Stage 1: What’s the Problem

This is the first stage of the productive thinking process. In this stage, as well as in others, we use a two-step process.

The first step is creative thinking. We used creative thinking to come up with one hundred or more problems you, our client, have.
We then proceeded to use the critical thinking process to cluster and label the problems we wrote down.
We then narrowed down the groups in order to come up with the main: The problem facing the client is that their outreach efforts are only geared towards one group (inclusivity/diversity is lacking).

Stage 2: What’s Success?

In this stage, we used the same two step process as we did in step one. The only difference between the two steps is what we were coming up with.

We came up with ideal statements that indicated the perfect future. We later turned this into the Target Future Statement.
- Our target future statement for the client is as follows: In an ideal world, everything is completely diverse and accessible. Not only will there be an endless supply of scouts because of this, this will also advertise inclusivity.
- When a parent has a child, most of the time they want them to feel welcomed and included. Scouts of America can promote this inclusivity at a young age in order to set the standard.
- Not only does this include physical appearances and challenges, but also mental differences. If they promote this by making changes, more funding can come from this targeted segment.

Stage 3: What’s the Question:

In stage 3, we came up with statements that started with “how might the client…”. Our goal in this stage was to identify key questions that would lead us to the target future statement.

We did this by using the two step process again.
- Like in stage 1, we came up with 100+ questions to answer.
After we came up with them, we then organized the questions into groups and labeled them.
Finally, after narrowing them down, we picked our main question we wanted to answer.

Stage 4: What’s the Answer:

This stage is all about finding appropriate solutions options. It’s important to have options for many reasons.

Think of it this way, there are multiple ways to solve a problem, so explore every option. Like before, we used the two step process to come up with multiple key solutions.
After using the two step process we discovered that the best three solutions included the following:
- The client should
  1. have things accessible for all people including parents to provide a sense of inclusivity and promote involvement,
  2. reach out to major companies such as best buy, google, etc. for partnerships on state-of-the-art materials,
  3. partner with multiple website builders in order to assure alumni and current members all around access to badges and all events.

Stage 5: Forge the Solution:

In stage five, we took the previous solutions mentioned and did two things.

The first thing we did was put them all in the evaluation chart.
This allowed us to truly see if our solutions would help us reach our target future statement.
- If they were not aligning with our target future statement, we adjusted them in order to make them fit.
After evaluating all of the potential solutions, we selected one to pursue on with.
Once we selected “the one”, we were still not done.
We put it in the final step of stage five: the Power-Up chart.
- This allowed us to truly see the positives, potential objections, enhancements for our solution, and remedies for any objections.