January 3rd, 2024 - The Un-Chair
Last week, I posted on LinkedIn about the very random project of adding a “sidebar” to my blogs. In this process, I happened upon this blog that I wrote in January of last year, and never shared with my email list. So, here you go! (Just realizing now that this will be the second Ed Catmull quote from Creativity, Inc in as many emails! If it’s not obvious, I highly recommend this book).
January 23rd, 2023 Don’t Stare Directly at the Problem - the “un-chair”
Last week, my nine-year-old and I drove to the mountains for a powder day. On the way up, he slept and played games on his iPad while I listened to Ed Catmull’s Creativity, Inc. audiobook. On the way back, I didn’t realize it at the time, but my son had started listening to Ed as well. That weekend, we were driving into the city for a museum visit and he asked if I had finished “the Pixar book”. I had not, so he asked if we could listen to it.
(There are many articles and a lot of advice about using stories in presentations, proposals, pitch decks, branding, and even arguments. If this isn’t proof that it’s all valid, I don’t know what is: a 9-year-old wanting to listen to a business book because of Ed’s *stories*.)
One of Ed’s stories is about an exercise he calls the “un-chair”. He talks about how the best artists and animators will actually draw what is NOT there, in his example, the shape of the space between the chair legs, rather than the chair itself. Of course, his book is not a “how to draw” book, he leads up to a metaphor for a way to “learn to set aside preconceptions”.
Not surprisingly, the CEO of a company with a culture of creativity shares a very similar vision to mine with BoredLess, where I’m focused on bringing transformation to organizational culture through the neuroscience of play. One of the best benefits of play for professionals is problem-solving. When Mr. Catmull talks about the “un-chair”, he discusses the importance of looking around the problem, and not directly at it, to uncover solutions. Creativity is vital to solution-finding (otherwise known as problem-solving). Science tells us that when we are forced to do something, we are much less effective and efficient. Just like going to sleep at night, if we get in bed and tell ourselves “go to sleep NOW”, we all know the exact opposite will happen. (This goes for play, too! Forced fun is the worst, for a myriad of reasons). So when we encounter a problem, as an individual or a team, and someone says “ok, fix this!” usually with urgency, it’s going to be incredibly difficult. Some of my usual recommendations for problem-solving sessions are as follows:
Do anything but try to solve THAT problem.
Do something creative unrelated to the task.
Talk about what is going well with the project.
Discuss another problem that was solved last week.Consider the worst solutions for the problem at hand
Write the really bad ones down.
Then discuss WHY they wouldn’t work
Play with the problem.
Write potential solutions on paper airplanes.
Build the problem into a visual representation.
Have the meeting about it anywhere but seated at a conference table
If we incorporate the concept of the “unchair”, we can add this recommendation: look at the environment around the problem, the space between the legs of the chair. Let go of assumptions and biases (the shape of the chair legs you think you see) before addressing the problem itself.
Ultimately, we can't control how problems arise. When teams approach problem-solving with creativity, playfulness, and analysis of the environment around the problem (the unchair!), solutions will abound!
If you need a boost for problem-solving meetings, BoredLess is here to help. Schedule a discovery call here!