In my job as a strategist I often use a fairly simple trick to get the process going: Turn the problem over. What if all your assumptions are wrong? Flip-flop them and see what you learn.
Recently I was on panel at the annual Society of Professional Journalists convention Chicago. Here are three examples I gave of "bad" that have "good" aspects if you change your point of view.
* Declining newspaper circulation. We kill trees, grind them up into a paste, make paper, ship it all over the country, smear it with ink, bundle it up, truck it around some more, and deliver it to driveways and porches and tubes. Someone has to get up, get dressed, go outside, bring in the paper, and open it up. That someone barely glances at a minority of the pages and then throws the whole thing away. Printing is terribly wasteful, messy and environmentally damaging. Perhaps there's a better way.
* The collapse of the mighty Knight Ridder empire. It's a bucket of cold water thrown in the face of many newsroom traditionalists who've been in denial about the restructuring of newspaper journalism in America. There's been more cold, hard realism in newsrooms in the last six months than in the previous six years. We need that.
* The end of mass media. Here's what the 20th century gave us: A population of consumers whose economic role was to eat what they're served and pay up. These "people formerly known as the audience" are alienated, disengaged and angry. Instead of setting our sights on building a nation of shopkeepers, bankers and passive consumers, what if we set our sights on building a nation of participants in cultural and civic life? Perhaps this world where everyone can be a publisher will not be such a bad place.
Some of these may turn out to be true, or false, but I think the important thing is that we challenge our assumptions. Change is inevitable and always a mixed bag of opportunity and difficulty. Challenging assumptions helps us distinguish between our values and our traditions, discarding the latter when they no longer fit the environment, and actively seeking new ways to serve the former.
I'm fairly certain that it's the end of the world as we used to know it. Our traditions are collapsing. But if we can refocus on our values, I feel fine.