- Collaborating and working together in a group
can help get many hands and minds
involved in solving a problem,
offering a diversity of insights.
However, working independently also can enable
creativity to flourish,
and allows people time to mold and shape their ideas.
But who says you have to choose one over the other?
One collaborative technique,
which leverages the benefits
of both of these working styles,
is known as diverge and converge.
The diverge and converge collaboration method
has two stages,
a diverge stage, in which team members work independently
to produce their individual insights,
and then a converge stage,
where they discuss the results of the diverge phase
as a group in order to decide upon some collective output.
This technique not only gives you the benefits
of both working alone and with a group,
but it also helps to counteract the weaknesses
of each of the working styles.
A common problem with group work is group think.
A strong personality or someone in a senior position
may quickly state their opinion and insight.
And because people don't have the time
to really synthesize their ideas before someone speaks up,
then they may instead defer to that earlier sentiment
rather than formulate their own understanding.
Consequently, variations in perspective become unspoken,
or if they are spoken,
frowned upon in favor of that dominating belief or opinion.
Diverging to generate ideas or insights
can enable people equal amounts of time
to synthesize their ideas, their thoughts,
and to help give people time with their ideas
without being judged for them too early.
Exclusively working alone though
means that you have a single perspective
that you're working from, yours.
And therefore, a pool of thoughts, ideas and observations,
all inspired by a singular perspective.
Plus, if you're working on a complex problem
or a massive dataset,
then you will be limited on how productive you can be
with that dataset.
As the saying goes, many hands make light work.
Converging after an initially diverged phase
can statistically increase the odds
of finding the right solution,
and also increase output
when analyzing large amounts of data.
The key to success is to preserve diversity of inputs
and expedite the generation of outputs.
So diverge first, converge after.
If you converge first,
you lose all the benefits of diverging,
defeating the purpose of doing it in the first place.
So here's how you introduce the concept
in your next collaborative activity.
First, strictly enforce divergent time as quiet time
and convergent time as talking time.
This helps to prevent those who think aloud
from disrupting anyone who is trying to concentrate.
Next, ban the words no or but.
We need to ensure that people feel safe enough
to share their unique ideas.
The words no or but tend to raise tension
and therefore decrease the likelihood that people will raise
opposing or alternative ideas to any existing options.
So ironically, by banning the words no or but,
tension is less likely,
and in turn, alternative ideas can flow more freely.
You can use this method
for a variety of collaborative activities.
You can have multiple researchers diverge
to run concurrent user research
and avoid researcher bias,
and then converge to compile the research insights.
You can also diverge to analyze the research insights
and then converge
during design thinking, mapping activities
like empathy mapping or journey mapping.
You can even diverge to ideate on existing design problems
and then converge to iterate upon those ideas
and prioritize your prototyping efforts.
No matter how you use this technique,
diverging first then converging after
can help your team benefit from multiple working styles
and take your design process to the next level.