Parkour Thinking in the Office

My Stanford Adventurous Thinking workshop concludes with Parkour, the last of the Five Ways thinking tools and definitely the most extreme.  Parcours: ‘l’art du replacement’ is about getting from A to be in the most efficient way possible.  Most importantly it's about never looking backwards, and never doing what's conventionally been done.In Adventurous Thinking terms that means turning a genre on its head.  Taking the cliches and norms of a scenario and completely inverting them.  The immediate results of inverting a norm feel gimmicky and easy to dismiss, but working hard, against your better judgement, to see an inversion through can deliver innovative leaps and bounds.   As Jacques Derrida said of his disruptive deconstructionist philosophies, "If this work seems so threatening..this is because it isn't simply eccentric or strange, incomprehensible or exotic (which would allow them to dispose of it easily), but...competent, rigorously argued, and carrying conviction in its re-examination of the fundamental norms and premises of a number of dominant discourses..".  Phew.  OK - let me show you how my current students broke that into solutions for two real-life work issues.

        1. Making the Transition from Restauranteur to Techie.  Students suggested the conventional route would be to find highlight any tech-worthy experience within the subject's past, as well as interning and finding contacts within the desired tech field.  Inverted, the advice became:

• DON'T note similarities.  Highlight the differences between your expertise and the "typical" tech employee as a thinking advantage;
• Become a food industry expert through social media and make your advice available to the industries you seek to work with so that you are on par with the experts there;
• Look harder at the food industry and consider what tech help it needs - apps, backend services - and design them.
  
  2. Increasing Submissions to WikiHOW .  Conventional solutions included more outreach, making submissions easier and reminding people how useful this anonymous, free information is.  Inverted, the advice became:
• Pay professors and industry experts to contribute and tier information into "Expert" or "Maestro" levels;
• Create social profiles around prolific "experts" and allow them to share their contributions across social platforms;
• Encourage manufacturers to reward consumers for posting "how to" entries using branded equipment, tools, fixtures and fittings;
• Create a mobile-friendly template for short SnapChat-style How To videos.
• Parkour thinking is a terrific way to group-problem solve because it is equal parts crazy and constructive, with the extra benefit of team-building.  And for anyone who hasn't seen it - here is the definitive Everyman's Parkour.

the office parkour from BanjaMdf on Vimeo.