Using the SCAMPER Technique to Say "Yes, And"

In my previous article, I described the use of the Tradeoff Triangle as a way to support taking a “Yes, And” approach to dealing with others who make requests and demands of you. As we saw, the Tradeoff Triangle helps you focus on what you can do rather than what you can’t do. This helps you be a YES! Leader by keeping the interaction positive and opening up a range of possibilities with respect to all three sides (Resources, Time, Outcome) of the Triangle.

A valuable technique for helping you consider the full range of possibilities is called SCAMPER, which traces its origin to ideas put forth in the 1950s by the “Father of Brainstorming,” Alex Osborn. SCAMPER is an acronym for seven categories of questions (Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Magnify, Put to Other Uses, Eliminate, Reverse) that you can ask yourself about any topic, problem, or idea in order to take a widescreen view of the possibilities.

To recap the scenario from my last article, let’s say a customer asks you to generate a certain Outcome (manufacture one blue marker and one red marker) in a certain Time frame (2 days) with certain stated Resources ($10). You quickly realize that you can’t generate that Outcome with that combination of Time and Resources. Rather than tell the customer “No,” here is how you might apply the SCAMPER technique to test the constraints the customer is placing on you (some of these questions might be asked to the customer, some just to yourself):

SUBSTITUTE: What color could I substitute for blue, red, or both? What would happen if I took an existing marker and just substituted new ink? Why does it need to be a “marker” at all, i.e., what other media could the customer use in order to fulfill the purpose for which he wants the markers?

COMBINE: With what other companies – even competitors – could I join forces to create the requested Outcome? What parts of my marker-fabrication process could I combine, or do simultaneously rather than sequentially, to generate the requested Outcome?

ADAPT: What similar requests have I ever received in the past? How did I deal with them? How can I adapt my experiences and learnings in those situations to the present request? What solutions can I adapt from the experiences of others?

MAGNIFY: How can I think “bigger” about this issue? For example, what would happen if I took a loss on this transaction in the name of securing a loyal long-term customer who might recommend me to others? How could I “expand” the Resources and Time available to me by running more shifts, or hiring short-term help?

PUT TO OTHER USES: If I adapted my process to generate the requested Outcome, how might the new process benefit me in the long run?

ELIMINATE: What parts of the requested Outcome could we eliminate by inquiring more deeply into the reasons behind the request? What parts of the marker-fabrication process could I omit in order to expedite the process?

REVERSE (or REARRANGE): What if the customer and I “switched roles,” that is, what value might the customer be able to provide me (e.g., a barter arrangement) so that I might be able to generate the requested Outcome? How could we “rearrange time,” i.e., work out a plan so the customer could pay part of the cost now and the rest later?

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

As I checked the literature, I noticed that the SCAMPER technique is usually applied to the creation or improvement of the features of a product, process, or service. When I first thought of “Adapting” SCAMPER to the Tradeoff Triangle context, it struck me that “Combining” the two concepts might be a bit of a stretch. However, I then recalled the old improv adage “Fall first - then, on the way down, decide what you’ll do next,” and decided to just start writing to see where I would go.

Amazingly, as I pored over the SCAMPER questions, my thinking seemed to unfold in rapid order, making this one of the least “labor-intensive” articles I’ve ever written. As I considered the questions in the “P” and “E” parts of the model, new questions for the earlier “S” and “C” parts kept flowing into my head. (I even thought: Hmm, next time why not “Reverse” my approach and use a REPMACS technique?)

I share this personal experience because I think it illustrates the role that asking powerful questions (even of yourself) can play in breaking down entrenched patterns of thought so that new ideas and perspectives can enter the mental playing field.

What entrenched patterns of thought – and behavior – are holding you back and keeping you stuck? What habits and routines are getting in the way of effective thinking and acting? As you look at your life and the world around you, what unquestioned assumptions are narrowing your view of the possibilities available to you and the capabilities that you (and others) possess?

And what would you happen if you applied the SCAMPER technique to those entrenched thoughts and behaviors?

