We are naturally coming to the place when we need to identify options for solutions. It is the place where most people feel comfortable staying in will last to find solutions to problems. The challenge here is that we actually want to divert and come up with at least several alternative options for solutions, so that we can find the best one. So, in this section, we want to present a few tools that we believe can help you overcome this challenge. One of those tools is brainstorming that we can use everywhere and we have already discussed, but we'll also look at some more exotic options like the bonehead, step ladder and some others. One of the techniques that I like using in similar stories situation is Edward de Bono's six thinking hats.

It's a structured process that supports people to look at the problem and look at solutions from different perspectives, taking into account their feelings, the fact the processes, and all different perspectives. The tool offers the metaphor of six heads that correspond to a specific viewpoint of thinking. We always start with the blue hat and work clockwise to put on the hat the different heads and think from the respective perspective. In the end, we arrived back and the blue hat we can do a few iterations if needed. Going back to a specific Had to explore further. For larger teams.

The stepladder technique might be very useful to prevent groupthink and to make the discussions more efficient. In the step ladder, we introduce the problem to the team and collect a group of two members that form the core team. They discuss the problem among themselves and arrive at some conclusion. Then we add the next team member to the group, and he or she listens to what the other two people have arrived it contributing with his or her own thoughts. This creates multiple validations of the thinking and creates a good basis for arriving at helpful solutions. Another idea for you is to use whiteboarding and to ask the team to come up with With parallel solutions, this technique combines a few helpful elements.

One of them is visualization. And the other thing is including a competitive element in a well intentioned way. You split the group into smaller teams, and each team starts working in parallel on a solution to the problem. You can incap encourage teams to steal from one another, because they can build on top of good ideas and arrive at even better solutions like that. Remember, our goal is to have the best solution for the problem. So really, the competition in this case is very good intentions.

You can ask the teams to switch places and review each other's ideas, provide feedback, and then iterate back to improve on their solution. Eventually, you can look at the parallel solutions and pick the best one. The world cafe technique is one that works especially well for bigger groups. In this technique, we split people in small groups of four to five people and ask them to brainstorm on ideas for solving the problem. We do it in a time box. And once the time box expires, we ask people to change group and three do the exercise.

This helps people work with a lot of other peers from the group, build on top of each other's ideas and arrive at new and unexpected solutions. You can repeat these rounds as long as you need it. Eventually, you can bring the group together in exchange what were the Most Valuable ideas that were identified and how you want to continue with them. So in this lecture, we gave you some ideas about how you can boost the creativity of your team so that they can arrive at unexpected and really while good solutions of the problem. Now go ahead and try out some of those ideas.