Mixed up makes better: Tricky thinking

The principles that enable creative thinking apply to all sorts of scenarios. We’ve defined five areas that we work in, all benefiting from creative thinking but leading to slightly different outcomes. 

Tricky thinking is needed when you are faced with a problem. Something outside your field of knowledge. A sensitive subject. A new frontier.

It could be that you know something needs to happen but you don’t know what. It could be that you know what needs to happen but you don’t know how.

When you’re faced with a challenge like this it’s easy to become swamped with different ideas. A forest of mighty pines, when all you need is a toothpick. 

Or the opposite can happen, you don’t have any ideas. You’re stood in a big empty field, with not a tree in sight.

Both scenarios can have you lost in unhelpful trains of thought. That ultimately lead you back to where you begun. The problem.

Who wants to be a millionaire?

We’ve found that tricky thinking tends to get trickier because we feel we have to solve it on our own. This can be for a number of reasons:

• You’re working on something that’s going to impact someone or is top secret, you may not feel comfortable talking to others through fear of letting the cat out of the bag.
• You’re working on something that you’ve been chosen to do because of your skillset, you feel that asking others for support will devalue your reputation.
• You’re working on something with a painfully short deadline, talking to others about it will cost you valuable time.

We’ve been there, countless times. We’ve seen clients and colleagues go there too. 

The old turn of phrase holds true, a problem shared is a problem halved. And when you halve a problem you double your chances of solving it.

It can be the hardest thing to do but pick up the phone to a friend. Ask the audience if you can. Or at least one of them.

Simply by airing the problem to spark a conversation with someone else you start a whole new train of thought. It may change direction. Stop at a few destinations along the way.

They may not be where you thought you needed to go, they may not even give you the solution you need. 

But they’ll spark ideas that you hadn’t considered, that will ultimately give you a better chance of getting to where you need to be.

There’s lots of things you can do to help yourself think creatively beyond talking to others, which will compliment tricky thinking. We explain them in our article about new thinking.

And if you’re struggling, we’d be happy to talk to you about tricky thinking, for free. And then, if we think we can help you and you like the cut of our jib, we’d take you on a creative journey that won’t fail to get you to the solution you need.

---

---

---