Say "YES! And" to All Requests (Even the Impossible Ones)

It’s Monday morning. You run a company that makes custom-designed magic markers for walk-up customers. A man rushes into your store holding a blue marker and a red marker and says, “I need for you to make me two markers that look exactly like this by 5:00pm tomorrow. I can pay you $10 for the job. How about it?”

Doing a quick mental calculation, you realize that it will take you three days to make the two markers. Even if you could make them in two days, it would cost you $15. The customer’s request is impossible to fulfill.

Now, let’s consider some possible responses you could give, and the potential impact of each:

a) “No, it can’t be done!” By saying this, you cut off all further conversation. The customer leaves unsatisfied, vowing never to bring you his business again.

b) “Yes, I’ll git ‘er done!” You say this in order to gain the customer’s business and to show a positive, “can do!” spirit. Even though you have serious doubts about succeeding, you maintain hope that things will break your way. However, when your original doubts are confirmed and you miss the deadline, the customer leaves unsatisfied, vowing never to bring you his business again.

So how can you maintain a positive yet realistic stance that will be more likely to satisfy the customer? How can you be a YES! Leader even in the face of an impossible demand? By using the following response:

c) “YES!, and …”

We’ll reveal the rest of the response shortly. First, though, I’ll point out that saying “YES!” doesn’t mean that you Agree with the person’s Position – the “position” in this case being the exact terms of his offer (a blue marker and a red marker, by the end of Tuesday, for $10).  What it does mean is that you Acknowledge the Possibilities in the customer’s offer and Advance with Positive Purpose. And, in this situation, you have a powerful tool that lets you Acknowledge and Advance.

It’s called the Tradeoff Triangle. As shown below, the Tradeoff Triangle depicts the three components of any work effort: 1) The Outcome desired; 2) The Resources required to produce the Outcome; and 3) The Time it will take to complete the effort. Its depiction as an equilateral triangle – all sides the same length – reinforces the fact that the “size” of any given Outcome must be supported by a proportionate amount of Resources and Time.

To apply the Tradeoff Triangle to the marker example, you would first mentally plot the stated Resources ($10) and Time (2 calendar days) on the appropriate sides of the triangle. But you realize that you can’t then plot “one blue marker and one red marker” on the Outcome side, because that would throw your triangle out of balance.

Rather than give up altogether, though, you think: What Outcome could I generate with that combination of Resources and Time? Quickly mulling over the options, you realize that by 5:00pm Tuesday you can make one blue marker and give the customer an orange marker from your inventory on hand, at a break-even cost (which is acceptable to you) of $10.

So now you’re ready to give the complete response to the customer:

“Yes, and here is what I can do for $10 by 5:00 tomorrow: I can make a new blue marker and give you an orange marker from stock.”

By giving the customer an alternative, you are (in improv terms) accepting his offer to engage in dialogue and advancing the interaction by making your own offer.

Now the customer can consider whether the revised Outcome you’ve offered is acceptable to him. And he might, for example, say, “Well, I guess the other marker doesn’t have to be red, and it doesn’t have to be custom-made. I only need a bright color for highlighting purposes, and orange will work just as well.”

This is how the Tradeoff Triangle helps you to be a YES! Leader: It allows you to think and act in terms of what you can do rather than what you can’t do! By keeping the dialogue open, you’ve reached a mutually agreeable result – one that never would have been discovered had you just said “No!” or “Yes!”

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

In actuality, there’s one question that you would probably want to ask even before you give the “Yes And” response. And that question is:

“Why?”

As we’ve seen before, asking this question is essential for getting past conflicting positions in order to discover the interests that underlie the other person’s position – thereby greatly expanding the field for reaching a resolution. 

In the marker scenario, the customer volunteered his underlying interests (blue for writing, bright color for highlighting) with respect to his requested Outcome. By learning that he just needs a bright color, you can now consider other colors besides “red.” But, in fact, you could have directly asked him the “Why?” question (and its variants) with respect to any of the sides of the Tradeoff Triangle. Exploring the interests underlying each of the three sides will likely open up even more opportunities for Advancing toward a positive result.

