Unless you are very lucky or very unlucky, your job and your life require very little problem solving. Think about it: most of the challenges you see regularly are problems you’ve solved before, and unless you’re lucky enough to be in a profession that demands you generate new knowledge, or unlucky enough to be forced by circumstance to solve new problems that affect your life, you can pretty much coast on solutions you’ve generated in the past.
For the few new challenges you haven’t faced, you can usually hire expertise rather than stumbling through the problem-solving process yourself. For example, imagine you’re installing a new dishwasher. Unless you already know how to plumb from the garbage disposal, it may seem easier to work a little harder at your job to pay for a plumber rather than try to install the new dishwasher yourself. I mean, you could do it … but it would take some figuring out.
The rest of this entry is for those times you can’t avoid figuring it out—and especially for when a solution doesn’t come from rote and needs a little hit of creativity. Like the “innovation” angle of creativity we looked at before, creative problem solving remains a trick of connecting information in new ways, but there are some new strategies specific to this flavor of creativity that can help you pull it off. Here are some things to try.
First, try to avoid the temptation of the solution. It’s hard! I mean, that’s what you want; why not just reach out and grab it? One major lesson from studies of problem solving is that the sooner you reach for the apple at the expense of understanding the ecosystem of the tree, the less likely you are to find a fruitful solution to your problem. In creative problem solving, it’s all about understanding the problem. Specifically, it’s about understanding what researchers call the initial state and constraints—in other words, being crystal clear about the problem, the rules, your resources, and the goals.
For example, take this classic problem used in problem-solving studies from the book Lateral Thinking Puzzlers by Paul Sloane: “Bombs Away: One night during the Second World War, an allied bomber was on a mission over Germany. The plane was in perfect condition and everything on it worked properly. When it had reached its target, the pilot ordered the bomb doors to be opened. They opened. He then ordered the bombs to be released. They were released. But the bombs did not fall from the plane. Why should this be so?”
Now work to understand the initial condition and constraints. Picture the problem in your mind and then ask yourself, from the information given, if your picture must be as you imagine it. Must the plane be flying? Well, if it’s “over Germany,” then it really must. Must the bombs be free to fall? Well, if they “were released,” you would really have to assume so. Must the rules of gravity apply? Well, unless otherwise stated, you would have to assume the rules of physics are unchanged. Imagine the problem as if you were opening a hand that holds a tennis ball. Does the ball drop? Well, it does if your open hand is palm down. Do you see the solution now?
If you’re like most people, you assumed something about the problem’s initial state, but nothing in the problem states that the plane has to be flying right-side up. Of course, the solution is that the plane is flying upside down, and so when the doors are opened and the bombs are released, they don’t go anywhere.
Let’s strip down creative problem solving to a simpler form and try it again. Analogies have been extensively studied by people who study these things, and you’ve probably seen them before: how is A like B? Well, it’s pretty easy to see that apples are to fruit the same way wheat is to grain (both are kinds of the category). But now try this one:
MACERATION : LIQUID
A. Trail : Path
B. Evaporation : Humidity
C. Sublimation : Gas
D. Erosion : Weather
E. Decision : Distraction
It’s tempting to kind of unfocus your eyes and start putting answer choices next to the target and seeing how they feel. If you’re totally in touch with your insight (see earlier entry on creativity), this might actually work. But if the insightful solution doesn’t wallop you in a visceral way, you’ll have to do some analysis. And by now you should know that in creative problem solving, that starts with understanding the problem: what are its initial state and constraints? The more time you spend working to understand how the problem works, the faster you will find a solution. So ask yourself: what is the relationship between maceration and liquid? Well, hopefully you know that maceration means “chewing,” which makes you able to come up with the sentence “Maceration turns something into a liquid.” (And if you don’t, well, that’s where knowledge can aid problem solving.) Now you can go to the answer choices. Does a trail turn something into a path? Kind of, but not really. Does evaporation turn something into humidity? Again, kind of, but not really. Does sublimation turn something into a gas? Again, solving this problem takes some knowledge—namely, knowing the definition of sublimation—but the answer is that heck yeah, it does. (Or you could have applied your practical intelligence to understand that the answer is always C.)
Let’s try one more, again from Paul Sloane: “A man walks into a bar and asks the barman for a glass of water. The barman pulls out a gun and points it at the man. The man says ‘Thank you’ and walks out.”
Instead of reaching immediately for a solution, work to understand the problem. Search for false assumptions. Might there be another definition of gun? (No.) Might “pointing” be something other than the obvious? (No.) What do you assume is the intention of the barman’s actions? Do you assume that he is angry that the man ordered water? By prodding your assumptions, you may find possibilities in addition to the obvious ones. Is it possible the barman was trying to help the customer? If so, what problem would the customer think could be solved with a glass of water that could also be solved by looking down the barrel of a gun? Discovering the false assumption of the barman’s anger leads you to the answer: the man had the hiccups, which the barman cured with a good scare.
Problem solving is a big skill, and there are dozens if not hundreds of tips and tricks proven to increase problem-solving skills. One you may not have heard before comes from a 2013 article in the journal Thinking Skills and Creativity: applying the problem-solving strategies of the ancient Chinese philosophical text the I-Ching. The study looked at how 188 students applied I-Ching principles during the 2011 GreenMech challenge in which groups of four had to “assemble parts into a reaction system based on scientific principles and green concepts” (kind of like a crunchy Rube Goldberg challenge). In the BaGua model of the I-Ching, there are four paired problem-solving forces: sensitivity to the problem is balanced by arriving at a solution, mood arousal is balanced by logical reasoning, internal stillness is balanced by external action, and confrontation is balanced by support. The study integrates the BaGua with a traditional model of creative problem solving to suggest the following five stages of creative problem solving. With practice, you too can bring the ancient wisdom of the BaGua to your attempts at creative problem solving.
1. The process of sensing that a problem has occurred or will occur.
2. The activation of working memory during creative problem solving suggests that the idea-generating or -gathering processes are stimulated by mood arousal and logical reasoning.
3. The idea-generating and -gathering processes encompass individual interactions with people, data, and things, as well as meditative thinking during calm intervals.
4. The idea transformation process embraces two extremes to refine ideas: decreasing conflict about a new idea and deliberating about ideas.
5. Consequence-based idea evaluation is used to examine the effectiveness of different options.