Before I talk about ideas, I have a short story about games. Bear with me, if you will.
Every weekend, I spend a few hours playing a roleplaying game called Fate. It’s a fantasy setting (dragons, pirates, gnomes, all sorts of similar excellent critters) and the characters we play are – well, not heroes exactly, but people trying to shape a world that’s much bigger than they are.
One of us is a world-class swordswoman, another silver-tongued, others wield the primal forces of the world. Me, I’m good at a skill called Notice. All it does is let you notice things. But what that means (in this particular game) is that it lets you define the scene. Roll well, and you can describe a detail that might not have been there before, a detail that you can turn to your advantage.
So we’re facing off with some palace guards in an open southern courtyard. I look around for something I can turn to my advantage. Roll Notice – and I have the opportunity to add to the scene the detail that there’s a big awning providing some shade from the sun over half the courtyard. We knock it down, and suddenly half the guards are tangled up in cloth, making things easier for our merry crew.
What am I getting at with all this?
For clients, I often take the data they’ve collected (let’s say, social media data, or customer metrics) and making recommendations based on it. That’s the scene set before you. Here’s the numbers you have – what do you do now? And that’s a great place to work from (many folks don’t even collect metrics, so if they don’t, you may want to work on selling that in first).
But there are many things that aren’t in the numbers. Or at least, not in those numbers. Those are easy – they’re in front of you and you know they relate. But you don’t want to get so focused on the scene that’s been set before you that you forget to search for the detail you could add to the scene. What isn’t there that – if it were – would be fantastic for you? Then, can you get it to be there somehow?
It’s not a new idea – the idea of thinking about a problem sideways, or from another angle. But I think it’s still worth asking: What can you add to the scene?
Image is “Dice five” by @Doug88888, available under a CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 license. ©2008