E5: Changing Just One Word Changes Your Solutions

What if changing just one word in a problem statement can completely change the solutions you find? Welcome to Invisible Solutions. I'm your host, Steven Shapiro. Each week we tackle your most complex problems using the lenses from my book, Invisible Solutions. If you need the lenses, go to get the lenses.com with that. Let's get started with today's episode. And I love this concept of changing just one word when we ask questions. When we're solving problems, we don't give enough power to the language that we use. But we can change just a single word in a statement and completely change the outcome. For example, instead of trying to get new customers, what if we get kept our existing customers? We're changing just one or two words in the statement, but we're completely changing the range of solutions. One is all around selling and attracting, the other one is about serving. Each will give us a very different range of possible solutions. And what's very interesting is this program is all around solving your most complex problems. How can we solve our most complex problems? But I want you to consider that changing just even one word in that statement can have a profound impact on the way you think about things. Instead of how can we solve our most complex problems? What if we change it to how can we prevent our most complex problems? One is very reactionary in nature. The other one is very proactive. When we are trying to prevent the problems, we are going to take steps in advance so that we don't have to solve the problem later on. It never happens. So there's so much power in changing just one word. And invisible solutions. We have what we call the substitute lens. The substitute lens is basically a lens where we say we substitute a word, one word, two words, and we get a different outcome. In the very first episode when I talked about the baggage claim problem, we changed one word. Then we went from how can we reduce wait time at baggage claim? To how can we improve wait time? The baggage claim one is about speed. One is about experience. There's power in the words and the language we use. And today's problem that we are going to solve was submitted by a listener. And the question is, how can an association executive help transform a risk adverse board into one that embraces innovation? Now, I would argue that even though the question was specifically about association executives, I would imagine that we could use this to talk about any type of board or any type of organization. As you may have heard in previous episodes, there are lots of lenses that can apply to any particular problem. And one of the pieces of feedback that I received is that maybe using too many lenses is too confusing. So, although I could probably name eight or nine different lenses that would be very appropriate for this particular problem, I'm only going to focus on four today and in the future, I'm going to try to target three lenses and only three lenses in each episode. The first lens that feels like it would be very appropriate with this one, and I use this one a lot, and you're going to see that there are some lenses I tend to go to more often than others, is number seven, the result lens. And the result lens is all around what's the outcome? Now, when we use the word innovation, a lot of us seem to think we know what we mean by innovation, and we seem to think we know why we want innovation. But in most cases it's not clear. So the first thing is to really just get very clear, what do we mean by innovation? What's the goal? What's the outcome? Why do we care? And sometimes even just changing that language will get people to buy in. One of the things I found is when we use the word innovation in an organization, the antibodies kick in. People are going to find the reasons why they don't have time to innovate. And the reason for this is because the brain's primary function is not innovation, it's actually survival. And so whatever we've done in the past, we're going to try to continue to do in the future. So innovation is not a natural act for most people. So if we look at the outcome, why do we care? So let's just take an association, for example. What's the goal of innovation? Is it being able to get more members? In the case of associations, membership is typically important, or is it fiscal responsibility or is it something else? And once we can reframe the problem, instead of using this generic term, innovation, which to most people has a negative reaction, a negative feeling and a lack of clarity, let's use something which is the language that others would use. So the result lens in this case might be membership, it might be money, it might be being able to increase the value of our industry in the eyes of others. So it's really about a goal. Why do we care about innovation? What's the. What does innovation make possible? So that's lens number seven. And I often start here, especially when we're dealing with something which is about a means to an end. Innovation is a means to an end. It's not the end game, it's order to get somewhere else, which is then going to lead us to lens number 15. I started this episode with lens number 15, the substitute lens. Super simple, super powerful. Sometimes changing just one word in the problem statement can help unleash a totally different range of possible solutions. So in this case, the word innovation. Let's substitute the word innovation now. Again, it could be the result. But I actually want to talk about maybe a different process because the question, as it was stated, how can an association executive help transform a risk verse board into one that embraces innovation? So if there's a risk aversion, well then what we need to do is some find some way to mitigate that risk. And so I would substitute the word innovation with maybe into one that embraces experimentation. I love experimentation. We've become so fascinated with failure. It's like in the world of innovation, if we're not failing, we're doing something wrong. Well, I don't think