Reverse the problem to break fixation

Ask the opposite question ("How could we make this worse?") to escape the constraints of the original framing.

Why it works

Mental fixation — latching on to an initial problem representation — is one of the primary blockers of insight in problem-solving research. Reversal deliberately disrupts the fixation by forcing the brain to activate a different, opposing representation. The reversed answers often expose the hidden assumptions of the original framing when you flip them back.

How to do it

1. State your problem as normal ("How do we increase team trust?").
2. Reverse it completely ("How could we destroy team trust as efficiently as possible?").
3. Brainstorm freely on the reversed question — the more extreme the ideas, the better.
4. Flip each answer back into a positive action and examine which ones you are already accidentally doing.

Evidence

Mental fixation is well documented in the problem-solving literature (Knoblich et al., Ohlsson). Reversal as a fixation-breaking technique is a practitioner heuristic grounded in that research; direct outcome trials for reversal specifically are not established. (mechanistic)

The mechanism (disrupting fixation) is supported; whether reversal is superior to other disruption techniques has not been directly compared in trials.

Common mistake

Staying polite during the reversal brainstorm — "How could we make it slightly worse?" — which fails to break fixation because it stays too close to the original framing.