Hi everybody - it’s Andrew Benedict-Nelson, your friendly neighborhood strategist, back with another way to think differently about any problem you are working on. Subscribe if you’d love to receive an exercise like this every week.
Think of some issue from outside the normal flow of your work on your problem that keeps coming back to bother you “like a bad penny.” This issue won’t be one that feels essential to you or your organization. It should be one that feels annoying and irrelevant, yet takes up way too much of your time. Most people I know are facing some issue of this type, but if you are lucky enough not to, think of some outside issue you’ve seen other people in your field face.
Why exactly is this outside issue so annoying? Try for a moment to see it independent of personalities or circumstances and look at the core of why it feels like it is not worth your time. It may help to make a list of adjectives to contrast the “bad penny” and your problem, like “petty” vs. “profound.”
Even though it is annoying, what are some things you have gained from having to deal with this issue? List any resource you can think of even if it’s something a little tongue-in-cheek like “an increased tolerance of annoying people.”
Now it’s time to get weird. Pretend for a moment that your experience with this external issue is critical to solving the most important problem you are working on — not just for you, but for the whole world. The list you generated in the last step will help you get started. But push yourself further to see the world of people and resources connected to this issue. What about it could change everything?
Now you’ve seen the “bad penny” from several different angles. What have you learned that will change how you deal with it next time? How will you turn it into a “good penny” that helps you make progress against the most important problem in your world?
That’s it! If you want to share any thoughts or feelings these questions evoked, just reply to this e-mail or comment below.
This exercise was developed using the parthood dynamic. It’s one of six innovation dynamics I use with clients to help realize new insights and unlock creative thinking.