One of the main reasons the divergence-convergence job doesn’t get done well in the majority of organisations is that the divergent part often feels very inefficient and a round-a-bout way to get to an answer that will – if its any good at least – will look completely obvious in retrospect. Edward De Bono talked a lot about this irreversibility in his early work. But, it appears, not too many people took too much notice.

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a big issue if it weren’t for the fact that such a horrendously high proportion of complex problem solving exercises end in abject failure.

One of the things we always try and impress upon delegates working in the session we run is that there is a very strong causal link between how much time people spend in the divergent parts of the process and the likelihood of a positive outcome. Similarly, the extent to which a team allows themselves to diverge, is also very closely related to the likelihood of that same positive outcome.

F Scott Fitgerald once famously said, The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function. In divergence-world, the idea is to turn two into ten or twenty. Or more. The more you can force yourself to keep on diverging, the more you start to feel sick with confusion, the higher the likelihood something good is going to come from the session. ‘Diverge until you can’t see straight any more’ is my usual instruction to the SI team when we get to work on our own complex problems. It’s not easy, because it’s not supposed to be easy.

I once ran a session for a client where there were a bunch of people I’d never met before. I figured because it was a big multi-national organisation and the team was quite senior, that I might be able to get them to diverge more than the average. By morning coffee break it was clear I’d got it wrong. ‘Why would we use a process that didn’t make life easy for us?’ one of the delegates asked me during the break, ‘if it’s not going to be easy, no-one will adopt it.’ Needless to say, I don’t do much work with that client any more. After a while, running sessions that deliver mediocre ‘easy’ results can get a little bit soul-destroying.

These days, rather than guess about the extent and duration of divergence that a team I’m about to work with is going to be up for, I try and assess where the team might be on another 2×2 matrix: 

Knowing that I have a room full of lions, cheetahs, vultures or wolves (or combinations thereof) before we get going means we can adapt how we do things.

Lions – like my ‘easy-life’desiring multi-national client – are not good at spending much time diverging or generating lots of divergent thoughts. This is a category with lots of multi-national organisations in it. Especially ones with lots of MBAs prowling around the building. Like lions, they’re already top of the food chain and, frankly, they don’t often have to try that hard to do anything. I try and avoid running sessions with lions, unless I’m allowed to bring a whip and a chair.

Next up, the cheetahs. These are the people – a lot like the ‘creativity consultants’ I ranted about in the previous diatribe – that love a Post-It party. Guaranteed they’ll fill any wall you might care to point at in under an hour. They’ve been there, done it, got the t-shirt as far as divergence sessions are concerned. In all likelihood they’ve become a little bit cynical about the process, due to the knowledge that they’ve done these kinds of things a million times before and nothing tangible ever came out of it, so why will this time be any different. I’ve even see one group sneak over to a cupboard and retrieve some of the Post-It posters they’d generated during a previous session. Cheetahs can put on a terrific busrst of speed when they have to, but don’t have a lot of staying power. Try to get a group of cheetah’s filling up Post-Its for more than an hour and you might have a mutiny on your hands.

The opposite end of the spectrum finds the vultures. These are the people that can circle around a divergence session until the sun goes down, probably thinking about stuff, but not actually getting that much done. They’re the ones looking for the already-dead prey. They’re definitely not going to bust a gut to fill you a wall of Post-It’s any time soon.

At least, though, the vultures have a solid understanding of the importance of biding your time. In complex problem solving world, ‘biding your time’ is better known as incubation. Incubation is really important in the complex problem solving world. Incubation is a skill that the final segment of the matrix, the wolves, have in abundance. Wolves represent the top of the evolutionary tree when it comes to stamina. They will chase prey for days if they have to. They’ll also work together. It shouldn’t be a great surprise to learn that it is the wolf groups – top-right hand corner of the matrix = best per convention – that are the ones generating the outcomes that are most likely to deliver meaning and success. They’re the dream groups to work with if you can find them. They’re the groups that will still be there at 6 o’clock in the evening, loading their brains up with stimulus so they can incubate it all over night, then come back at 8 the following morning all set to diverge some more.

In my experience, about 5% of groups have wolf-like characteristics. It’s a lucky day, in other words, if you find yourself working with one. Unfortunately, I haven’t reached a position in life when I can say no to 95% of my potential clients. Which means I find myself carrying around lots of wolf-suits for people to wear. For the duration of a session at least. Generally speaking, I find it’s easier to squeeze the cheetahs into them than the vultures or the lions. I’ve had some success taking a pair of clippers to lion manes, but am still at something of a loss with the vultures.