Wow! Limbic~Region, that is awesome! Thanks so much for sharing that; it really has me thinking.

I have, over the last several weeks, been struggling with a mentoring issue from one of my mentorees.

My mentoree, a budding systems engineer who is on the brink of becomming a Chief Systems Engineer on a project of his own. In that capacity much of the "engineering" is done by the systems engineers working for the "Chief" and the "Chief" takes on responsibilities for a much broader range of challenges (e.g., politics, customer interactions, security, safety, etc.). The transition from largely pure engineering to this broader challenge is the normal stumbling block and is why I spend a lot of time mentoring them to help them "find their stride".

Find that "stride" is unique to each individual and it is up to me to try to "bring it out." I find that the Socratic Method largely works; but occasionally I encounter unique challenges; and that was this case.

The mentoree's inquiry (in response to a question of mine to him) was "I watch you in meetings and I am struck by the frequency that you inocuously turn the meeting completely around and embark on a completely differnt solution direction. How do you do that? How do I learn to do that?"

At the time, I was a bit taken aback because I hadn't ever really realized that I did that. But as I thought about it more and more, I realized that it has always been apparent to me how easily folks, especially in groups, tend to lock into a single solution and then beat it to death...especially if it doesn't really solve the problem. This is true not just for engineering/technical challengs, but for human interactions (e.g., politics, inter-personal challenges, etc.), too.

Hence, over the years, I find myself almost always and almost uncounsciously, taking a problem and making myself step back and, as Limbic~Region says, "Turn the problem on its head." I try to find ways to look at or envision the problem from completely different perspectives.

An important aspect for me, and I see that one of the responders similarly talked of working with his friend, is getting other people to consider the problem and to listen carefully to their "take" on it. For me, the hardest thing to do...and to get others to do...is to not "tune out" other people's approaches. I have found that the vast majority of "leaps" into new solutions for me have come from ideas (sometimes just small, seemingly insignificant, comments) that came from someone with an entirely different perspective on the problem.

So, at least for me, the first step is to force myself to step back and try to think about the problem in entirely different ways. This did not come naturally and took me many years to begin to do it effectively and somewhat automatically.

The second step (not always possible, of course) is to listen to others' perspectives and ideas on the problem. In this, I don't usually focus so much on their particular ideas of how to solve the problem; rather, I try to think about how and why they are solving it they way that they are. This is one of the tremendous values, for example, that the Monestary brings to me. It is not the particular solutions that the Monks offer that is most important to me. Rather, it is their thinking and perspective on the problems that teaches me so much.

I have, on more than one occasion, even found myself repeatedly...for the same problem...stepping back and looking of yet more ways of seeing the problem...i.e., "standing it on its head, on its side, on its back, on its other side...." The need for such is rare, but I think that is what Limbic~Region did in his quest, too. And it paid off, obviously.

I think, at its heart, that innovation flows significantly from that ability to "turn a problem on its head."

So that is how I answered my mentoree, and it has formed the basis of some little exercises that I've been doing with him. I've picked out a few challengs and spent about 1/2 an hour or so on each with him eliciting a solution and then embarking on the exercise of "turning the problem on its head" to see what he might discover. I don't know, yet, if that will help him. But it always makes for some fun discussions and it seems to have yielded some "Ah-ha" moments for him, too. He is a budding Perl programmer, so I am thinking about trying to formulate a Perl example. Limbic~Region's example is a bit too complex and my mentoree doesn't have the math background, probably, to tackle that specific one. But it gave some food for thought and I think I can find an appropriate Perl challenge for him.

Thanks, again, Limbic~Region. Sharing your thoughts really crystallized my own thoughts and was uncannily timely.