result. If this happens, return to step 4 and try the next best idea. Repeat until you have resolved the problem and then move on to the next one.
The worst possible idea innovation exercise can be a powerful tool for generating new ideas. You will be surprised at how much energy is in the room when people are given permission to break things. More importantly, you may discover new possibilities and creative solutions that would have otherwise remained unspoken.
Have fun and see what kind of breakthroughs you can achieve!
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