Listed below are some of the questions you could ask about each side. How can you adapt these questions to respond to requests that people (customers, co-workers, your manager) make of you?

OUTCOME: Why do you want the markers? What use will you make of them? Why do they need to be different colors? Why do they need to be custom-made? What aspects of the markers are important to you – color, length, diameter, other?

TIME: Why do you need them by 5:00pm tomorrow? Would 5:00pm Wednesday work for you? Could you accept part of the order by 5:00pm tomorrow and the rest on Wednesday?

RESOURCES: Why are you limited to $10? If the Outcome and Time are essential to you, can you pay a bit more so I can expedite the job? What kind of a payment plan might we work out?

Improv and Meetings: How to Achieve True Collaboration

Performance improvisers are taught one very basic rule: Always say “Yes!” to your onstage partners. If your partner says, “Look at that huge dark cloud,” don’t say, “That’s not a cloud – that’s a Plutonian spacecraft!” Instead, accept your partner’s offer of a “cloud” and build on it, for example, “Yes, and there’s a rotating cow in it!” You may have a great storyline in mind involving Plutonian spacecrafts, but if you try to steamroll your partner with that idea, here’s what’s likely to happen:

1) He’ll resent your denial of his “cloud” offer;

2) He’ll feel more like a second banana than an equal partner in the creation of the scene;

3) He’ll retaliate by denying your offers;

4) He’ll focus less on listening to you and more on vigorously asserting his own ideas of where the scene should go.

While all of this is being played out, the audience will become wise to the fact that you’re trying to upstage your partner and trying to put on a one-man show – and that’s not what they came to see. Savvy improv audiences expect a collaborative give-and-take, not a struggle for dominance. A bout of back-and-forth contradiction (a la Monty Python’s Argument Clinic sketch) is, frankly, boring to watch.

If you think about it, business organizations tend to be hotbeds of offer-rejection. In a typical meeting, you frequently hear people insistently asserting their positions and trying to get the upper hand, rather than listening to each other, seeking to understand the other’s point of view, and working together to find a solution. The results of offer-rejection behavior in the meeting room are the same as they are onstage: resentment, suspension of listening, power plays, competition, retaliation. To outside observers, the proceedings would probably seem as boring and banal as a contentious round of one-upmanship between two improv performers.

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

Improv performers have a lot to teach the YES! Leader about what true collaboration looks like – and how to achieve it. Many improv activities (for example, Word at a Time Story) are geared toward giving performers (and nonperformers as well) a sense of how it feels to go with the flow of a group-created effort. Such an activity can also be a gauge of a person’s natural comfort (or lack thereof) with relinquishing control and seeing what emerges from the group process.

You might benefit from these kinds of activities if your typical meeting behaviors include:

·        Getting frustrated when somebody makes a suggestion or observation that seems impractical or off the wall, rather than asking the person to elaborate and opening your mind to the possibilities;

·        Invariably responding to another’s opinion (“I think X!”) with your own opinion (“Yeah, well I think Y!”) rather than a question (“Why do you think X?”);

·        Prematurely cutting off brainstorming and kicking around of ideas by saying, “We need to get going on this. Here’s what we’ll do …”

·        Putting down others’ contributions by using IdeaChillers such as “We tried that before and it didn’t work” or “You can’t be serious!”

Thinking vs. Doing: Time Management for the YES! Leader

President Dwight D. Eisenhower once said, “What is urgent is seldom important, and what is important is seldom urgent.” This seemingly simple observation has given rise to a time management model (often called the Eisenhower Model) that has proven useful precisely because of its simplicity.

You can apply the model by looking at any task and rating it according to how urgent it is and how important it is. As you can probably tell by now, the combination of these two factors gives rise to a quadrant model, as follows:

1 - Urgent/Important: These are tasks you can’t ignore and which must be done right away. These often take the form of unanticipated problems, immediate requests from someone in authority, or tasks you’ve left to the last minute due to your own procrastination.

Clearly, these are tasks that must be done – but, as noted below, the more you focus on long-term planning and priority-setting, the more you’ll be able to reduce the volume of these firefighting tasks.

