Sometimes the Ridiculous Works

Bear with it

Someone tried stools to block the corridor. That didn’t work. They added a sign. That didn’t work either. So they placed an enormous teddy bear across two bar stools and the problem was solved. Nobody quite knows how to deal with it; moving it feels oddly confrontational. So it stays and achieves its purpose. 

The most effective solutions are not always the most obvious ones. Sometimes the unconventional approach works precisely because it is unexpected and too absurd to ignore.

For instance, London Underground introduced classical music into stations where antisocial behaviour was a persistent problem and crime dropped significantly. A CEO banned email on Fridays and discovered that most problems people thought required a message were better solved by a conversation. Neither solution would have survived a conventional approval process. Each looks faintly ridiculous until it works, at which point it looks obvious.

The same pattern repeats across organisations bold enough to try it. A company removed chairs from its meeting rooms and found that decisions which previously took an hour were made in fifteen minutes. A restaurant banned mobile phones and discovered that reviews improved because people paid attention to the food and each other rather than their screens. A tech firm moved the printer to the furthest point from every desk and found that the walk created the accidental conversations that no team building exercise had ever managed to produce.

The most persistent problems are sometimes best approached not with a more rigorous version of what has already failed, but with something so unexpected that it sidesteps the resistance entirely.

What problem have you been trying to solve the same way for too long?

David R. Smith