The medical staff of a university hospital had been struggling for months to optimize the readiness of instruments in the operating room without finding a workable solution.

In  2 intense workshops we  deliberately structured the discussion, making sure all  causes of the problem were identified and all inputs were captured.  By pushing them to go beyond the most obvious ideas, we surprised the team.  They realized the problem was more complex than they thought at first side. They acknowledged that all participants had valuable input and that the solution could come from taking an unexpected perspective, by being constantly challenged by the facilitator, by listening to each other and by building on each other’s ideas.

From an operational point of view, the team was very satisfied to have identified unexpected solutions, some of them easy to implement, others to be developed further.  From the process point of view, they recognized the value of using the creative problem solving process to be more deliberate, more creative and more collaborative. They committed to learning  and applying this process and the learnings for other challenges.  They most of all learned that going beyond the obvious solutions and building on each other’s ideas are strong principles in problem solving.