QualiTea: Episode 2 - Lotus Blossom

Join Becca Lunn and Sarah White from Health Innovation West of England's Academy team for the second episode of QualiTea.

So what is QualiTea? Quite simply, it's time for a cup of tea and a useful conversation. Each episode is a short, informal chat between Sarah and Becca, focusing on one simple improvement tool. They'll use relatable examples and talk about how you might actually use it in your day-to-day work to help you think a bit differently about a problem. Not in theory, in real life. 

In this episode, we're looking at Lotus Blossom - a structured brainstorming exercise used to expand on a central idea or problem, great for coming up with new solutions when you thought you had run out of ideas. 

So grab a brew, get comfortable, and let's get started.

Programme notes

Visit the West of England Academy 

Got feedback or an idea for a future programme?

Contact us at healthinnowest.communications@nhs.net or via our socials: Instagram, LinkedIn or Bluesky

Find out more about Health Innovation West of England

Got feedback or an idea for a future programme? 

Contact us at healthinnowest.communications@nhs.net or via our socials: Instagram, LinkedIn or Bluesky

Find out more about Health Innovation West of England

Transcript

QualiTea - Episode 2 - Lotus Blossom

Becca: Hi, I'm Becca, and I'm here with Sarah. Between us, we run a lot of the West of England Academy sessions and programmes around improvement, leadership and change in the NHS. QualiTea is exactly what it sounds like. A cup of tea and a useful conversation. These are short, informal podcasts, around fifteen minutes each, each focusing on one simple improvement tool. We'll use relatable examples and talk about how you might actually use it in your day-to-day work. Not in theory, in real life. Think of it as a calm, practical chat to help you think a bit differently about a problem. So grab a brew, get comfortable, and let's get started.

Sarah: Hello and welcome back to QualiTea, your learning break you can fit into the time it takes to drink a cup of tea. No slides, no breakout rooms. Just listen in to a conversation about improvement tools that you can actually use at work.

Becca: Last time we explored TRIZ, which was essentially permission to let your inner evil genius loose so that you could see problems differently. Today, we're shifting gears to a tool with a slightly more mysterious name the Lotus Blossom.

Sarah: This one is about structured creativity and just a little bit of chaos. A tool that lets you release your inner mad scientist. Have you ever been in a meeting where someone says, let's brainstorm, and within a few minutes you've landed on all the same three previous ideas that you've tried and failed?

Becca: Yep. Someone says communication, someone else says training, and then everyone says more staff.

Sarah: Yes, exactly. Everyone nods, writes it down, and then agrees that there isn't any resource to make that happen. So nothing really changes when teams are working with really limited resource and tight timelines, and in environments where risk can feel too risky, creative ideas often get dismissed even before they have a chance to be explored. And this is where the Lotus Blossom helps teams to deliberately expand their thinking without fear of judgment.

Becca: So what actually is the Lotus Blossom?

Sarah: You don't need anything fancy, just a group of willing humans and post-it notes and a surface to stick them on. That's enough. Set one clear expectation at the start that this is about generating ideas, not judging them or not refining them. We're not solving the problem - yet. We're thinking quantity first. Making sense of it later. So you write your core challenge in the centre of the page, and then the group comes up with eight ideas related to that central problem and stick those around the page. For example, if we were facing the challenge of how to make cycling safer in Bristol, we would put that in the centre of the page and then we would generate eight ideas connected to that challenge. And they can be sensible, ambitious, impractical - doesn't really matter. Do you want to have a go?

Becca: Okay. So how can we make cycling safer? Protective technology?

Sarah: Yeah, that's a good idea. We could also, ban cars from city centres. Or what about a, like, a reward system for cycling? Like a loyalty card?

Becca: Yeah. In fact, you could make cycling compulsory in the city centre.

Sarah: Or if you wanted to make it really safe. What about having the roads made out of rubber?

Becca: I like that. How about cycle lanes in the sky?

Sarah: Yeah, that would be brilliant. Or what we could do is, you know, those big zorb bubbles? We could make everybody cycle inside of those, like a protection for them.

