Coaching practices for Lateral Thinking with My Team
Describe almost anything you are working through and IX Coach finds the practices whose real-world fit is closest. For Lateral Thinking with My Team, these are the strongest matches in the current practice library.
Does this sound like the set of challenges you might be facing?
- I keep generating "alternatives" but they’re all just minor variations of the same basic approach
- My team just executes whatever I hand them and never pushes back or brings me a better idea
- Every time we get the team in a room to brainstorm, the loudest two people steer it and everyone else goes quiet
- When I try to brainstorm how to make this work I freeze up and self-censor every idea as not good enough
- I’m stuck and every realistic option I can reach from here is no good, and I sense the workable answer is somewhere I just can’t get to from inside the feasible
Practices that may help
- Lateral Thinking, Made Practical
Lateral thinking, coined by Edward de Bono, is a set of deliberate techniques for disrupting habitual thought patterns so that a problem can be approached from an unexpected angle. Unlike vertical (logical) thinking, which deepens the current line of reasoning, lateral thinking deliberately abandons it to find a new entry point. Evidence for specific techniques is largely observational and practitioner-reported; the underlying cognitive principle — that breaking pattern-lock enables novel solutions — has support in creativity research. - Concept fan: map the solution space before picking a direction
Expand from specific solutions to the broader concept behind them, then generate alternatives at the concept level.
Lateral Thinking, Made Practical - Challenge assumptions and invite new thinking
Actively encourage your team to question old ways and generate new approaches.
Transformational Leadership, Made Practical - Brainwrite instead of group brainstorm
Have people generate ideas silently and individually first, then pool and build.
Divergent Thinking: Generating Many Ideas - Reverse brainstorm: solve the opposite problem first
Ask "How would we guarantee the worst possible outcome?" — then invert every answer.
Lateral Thinking, Made Practical - Use a stepping-stone idea: an intermediate impossible idea
Generate a deliberately impractical intermediate idea to use as a bridge to a practical one you could not have reached directly.
Lateral Thinking, Made Practical - Random entry: force a random stimulus into the problem
Open a dictionary to a random word, then connect it to the problem — the forced association breaks the current pattern lock.
Lateral Thinking, Made Practical - Run a structured team morphological session
The method is most powerful when multiple perspectives populate the dimensions and values.
Morphological Analysis, Made Practical - Assign project phases to genius-matched people
Route early ideation to Wonder/Invention geniuses and execution phases to Tenacity geniuses.
The 6 Types of Working Genius (Patrick Lencioni) - Provocation (PO): make a deliberately absurd statement to escape the pattern
Prefix an impossible or absurd idea with "PO" to signal it is a provocation, not a proposal — then follow it to see what it unlocks.
Lateral Thinking, Made Practical
Related concerns
- Lateral Thinking Structured
Lateral thinking, coined by Edward de Bono, is a set of deliberate techniques for disrupting habitual thought patterns so that a problem can be approached from an unexpected angle. Unlike vertical (logical) thinking, which deepens the current line of reasoning, lateral thinking deliberately abandons it to find a new entry point. Evidence for specific techniques is largely observational and practitioner-reported; the underlying cognitive principle — that breaking pattern-lock enables novel solutions — has support in creativity research.
- Lateral Thinking With Friends
Lateral thinking, coined by Edward de Bono, is a set of deliberate techniques for disrupting habitual thought patterns so that a problem can be approached from an unexpected angle. Unlike vertical (logical) thinking, which deepens the current line of reasoning, lateral thinking deliberately abandons it to find a new entry point. Evidence for specific techniques is largely observational and practitioner-reported; the underlying cognitive principle — that breaking pattern-lock enables novel solutions — has support in creativity research.
- Challenge Assumptions Lateral Thinking
Lateral thinking, coined by Edward de Bono, is a set of deliberate techniques for disrupting habitual thought patterns so that a problem can be approached from an unexpected angle. Unlike vertical (logical) thinking, which deepens the current line of reasoning, lateral thinking deliberately abandons it to find a new entry point. Evidence for specific techniques is largely observational and practitioner-reported; the underlying cognitive principle — that breaking pattern-lock enables novel solutions — has support in creativity research.
- Lateral Thinking Alternatives
Lateral thinking, coined by Edward de Bono, is a set of deliberate techniques for disrupting habitual thought patterns so that a problem can be approached from an unexpected angle. Unlike vertical (logical) thinking, which deepens the current line of reasoning, lateral thinking deliberately abandons it to find a new entry point. Evidence for specific techniques is largely observational and practitioner-reported; the underlying cognitive principle — that breaking pattern-lock enables novel solutions — has support in creativity research.
- Lateral Thinking As A Parent
Lateral thinking, coined by Edward de Bono, is a set of deliberate techniques for disrupting habitual thought patterns so that a problem can be approached from an unexpected angle. Unlike vertical (logical) thinking, which deepens the current line of reasoning, lateral thinking deliberately abandons it to find a new entry point. Evidence for specific techniques is largely observational and practitioner-reported; the underlying cognitive principle — that breaking pattern-lock enables novel solutions — has support in creativity research.
- Lateral Thinking At Work
Lateral thinking, coined by Edward de Bono, is a set of deliberate techniques for disrupting habitual thought patterns so that a problem can be approached from an unexpected angle. Unlike vertical (logical) thinking, which deepens the current line of reasoning, lateral thinking deliberately abandons it to find a new entry point. Evidence for specific techniques is largely observational and practitioner-reported; the underlying cognitive principle — that breaking pattern-lock enables novel solutions — has support in creativity research.
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