Thought Exercise 2: The Miracle Question

In this third bonus video connected to A Course in Production, we're going to discuss problem solving with advice from Tasha Eurich.



Relatively early on in my career, I had a chance to work with an exceptionally talented lighting supervisor. While I did not work with her closely every day, I got to observe from a slight distance of how she worked in meetings, reviews, and dailies. 

Something I found so impressive about her is that when faced with a problem on a given shot, she had three excellent solutions (at least) at the ready, and usually when she presented these solutions, she had already tested one of them. Her creativity and innovation has stuck with me all these years, and is something I have tried to apply to my own work.

In Lesson 8, which focused on working with your superiors, I mentioned that you should never bring your boss just a problem for them to fix, you must also have some solutions, much like this lighting supervisor of mine had.

Coming up with multiple reasonable solutions quickly is a skill you acquire, based on your experience with a given department, client, workflow, etc. If you are at work right now and facing a problem for which you have no solution, no worries, this process will get much easier and faster.


Above: Tasha Eurich, author of Insight

Today’s thought exercise will be based on this idea of how to come up with solutions. I will be referring to Insight: The Surprising Truth About How Others See Us, How We See Ourselves, and Why The Answers Matter More Than We Think by Tasha Eurich. Eurich is talking more broadly about business, not Animation, just the same, you will find her words of advice highly relevant.

Eurich says, 

“Most people instinctively know that when faced with a challenge, finding solutions is the most productive choice […] but particularly still in the business world, we still spend inordinate amounts of time focused on problems and comparatively little on how to fix them. Yet not only does focusing on solutions - a technique called solutions-mining —help us reach our goals in record time; it has the surprising benefit of helping us think less but understand more.”

p. 135, emphasis maintained


With this, Eurich offers us a tool developed by Steve de Shazer and Kim Berg called 'The Miracle Question'.

Eurich says The Miracle Question is a relatively simple way to increase our ability to mine problems for solutions. So how do we do it?

Quite simply, we present ourselves the following scenario:

Imagine that tonight as you sleep a miracle occurs in your life [that] has completely solved this problem…Think for a moment…how is life going to be different now? Describe it in detail. What’s the first thing you’ll notice as you wake up in the morning?

p. 136 of Insight by Tasha Eurich, quoting Steve de Shazer and Kim Berg’s ‘Miracle Question’


Eurich offers the example of a CEO she worked with who received some feedback that his biggest problem with his work was delegation. He asked himself the Miracle Question, and he decided his first step was to adjust his attitude and see asking for help as not a weakness, but a strength.

So for today’s thought exercise, think of a problem you are facing at the studio: Is your team logging on too late in the morning? Is your layout department constantly late on their deliveries? Have you received feedback that your coworkers find you flakey and unreliable? Ask yourself the Miracle Question and see what kinds of solutions you can come up with!


Resources for Thought Exercise 2

Insight by Tasha Eurich

Tasha Eurich's TED talk: Increase your self-awareness with one simple fix


Previous Videos in this Series:

Bonus Video #1: Trends in Production

Bonus Video #2: Done is Another Person's Perfect

A Course in Production Series Overview (complete with links to all ten videos!)


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