TRIZ Inverted Failure Brainstorm

Choose this exercise

Purpose: Identify existing counterproductive habits and select specific actions to stop doing.

Use it when: Use when a team is stuck in polite agreement, repeatedly missing targets, or launching a major change initiative.

Skip it when: Skip when team psychological safety is critically low or during active investigations where surfacing flaws may be used punitively against individuals.

Group arrangement: Subgroups of 3 to 4 participants (for 5 participants, work together as a single group of 5), plus whole-room sharing rounds. If numbers do not divide evenly, form groups of 3 and 4 rather than leaving anyone out.

Timing: 60 minutes matches the WorkshopBank source listing. Step allocations are a UWT timing plan.

Materials and tools

• Sticky notes (2 pads per subgroup of 4)
• Fine-tip markers (1 per person)
• Flipchart paper or tabletop poster sheets (2 per subgroup)
• Wall tape or voting dots (3 dots per person)

Before participants arrive

1. Draft the central challenge or goal statement ahead of time.
2. Formulate its inverse failure question (for example, 'How can we ensure our client onboarding completely collapses?').
3. Write the failure question clearly on a main display board.

Say this to open

Welcome. Today we will tackle our goal backwards. Instead of asking how to succeed, our challenge is to design the absolute worst outcome. We want to list every action, habit, and bad decision that guarantees failure. Be as creative and ruthless as possible. After that, we will look at our actual team reality.

How to run it

1. Frame the reverse goal 5 minutes

   Present the inverted failure question on the board. Check for understanding. For example, if the real goal is 'deliver clear weekly client reports', the inverted question is 'how can we guarantee client reports are utterly incomprehensible and useless?' Split the room into subgroups of 3 or 4, keeping 5 people together as one group.

2. Brainstorm worst failure ideas 15 minutes

   Subgroups write ideas on sticky notes answering the failure question. Aim for quantity, absurd extremes, and specific behaviors. Each person writes silently for 5 minutes, then the subgroup posts and reviews their notes together on flipchart sheet 1.

3. Audit current reality 15 minutes

   Direct subgroups to read their sheet 1 notes carefully. Ask them to mark or transfer any item that resembles something the team currently does, tolerates, or resembles reality even slightly. Subgroups post these matching items onto flipchart sheet 2 under the heading: 'Things we actually do'.

4. Select items to stop 15 minutes

   Bring the room together. Each subgroup shares two items from their 'Things we actually do' list. Consolidate duplicates on a central board. Give each person 3 voting dots or checkmarks to place next to the habits they believe the team must stop immediately.

5. Commit to action and debrief 10 minutes

   Identify the top two voted behaviors. For each, have the room agree on what stopping looks like in practice and set a concrete check-in date. Run the debrief questions.

Debrief questions

• Which behaviors on our list surprised you the most when we admitted we actually do them?
• What makes it difficult to stop these habits during normal workdays?
• What is our immediate replacement behavior starting tomorrow?

Finished output: A prioritized central list of counterproductive behaviors identified by the team, with documented agreements on specific practices to stop and a follow-up date.

Remote

Use a shared digital whiteboard with separate group areas. Create frames with column 1 for 'Guaranteed Failure' and column 2 for 'Things We Actually Do'. Run Step 2 and Step 3 in breakout rooms with 3 to 4 people. Return to main room for dot voting and commitments.

Hybrid

Pair in-person participants at physical tables and remote participants in dedicated virtual breakout rooms. Assign one co-facilitator or designated volunteer to transcribe the physical subgroup selections onto the shared digital whiteboard so voting in Step 4 is visible to everyone simultaneously.

Access and participation choices

• Participants may contribute written notes silently without needing to read them aloud.
• Anyone may choose to observe a subgroup audit without disclosing personal work mistakes.

If the session gets stuck

Participants start blaming individual colleagues during the reality audit in Step 3.

Intervene immediately and reframe to systems and shared team habits: 'Focus strictly on the pattern, process, or behavior itself, not individuals.'

Groups only generate silly, impossible extremes in Step 2 that have no bearing on real work.

Prompt them to add realistic bad habits: 'What subtle, ordinary neglect or communication failures would ruin this project?'

Terms used here

• TRIZ: Here used as shorthand for an inverted problem-solving exercise where teams analyze how to produce failure in order to identify existing counterproductive habits.