How to use the Disney Method - Brainstorm Technique

Hello, my name is Paul Sloane. I'm an expert facilitator. I help organisations run brainstorms and strategy meetings. And a method that I've come across, particularly on the continent in Germany, is the Disney Method. And I want to share that with you today and explain how it works, because although it's quite well known in some places, it seems little known in the UK and maybe in the USA. An explanation might put it in context and you could see where you could use it. And I believe it came from Disney Studios, Walt Disney Studios, as a method of evaluating ideas and generating ideas for film scripts or other projects. So, the Disney Method, who would use it? A team, a diverse team who want to solve a particular problem quickly, who want to come up with some really creative ideas and then turn them into a workable plan. And when would you do it? When you need to solve that kind of problem. The same team of people use the 4 different perspectives either in the same room or they go out of the room and come back in. The only rule is they all approach the problem from the same point of view at the same time. And it's a thinking method in which a group of people adopt 4 different thinking styles. And it allows a team to discuss an issue from 4 different perspectives. And because of that discipline, you can often reach creative ideas quickly and then translate those into a workable plan very quickly using this method. That's what it's particularly useful for, though I'm sure you could use it for other things as well. So let's look at the 4 perspectives. The 4 perspectives that you use are a spectator's view, A dreamer's view, a realiser's view, and a critic's view. And you use these in sequence. You can jump around between them. You can go back to a particular view. The only rule is that everyone must have the same perspective, the same view at the same time. So all the team are spectators, or all the team are realisers, and so on. And you can do this by having 4 corners of a large room, each with a flip chart, and move around. Or if you're working in a smaller room, which is often the case, you can actually go out of the door and come back in. And this, funnily enough, seems to work quite well and helps people change their mindset. So let's just step you through it and show you how it works. And you start with the spectator's view. You've got a problem, and the problem is poor customer service, say. So the first thing you look at is how would this be seen from the outside? How would a customer view this? Or a consultant, or a supplier, or somebody else who is independent. And you try to avoid opinion here. You try to look at data and facts and problem analysis. You're trying to look at the perception of this in as analytical a way as you can. So you avoid a long discussion. What you do is you say, a spectator would see it this way, a consultant would see it this way. These are the facts that we have. The data showing how we compare with the competition, how this has trended over the last 6 months, or things like that. And typically you wouldn't spend a long time on the spectators' view, but it just puts the problem in some kind of context, which is an external context if you can. The spectators then leave the room and in come the dreamers. And the dreamers use divergent thinking. They're in pure brainstorm mode. These people are really creative. They say, what if? They're looking for an ideal solution. They're saying, what would our dream solution for this be if there were no constraints? If we could have unlimited resources, what would we do? And they just brainstorm in a completely free-form, unconstrained way without any judgment, without any criticism. They're looking for ideal solutions and literally dreaming, dreaming of a perfect world in which this particular issue is completely overcome in a perfect way? What would the perfect solution be? And they cover flip charts with all sorts of ideas until they're exhausted, until they've covered the wall with flip charts and all sorts of ideas. They then leave the room. They've done their work, the dreamers, and they leave it to the next group who come in, and this group who come in. And of course, it's always the same people, but just wearing a different hat, wearing a different perspective, are the realizers. And the realisers, or sometimes called the realists, are pragmatic, practical kind of people whose job it is to turn the dreamers' dreams into reality. And they use convergent thinking. So they agree some criteria. We're looking for ideas which are feasible, attractive to customers, profitable, and can be implemented within the next 18 months or whatever. So they set some criteria. And they look through the dreamers' ideas on the flip charts, and they narrow those down to a shortlist, and then they discuss those in a constructive way. And typically they would choose the single best idea. They might choose more than one if there were some multiple ideas they wanted to implement. But typically they take the single best idea, and then they work it up into a plan. So they take it one stage further. What steps would be necessary to implement this idea. Whose approvals would be needed? How much funding is needed? What are the constraints? What are the dependencies? What technologies do we need? Those sorts of things. And they draw up the plan on maybe a couple of sheets of flipchart paper, and they leave that on the wall, and then they leave the room. So they go out, and the next people who come in are the critics. And the critics look at this plan in a critical way, But in a constructive way. They're not negative. They're not cynical. They're not destructive. But they would say, what are the risks and dangers here? What could possibly go wrong? Who will oppose this plan? And so they're looking for the pitfalls, the dangers, the risks, the obstacles that will hinder this plan being implemented. And so they list those. They define them and they make some suggestions. And then that's their work done. Now at this stage you can, there's a number of things you can do. You can go back to the realisers. This typically is what happens in most of the workshops. The critics have made their criticism, the realisers come back into the room and say, oh yeah, that's true, we hadn't taken that into account, we'd forgotten about that stakeholder group, we need to put something in the plan to handle them and to cater for this and to mitigate this particular risk. In a constructive way, revise the plan and improve it. But it could be the case that the critics have been so devastating you have to go all the way back to the dreamers and conceive some entirely new approach. But that would be unusual. Typically, the critics criticize the plan and then the realizers would refine it. And at this stage, you can go back to the expectation. You could say, how would observers, outsiders view this now if we launch this plan? How would it be viewed by our customers, how would it be viewed by consultants. Let's go and pretend we're outsiders, spectators, and get their view on this plan. So you can go back all the way to the spectators and get their view on the plan in order to refine it even further. And that essentially is the method. So it's ideal for creative problem solving, and the reason for that is that it gives you a structure, a very clear structure, and it separates the analysis which is the spectator's view, the divergent thinking, which is the dreamer's view, the brainstorming, the convergent thinking, which is the realiser's view and the construction of a plan, and the critical review, which is the critic's view. And those are 4 separate perspectives, and in each of those everyone in the team is constructively adding to that. And I find it a very useful alternative to de Bono's Six Hats. Obviously it has some similarities with Six Hats, so The spectator's view is like the white hat, and the dreamer's view is to some extent like the yellow hat and green hat. And the realisers and critics between them cover some of the black hat stuff. But some people find this easier and easier to grasp, and there's no equivalent to the red hat in the Disney Method. But overall, it's a useful alternative, and typically it will deliver a workable creative plan very quickly. So that's the method. I would commend it to you. I would recommend that you try it next time you've got a tricky problem that you want to work on. It won't take that long, an hour or so. You can often do most of the work, an hour and a half, depending upon how complex the problem is. And generally it will deliver some very good results. So if you've got any questions about that, if you want to try it, or if you want to ask me any questions, here's my email address, here's my website, and here's my telephone number. Good luck with the Disney Method, and may you be as creative and successful as Walt Disney and his great company.