Purchasing Coach: Advent Window 1: Problem Reversal

25 unconventional coaching and facilitation tools to surprise and delight

Window 1: Problem Reversal

Level of unconventionalness out of 10 = 2

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Process:

• Identify as many ways of making the current situation worse - ie how can you have more of the problem, 
• Have fun and get absurd, 
• Mind maps on a flip chart are great for this with everyone contributing (as you'll discover below, it's not such a creative process with one person doing it alone!)
• Once you have a lovely long list identify mitigating actions to ensure the suggestions don't trip you up, nor are the reason for your future or continued failure.  

Festive/Holiday season example: 

How to have the worse Christmas/holiday ever.

Before the holiday

• Leave everything to the last minute
• Be very unclear with others about your plans 
• Don't listen to what others want
• Steam roller ahead with your own plans
• Say yes to everything - work and personal 
• Say no to everything 
• Say yes to things you don't want to do
• Say no to things you do want to do
• Set unrealistic deadlines 
• Focus on one task to the exclusion of everything else on your to-do list 
• Have no idea what preparation you need to have done
• Do no preparation
• Put pressure and stress on everyone around you ahead of their holidays 
• Start to erode into other people's holidays by giving them work at the last minute (e.g sending out a tender on Christmas eve with a deadline of 2nd Jan - but you'd never do that would you?)
• Party hard every day running up to the holiday (although I realise for some this might make for the best holiday ever)

During the holiday

• Read your emails daily
• Interrupt other people's holidays with work
• Ignore and don't speak to anyone (again this might be someone's idea of bliss)
• Spend most of your time head down in social media 
• Do nothing you enjoy 
• Ensure only those that don't get along are invited to the same party/meal
• Focus on the negative to the exclusion of any positive
• Spend lots of time with people you don't get along with 
• Be ungrateful for everything
• Eat and drink nothing you enjoy 
• Play at being Scrooge
• and so on.

Solutions might include:

• Be grateful every day 
• Plan to do what you enjoy doing
• Be clear about the criteria for success for you for the holiday
• Understand other's criteria for success
• Plan ahead
• Develop and prioritise a to-do list - NOW
• Identify things you can do in spare moments throughout the weeks running up to the holiday
• Delegate if possible
• Say no, or ask if it can wait till Jan
• Use your out of office to manage expectations
• Ensure people know now when you're planning to be away.
• Don't go cold turkey with your emails - wean yourself off them slowly over December (other suggestions for email management can be found here)
• and so on

If there had been a few of us doing this exercise we would have had a little more fun with it, and have identified some ludicrous suggestions that no one would ever do - and yet ......

You may also find that these suggestions could be applied to a challenge you're facing. As you reflect on that challenge review the above suggestions and notice what you notice. You may just be surprised with what you discover.

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Benefits: Fun means of finding solutions without the defences going up about the reason for the current situation. Great way of uncovering the obvious we're ignoring/have forgotten about!

Uses: Strategy and Vision Setting, Coaching, Problem Solving, Creativity & Innovation

Participants: Better when there's a few of you to bounce ideas off each other and have fun together.

Alison Smith

Unlocking procurement potential - using conventional and unconventional tools
Procurement and Business Speaker, Coach, Trainer, & Facilitator
alison@alisonsmith.eu +44 (0)7770 538159


Earlier in the year I applied some of the unconventional tools shared in this series of advent posts to common procurement challenges - more here. Otherwise, I wonder what will be behind window 2, and what tool will get the coveted 10/10 on the unconventionalness scale!

NB: Conventional thinking can simply give us more of what we've already got which is why I always consider the applicability of an unconventional tool or two in any situation.