Further Resources

Creative Problem Solving: Why Your Team's Best Ideas Come From the Strangest Places

The lightbulb moment happened during a coffee queue at 7-Eleven in Surry Hills. I was stuck on a logistics nightmare for a client—three warehouses, seventeen delivery routes, and a system that made about as much sense as pineapple on pizza debates. Then I watched the bloke behind the counter juggle four coffee orders, restock the pastry cabinet, and handle a difficult customer simultaneously without breaking a sweat.

That's when it hit me. We'd been overthinking the whole bloody thing.

After twenty-three years in business consulting, I've noticed something fascinating about creative problem solving. The best solutions rarely come from sitting in sterile boardrooms staring at whiteboards. They come from watching how a barista handles the morning rush, observing how your kids organise their Pokemon cards, or noticing how your local mechanic diagnoses engine problems.

The Grocery Store Revelation

Most business schools teach you frameworks. Six Sigma. Design thinking. Root cause analysis. All useful stuff, don't get me wrong. But frameworks are like training wheels—helpful until they're not.

Real creative problem solving happens when you stop trying to solve problems the "right" way and start solving them the human way.

I learned this during a particularly stubborn supply chain issue for a manufacturing client in Newcastle. We'd tried every conventional approach. Process mapping. Stakeholder analysis. Even brought in some expensive consultants from Sydney who spoke entirely in acronyms. Nothing worked.

Then I spent a morning at Woolworths. Just watching. Observing how they handle the chaos of restocking shelves while customers shop, how they manage peak periods, how they deal with unexpected shortages.

The solution was staring me in the face. Instead of trying to predict demand perfectly (impossible), we needed to build flexibility into the system itself. Just like how supermarkets don't panic when they run out of one brand of pasta—they've got alternatives ready to go.

Why Traditional Brainstorming Sessions Are Broken

Here's an unpopular opinion: most creative problem solving activities in corporate settings are theatre. Pure performance art.

You know the drill. Everyone sits around a table. Someone writes "PROBLEMS" on a whiteboard. People take turns saying increasingly obvious things while nodding seriously. The extroverts dominate. The introverts check their phones. Nothing genuinely creative emerges.

The issue isn't the people—it's the environment. Creativity doesn't happen on command in fluorescent-lit meeting rooms. It happens when your brain is relaxed, when you're not trying so hard, when you're doing something completely unrelated.

Some of my best problem-solving insights have come while:

Walking the dog around Centennial Park
Fixing a leaky tap (there's something about hands-on work that frees up the mind)
Listening to my neighbour complain about his strata committee drama
Watching my daughter navigate friendship politics at school

The human brain is designed to make connections between seemingly unrelated things. But only when it's not under pressure to perform.

The Chef's Secret

Last year I was working with a restaurant group struggling with staff retention. High turnover, constant training costs, morale in the gutter. We'd tried everything standard: better pay structures, team building events, performance bonuses.

Nothing stuck.

Then I spent an evening shadowing the head chef at their busiest location in Darlinghurst. This guy ran his kitchen like a Formula One pit crew. But here's what caught my attention—he never yelled. Even during the absolute chaos of Saturday night service.

Instead, he'd anticipate problems before they happened. Saw patterns others missed. Knew exactly when to rotate staff positions to prevent burnout. Had backup plans for his backup plans.

"Cooking isn't about following recipes," he told me during a brief break. "It's about understanding why things work, then adapting when they don't."

That's creative problem solving in action. Not following a predetermined process, but developing an intuitive understanding of how systems behave under stress.

We restructured their entire approach based on kitchen principles. Cross-training. Rotation systems. Clear hierarchy but shared responsibility. Staff turnover dropped by 68% within six months.

The Taxi Driver Principle

Most business problems aren't actually business problems. They're human problems dressed up in corporate language.

I discovered this truth from an unlikely source—a taxi driver in Melbourne. This was back when Uber was just starting to shake things up, and traditional cabs were struggling. This particular driver had somehow managed to build a loyal customer base while his competitors were going broke.

His secret wasn't better technology or lower prices. He remembered people. Their names, their usual destinations, their kids' soccer schedules. He turned a transaction into a relationship.

"Business is just people helping people," he said during the ride from Tullamarine to the CBD. "Everything else is just paperwork."

That conversation changed how I approach problem solving in the workplace. Instead of starting with processes and systems, I start with people. What do they actually need? What frustrates them? What would make their day better?

Funny thing is, once you solve the human element, the technical stuff often sorts itself out.

Why Your Competitors Are Probably Copying Each Other

The biggest barrier to creative problem solving isn't lack of imagination—it's fear of being different.

Most industries develop a kind of groupthink over time. Everyone benchmarks against everyone else. Best practices become gospel. Innovation becomes incremental tweaking around the edges.

But the real breakthroughs come from looking outside your industry entirely.

Southwest Airlines didn't study other airlines when they revolutionised air travel. They studied bus companies. Netflix didn't just improve video rental—they looked at how people consumed other forms of entertainment.

In Australia, Bunnings didn't just sell hardware. They studied how successful retail experiences worked across completely different sectors. The sausage sizzle wasn't a hardware store innovation—it was borrowed from community fundraising events.

The lesson? If you're only looking at your direct competitors for inspiration, you're already behind.

The Apprentice Advantage

Here's something that might surprise you: some of the best problem solvers I've encountered aren't MBAs or senior executives. They're apprentices, juniors, and people new to an industry.

Why? Because they haven't learned what's "impossible" yet.

I remember working with a manufacturing company in Wollongong where production delays were killing profitability. The engineering team had convinced themselves the bottleneck was inevitable—just the nature of the process.

Then a first-year apprentice asked why they couldn't run certain operations in parallel instead of sequence. The engineers started explaining why it wouldn't work. The apprentice kept asking "but what if we tried...?"

Three months and several iterations later, they'd reduced production time by 30%. Not through expensive new equipment or complex process redesigns. Just by questioning assumptions that nobody else thought to question.

Fresh eyes see different patterns. They're not blinded by experience or constrained by "how things are done." Sometimes ignorance really is bliss.

The Real Secret Sauce

After two decades of helping businesses solve problems, I've noticed that the most creative solutions share certain characteristics. They're usually simpler than the problem they solve. They often borrow ideas from completely unrelated fields. And they almost always focus on people rather than processes.

Creative problem solving isn't about being artistic or unconventional for its own sake. It's about being willing to look beyond the obvious, to question assumptions, and to find inspiration in unexpected places.

The next time you're stuck on a business challenge, try this: spend a day doing something completely unrelated. Visit a museum. Watch kids at a playground. Chat with your barber. Observe how other industries handle similar challenges.

You might be surprised what you discover.

The solution to your biggest problem might be hiding in plain sight—you just need to train yourself to see it.