There’s a lot to be said for being just a little bit naughty, wouldn’t you say? To play at the edges of acceptability. To push people’s buttons and see what happens. Coming up with new ideas is about seeing just how much mischief you can get into, and then only when you’ve reached the edge, pulling back into slightly safer territory.

Lateral thinking – the thinking man’s thinking

In my last post Ideas are threats, I touched on lateral thinking, after Mark Pollard called it out as an advertising planner’s stock in trade. Lateral thinking is about producing a volume of creative and incongruous ideas, in order to get to the best possible solution to your problem.

“Brain training pioneer” Edward de Bono is more well know for his six hats (especially that pesky black hat). But he formed the idea of lateral thinking 50 years ago: possibility thinking.

Creativity is a skill that everyone can learn.

The BBC did a little segment on de Bono’s lateral thinking, which is a fascinating piece of audio.

Ok, but what is it for? Where do I start? How can I use it?

In its simplest terms, lateral thinking is a way of stretching the innovations your mind can come up with. You have a problem. You need a solution. The odds are, someone has tried to come up with a solution before, right? But you still need a solution. Which means either previous ones didn’t work, or they didn’t work well enough (too expensive, too slow, too complex, etc).

So you don’t just need any solution, you need the right solution. The best solution. Ok, so this is where lateral thinking comes into its own. People think of Sherlock Holmes (one of my heroes) as a man of logic and reason. And that he was. But he was also a great lateral thinking.

Elementary, my dear Watson!

According to my good friend Google, lateral thinking is the solving of problems by an indirect and creative approach, typically through viewing the problem in a new and unusual light.

View your problem through a new and unusual light

Unusual, you say? Ok, we can do that!

When you think of problem solving, you think you need only the right information. But lateral thinking can throw in loads of curveball information, to stretch your mind, to make it work harder for the problem. And therefore find different solutions to everyone who has tried to crack the problem before (I’m going to try and stop saying solution now).

Lateral thinking is concerned not with playing with the existing pieces but with seeking to change those very pieces.

Shane Snow

So let’s take a look at a problem that lots of people face when searching for a job, and one that was raised recently in Mark Pollard’s strategy discussion group Sweatheads:

I’m job hunting at the moment. Does anyone have any ideas or pointers on what to include in an application?
Resume, cover letter and…? And any thoughts on what makes a great cover note?

Lateral thinking exercise

In other words, how do you get cut through when looking for a job? Here’s the process we’re going to follow to approach this (obviously this is going to be quite a generic outcome, but let’s see how we get on):

1. What are our assumptions about getting a job?
2. What are the normal routes to a job? 
3. What if we couldn’t do any of these things?
4. How can we reframe the question?
5. Let’s work backwards.
6. Change the perspective.

Once we’ve worked through these steps, hopefully we’ll have come up with a number of different routes to getting a job. Some will be awful, but we’re looking for that one little gem, the nugget of gold amongst the rocks.

What are our assumptions?

• Everybody wants a job.
• A company has a specific need for specific skills for a specific amount of time.
• There is a person or group of people making the decision on the person they will hire for that role.
• There will be other people, and possibly a lot of other people, wanting that role.
• The better the job the more competition for the role.
• It’s not what you know, it’s who you know – people with an “in” to the company will be able to queue jump.
• It’s not all about the skills and experience, but about cultural fit.
• Hiring managers are scared of making the wrong decision, so might go for the safe option, the person that ticks all the boxes.

Ok, that’s a good list for now. Doing this for real I could go on for much longer, but this should do to illustrate the point without boring you to death with lists.

What are the normal routes to a job? 

• You see an advert for a role online (job board, industry publication, etc), send a CV or fill out an application form.
• You someone in a company and ask them to put you in touch with HR, the hiring manager, or the person in the department who might be your boss.
• You network  within the industry to hear about roles as they come up.
• You reach out to your existing network to hear about roles.

What if you can’t do any of these?

This is where things get interesting. How do you get a job if you can do any of these things?

• If you can’t reach out to them, get them to reach out to you. Become really well known for a particular skill or project. Self promotion.
• What if you can’t use a computer, so you have to send in the application by post?
• What if you’re really nervous and can’t speak to people at networking events? You could host an event and be behind the scenes, and hopefully build your confidence.
• What if you were really expert and went to speak at events, rather than being a delegate?
• What if you’re looking for a job in a new industry or country where you have no network or expertise? You could put together a portfolio of work with transferable skills. You could reach out to people you admire in the industry for mentorship, or guidance. You could start a blog on the topic you want to become an expert on to teach yourself about the subject and eventually showcase your expertise (hello wannabe strategist…)

How can we reframe the question?

