Same is good. Same is bad. So is different.

A Spoonful of Love
That was the title of Great American Recipe Season 3, Episode 3, a reality cooking show on PBS featuring great home cooks. This episode asked the seven cooks: "What would you cook for someone you love?"

Before reading further, pause for a moment.
What springs to mind when you think of cooking for someone you love? 💝 
(And for those of you who don't cook, take-away counts! :) )

It's a high-level question, but I'm sure your mind could fill in the details and deliver an answer.

The Great American Recipe judges provided more context, too. The episode included two competition rounds.

Round 1: Recipe Remedies

Sixty minutes later, each cook presented the judges with a meal and story about the many, many, many times they'd served that same dish to their beloveds. In this case, food conveyed love by giving familiar comfort.

Comfort = Same = Good.

Round 2: A Love-Filled Dish for that Special Someone

For this round, comfort and familiarity gave way to excitement and special treats. Special = Different = Good.

So sometimes serving the same meal you've made a thousand times is a good thing, and there are other times when the same-ol' same-ol' would be ultra lame-o.

In the cooking show, the chefs traversed the line between comfort and excitement, balancing what they knew their loved ones would appreciate with something that would delight the judges. This mirrors a common tension we face in professional settings—familiar processes vs. the competitive pressure to stand out with something new.

But simply recognizing the tension between these polarities (same vs. different, old vs. new) doesn’t help us figure out the best way forward. The context, the people involved, and the moment all shape what’s needed.

This struck me when I played with mapping out the themes from A Spoonful of Love one day, revealing a pattern that’s become clearer to me as I explore 5D Thinking Maps with others.

Beyond Good & Bad: Adding Dimensions

A bit of background for those new to the 5D Thinking Map. We originally called it a "framing tesseract" because it was inspired by three observations.

1. The results of our 2023 creativity experiment, where we found that the only variable that had a big impact on a group's creativity was the way that they framed the creativity challenge.

2. Adam Grant's "Meetings Suck" podcast episode, where he framed meetings negatively to attract a large audience to his discussion of how to make meetings better.

3. The realization that, although we have plenty of methods to help groups reframe conversations in specific ways, we lacked a tool for exploring the full range of framing options.

The first version invited people to list ways to frame a discussion across four dimensions: sentiment, scope, stakeholder, and time. When assembled into a model, this created a four-dimensional cube or tesseract.

Then, as I worked with Dave to create a prettier model and outline how it might be applied to other use cases, I realized we were missing an important element. The fifth dimension, represented by a dot, is the topic at the center of the conversation. It anchors the discussion, and everything else—sentiment, scope, stakeholders, and time—expands from this core.

That dot. It's just a dot, right? To fill it out, simply decide what you want to think about, and write it down. Easy peasy.

Mind the Dot

Since it was created, we’ve used the 5D Map to expand and compare different ways of looking at a wide range of topics, including:

• Personal finances

• Relationships with their parents

• Career options

• Conversations with a spouse

• Conversations with a boss

• How to handle a creative disagreement

• How to navigate urban-rural disagreements

• Differing views on using AI

• Differing views on the 2024 election

• Different ways to lead a workshop for sad clowns who aren't funny anymore

• and more.

In each of these cases—from navigating tough conversations to exploring new career possibilities—we find that every conversation is riddled with assumptions. When we make those assumptions visible by mapping out our unique perspectives on the 5D Map, it becomes much easier to spot and correct any misalignment.

We also find that much of the time, we weren’t very clear about the topic in the first place. What exactly were we thinking when we set that dot?

That challenge became apparent in a recent 5D Thinking Map session for facilitators and leadership coaches. We picked a topic to map – LinkedIn Posting – then spent 5 minutes adding ideas about:
• Sentiment: How do we feel about LinkedIn Posting?
• Scope: What about posting? What are the details, and what's the big picture?
• Stakeholders: Who are we thinking about related to LinkedIn Posting?
• Time: When are we thinking about? As it was, as it is now, as it might be?

In the debrief, one participant admitted she wasn’t excited about the topic. It didn’t ‘fork her jaws,’ as my friend Doug would say.

But then we looked more closely at the topic itself. While most of the group shared ideas about using LinkedIn for brand-building, we noticed that this was an assumption. The topic wasn't "Using LinkedIn to Build Your Personal Brand" - it was simply stated as "LinkedIn Posting." Participants could just as easily have focused on LinkedIn as a learning or sales platform, or on how LinkedIn posting influences the overall quality of our public dialogue.

When we recognized that potential reframing– the question about how LinkedIn influences the quality of our thinking and work that we show publicly– the apathetic folks found they had plenty to say!

This brings me back to the Great American Recipe's "Spoonful of Love" episode.

Balance is nice. Clarity is better.

When we talk about something broad, like ‘food for loved ones,’ it’s easy to stay high-level and abstract. We might discuss the benefits of balancing familiar/same meals with our special/different meals, and find other general guidelines to keep in mind.

Starting high level can prove illuminating because sometimes we're so scattered and so new to sharing our ideas on a topic that we need to start in the fuzzy zone before we can see where to focus in.

Then if we can make the topic more specific, things snap into place. In the two rounds of recipe challenges, Same and Different have clear places on the Sentiment line.

