Creative Problem Solving and Decision Making

It has been over a decade since I’ve taught CPS (Creative Problem Solving).  I learned it at the hands of Scott Isaksen of CPSB who has devoted a lifetime of academic and applied research to the subject.  In the 90s, I was so immersed in the topic I had rather taken it for granted – but teaching it again last week, I saw the power of it once again.  I had probably taught, lectured, studied, and applied CPS for 18 months – it became part of my life.  In addition, I got to do a world-tour interviewing illustrious CEOs on Innovation – including David Duffield of PeopleSoft and Jorma Ollila of Nokia.  Fun!!

However, ‘no battle plan survives contact with the enemy’; and ‘no training program survives contact with participants’.  You never know just how a group will take to a subject.  My group (at UW Green Bay) was industrial shop floor managers, medical receptionists, administrative assistants, and one finance manager.  How would they react?  What would they learn?

Class participants were tasked with helping a failing coffee shop, one surrounded by Walmart and Starbucks.  Using brainstorming with Post-its, clustering, voting, must-want, and criterion matrix tools, they spent an hour coming up with solutions.  What I forgot was just how much fun CPS was and how much group energy it released.  I don’t often enough see groups having that much fun.

And they produced some very interesting ideas!  What surprised me was that they found the convergence (criterion matrix) tools most useful.  As a ‘divergent thinker’, that boring bit when you have to narrow down and choose from multiple options is less fun.  But they loved it and during the debrief that showed up as their favorite tool.

So this facilitator learned a bunch, and was reminded just how useful and fun CPS can be.