Coaching teams in creative problem solving

How to coach teams in creative problem solving

Ari-Pekka Lappi (@ilmirajat)

Goal After this presentation everyone has at least 1 creativity tool they can use in their everyday work within next two weeks.

• Introductions round(s)• Short intro• Some creative tools• Exercises (here and home)• Coaching exercise (optional)• Next catching circle session

Outline

Who am I?• Hybrid philosopher-engineer

• Developer, ScrumMaster, architect• M.A. majoring theoretical philosophy

from Helsinki University• Entrepreneur in Flowa

• Big fan of functional programming (F# and Clojure), philosophy of Nietzsche• Hobbyist game designer and game

researcher• Part-time artist in Reality Research

Center

Thus Spoke Zarathustra by Atanas Botev.Oil on canvas/collage 2004

Introduction

How can you make your team (and people in the team) more creative?

Image: Epsos.de

Well, strictly speaking,

you cannot!

Impossible!Everyone is creative

in their own way when they want to!Not in your way and when you would like them to!

But…

You can, for instance……remove the obstacles blocking their inherent creativity

…encourage people to step aside routines and accustomed pattern and presumptions

…amplify their creative potential by ensuring that they do things they love

…help them see opportunities and options beyond constraints and obligations

Individualautonomyfears & anxiety, safety,optimisminspirations…

Teamtrustrelatednessplayfulness &humour…

Communitypurposevisionpower balancefairness…

Societyfreedomopenness curiosityprogress…

My focus in this session…remove the obstacles blocking their inherent creativity

…encourage people to step aside routines and accustomed pattern and presumptions

…amplify their creative potential by ensuring that they do things they love

…help them see opportunities and options beyond constraints and obligations

Individualautonomyfears & anxiety, safety,optimisminspiration…

Teamtrustrelatednessplayfulness &humour…

Communitypurposevisionpower balancefairness…

Societyfreedomopenness curiosityprogress…

How can you support people in problem solving?

Image: Epsos.de

Think of pains and struggles just before the moments of

”heureka” and ”aha, I got it”What creative struggles have had?

How it feels just before ”heureka” and why?

The most common pains and struggles in problem

solvingMy observations

Unresolvedproblems Solutions

Gatekeepers

9 Windows

Unresolvedproblems Solutions

Gatekeepers

Case 1: Bootstrap doesn’t work anymore. It worked last week. What I have messed up?

Download Bootstrap

Ensure that it works

Something else for week

and two

Continue (following

the tutorial)

It does not work

anymore

Something that worked last week doesn’t work anymore!

Past Now Future

Super-system

System

The problem

Sub-system

Bootstrap did work week or do ago

Bootstrap doesn’t work anymore. It worked last week.

Bootstrap works again (=problem solved; what might be differently)

CSS markup and bootstrap filesHtml and link to css fileBrowsers default rendering rulesExamples in the tutorial

CSS markup and bootstrap filesHtml and link to css fileBrowsers default rendering rulesExamples in the tutorial

Web site documentationDevelopment communityBrowser versionVersion 2.x (newest)=> Default docs for v2.x

Web site documentationDevelopment communityBrowser versionVersion 3.0 (newest)=> Default docs for v3.0

Bootstrap did work week or do ago

Bootstrap doesn’t work anymore. It worked last week.

Bootstrap works again (=problem solved; what might be differently)

CSS markup and bootstrap filesHtml and link to css fileBrowsers default rendering rulesExamples in the tutorial

CSS markup and bootstrap filesHtml and link to css fileBrowsers default rendering rulesExamples in the tutorial

SolutionsBootstrap 3.0 was released a week ago. I had downloaded the bootstrap 2.x files and tested it using version 2.x tutorial. Now I continued by using 3.0 tutorial. There’s a mismatch…

Case 2: After customer have paid, delivery of the product fails in 1 of 10 000 case due fatal system failure

Order PaymentProcess

order and payment

Delivery

Fatal (seeminly non-repetable and rare) error here

Much earlier: Recurring session related problems and fixes

Customer serviceCompany reputation

Customer select productCustomer confirm orderCustomer pays product in third party payment system

When customer returns to the our system, system throws fatal error sometimes.

Delivery of the product fails in 1 of 10 000 cases due a fatal server error.

Customer calls to the customer service and complains about the problem.

