Divergent thinking

In praise of divergent thinking

In praise of divergent thinking

I had an interesting exchange with a student a couple of weeks ago. I asked them where the Titanic was built. They said “Ireland.” So I asked them where and they said “a city.”

On the face of it, they were just being difficult. Thinking about it more, they were displaying divergent thinking. That’s something I really want to encourage.

Before we start

Watch this video. I watch it every now and again to remind me how good it is.

While most of it is good and worth listening to, the bit on divergent thinking took me back to that cheeky monkey talking to me about Titanic. Think about how we condition ourselves to discount answers because we know they’re “wrong.” Not because they don’t answer the question.

It got me thinking about how, sometimes questions can be really reductive, rather than stimulating creativity.

A little thought exercise

I want you to try something for me…

Think of a question. If you work in learning, try a question that you have used with a group. Doesn’t have to be particularly ground breaking. It just needs to be a question that has an answer.

Got it?

Ok. Now, I want you to think of the most “wrong” answer you can that’s technically “correct.”

Think about it for a moment. Really try to break the spirit of the question. Really think about how it can be subverted without actually changing anything.

Now for a divergent example

Let’s try an example: What’s the largest animal in Britain?

OK. The simple answer is something like a cow. Or possibly a red deer.

Deer and a cow

Deer and a cow

That’s because we’re thinking convergently.

Try something different. Think about the implicit assumptions we’ve made and ignore them.

One thing we’ve assumed is that the animal is native (which would probably discount the cow). Ignore that and suddenly giraffe, rhino and, ultimately, elephant are the answers you’re looking for.

Another thing we’ve assumed is that we are only including animals that are alive now. Think about that for a moment…Now stegosaurus and iguanodon are good shouts. This has got interesting. Is a steggy bigger than an elephant? Actually, it seems that cetiosaurus, at 16m long and 5m high was the biggest dino in Britain.

cetiosaurus size

cetiosaurus size

And we’re still assuming that we mean land animals. Has there been anything in British waters that is bigger than a dinosaur? A quick internet search reveals that you get humpback whales in British waters, weighing in at up to 20m long and up to 40 tonnes. That’s pretty big, even compared to a dinosaur. According to an article in the Daily Express, there was a blue whale spotted 250 miles off the Cornish coast in 2015. Even for the purposes of this exercise that seems a little tenuous. So, we’ll stick with the humpback at 20m long. That’s pretty big.

Humpback whale

Humpback whale

Something really divergent

But I’ve got another thing you might have missed. Fungus. Yup, mushrooms. In north America, honey fungus (armillaria Solidipes) have been found that has a rhizomorph (root-like) network that measured over two-and-a-half miles across. Yes, 2.5 miles or over 4,000 metres across. You could lose a humpback whale in that. The same fungus lives in Britain, so there’s no reason why they shouldn’t be of a similar size.

Honey fungus

Honey fungus

However, fungus are not animals, so they will have to be discounted from our list.

Thus, it appears that, if we ignore one-off occurrences, the biggest animal in Britain is the humpback whale. But the biggest organism is the honey fungus.

What about divergent thinking as a session?

Often, when teaching, you have facts or information that you need to get across. That means you need to steer the group towards the “right” answer which, in turn, means that any divergence you encourage is likely to be illusory.

One way to build it in is not to have a set collection of things that “must” be covered, but a collection of things that “may” be learned. When doing Titanic sessions, for example, I have a lot of things that I can talk about. While there are “core” things that I will ensure I cover, there is a whole bunch of “broader interest” things that I can cover if the group’s interest heads in that direction. They will all get the core stuff, but which elements of the broader interest collection comes up is determined by their divergent thinking. It’s not planned out in advance nor necessarily determined by year-group, it’s responsive to the group.

It does, however, require significant knowledge of the story at hand and a willingness to deviate from the plan (whilst keeping in mind a route back to make sure you still cover everything). That needs considerable time spent learning and a lot of energy when delivering.

Anyway, it’s more a case of being responsive to divergence than actually harnessing it.

So, there must be another way…

When Divergent thinking is the point

My storytelling workshops are based on the principle that there are no wrong answers. There are no bad ideas, just good ones and better ones. I want all of your good stuff. I want your collaborators to build on that good stuff with their good stuff. I don’t want to curate your good stuff, because that gets in the way of coming up with more good stuff.

This works because the mechanism is the point. These are process-driven sessions rather than information/understanding-driven. So, the content of the stories that come out at the end of the session are not necessarily the point of the session. The point is that the stories have good ideas and are well expressed.

I refine the idea when I tie the content of the session to learning. If I deliver a D Day themed workshop in the morning and we learn a bunch of stuff about D Day: what happened, what it was like for people there and what happened to them, then we can fill them with knowledge. If we do a storytelling session where they create their own D Day stories in the afternoon, then they can pour that knowledge back out again. I don’t need to curate it because the ideas are all good and I can build in tools that encourage them to showcase their knowledge from the morning. That way they can show off their creativity and their knowledge at once. The results are brilliant.

D Day gunner

D Day gunner

It’s a good way of harnessing divergent thinking because each group will showcase different things they have learned as they write different stories. It’s great fun.

What if we make divergent thinking the point?

So, that covers how to harness divergence. How can we make a session divergence-driven?


Now, there’s a thing.

Ok, let’s go back to the “Biggest animal in Britain” question.

That was a lot of fun, so could me make that a model for a session?

Of course we can.

So, let’s imagine that we want to find out about [a thing]. Can we pose a question that is tangentially related to it?

If we wanted to create a session that talks about the relationships between different groups of animals could we do it by asking that same question as we asked at the beginning?

Because we used that simple question to look at wild vs farm animals. We looked at native vs imported animals (both recent in the case of zoos and older in the case of agriculture). We looked at living and extinct animals (dinosaurs). We looked at land vs marine animals. We also looked at classifications of organisms into kingdoms, groups, families etc (telling animals from fungus). That feels like a pretty good primer session on

And, actually, it didn’t take that much prep or research because we can rely on existing refence tools be they books or the internet.

A Model for a Divergent thinking session?

Ask a question

Actually, work out what you want to talk about.

Phrase a question that allows you to investigate that subject. Like above

Come up with an answer

Get everyone to come up with an answer, see what they come up with.

Check your assumptions

Ask them to write down as many things as possible that they have assumed but are not actually in the question

Uncheck your assumptions

Take the assumptions in turn and ask: If we don’t assume this, what might the answer be?

Set the groups off researching things that might now be “right” answers.

See what lessons we’ve learned

Now look at what we’ve learned by checking and unchecking your assumptions.


There is, obviously, some prep to be done. Going through this exercise for yourself will not only get you ahead of the game in terms of where they might go, but will also help you refine that question. Unchecking your own assumptions will point you to the places they will go and may give you the opportunity to have that research to hand. This is necessary if you want to have physical resources to hand out rather than getting them to do the research.


Beyond that, knowing what lessons you might learn, and what assumptions may lead to them will help as a prompt if they’re not getting there on their own there’s not a right lot to do.


See how that works out.


Posted by Past Participants Andy in Thoughts, 0 comments