Anchor Management: Letting Innovation off the Leash

Anchor Management: Letting Innovation off the Leash is a guide and tool kit for removing the barriers to creative problem solving.

Anchors are the things that make it so hard to come up with fresh ideas, to think of new and different solutions. People talk about being “inside the box” and the importance of getting “outside the box”, but we rarely hear anyone talk about how you can do that.

Anchor Management: Letting Innovation off the Leash answers the unspoken questions about “the box”. What is it made of? How can I get out? Is there a time when I should get back in? The box consists of anchors, which are all the things that limit our thinking, consciously or unconsciously. We get out by taking control of our anchors, breaking the influence of the ones that are getting in the way.

A crucial step in the Problem Solving process is “ideation” which refers to the process of creating ideas. The importance of generating a rich set of options to consider is universally accepted, but the process of thinking up possible solutions is still a weak link. When a team is working to create fresh, new ideas and generate options for consideration, it is essential to managing their anchors, or the options will be the same old ones we have seen before.

And yes, there is a time to come back in. When it is time to implement and operate a practical solution, we need to be back inside the box where things are more stable.

Anchor Management: Letting Innovation off the Leash explains what anchors are all about, why we need them, and how to control them. It describes multiple specific de-anchoring techniques, and clarifies the re-anchoring needed to move the team into implementation mode.