So now you start questioning the question. Do you really need a job? What is a job? What defines the job you are looking for? What happens if you don’t get a job? What happens if you got a job in a different industry? How would this process be different if you were making a purchase? If you had to buy your job? How would you approach this differently if you needed to start the job tomorrow? Or in five years? 

The questions here are limitless. I just stream of consciousness writing to get a load of questions out, before you start answering them. 

Do you think you’re asking the right question? Or has the question changed based on this exercise?

Working backwards

You’re looking for a job. Presumably you’re looking for a specific job. Imagine you’re already in that job. And you’re smashing it. Really think about that situation. What does it look like? What does it feel like? Where are you? Who are you with? What are your colleagues like? What’s your boss like? How is your homelife different with this new job? What kind of money are you taking home? Where is your office? What do you have for lunch?

I’m not sure if you can tell but I’m a big believer in visualisation. This is a good step for getting clear on what you want, as well as for this lateral thinking exercise.

Now you’re clear on the end game, how did you get there? Work backwards.

• What was your first day like?
• How much time was there between finding out you got the job, and starting the job? What did you do in that time?
• How did you find out you got the job? Who told you? Where were you? Who did you tell first?
• What sealed the deal? What put you in front of the competition?
• What was the interview process like? How many rounds? How many people?
• What feedback did you get after your first interview? Who interviewed you? Where was it?
• How did you find out about the job? How did you apply? How did you position your skills? 

I know this is easier said than done, but it’s such a useful exercise. And there’s no right or wrong answer, so chill out and give it a go. There’s an infinite number of combinations, so do it multiple times. Try doing it when you’re in different frames of mind to see if you come out with different answers.

Try and be a bit mischievous with your answers. Play around with them. What if you were being totally outrageous with your route to your job. Make up stories about dragons, wizards, blackmail and sex. 

How many different ways can you get a job?

Change perspective

This is a great exercise, and one I’ve used many times before. I absolutely love it. You get to pretend you’re someone else trying to solve this exact problem. I call it What Would Obama Do?

If Obama was trying to get they job you want, how would he approach it? Would he go on Ellen and let the world know what job he was looking for? Would he make a documentary about his skills in that area? Would he already know the CEO of the company, or one of its investors?

Now try this for a bunch of different people. Have fun! Come up with people in different situations to really try and stretch your imagination. Here’s a few I’ve used recently:

• Family: a father, a toddler, a grandmother
• Subcultures: a hipster, an emo, a punk, a Belieber, a nerd
• Real people/Celebs: Elon Musk, Lily Allen, Jeremy Corbyn, Oprah, Jim Carrey, Victoria Beckham, Gareth Southgate, Beyonce, Alan Sugar, Simon Cowell, Elvis
• Professions: engineer, visual artist, city planner, glamour model, teacher, growth hacker, mountain climber, professor, footballer, MP, reality TV star

What now?

Now’s the time to refine. You’ve thought about your assumptions and how to challenge them, and push them to one side. You know what your dream outcome is, and have thought about the steps in detail to make that happen. You’ve got out of your own head and thought about how a load of different people might approach the problem.

Now you refine those. You’ve gone to the edges of possibility, and now you can bring yourself back into the safe area.

List out your options. Hopefully you have more interesting options than when you started. And more effective, more efficient options. And more expensive, more elaborate options. You have the power to decide which ones are right for you, right for now, right for this situation. 

Problem solving resources

As you go out into the world and solve different problems, there are many ways to approach these, not just lateral thinking. There are some great resources to help you on your journey. Here are a few:

• OCR guide to problem solving
• How to use lateral thinking for solving complex problems
• WikiHow’s guide to lateral thinking

How did you find that?

Everything we know is right until its proved wrong. Science a whole profession of certainties that are ripe to be disproved. But that doesn’t invalidate the work they do, not one bit.

There’s no right answer in here. That’s not true, actually. There are often many, many right answers. And some might be more right than others. And some will be down right wrong. But you’ll have a load of options to try that you didn’t have when you started.

And the further towards the edge of reason you can push your thinking throughout the process, the more interesting your answers will be. Challenge your thinking at every step. If you discount an option, ask yourself why. Leave it on the table for that little bit longer.

I’d be really interested to hear how you use lateral thinking in your work, or if this post has helped clarify lateral thinking for you.

Be brave. Feel stupid.