This is Andrew Benedict-Nelson, social change strategist and innovation educator. Each week, I share a question that you and your organization can use to find a new perspective on the toughest problems you face. Reply to the e-mail or comment on the site and we can talk about them together!
NOW FOR THIS WEEK’S QUESTION…
Our thinking about the social problems we are trying to solve is structured by categories. People who are highly familiar with these problems likely started learning these categories decades ago. But children are utterly unfamiliar with such restrictions on their thinking. Try combining two things in the world of your problem in a way that would only make sense to a child. What does this teach you about the underlying categories and how they shape your thinking?
Right now my son is in to just about anything with wheels or an engine. Cars, trucks, trains, airplanes, you name it. One of his toys that is in heavy rotation is a set of about a dozen Duplo trains cars that can all hook up together (for people who aren’t parents, Duplos are the toddler-friendly version of Legos). He will add just about anything to these cars as he navigates them around our kitchen, from googly eyes to giraffes to pirate ship parts.
One day, I saw him pulling along the train with a structure that was about as high as the whole train is long. He explained that it was the train’s elevator (he is also thrilled anytime we go anywhere with an elevator or an escalator). This made me laugh even more than the other train accessories, then I stopped to wonder why. I figured it was because a train is an extreme example of humans moving horizontally while an elevator is an extreme example of humans moving vertically. Our thinking about both directions belongs in such different situations that combining them feels absurd. However, that absurdity also helps you see the horizontal and vertical categories more clearly.
As adults, we don’t have toddlers’ natural ability to combine the categories of the world in unexpected ways. But for this exercise, you only need to recapture it long enough to gain an insight or two. Here’s how it works.
HOW TO DO IT
Collect your Duplo blocks - Coming up with absurd combinations is much, much harder for adults than it is for children. That’s because we get so used to working with highly specialized categories and tools that we forget that at one point in time, they were just ideas in somebody’s head. This exercise works best if you can collect a large number of words or phrases associated with your problem in a truly random way. You might carry a little notebook for a few days and write down some words you heard each hour. Maybe throw in some words you just like hearing, like “cicada.” The point is to have diverse material before you even try constructing anything.
Come up with some weird combinations - Now start combining items that don’t feel like they make sense together. It may make sense to start by doing this completely at random. What you’re looking for is something that sounds very strange, but also is not utter nonsense — for example, I can immediately imagine a train with an elevator, but I can’t imagine an ironic asymptote. If you can, power to you. If random isn’t working, try combinations that sound like they would be truly amazing or truly awful. The one thing you must NOT do is try to be innovative or solve a problem — that will just reinforce the categories you are already using.
Commit to one combination - It’s necessary to come up with a few possibilities because as adults, it can be hard for us to judge how far we are outside the norm. So after you’ve come up with a few ideas, sit with them for a moment and consider which one would be most disruptive to the categories you work with every day. Take a moment to more fully realize the combination in your mind — it might even help to draw it or tell a story about it. The point is to kind of shock and amuse yourself in the same way I was shocked and amuse to see a tower of blocks coming around the corner of my kitchen island.
Identify the underlying categories - The combination you chose will not just be confusing because the words sound funny. There will be some deeper reason why the two concepts seem to contradict each other. Try to find the fundamental categories that make up each side. You can do this though looking at synonyms or word association. Or you can do it by trying to explain the conflict in a sentence and then looking at the words you use. Fortunately, you don’t have to limit yourself to just one set of categories here. Look at everything that comes out of your funny combination.
Consider what the categories mean - This is the part where you have to go back to being a grown-up again. Even if he understood the categories of vertical and horizontal, my son might still insist that it would be fun to build a real elevator train. To really get at the reason they don’t exist, you have to understand that large investments are made in horizontal movement (transit) and vertical movement (buildings) for different reasons and in different contexts, all of which fall apart if you combine them. Boring, I know! But breaking things down to this level can help you see assumptions you are making about the categories that make up your problem. Then you can decide whether to keep them or discard them.
Bonus - Every once in a while, you’ll see that there is a category that actually unites the two sides of your silly combination. In the context of toddlerhood, there are a ton: elevators and trains are both things we can build with blocks, things we can go on trips to see, things that need motors to run, and so forth. Your silly combination may also yield these kinds of new adventures, so keep your mind open to the possibility.
CAN YOU GIVE ME AN EXAMPLE?
Yup. “Reality star president.” That combination would have made very little sense prior to Donald Trump descending his golden escalator in 2015. And even now it would be inappropriate to understand Trump only as a reality star. However, many of the best analyses of how Trump thinks and what he represents are ones that were willing to break down the mental wall between entertainment and politics. For example, a few writers have looked at Trump’s foray into the world of professional wrestling to understand how he structures conflicts to achieve an advantage.
COOL, SO WHAT MAKES THIS WORK?
This question is an example of how to better understand assumptions about your problem using the configuration dynamic. It’s one of six innovation dynamics I help people master to improve their critical thinking and build strategies for social change. Reply to this e-mail with your answer to the question and I’ll let you know what I think! Or learn more by visiting http://www.teachingsocialchange.com.
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