Thanks for these scribbles in your pad – I actually love reading them in this way. Feels pure, somehow! Concentrated Mark thought granules. I echo what Mark M says about your honesty with not liking TRIZ or GDM.

It's given me the idea that in future, it might help groups to give them the advice to choose a real decision rather than a pretend one. In the past, I've often taken groups through the process with a real decision from one member that they have either made or need to make, and for them to identify some real stakeholders for others to role play. Though even this is artificial, it tends to be quite meaningful.

That said, GDM or IDM is almost always experienced as awkward and clunky at first. So perhaps I could also say that to manage people's expectations. It's totally natural! It takes practice to make it fluid and feel a bit more human. And it's just one of many tools to choose from, of course.

I'm a little sad, I have to say, that you don't like TRIZ as it's one of my favourites. But we all have different tastes and that's great! I've seen it at its most powerful with groups of corporate managers when the penny drops of "oh, we ARE doing some of these things that are working towards the opposite outcome of what we want" - it's humbling in a non-threatening way. And I find it's just good fun if you get people to be really ridiculous and silly in round 1.