Database callUI interactionSession handlingDatabase callsCryptographic stuff (ensure validity of order)

Cryptographic stuff (ensure validity of payment)Database calls (get product data, get order related data, store payment related data…)Session handlingSession expiration

Annoyance about the failed deliveryCall to customer service

Much earlier: Recurring session related problems and fixes

Database server3rd party payment systemError logs and audit logsWeb server and application serverRequest routingCaching mechanisms

Customer serviceCompany reputations

Customer select productCustomer click order and pays product in thrid part payment system

Customer returns to the our system. System throws fatal error.

Delivery of the product fails in 1 of 10 000 cases due a fatal server error.

Customer calls to the customer service and complains about the problem.

Database callUI interactionSession handlingDatabase callsCryptographic stuff (ensure validity of order)

Cryptographic stuff (ensure validity of payment)Database callsSession handlingSession expiration

Annoyance about the failed deliveryCall to customer serviceLog entries mapped to the approximate time of the error and type of error

SolutionThe solution was that in some rare cases a field returned by SQL server was null (value did not exist) and the system threw NullReferenceException*. The end user saw just a generic “something went wrong” error.

You needed to add a null check.

[*] As some of you guessed already, the language was C#. In Java you get NullPointerException, not NullReferenceException.

Contradiction analysis

Unresolvedproblems Solutions

Gatekeepers

Case 3: Startups don’t do any risk management

Where?• Where should startups do risk management?• Irrelevant

• Where should startups not do risk management?• Customer premises?

Image: Nasa

Fine, but this does notyet solve the problem!

When?• When should startups do risk management?• Hour or two once per quarter is probably enough

• Where should startups not do risk manement?• Irrelevant

A solution; maybe good enough

Conditions? Interfaces?• In which cases or within which conditions startups should do risk

management?• If they need to do decision having big financial impact

• In which cases or within which conditions should not startups do risk manement?• If they do sales• As a part of their everyday work (usually)

Great, we have a solution!

OutcomeThe coachee decided that:Once per quarter he will go to a restaurant with the founders of a startup. During that evening they go through what all could go wrong and get drunk (or another way around).

After that evening, the people switch back to the optimistic mode.

Case 3: We want to write and read massive amount of data from a table at the same time in SQL ServerGuess what --- we had a serious performance problem.

The problem

Where?• To where need I write data quickly?• I don’t care as long as the data is persisted to the database and never lost

• From where need I read data quickly? • I don’t care if I get valid data from database

Image: Nasa

NO WIN!

When?• When do I want to read data quickly?• When customer wants to download a dataset he have earlier stored to the

system

• When do I want to write data quickly?• When customer want to save or upload data to the system

NO WIN!

Conditions? Interfaces?• In which cases or within which conditions I want to read data quickly?• Always

• In which cases or within which conditions I want to write data quickly?• Only in those cases it have impact to user experience. If I do some stuff as a

background job it does not matter if it takes time.

ROCK! Now we’re talking…

Outcome

Creative toolboxes

Unresolvedproblems Solutions

Gatekeepers

Exercise 1 – Step 1

Pick an object from this space.

It can be anything from a pen or shoe to table. I will use light bulb as an example so please choose something else.

Exercise 1 – Step 2

Think of its main function.

The main function of a light bulb is “to illuminate”.

Exercise 1 – Step 3Now think what use could the object have if you “eliminate” its main function.

Why would people want to have the thing without its main function?

E.g. What use could a light bulb have, if its main function was not to illuminate.

Visual esthetics

”Conditional” visibility

Signal what is happening in a machine

To be a kickass weapon

Exercise 2 – Step 1

Pick an object from this space.

It can be anything from a pen or shoe to table. I will use light bulb as an example so please choose something else.

Exercise 2 – Step 2

Think of its main function.

Exercise 2 – Step 2

Pick at an actions that does not relate to the object at all.

In case of light bulb the main function is “to illuminate”. So I choose “to walk”.

Exercise 2 – Step 3

Combine the object and the actions.

Exercise 3 – Step 1

Pick an object from this space.

It can be anything from a pen or shoe to table. I will use light bulb as an example so please choose something else.

Exercise 3 – Step 2Think what is essential for its main function.

What mechanism or part is needed for its core function?

E.g. ‘class shell’ around the wolfram wire.

Exercise 3 – Step 4

Pick another object

E.g. ‘a table’

Exercise 3 – Step 4

Substitude the essential part by the other object

Light table… boring. Let me try again ‘door’. Using light as a door. Kind of theatrical effect… Better.

You just applied three very common creative techiniques: Combine, eliminate and substitude.

SCAMPER, Synectics, 40 Inventive

principles, 6 thinking hats…

Slightly different approaches but a lot of similarities.

SCAMPER exercise

Thank You! DiscussionTwitter: @ilmirajat