Creative Thinking · Lesson 2 of 3

Reframing, analogies and combinations

Change the description and different solutions become available. The description is doing more work than you think.

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Reframing changes the description of the problem, and because solutions are generated from descriptions, a new description generates new solutions. "How do we get more people to the gym" and "how do we make movement part of their day" produce different answers and neither is obviously right.

Analogies import structure from elsewhere. How does a restaurant handle a rush? How does a library handle abundance? The value is not the surface resemblance but the mechanism you borrow — and the discipline is to state where the analogy stops.

Combination is the most reliable creative move there is. Take two things that work separately and force them together. Most of what looks like invention is a combination that nobody had needed to make until now.

See it happen

The question on the whiteboard reads: "How do we get more people to read our documentation?"

The read that arrives on its own

Better formatting, better search, an announcement.

The same situation, with this idea

Reframe: "How do people get their answer with no documentation at all?" Now: error messages that say the fix, sensible defaults so the question never arises, an answer in the product itself.

What changed

Nothing about the situation changed. The description changed, and the second description made a different set of solutions visible.

The takeaway

Change the description and different solutions become available. The description is doing more work than you think.

Easy to take the wrong way

Reframing until you find a version of the problem you already know how to solve. The test of a reframe is whether it opens options, not whether it is more comfortable.

Try this

Describe your current problem in three completely different ways. Notice which solutions appear in each.