By Muthiah Kasi, PE, SE, CVS-Life, FSAVE
Going Against the Grain
The VE facilitator finds it smoother to lead the team during the creative phase as compared to the function analysis phase. The team usually starts this phase with much enthusiasm. However, the team sometimes likes to play it safe. This observation, as a facilitator, made me wonder how to measure the quality of the creative process. I wanted to know how often the team goes against the grain. Reluctant to go against the traditional or standard approach is due to two reasons, perceived lack of performance and perceived lack of acceptance. This led me to develop the Idea Profile Graph as shown below.
The graph is divided into four zones. It is based on the Perceived Performance and Perceived Acceptance of a project. Traditional, or standard ideas, occupy Zone A. Ideas that are considered extremely radical fall in Zone C. A technically strong team proposes ideas that are sometimes not practiced by certain clients. These ideas will be located under Zone D. The team sometimes proposes ideas that are considered by them as low performance, but the client may like. These ideas will be under Zone B. Based on the team’s exposure to acceptance or rejection of their past ideas and the nature of client’s philosophy, the team tends to manage their creativity thinking.
I reviewed our past 20 years’ worth of studies to see a pattern. The majority of ideas in these studies occupied Zone A. However, I noticed that our award winning projects were based on ideas that began under Zone C. Very unusual (innovative) ideas were proposed on our award winning projects. They were considered as low performance and low acceptance. In each case, one of our engineers worked to prove that the idea was technical feasibility while our senior managers addressed the stakeholders concerns and improved the acceptance of the idea.
The facilitator should make sure that ideas are developed that fit all zones. It is important to try to have ideas in Zone C. During the development phase, the strategy to improve performance and/or acceptance should be carried out. One should keep in mind that all innovative concepts are at one time considered as a low performance and low acceptance concept.
Print 
PDF