And, while you might think increased topic clarity would remove options and the potential to exchange rich, diverse perspectives, often the reverse is true. We all interpret topics based on our own experiences. The home cooks came from different backgrounds, so the comforting recipes included the following: tortilla soup, chicken congee, pesto pasta, a fennel sausage frittata, chicken potpie, classic beef cutlet with duchess potatoes, and a goat pepper soup.

While they all looked delicious, none of these are my go-to comfort food recipes. Are they yours? (Also, I love recipes! Please share yummy ideas in the comments.)

Obvious / Not Obvious 5D Thinking Takeaways

As you can see, I'm learning and re-learning as I work with this model. Every single time, I see something new about the topic under discussion. Often, I gain a deeper understanding of the complexity underlying thinking in groups. Today, I'm pondering these insights. Like so many "insights," they were unexpected and felt revelatory in the moment, and now look obvious when captured in hindsight.

1. Broad topics lead to safe assumptions and generic answers.

Broad topics surface safe answers. When discussions start with vague prompts, people tend to stick to surface-level responses. This was clear in the 2023 experiment that inspired the creation of the 5D Thinking Map and in last week's "LinkedIn Posting" exercise.

When a topic is too broad, creativity and engagement suffer, as people are unsure how to contribute. Especially as group size grows, we lack the time it would take to explore and move past all our assumptions using natural conversation. So, like we saw in our LinkedIn Posting example, those who weren’t excited by what they assumed was the focus waited for others to define the conversation, leading to a narrow range of ideas.

How many of our business-speak conversations center on high-level topics like innovation, creativity, engagement, progress, and so on? Too damn many for us to make meaningful sense out of them.

While natural conversation proves a slow boat to clarity, I'm finding you can get deeper more rapidly (and reliably) by using a quick 5D map as a starting point. Then with this first-pass map in hand, ask questions like:

• Was this topic interesting to you?

• Did someone post something that confused or surprised you?

• Did you have an idea but weren’t sure how it fit? What does it depend on?

Want to take this further? Challenge the topic directly by asking:

• What assumptions do we seem to be making?

• What if the opposite of our assumptions were true? How would that shift our perspective?

• How might the downsides be seen as the best possible outcome? And the reverse: how might the positives turn into serious negatives?

• Who might view this entirely differently, and what might it look like to them?

The answers will uncover alternative perspectives, opening a path to more specific, actionable topics.

2. Clarity unlocks creativity and alignment.

When the conversation shifts from broad to specific, everything snaps into place. The clearer the focal point, the more insightful and creative the outcomes.

In our experiment on cool uses for empty spaces, teams that narrowed their topic—focusing on financially viable uses or specific campus spaces—generated much more compelling ideas. The same dynamic played out on "A Spoonful of Love." Heck, it's the basis of all my work on meeting performance, where I encourage people to ditch the word “meeting” entirely in favor of more specific alternatives. Once the topic shifts to clearly defined challenges—like comfort vs. special occasion meals or client demo vs team retrospective—the cooks and the collaborators can deliver thoughtful, exciting experiences.

3. Clarity doesn’t limit diversity—it invites it.

Even when the topic is clearly defined, people interpret it through their lens, bringing a wealth of diverse ideas to the table. The home cooks in "A Spoonful of Love" all responded to the same challenge—recipe remedies—but their backgrounds and experiences produced wildly different dishes. A clear focal point doesn’t flatten the conversation; it invites deeper, richer contributions because everyone knows where to begin and feels free to bring their spin.

I've seen these dynamics play out in conversations between people on opposite sides of the political fence, too. Clarity is especially powerful in situations where different perspectives give rise to mistrust and hostility. When the topic is too broad—like "conservative vs. progressive values"—the discussion tends to stay polarized and abstract, reinforcing stereotypes and assumptions, and yielding only grudging acknowledgment of the grains of goodness in the opposing viewpoint.

But when the topic narrows to specific policies or personal stories, the conversation changes. People often discover they share similar hopes and dreams for their lives and communities. For example, in discussions I’ve hosted between political opposites, participants are often surprised to find agreement on issues like healthcare, education, and climate when they get specific about how they would like to see policy play out in practice. The most common reflection from these conversations is "I learned that we're more alike than different." By minding the dot and focusing on clear examples, these conversations shift from adversarial debates to productive exchanges that end with common ground and nuanced thinking, rather than enmity.

Putting It In Practice

5D Thinking Maps offer a path to deeper understanding by minding the dot—the central focus that drives everything else.

If you are using a 5D Map to explore a topic with a group, consider running two back-to-back mapping rounds before deciding on your next step. Keep the first round fast, then discuss what you see. A more specific topic may emerge that you can then put at the center of a second map.

Once you clarify that dot, the dimensions around it (sentiment, scope, stakeholder, and time) come into sharper focus, leading to clearer alignment, richer perspectives, and more meaningful outcomes. By staying aware of when topics are too broad and intentionally narrowing them, you can unlock the kind of insights that move conversations and ideas forward.

I’m curious to hear what you think.

• Do you agree that we need to get more specific more often? If so, where would you start?

• What are your favorite recipe remedies and date-night favorites? Bonus love awards go to everyone who shares a link!

All the best to you all,
Elise

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