As a Positive Revolutionist, you need to focus on solving problems, continually improving things, and innovating. You should constantly search for alternative ways of doing things.
Even when there is no problem, we should be looking at new ways to improve ourselves, our organization, the community and the world. If something is working well, think of new ways to make it more effective. If customers love your service, how can you ramp it up and blow them away.
You must push beyond the initial new ideas. If you only stop at the first alternative, you will never know if there was something better. Keep pushing yourself and your team to develop more alternatives; it only takes a few extra minutes. And is a great way to continually practice your creative and critical thinking skills.
As a Positive Revolutionist, be proactive to improve and make positive change. Even if something is working well, apply some focus and improve it. Don’t just change something for change sake, but develop a new and improved way to conduct operations.
A key part of creativity and finding alternatives is asking questions. Asking questions allows you to identify and develop alternative ideas. You can use questions like the following.
How can we find a better way to do this?
What other ways can we solve this problem?
How else can we define the problem?
How do other people do this?
Constantly focusing on alternatives allows you to look beyond current ideas and the status quo. The combination of motivation and thinking skills can produce amazing creativity and positive change. It only takes a few minutes to do some creative thinking. In a few minutes you can develop multiple alternative ideas for improvement and innovation. It just takes motivation and the desire to find ideas that might be better than current.
You should continuously find new ways to improve and simplify the world. Taking a few extra minutes allows us to analyze a situation in more depth and possibly develop better ways to conduct business. In addition, finding alternative ways to improve is a great way to keep employees engaged and create a learning organization. As we develop the habit of continuously seeking alternative ways to improve the business, we will create an agile organization that keeps competitors reacting and customers excited. Never be satisfied.
The 4i System of Creative Problem Solving has four phases to provide a deliberate and systematic process to solve problems or discover opportunities. It is about asking questions, developing lots of ideas, choosing the best ones, and putting the ideas into action.
INVESTIGATE is the first phase of this never-ending, four-phase cycle.
During this initial phase, you embark on a journey of discovery. You determine the background and current condition of the situation. You leverage market research to develop a holistic understanding of the situation to develop a clear goal, and a clear problem/opportunity statement to provide a strong foundation to create new ideas.
The second phase is to IDEATE
Based on all the knowledge and insights you gained during the INVESTIGATE phase, you now use divergent thinking to develop a large quantity of ideas. Putting aside judgement and keeping an open, beginner’s mind, you use deliberate, creative-thinking tools to focus laser-like on the problem or area of opportunity. You develop new solutions, form original links between often dissimilar items, and break patterns to discover new opportunities. Most of this stage is done individually, as it is best to ideate individually than with groups. Sorry, all of you who love brainstorming, but group ideation is not effective nor efficient.
After developing lots of new ideas, phase three is to INNOVATE
You now use convergent thinking to narrow the list of ideas to a few with the most potential. Once again, you apply easy-to-use tools to analyze, synthesize and evaluate the handful of ideas that will help you achieve your goal. Unlike the IDEATE phase, the INNOVATE phase is done with others, typically a cross-functional group made up of subject-matter experts and novices for a wide range of perspectives. You either identify the root cause of the problem or the opportunity with the most chance to succeed. And then you keep working on the idea to make it better. You select, develop, refine, and keep evolving the idea.
Finally, and often most importantly you INITIATE the idea
Now that you have decided on one or two key ideas to move forward, you develop a plan to implement the idea. You test the solution to the problem or the idea for the opportunity in the real world.
You determine roles and responsibilities (who does what) and develop timelines (when does stuff need to be done). You launch the idea, check it against your goal, and make adjustments. You keep refining and improving, as nothing is ever perfect.
The 4i System of Creative Problem Solving is a never-ending cycle of investigation, ideation, decision making and execution. It is a process that leverages easy-to-learn and easy-to-use tools to systematically make positive changes.
