You’re kicking off a project aimed at solving something complicated. Something that’s a priority across the organization. Your 6 month timeline feels short. Your starting point can be interpreted as an inspiring blank slate or a very intimidating zero.

At your first meeting, a colleague suggests solving the problem now. In fifteen minutes.

An uncomfortable silence follows.

This exercise makes most people uncomfortable, but tapping into that discomfort can unearth insights that give projects direction. That discomfort can help you identify the knowledge gaps undermining the group’s confidence and help the team prioritize what questions need answers before a team can arrive at a solution with confidence.

Where does it hurt?

Your team has hastily tackled the colossal challenge ahead in fifteen minutes. Before they present back, ask them to pause and reflect on how they’d feel if they had to recommend this solution to a more critical group of stakeholders within the company. Ask them to write down the aspects of the solution that make them the most nervous in descending order of concern.

Anxiety as a project planning tool

Now ask people to reframe their most fundamental concerns as a question that needs to be answered over the course of the project.  These questions can then become a guide for the learning journey ahead. Meanwhile those early solutions, no matter how rough, are valid hypotheses worth exploring.

Ultimately, innovation is a learning process where our earliest solutions make for better questions than answers. Understanding what makes us nervous about those earliest hunches can tell us a lot about how we can reach an outcome with confidence in the end.

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Propellerfish is an innovation consulting firm with offices in London, New York and Singapore.
We turn strategy into the products and services that move businesses forward in the real world.

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