2 - Urgent/Not Important: Frequently these are “squeaky wheel” tasks that you think you can’t ignore because they’re right in your face, demanding attention. The most common example is interruptions – someone stops by your desk to discuss something that doesn’t really need to be disposed of now, but you feel you have to do something with it in order to placate the person standing before you. In addition, these days technology has added to the variations of interruptions you can experience – texts, instant messages, emails with little red exclamation points. Beyond interruptions, though, this category can also include minor tasks you won’t relinquish because you think nobody else can do them better – and so you attend to all the little details right now to avoid the discomfort of leaving loose ends.

Strategies for dealing with this quadrant include: (1) Learning to quit taking on more than you can handle, which often means being able to say a respectful “no,” and (2) Learning to delegate and ask others for help

3 - Not Urgent/Not Important: This is the “time waster” category – distractions, mindless activities, recreational pursuits that can get in the way of more important tasks. Again, technology has enabled a myriad of new ways to let you fritter away your days until you say “Where did the time go?”

Often your best strategy here is to first make yourself aware of how much time you're actually spending on these tasks and then (as shown in Quadrant 4 below) being clear about your long-term goals so you can assess the true cost of your time-wasting activities.

4 - Not Urgent/Important: This is the high-gain category – the quadrant that involves reflecting on your life, determining what matters most to you, and setting a vision for the long term. Here is where you can create the beacon that draws you forward and keeps you from getting thrown off course by the temptations of the other three categories. But since this quadrant involves investing time in tasks (such as reflecting, planning, and building relationships) that might not involve immediate payoff (i.e., are not urgent), it’s easy to get diverted from this quadrant into reactive mode (Quadrants 1 and 2) or let your mind wander where it will (Quadrant 3). The challenge, then, is to create positive habits that will remind you to take active steps to focus on this quadrant every day (see the link to the Marshall Goldsmith article, below).

In addition to the strategies mentioned above, you may find that the more you focus on Quadrant 4, the less you’ll find yourself mired in the other three quadrants.

REFLECTIONS FOR THE YES! LEADER

Another Dwight Eisenhower quote comes into play here as well: “Plans are useless, but planning is essential.” In other words, the value in analysis and planning comes, not so much from the hard-copy output, but from the mental preparation you do while sifting through the possibilities and considering all the contingencies. Similarly, the world of improvisational theater teaches us that an improv performer practices his craft, not to create funny lines or other “schtick,” but to prepare his mind to deal in the moment with onstage incongruities, whatever they might be.

I mention all this because the Eisenhower Model of time management can itself carry an incongruity, namely: Isn’t Quadrant 4 time by definition “wasteful” time (Quadrant 3), that is, if you aren’t engaged in immediately producing an output, aren’t you frittering time away?

Think of it – how many of us have been told that time spent in thinking, analyzing, reflecting, sketching, browsing, playing, etc., is “unproductive” time? (And how many of us have been called “lazy” as a result?)

I’m not sure there’s an exact formula to be applied, but, as with anything having to do with resolving incongruities, I think there’s a balance to be continually struck between two extremes. Sure, on one hand, you can stay in your head and reflect on the great complexities of life, to the point where you never really get out and do anything. On the other hand, though, you can become so concerned with always being “productive” that you give short shrift to the value of just letting your mind drift where it will. In fact, it’s essential for the mind to take a periodic excursion from the immediate issues and tasks at hand in order to experience those “Aha!” moments of creative insight.

As a YES! Leader, are you:

·         Structuring each day to include unstructured time for reflecting on the big, long-term concerns that really matter to you?

·         Holding yourself accountable for taking regular action – even small steps – to attend to those long-term concerns?

·         Using your unstructured time either as a respite or as mental preparation – and not as avoidance?

·         Striking the proper balance between time spent “doing” and time spent “thinking” so that each informs the other?

(Also see Marshall Goldsmith’s article Ask Questions Daily for a simple yet powerful way to keep your Quadrant 4 priorities uppermost in your mind every day.)