In ThinkerToys, Michael Michalko has a category of creative thinking activities he calls “rechoreographing”. The essence of this work is to apply the attributes of the problem you’re trying to solve to a preexisting framework. A SWOT (Strengths/Weaknesses/Opportunities/Threat) analysis is one example. Another is Force Field analysis, in which you divide circumstances into forces driving change and forces resisting change. There are any number of magic quadrants, pyramids, flow frameworks, and other models that work more or less the same way.

What I find so attractive about these kinds of exercises is that they invoke a particular kind of creativity. You find the same creative choreography at work among people who work with Tarot cards, or astrological charts. In all these cases, the task is to put your creative autonomy in the service of a pre-existing structure. That might seem like the opposite of “creative”, which suggests the need for a completely blank canvas and complete freedom.

But there are many circumstances in which complete freedom doesn’t really work that well. Even Michelangelo, when he created the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, had to fit his painting into a pre-existing space.

Constraints introduce interesting creative possibilities that wouldn’t have existed without them.

In applying a constraint, it’s not such a good idea to take the specific form of the constraint too seriously. We have a human tendency to get stuck on form rather than content (any template, however useful, thus has its dark side). Magic quadrants are not magic, and neither is the I Ching. The magic comes from the way your imagination interacts with the framework to create something uniquely interesting and insightful. The specific form doesn’t matter. But using some form: that matters.

Try It: Choose an artificial constraint to apply to the problem set you’re working with. Divide your whiteboard into four quadrants. Or eight beach-ball segments. Or eighteen pyramids. Or seventy-eight Tarot buckets. Then let your ideas flow into this form and see what patterns and insights emerge.