Too easily satisfied.
Routes, options and choices.
Levels of alternative.
In school mathematics you work out a sum and get the answer. You move on to the next sum. There is no point in spending more time on the first sum because if you have the right answer you cannot get a better one.
Many people carry that idiom over into their thinking in later life. As soon as they have an answer to a problem, they stop thinking. They are satisfied with the first answer that comes along. Real life is, however, very different from school sums. There is usually more than one answer. Some answers are much better than others: they cost less, are more reliable or are more easy to implement. There is no reason at all for supposing that the first answer has to be the best one. If time is very short and there are a great number of problems to be solved, there might be a reason for being satisfied with the first answer – but not otherwise. Would you like your doctor to settle for the first thing that came into his or her mind and then to stop thinking about your illness?
So we acknowledge the first answer and note that we can always go back to it. Then we set out to look for alternatives. We set out to look for other solutions. When we have a number of alternatives, then we can choose the best by seeing which one fits our needs and our resources.
We may have a perfectly adequate way of doing something, but that does not mean there cannot be a better way. So we set out to find an alternative way. This is the basis of any improvement that is not fault correction or problem solving.
So far in this section I have looked at instances where we already have a way of doing things. Our search for alternatives is really a search for a better way. There are also times when we do not yet have a way of proceeding.
In planning any journey we set out alternative routes. When we have completed the mental map of a situation, we look for alternative routes to our destination.
The notion of alternatives suggests that there is usually more than one way of doing things, more than one way of looking at things.
The acknowledgment that there might be alternatives and the search for these alternatives is a fundamental part of creative thinking. Indeed, the different techniques of lateral thinking are directed to finding new alternatives.
The willingness to look for alternatives (of perception, of explanation, of action) is a key part of green hat thinking.
… Our rival newspaper has just raised its price. Put on your green hat and list all our alternatives.
… We have received a demand note saying that if we do not pay a large amount of money, our products in the stores will be poisoned. Let’s go through the obvious options open to us, then let’s put on our green thinking hats to find some further ones.
The search for alternatives implies a creative attitude: the acceptance that there are different approaches. The actual search for alternatives may not require any special creativity until the obvious alternatives have been spelled out. It may simply be a matter of focusing attention on the subject and listing the known ways of dealing with it. This is not sufficient. Just as we need to make an effort to go beyond the first solution, so we should make a creative effort to go beyond the obvious set of alternatives. Strictly speaking we may need only green hat thinking for this extra search. The first part of the search could even come under white hat thinking: ‘Go through the approaches that are normally used in such situations.’
In practice it is more convenient to put the whole search for alternatives under green hat thinking.
In business training a great deal of emphasis is put on decision making. Yet the quality of any decision depends very much on the alternatives that are available to the decision maker.
… We are going to have to decide on a location for this holiday camp. Put on your green hat and let me have all possible alternatives. Then we can narrow them down.
… How are we going to distribute these computers? What are the alternative strategies?
Many people believe that a logical scan will cover all possible alternatives. In a closed system this may be the case, but it is rarely so in real life situations.
… There are only three possible alternatives. We can leave the price the same. We can lower it. Or, we can raise it. There is nothing else we can do.
It is true that any possible action on the price must eventually fall into one of these three choices. Yet there are a huge number of possible variations. We can lower the price later. (How much later?) We can lower the price on some of the products. We can change the product and produce a low-price version. We can change our promotion of the product to justify a higher price (leaving the price the same or even raising it). We can lower the price for a while and then raise it again. We could leave the price alone and give special discounts. We could lower the price and then charge extra for options. Once we have considered such options (and there are many, many more), we could indeed classify them under one of the three choices. But listing the three choices does not, itself, generate all these alternatives.
It is a very common fault of rigid thinkers to outline major alternative categories and to go no further.
… What I really want to do is both to raise and lower the price at the same time. We shall create a low price commodity line and a high price premium line.
There are different levels of alternative. I have some free time. What shall I do with it? I could go on holiday. I could take a course. I could do a lot of gardening. I could catch up with some work.
If I decide to go on holiday, we move to the next level. What sort of holiday do I want? It could be a sun/sea holiday. It could be a cruise. It could be a sporting holiday. If I decide on a sun/sea holiday, we move to the next level: where do I go? It could be the Mediterranean. It could be the Caribbean. It could be the Pacific Islands. Then there is the matter of choosing how to get there and where to stay.
Whenever we look for an alternative we do so within an accepted framework, which sets the level. Usually we want to stay within that framework.
… I asked you for alternative designs for an umbrella handle and you have given me a design for a raincoat.
Occasionally we need to challenge the framework and to move upward to a higher level.
… You asked me for alternative ways of loading the trucks. I am going to tell you that it would make more sense to send our product by train.
… You asked me to suggest media for the advertising campaign. I am going to tell you that the money would be better spent on public relations.
By all means challenge the framework from time to time and change levels. But also be prepared to generate alternatives within the specified level. Creativity gets a very bad name when creative people always makes a point of solving a different problem from the one they have been given. The dilemma remains a real one: when to work within the given framework and when to break out of it.
We come now to what may be the most difficult point in all of creativity – the creative pause. The creative pause is not there unless we choose to put it there.
Something is going along very smoothly. We have looked for alternatives at the obvious points. We have spelled out different approaches to the problems. What more could we want from creativity?
I once spent several minutes trying hard to turn off an alarm clock that was not ringing. I had not paused to consider that the sound might have been coming from my other alarm clock.
The creative pause arises when we say: ‘There is no obvious reason why I should pause at this point to consider alternatives. But I am going to.’
In general we are so problem-oriented that when there are no problems we prefer to move along smoothly rather than to pause to create more thinking work for ourselves.
… I don’t want to think that we have a problem here because we don’t. But I want you to put on your green hat and to have a little creative pause with regard to our normal habit of painting cars before we sell them.
… Have a green hat pause on this point: salesmen are paid commission on the sales they make.
… Consider the steering wheel of a car. It does its job well. Pause and green hat it.