Lateral thinking has the potential to totally transform businesses from top to bottom, especially when the charges led by great leaders (and thinkers) in management.
Coaxing lateral thinking out of your team, though, can be a bit of a challenge – particularly if this hasn’t been a point of emphasis in the past.
The results (the short and long-term) are well worth the extra effort, though.
Few things have the potential to electrify a team the way that lateral thinking – and the creative solutions that lateral thinking brings to the table – can.
Here’s a couple of things to consider when prioritizing and emphasizing this kind of problem-solving with your team.
Lateral Thinking Tactics to Lean on as a Manager
Straight out of the gate you have to come up with a creative way to introduce lateral thinking to your team, especially if this hasn’t been a core tenant of the team in the past.
Coming in on Monday morning, sitting everyone down in the conference room, and dictating to them the power and possibility of lateral thinking isn’t going to get you the kinds of results you’re after.
No, you have to be creative in how you introduce lateral thinking, how you reinforce lateral thinking, and how you encourage your team to approach problems and obstacles they bump up against every day.
Start with these tactics and expand from there!
Transitional Objects are Powerful Stuff
A transitional object makes it easy to introduce the idea of lateral thinking into the mix without it coming across as another corporate training to be tolerated (if not outright ignored).
Introduce the problem or obstacle that you want the team to focus on solving, clearly outlining the situation and giving them as much intel as possible to get started.
Then ask something like “How would the Indiana Jones solve this?”
You’ll immediately see the wheels of your team start working in ways they weren’t before.
Now they have a transitional object with specific qualities they all get deep in their bones, but they also have a transitional object that can carry the responsibility of solving this problem – even just a little bit.
That’s powerful, powerful stuff.
Wrong Answers Only (At First)
Another great approach for managers to take when coaxing their team to be think laterally is to ask them specifically for wrong answers right out of the gate.
Encourage them to make these answers at least tangentially related to the problem at hand, but definitely encourage them to come up with answers they believe to be are 100% wrong before even thinking about coming up with solutions.
This kind of brainstorming activity can spur the imagination, can unleash creativity, and can help team members spot weaknesses or strengths in the obstacle to be resolved that they might have been ignoring otherwise.
What Can We Cut?
A lot of solutions today revolve around “what can we add” rather than “what can we take away”.
Additive solutions certainly have their place (and have spurred a lot of progress all on their own), but subtractive solutions can be just as powerful – if not even more so.
Consider asking things like “what would happen if we stopped doing this” or “how would things be different if we couldn’t XYZ”.
There’s a reason that one of the most popular social networks on the planet (and one of the most influential companies in human history) began by asking how few characters they should give users to communicate with one another.
Twitter crushed it by limiting messages to 140 characters only. There’s a lesson in that.
Establishing a Culture of Lateral Thinkers
A good manager is going to seek out ways to implement lateral thinking tactically.
A great manager, though, is going to look for ways to establish a culture of lateral thinkers – really encouraging every member of the team to think outside the box, to creatively problem solve, and to bring something new to the table.
Here’s how to hit the ground running.
Get Comfortable with Discomfort
The first thing that managers serious about cultivating a culture of lateral thinking need to square with is the reality that there’s going to be a lot of discomfort in this.
Not just initially, either.
Yes, there’s going to be discomfort and growing pains as you shift the team culture away from more traditional problem-solving to lateral thinking.
But there’s also going to be a lot of discomfort, a lot of “unknowing”, and a lot of wrong answers on the pathway to the right solutions with lateral thinking, too.
Embrace that.
Make it a point of emphasis.
Do everything it takes to get your team comfortable with discomfort.
Let them know it’s just another piece of the success puzzle!
Embrace the Power of Failure
Another core tenant of your lateral thinking culture needs to focus on the power and importance of failure.
Too often today we want our first drafts to be picture-perfect, ready to ship, and the ideal solution right off the rip.
Very rarely does that mesh with reality.
Instead, make sure that your team knows that you are going to take a much more iterative approach to success. Every step towards (and every step away) the solution that ends up being the perfect fit is another step in the right direction.
Get Everyone Involved
Lateral thinking works best when you have multiple minds attacking a problem or obstacle from multiple different directions.
Diversity of thought and diversity of experience is a game changer when brought to bear against a particularly sticky challenge.
Encourage every member of your team to be a part of this new shift towards lateral thinking. Get input from everyone, even those that may not be Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). The whole idea here, after all, is to come up with new solutions that cannot come from all dogma.
All hands on deck build a much stronger team culture, too.
At the end of the day, as long as you keep these core things in mind while building that team culture of lateral thinking you should see the productivity – and happiness – of the team skyrocket.
References
https://byanthonyboyd.com/how-to-establish-a-culture-of-lateral-thinking-in-your-organization-b92763d9fe89
https://www.milforddailynews.com/story/business/2020/12/06/programmed-and-lateral-thinking-business-managers/6419532002/
