Divergent and convergent thinking in staff engagement 

Co-creating solutions for the green transition involves both divergent and convergent thinking—first generating a wide range of ideas and then refining them into practical, cost-effective solutions. A staff engagement process typically unfolds in four phases: understanding the problem, synthesising findings, co-creating solutions and implementing them. Throughout this process, participatory methods help ensure employees feel valued and empowered to contribute. Participatory staff engagement methods fall into three categories: paradigm-preserving, paradigm-stretching and paradigm-breaking approaches. Paradigm-preserving methods refine ideas within existing frameworks. Paradigm-stretching methods expand perspectives and encourage creative thinking. Paradigm-breaking methods challenge conventional approaches, fostering intuitive, human-centred innovation. Together, these strategies help organisations to rethink and implement green transition related practices effectively.

When co-creating new solutions and practices for the green transition, you might first use divergent thinking to generate a wide range of ideas or concepts. Then you would use convergent thinking to assess which ideas or concepts meet the needs and are the most practical and cost-effective. Both styles of thinking are important and are organically linked, with divergent thinking helping you to generate a wide range of ideas and convergent thinking helping you to make decisions or refine those ideas.

Four phases of a staff engagement process

A staff engagement process therefore consists of four phases:

1. Understand the problem, need or opportunity. This involves gathering information, conducting research and empathising with users or stakeholders to find out what is really needed. In design thinking this is often referred to as the "empathising" phase.

Key activities: User research, interviews, surveys, analysis of lived experience of Communities of Practice and identification of pain points.

2. Synthesise the findings to define the problem or opportunity. This step helps to narrow the focus and ensures that the team has a well-understood goal or challenge to address.

Key activities: Defining the problem, creating a problem statement, mapping the roots, causes and nature of the problem, and making sense of what kind of new knowledge is needed.

3. Co-create solutions. This is a stage of staff engagement in which the members of the Community of Practice (see the separate section) generate ideas, iterate on them, and build potential solutions. It involves brainstorming, sketching and building and testing of the practice, solution or service.

Key activities: Idea generation, prototyping, testing and feedback loops to refine and improve solutions.

4. Bringing the solution to life and into practice. This includes finalising the solution, launching it and ensuring it is ready for use. It also includes post-launch activities like monitoring, gathering feedback and making necessary adjustments.

Key activities: Solution launch, implementation, communication about the launch and post-launch evaluation.

Participatory staff engagement methods refer to the ongoing use and integration of collaborative practices to involve employees in decision-making, problem-solving and organisational development in the context of the green transition. The methods and facilitation focus on helping to create a work environment where staff – members of the Community of Practice who focus on the green transition – feel valued, empowered and motivated to contribute to generating, developing and refining ideas for green transition in the workplace.

Methods of participatory staff engagement for green transition

One way to divide the methods of participatory staff engagement for green transition is to divide them into paradigm-preserving, paradigm-stretching and paradigm-breaking methods (McFadzean, 2000), according to how they change people's perceptions and understanding.

Paradigm-preserving methods, e.g. brainstorming, SWOT, blue ocean strategy, stakeholder analysis

These are techniques used to analyse and generate ideas within the context of existing frameworks or assumptions. These methods help staff, the Community of Practice, to make informed decisions, innovate and refine strategies while remaining grounded in established paradigms or ways of thinking.

These methods are paradigm-preserving because they work within the confines of existing frameworks, goals and environments. They do not seek to completely overhaul or disrupt current understandings, but rather help organisations to assess, plan and innovate within those established structures. They provide a balance of creativity, strategic analysis and stakeholder alignment, while respecting existing paradigms.

Paradigm-stretching methods, e.g. meaning making and sense making methods such as work and patient or customer stories, personas, world café, patient or customer journey mapping, scenario planning for possible future scenarios

These techniques are used to expand our thinking or change the way we approach problems, typically by presenting new perspectives and frameworks. In the context of meaning making and sense making, these methods help individuals or teams to understand complex situations, customer needs or organisational challenges.

These methods are not just techniques for gathering data or generating ideas—they are frameworks for broadening how we see problems, opportunities and solutions. By encouraging diverse perspectives, creative thinking and deeper empathy, paradigm-stretching methods such as work stories, personas, journey mapping and empathy mapping help us break free from conventional ways of thinking and approach complex issues with a fresh mindset.

Paradigm-breaking methods, e.g. arts-based methods such as drama methods, hidden thoughts, visual methods, storytelling and narrative inquiry

These are techniques that challenge traditional ways of knowing and understanding. These methods go beyond the logical, linear forms of inquiry and tap into non-verbal, intuitive and creative dimensions of human experience.

These paradigm-breaking methods push the boundaries of traditional research or development practices and offer new, creative and often more human-centred ways of understanding the world. They invite new perspectives and insights that might be obscured by more structured, objective or linear methods.

Further information:

Knight, C., Patterson, M., Dawson, J., & Brown, J. (2017). Building and sustaining work engagement – a participatory action intervention to increase work engagement in nursing staff. European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, 26(5), 634-649. 

McFadzean, E. (2000). Techniques to enhance creative thinking. Team Performance Management, 6(3/4), 62-72.