Map
  Reduce abstraction
    Leverage
      USE WHEN: Your question is too abstract
      What one factor will have the greatest impact?
      What gives us the greatest leverage in solving this challenge?
      What is the most important factor driving change?
    Deconstruct
      USE WHEN: Your challenge has no clear leverage point
      What are the parts or components of this?
      What are the steps of the process?
      What different segments are there?
    Reduce
      USE WHEN: Complexity isn't producing the hoped-for results
      How might lowering our goals and expectations give us a better result?
      How can reducing or simplifying a target create new opportunities?
      How can simplification increase usability and accessibility?
    Eliminate
      USE WHEN: An activity doesn't produce sufficient value
      How can this be eliminated altogether?
      What if we eliminated one or more elements of it?
    Hyponym
      USE WHEN: The words in your problem statement are too broad
      Is there a more specific word that can replace the one we're now using?
  Increase abstraction
    Analogy
      USE WHEN: You've been recycling past solutions
      What is this like?
      Who else has solved a problem like this?
    Result
      USE WHEN: Your question is focused on a specific activity
      What does this make possible?
      What is the desired outcome?
    Concern reframe
      USE WHEN: Your teammates find some solutions won't work
      How can we take a progress-blocking statement and transform it into a "How can we...?" question?
    Stretch
      USE WHEN: You're stuck using incremental solutions
      Are our challenge criteria stretched enough?
      Are we shooting for a high enough goal?
    Hypernym
      USE WHEN: Your problem is too specific
      How can we replace a word in our challenge statement with one that's less specific?
  Change perspective
    Resequence
      USE WHEN: Your challenge implies timing or sequence
      How can we delay a decision until later in the process when we have more or better information?
      How can we make a decision earlier in the process, before we have all the necessary information?
      How can we perform multiple tasks in parallel?
    Reassign
      USE WHEN: Your challenge relies on the work of a particular person
      Ask, "Who else could perform this task?" Then substitute that person, department, organization or industry in the question
      Genericize the question so it doesn't imply a specific person
      Reassign the work to something other than a human being (e.g., automate it)
    Access
      USE WHEN: Your challenges revolves around ownership
      How can we change the ownership words to "access" words (such as rent, subscribe, lease or use)?
    Emotion
      USE WHEN: Your challenge lacks emotion
      How can we move from corrective words, such as "improve," "fix" or "reduce" to a more aspirational goal?
      How can we reframe the challenge in a way that stimulates solvers from an emotional perspective?
    Substitute
      USE WHEN: You're looking for a fresh perspective
      How can we swap out one or more words in the problem statement with different terms?
  Switch elements
    Flip
      USE WHEN: You have multiple influencing factors
      How can we turn the problem upside down by improving a different factor?
    Conflicts
      USE WHEN: Successful resolution is determined by multiple influencing factors
      How can we design the challenge to allow for and embrace conflicting attributes?
    Performance paradox
      USE WHEN: You're having issues hitting a goal
      What can we focus on other than the outcome?
    Pain vs gain
      USE WHEN: Pain could drive positive action
      What is the pain we need to solve?
      What may be lost if we don't solve this problem?
    Bad idea
      USE WHEN: You're only looking at good solutions
      Instead of asking for great ideas, ask for terrible ones. Then flip them into good ones.
      Instead of asking for what you want, ask what will give you what you don't want. Then do the opposite.
  Zero in
    Real problem
      USE WHEN: You have unexamined assumptions about your challenge
      Do we really know the underlying problems we want to solve?
      Are we solving the root cause of the problem?
    Real business
      USE WHEN: You have unexamined assumptions about your industry
      What business are we really in?
      Who are our real competitors?
      What new technology could make us irrelevant?
    Insights
      USE WHEN: Additional information would be helpful
      Is there data that can give us insights into a better solution?
      Have we looked at the data to help us identify more specific areas of focus?
      What information would help reframe the question or even help us find solutions?
    Variations
      USE WHEN: Your question implies that all customers or situations can be treated the same
      How can we design a solution to handle the exception, not for the exception?
      How can we create multiple variations that serve different needs differently?
    Observation
      USE WHEN: Historical data isn't enough
      Instead of asking our customers what they want, how can we observe them?
  Based on Stephen Shapiro's book, Invisible Solutions: 25 Lenses that Reframe and Help Solve Difficult Business Problems.
© 2020 Stephen Shapiro. Invisible Solutions® is a registered trademark of Stephen Shapiro Enterprise LLC in the United States.
  INSTRUCTIONS
This mind map contains 25 "lenses" or perspectives for looking at your challenge in creative ways. Each lens includes a "use when" subtopic that provides you with useful background on which lens is best suited for a particular set of circumstances.
Your goal is to use these questions as creative prompts. Consider each question in turn, and add any thoughts, ideas or inspirations that come to mind.
Chuck Frey
Visual Velocity
(formerly the Mind Mapping Software Blog)
mindmappingsoftwareblog.com
chuck@chuckfrey.com