Creative Thinking Techniques. No.2 the Lotus Blossom Technique.
After Michael Michalko - Thinkertoys
Once upon a time there was a frog who lived at the bottom of a deep well. He could hop from mud pad to mud pad and swim around to his hearts content. One day the frog poked his head out of the top of the well and boasted to a passing turtle of his free movement in the well and how much better off he was than all the shrimps and tadpoles who lived around him. The frog invited the turtle to come down into his well and see for himself.
The turtle declined the offer and instead told the frog about his life outside the well. “Even a distance of a thousand miles is not enough to describe the vast extent of the ocean, nor can one ever describe its depth” said the turtle “your world is seen through the lens of small peeping hole and the sky is seen through a tube”. When the frog heard this he was awed and began to realize that his view of life from the bottom of the well was limited and that he could broaden his perspective if he joined the turtle.
To some extent we are similar to the frog, we see the world from our wells and silos. The world appears to be complete until we are shown another perspective. In organizations, departments see the world from their point of view and often do not see the view from any other view-point. Organizations behave like the frog too; they see the world from their well. They don’t have a broad view of other perspectives.
When trying to solve a problem we need to have an oceanic rather than a bottom-of-the-well view. The more viewpoints we have the, the more we may be able to arrive at meaningful ideas.
Yasuo Matsumura of lover Management Research in Japan developed a creative-thinking technique that helps us to gain, diagrammatically, several different viewpoints. It’s called “The Lotus Blossom”.
The diagram starts with a central idea or theme that is then expanded out, into more related themes. Like the petals of a lotus flower, each petal is peeled back one at a time, revealing the component sub-theme. This approach is used in ever-widening circles until each theme is comprehensively explored. In this way, each related theme is explored for its own related sub-themes and thus the broad aspects and possibilities of the problem or challenge are explored and developed.
Lotus Blossom Blueprint.
1. Draw the Lotus Blossom with the central idea, problem or challenge written at its centre.
2. Note down all the significant components or themes of your subject around the central theme. The optimal number of different themes is between six and eight. Focus on essential themes that have a strong relevance to the central idea. Ask yourselves, “what are my specific objectives?”, “What is constant in my challenge?”, “f this were a book, what would my chapter headings be?”, “what are the dimensions of the problem”
3. Use the ideas in the ideas surrounding the central idea as the themes for the surrounding lotus blossom petals or boxes. Each theme now becomes the subject of eight (if you have noted eight) new central themes.
4. Continue the process until each theme is developed and explored into its sub-themes and the whole diagram is completed.
As an example, suppose you had decided that you wanted to explore creating more value for your organization by increasing productivity and decreasing costs. Your central theme would become “Add Value”. Then boxes A to H, which surround the central theme, would become the eight most significant areas within the organization where you could increase productivity or decrease costs. These new themes become the central themes in the corresponding outlying “petals” or boxes. Each new area now represents a new main theme. Then for each of the new themes begin to formulate ways to add value or reduce costs. It is often best to phrase each new theme as a question. So, if one of your new themes was technology you might ask; “in what ways might we use technology to increase productivity?” and “In what ways might we use technology to reduce costs?”. If you complete the entire diagram you will have 64 new ideas of ways to increase productivity or decrease costs.
The Lotus Blossom enables ideas to evolve into new ideas and applications. Ideas flow outwards from the central theme and are dynamically linked to it, each one generating its own conceptual momentum, each one interacting with its neighbours. It also allows us to have a view the whole system and how they interact.
This technique allows a shift from reacting to static snapshots of a problem or challenge and broadens our perspective towards the problem and the relationships and connections between its component parts. This is a good partner to Fractionating Attributes mentioned in last weeks blog.
This technique has been used by companies such as Volvo in order to find ways of making a safer automobile.
Lotus Blossom analysis begins with a central theme that evolves into various other themes and sub-theme that are interconnected, which in turn develop and evolve into new patterns and themes. Higher-level properties are regarded as having emergent properties. As an example, a car is an emergent property of its component parts. It is only when all the component parts are combined, in a specific way, that a car emerges. Lotus Blossom enables the deconstruction of the challenge and the reconstruction into new, emergent forms.