Getting started with TRIZ

Your organisation has a clear mission, there are ambitious annual goals and everyone is motivated. And yet, somehow, it just doesn’t translate into real progress. Meetings don’t lead to concrete agreements. The same discussions keep coming up. There’s movement, but it feels like quicksand. Sound familiar? TRIZ helps cultural organisations like museums, theatres, music venues, performing arts companies bring to the surface the thoughts and patterns that are holding them back. It’s often behaviour that everyone sees, but that is rarely acknowledged or spoken out loud.

What is a TRIZ?

TRIZ is a working method that flips a question on its head. Instead of asking ‘how do we achieve our goal?’, you ask the team: what would we need to do to completely sabotage this goal? What would make this project fail? How could we make absolutely sure our mission never becomes reality?

That sounds contrarian, and it is, deliberately. Because by naming the opposite, you bring to the surface thoughts and patterns that are already there, but rarely spoken aloud. Behaviour that everyone recognises, but nobody raises. And that’s exactly what makes it valuable. Because what you can name, you can change.

The TRIZ we use comes from Liberating Structures, a collection of working methods for inclusive collaboration, inspired by the Teoriya Resheniya Izobretatelskikh Zadach, Russian for the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving. It sounds complicated, but the method itself is surprisingly straightforward.

At Tò Mò, we use TRIZ regularly in our workshops, and time and again we see it help companies, museums, theatres and other cultural organisations recognise patterns and find the right focus. It’s one of the simplest and most effective tools you can use, especially if you want your organisation to become more agile.

When should you use TRIZ?

You can use TRIZ at any point in a project, season or year. It works best when you’ve thought carefully in advance about a clear starting point. Think about the organisation’s mission, annual goals, or a concrete project you’re working on, such as implementing a new ticketing system or developing a new audience strategy. In short: anywhere you notice things aren’t moving on their own, or where you sense something is in the way without quite knowing what.

How does it work?

Step 1: Invite the right team

Decide who you want to do the TRIZ with and send an invitation. Let people know in advance that you’ll be doing a TRIZ. A brief explanation of what it involves will put people at ease and make sure they arrive with the right expectations.

Step 2: Start with an icebreaker

Always begin the meeting with an icebreaker to loosen up the group and create an open atmosphere. You can read how to do that here.

Step 3: Write the starting point on the whiteboard

Get the whiteboard out and write down the mission, goal or project you want to apply the TRIZ to. Even better: ask someone from the group to do it. That immediately creates a sense of shared ownership.

Step 4: Flip the question

Hand out post-its – reusable magnetic ones if you have them – and ask the team to come up with as many ways as possible to sabotage the goal. For example: what could you do to completely undermine the mission? How would you make sure the annual goals aren’t met? What would cause this project to fail?

One idea per post-it, kept as short as possible, a word or a brief phrase. Encourage everyone to come up with as many as they can, including the things that might feel a little awkward to write down. Those are often the most valuable.

Step 5: Share the post-its with the group

Have everyone put their post-its on the board one by one and briefly explain them. Take plenty of time for this, it’s often the moment where the most insight emerges. Combine post-its that overlap.

Step 6: Sort the outcomes

Work through the post-its together as a group. There are two ways to approach this, depending on what’s most relevant for your situation:

– Divide the post-its into two categories: we actually do this, or we don’t do this at all. This immediately shows which helpful or unhelpful patterns are already present in the organisation.

– Or: divide the post-its into: we have influence over this, and we have no influence over this. This helps you focus on what you can actually change.

Step 7: Make concrete agreements

Record the outcomes – in a photo or in an online whiteboard like Miro – and make concrete agreements about what you’ll do with them. Also schedule a moment straight away, for example at the next meeting, to come back to the insights the TRIZ has produced.

Result

Together with the team, you’ve now identified the obstacles in your path and gained insight into the patterns standing in the way of success. Patterns that were already there, but have now finally been named. And what you can name, you can address.

That’s precisely why TRIZ is so effective: it’s not a theory, but a direct experience that creates genuine understanding. And genuine understanding is the foundation of real agility.

You can find out more about TRIZ and other Liberating Structures at liberatingstructures.com.

More blogs in this series are coming soon, in which we’ll look at brainwriting and other liberating structures.

Photo: Caecilia Rasch