by John Brooker | Jul 21, 2015 | Collaborate, Facilitate meetings, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus, Tools
“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.” Confucius Use Reflecting Teams to find better insights and solutions for an issue or opportunity Imagine you have an issue and want to obtain input from others to broaden your perspective and gain ideas. If you do this in a typical meeting it can often result in frustration as some people throw in ideas prematurely, others dominate the conversation and the talk spirals in endless circles. If that is your experience, you might find it useful to use the Reflecting Teams tool I describe in this article. I have experienced Reflecting Teams many times in UK chapter meetings of the Association for the Quality Development of Solution Focused Consulting and Training (see the web site here, http://www.asfct.org/) and have found it to be an excellent tool, both for the person with the issue or opportunity and the team. How it works There are a number of variants on the tool I describe here, however, this is the one I have experienced most. Appoint a moderator Choose someone who will run the process and moderate the team so that everybody can contribute equally. This is an important role. Form the team Assemble the team so that all can see and hear the client clearly. This can be around a table or might be a half circle of chairs facing the client. There is no ideal number but it needs at least three people and, for reasons of time, probably no more than 12....
by John Brooker | Jul 20, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Innovate, Tools
“Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” John Steinbeck, Author You can make an idea generation session run more effectively with these tips. This week, I ran a creative thinking workshop for a client. I showed them how to build the climate and introduced tools for creating solutions. They were particularly keen to know how they might best apply the tools in their own workshops. Instead of pre-designing a session on this latter topic, I ran an “ad lib” session. That means the participants identify the concerns they have about running a session and I answer them. This is something I enjoy doing as an experienced facilitator and like most improvisation work, is very rewarding. I thought it would be useful to write an article on this topic for you and so here are some of the concerns and my responses. Please see Yes! And blog 136 for a selection of tools you might use. 1. How to get people to attend: Schedule a few short sessions rather than a long single session. Provide a brief that explains the purpose and outcomes and make it sound interesting. 2. People are silent, no ideas are forthcoming: This usually occurs as a result of inhibition (e.g. different status) or participant style. To overcome this, start with a “Vent”, i.e. have everybody generate ideas individually without speaking and note these down. Once these are exhausted, share and record them one at a time. 3. People are not participating: This usually arises when people work in teams that are too...
by John Brooker | Apr 29, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Free Articles, Innovate, Overcome Challenges
“Before thinking outside the box, think how you might make your box bigger?” John Brooker Understanding and widening the boundaries of a situation can help you to create more options and better solutions… I took my daughter to compete in the second round of an inter school public speaking competition organised by the Rotary Club. Teams of children, made a speech (no visuals allowed!) to an audience of around sixty people, about a topic of their choice. One introduces the topic and speaker, the second presents the case and a third gives thanks. This is a great challenge for the children and provides an element of entertainment as well as some thoughtful points. During a talk on “Breaking the Mould”, which challenged conventional thinking about small people, one girl in her introduction mentioned that phrase so often heard in the same breath as creativity, “Think outside the box”. She set me thinking. In my world, when setting outcomes with the group on a creativity course, people say regularly that this is what they want to be able to do. My normal response is that “thinking outside the box” is a fair outcome. Could they also make the box bigger? This question usually produces confusion and no wonder, as “think outside the box” derives from the old nine dot puzzle of how to connect all nine dots with a single unbroken line. No matter how big you make that box, you are still going to have to go outside the box to obtain a result. So to avoid confusion, let me explain that in my response, I mix box metaphors....
by John Brooker | Apr 27, 2015 | Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Innovate, Solution Focus
Sometimes even successful endeavours can hit a bump, just when success seems certain. Creative leaders can deal with this… “How my achievements mock me!” William Shakespeare, Troilus and Cressida How might you motivate a team that thinks it has succeeded, only to hit an obstacle? I cycled 100km around Warwickshire (or Shakespeare County as the PR people like to describe it) for charity. It was a bitterly cold day, my gears kept slipping on hills and I lost the route four times, ending up cycling on my own for most of the day. About three hours in to the ride, tired and a bit miserable, I was riding up a hill. I kept going, seeing the top get ever closer until at last I breasted the hill… and found it was what I call a false peak, an optical illusion; there was yet more of the hill to climb. After some choice words I chewed an energy bar, drank water, focused on two metres of road to make the hill seem flatter and inched my way up to the top. I was reminded of this scenario, when facilitating a group to revise their strategy. I had worked with most of them two years before, to set their strategy and whilst they had not achieved everything, they had done well with minimal resources. In particular, they had recently received confirmation of substantial funding to recruit more people, which greatly boosted morale … until they realised that they would not actually receive the funding and the new people for some months. At that point, their energy started to falter. They...
by John Brooker | Apr 10, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Innovate, Overcome Challenges, Tools
And above all, watch with glittering eyes the whole world around you because the greatest secrets are always hidden in the most unlikely places. Those who don’t believe in magic. Will never find it. ROALD DAHL – THE MINPINS Everyone can be creative; with the right process, techniques and a little magic … Footballer scores 99 goals but stalls before the hundred. Cricketer hits 99 runs and stalls before the hundred. Brooker writes 99 articles and stalls… After the 99th article, I decided to write something “special” for the 100th. I thought I would review all 99 articles, identify the themes and write about them. I didn’t realise how busy I would be and how long it would take to review 99 articles. And, when I had done it, I had no enthusiasm for it! So tonight in my hotel room I gave up on the idea. My 100th goal would not be a thirty metre volley in to the top corner of the net. My 100th run would not be a six in to the crowd. Instead, I would scramble the ball over the line, sneak a quick run, write on any topic and… Just write it…! And a question arrived. In the three months since writing the 99th article, what was the stand out moment about creativity that has stuck in my mind? Here it is. I was running a residential weekend on creativity with MBA students. Two of the students were, I suspect (I didn’t measure it), adaptive rather than innovative in their style and they were both more introvert than extrovert. They were great people...
