The Counterproductive Canvas Template

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What happens when you are trying to support innovation in an organisation, sometimes you are met with the response‘ That won’t work because…’.

I have had this response on thousands of times, often seemingly well justified. Having said that can lead down rabbit holes, frustrating people and killing psychological safety to innovate.

But… what if we used the TRIZ principle of inversion and turned this problem into an opportunity (lemons into lemonade)?

I created a simple canvas using TRIZ and was inspired by an article on Liberating Structures and Lisa Bodell’s book ‘Kill the company’ to do just that.

I call it the Counterproductive Canvas.

Here’s how it works.

Step 1: When someone says ‘ That won’t work because…’ respond with ‘excellent question, let’s delve into it more. Gather your team and ask everyone on the team to write down the worst possible thing that could happen if you try and solve a problem. Give them five minutes alone to write. Now, ask them to place their ideas in the top left box. Prompt them to be as ‘out-there’ as possible; really imagine the absolute worst-case scenario. Ask the team to spend 2 minutes reading everyone else’s sticky. (You will get some eye rolls and chuckles).

Step 2: Next, move to the right and ask them to write down as many things that would need to happen to enable the ‘worst things’ they have just read. If required, they can draw arrows that link the answers to the worst things. Give them 5 minutes. When they have put them on the board, ask them to read everyone else’s for two minutes.

Step 3: Move the team down to the box directly under (This is where it gets interesting). Ask the group to spend 10 minutes writing alone, answering the question ‘What is currently happening that could enable the things above?’. Prompt them to be really honest and realistic. Ask them to put them on the board connecting them to the above. Ask one or two people to share aloud. Ask everyone to read for 2 minutes.

Step 4: Back to the positive and innovation! Ask everyone to follow the same cadence and spend 10 minutes writing everything they could do to stop what is currently happening. Ask people to read each other.

You know, have a to-do list to enable innovation! You can vote on the best things, put them in an impact/effort matrix or simply put them in a backlog and assign them to team members.

Give it a try, and let me know how it works for you. Get it on miroverse here.

Inspired by an excellent colleague João Luís Nunes, TRIZ, liberating structures and Lisa Bodell’s Kill the company and all the people who always say ‘That won’t work because…’.