Becca: I love that. Or we could have bike only roads.

Sarah: So what we've done is just generated eight ideas around that central problem, and each of those ideas would get its own post-it and sit around the middle. Then here's the good bit. Each of those ideas becomes the center of its own mini brainstorm. For every one of those, you generate eight more ideas building on it, stretching it, or taking it somewhere unexpected. And very quickly the wall fills up with ideas. So instead of having one narrow brainstorm, you get multiple structured expansions. The thinking spreads outwards like petals, and because judgment is deliberately parked, people start to say things they'd normally filter out. And that's where it gets interesting.

Becca: Ah I see. So each idea generates more petals like a flower blooming. Marvellous.

Sarah: And what makes this tool powerful is that it prevents the loudest voice or the quickest solution from dominating. It really slows things down just enough to allow creativity to emerge.

Becca: Yeah, because often teams feel stuck, not because people are lacking in motivation or expertise, but because they've been viewing the problem from only one angle. We ought to give an NHS example.

Sarah: What about the time that we were looking at staffing issues with a group? Their central problem was that they were holding a vacancy that they just couldn't fill, and the initial ideas were the obvious, predictable ones that already haven't worked. They had to recruit more staff. They had used bank staff, and they had tried just dividing up the extra workload amongst existing staff.

Becca: But when we applied the Lotus Blossom approach entirely, new areas emerged. They began to think about upskilling staff, how they could use tech or change their workflow.

Sarah: They also looked at issues around communication between the services and some of the social care elements.

Becca: Yeah, alongside some wonderfully mad things like bionic robot arms, roller skates for speed animals supporting patient care.

Sarah: They also had AI bots and they wanted to barcode everything from patients to staff.

Becca: Yes, some of the ideas were ethically dubious.

Sarah: And were those the final answers? No. But what we did see was that shift in energy, and it really forced the group to look at the system differently. And we've seen this happen a lot. My favourite moments using the tool is when a group is absolutely convinced that they don't have any new ideas left, and they start cautiously. They have very sensible suggestions, very safe thinking.

Becca: Yeah, we usually encourage them to write down some slightly wild ideas as well, and you can almost see them thinking these facilitators are idiots.

Sarah: Then someone says something completely ridiculous and suddenly the energy changes. People relax. They stop that self-editing and within about ten minutes, the wall is full of ideas.

Becca: Yeah. Once that one unusual idea appears and permission shifts, people let go. And that's when the creativity starts to flow.

Sarah: And what's interesting is that the solution teams eventually choose almost never comes from those same ideas at the start. It usually grows out of one of the suggestions that initially felt a bit silly or a bit unrealistic. And that's really the point of the lotus blossom. It helps people move beyond the obvious answers and create space for ideas that they might not normally say out loud.

Becca: Do you remember the HR team that developed the concept of a chatbot to answer routine policy questions, freeing their staff up to focus on the more complex work?

Sarah: Yeah, that was the one where they use ChatGPT to come up with all their answers for that one. And the one I'm excited about is a recent group, who we're actually now supporting to design an innovation box, and that's something that will contain tools, resources and guidance to support teams planning and delivering and measuring impact. And what was interesting about that one was that they were dealing with this staffing problem example and ended up with a solution that supports their existing staff to be innovative and creative, and approach problems in new ways.

Becca: So to summarize for the Lotus Blossom, you don't need anything fancy, just some post-its, pens, or if you're doing it online, you can use the Miro board function on teams. It's a key tool that works particularly well when a project feels stuck. And the same problems and solutions keep resurfacing.

Sarah: If TRIZ helped us to think about what not to do, the Lotus Blossom helps us to see what might be missing. And improvement isn't always about just pushing a bit harder, sometimes it's about creating just enough structure to think differently. So if you do try this with your team, even in a small way, we'd genuinely love to hear how it goes.

Becca: Thanks for taking a QualiTea break with us. Now go wash your mug up. Share what you have learnt and we'll see you next time.

Sarah: Thanks for listening.