that's really the case. I think we've over glorified failure. I don't think we want to be failing. And I think that's why so many people don't like innovation is they equate it with failing. They equate it with being inefficient. They equate it with spending time and money on something that might not produce value. But experimentation can be very low cost and very low risk when done right. I found some of the most successful organizations, in fact are organizations that are built around this mindset of experimentation and that you give people seed money, small amounts of money to be able to do a quick test of an idea and it could be $20. It doesn't have to be a lot of money, but something small to at least get them thinking and stimulating their thought process as it relates to the problem. So maybe we don't want to create an organization that embraces innovation. Maybe we want to create an organization that embraces experimentation and actually uses this concept of experimentation throughout the entire organization. I do believe that when we move towards this mindset of experimentation rather than failure, we now get more people engaged because we love to tinker with things, we love to give things a try, but we don't necessarily want to go big and fail. So that's the substitute lens number 15. The next lens I'd like to try here is a different one. It's called the conflict lens. It's number 17. And basically this question, as it is stated, has conflict built into it. Risk aversion and innovation. And we look at them as opposite sides of an objective. One is the opposite of the other. There's a Conflict. How can I mitigate risk and embrace innovation? Well, we talked about the previous lens with experimentation. Well, I just want to point out that maybe, maybe the concept of risk aversion is good. Maybe we don't want to get rid of risk aversion. Maybe we want to embrace risk, Risk aversion. So how do we embrace risk aversion while embracing innovation? Now that's a conflict, but that's a powerful conflict. And I think that might lead us down some different paths because now we're not telling people that they need to bet the house, but instead we're saying, how can we do this in a methodical way that mitigates the risk so that we can actually demonstrate that we're going to get great results with very little effort? And I think even just that framing will get some people to become much more interested. And I'll come back to what I said before. The framing is not just about the way we solve problems, but the framing also is going to lead us down a path in terms of how people are going to find solutions. And even if they're interested in the solution, if we change the frame, we might get people to embrace innovation, embrace experimentation. I would argue that maybe a better question is how can we have association executives embrace innovation as a means of risk mitigation? Whoa, wait a second. That's a completely different question. Or at least from my perspective, it is. Now. We're gonna design an innovation process that is specifically around mitigating risk. And if you tell that to people on a board, they will be much more likely to take that and saying, hey, get rid of your risk aversion. We now want you just to embrace innovation, embrace failure. And the last lens I want to use today is lens number 19, which is the pain versus gain lens. So in the previous lens we talked about, maybe we don't want to try to change them, we don't want them to get rid of their risk averse perspectives, but we want to embrace that. We want to, we want to embrace both a risk aversion perspective and an innovation perspective. Now let's take lens number 19, which is the pain versus gain lens. And this basically says a lot of people will take action to eliminate a loss or remove a pain. And maybe there's a way we can play with this language because right now it doesn't really get at what's the cost of not changing. Now, I don't know the answer for any particular association, but I'm involved in several. And what I would argue is in some cases it's money. In some cases, it's membership. But to me, what I would look at is instead of like, how do we create innovation, which is the gain? To me, it's like, how do we prevent, how do we prevent membership from eroding? Or what's the cost of not doing anything based on the current trajectory, where will we end up? And I find in a lot of cases, what ends up happening is when people frame it from the perspective of what will go wrong if you don't do something, they are now more likely to at least consider action. And that might lead us to another reframe. So we talked about four different lenses today. The result, the outcome. Why do we care about innovation? What's the goal of it? Is it membership? Is it money? Is it something else? The lens that we talked about then was lens number 15, the substitute lens, which is changing a word. The word innovation kicks in the antibodies. Maybe we use experimentation. We then went to the conflict lens number 17, which basically says, how do we embrace two conflicting perspectives, risk aversion and innovation. Not get rid of one, but embrace both. And then finally, the last one was the pain versus gain, which is really looking at it from the perspective of what happens if we don't do something. What's the loss? What's the pain associated with not doing anything? So with that, we have gone through four lenses. There's many more that you could use again. Go to getthelenses.com if you want to play along at home at some point. And if you have a challenge, an opportunity, a problem or a question that you want me to solve on the show, please submit it. Go to Invisible Solutions podcast.com invisiblesolutions podcast.com There you can send me an email, or better yet, you can leave me a voice message where you can provide a little more perspective on the problem so that when I go to solve it on the show, we have some more details. So with that, we are done with another episode of Invisible Solutions. I look forward to being with you next week. Happy problem solving.