by John Brooker | Apr 30, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Collaborate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla #110 You must ensure everybody involved in tackling a situation understands it. This is essential if you wish to find a long lasting solution… “It was some relief for Morse to recognise the fair countenance of reason once more, and she greeted him serenely when he woke, clear headed, on Monday morning and told him that it would be no bad idea to have a quiet look at the problem itself before galloping off towards a solution.” Colin Dexter, author in “Service of all the Dead” Chapter 12 Are you tackling the right problem? In an Internet chat room recently I noticed an elderly lady had posted a problem she wanted help with. Essentially, she wondered what she could do next in her life to give it some more challenge. (Which I agree is more of an opportunity than a problem). Very soon, up popped a response from a contributor advising her to take up painting “because that’s what my grandmother did”. All credit to this respondent for contributing and I am sure they had a positive intent but… already someone had come up with a solution and we knew little about the situation, other than the lady was elderly. Yes, it may well have been exactly the right answer, but equally it may have been completely wrong. This reminded me so much of what often happens in organisations, “Here are some symptoms of a problem;” “Aha, here’s a solution we used before on a similar issue”; put it in to action and voila! The problem reappears a few weeks later...
by John Brooker | Apr 28, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate, Tools
YES! AND… Collaborate. Innovate. Transform # 108 How to use Creative Solution Finding in virtual meetings? “I think they should consider giving Oscars for meetings: Best Meeting of the Year, Best Supporting Meeting, Best Meeting Based on Material from Another Meeting.” William Goldman, Novelist How can you facilitate a virtual “creative solution finding” session? One of the toughest meetings in which I was involved was a teleconference. I was in Lagos on a mobile telephone at 4.00 a.m. People were calling in from Asia, Europe and the US. It was difficult to understand who was speaking or what they were saying and I swear after ten minutes I heard a gentle snoring. It might have been me. I was reminded of this when I received a note from a fellow Gorilla this week, with background and a question as follows: “I have a new team of 5, situated in 3 locations (2 locations in Sweden, 1 in the UK). We get on really well. We regularly use audio with netmeeting / webex conferences and we can do 3 way video conferences. What ideas do you have for creative problem solving in a less than ideal physical set-up? I like a challenge and this article is my response. It is longer than the norm, please forgive me, I trust you will find it worthwhile. My first thought was that there are companies that specialise in web meetings and they have some great new technology. However, I set the scope of the challenge as a team working with little budget; they cannot use an external resource and must use the available technology as...
by John Brooker | Apr 23, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate, Tools
Yes! And… Creative Gorilla # 103 Creative idea generation sessions will work better if people follow guidelines on behaviour… “People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first..” David H. Comins Do you want your idea generation sessions to work better? The other night, I helped out at my son’s Scout meeting. We gathered the children and got them to play a game. However, three of them thought that this game was not cool, so they did all they could to mess up the game for everybody else. Despite much enthusiasm from others, the game fizzled out. This reminded me of many meetings I attended in corporate life, in particular idea generation meetings, where it is quite simple for people to dampen enthusiasm. Recently, a client asked me to give a short talk to build some energy in a group before an idea generation session. I built the talk around four guidelines for making an idea generation session work more effectively. So Here are the four guidelines, which you might find useful when diverging, that is, when generating ideas. By the way, can you find an acronym for these guidelines? Build on Ideas A great way to obtain more creative ideas is to build on the ideas of others so: Say, “Yes! And…” not “Yes! But…” Accept “silly” or “ridiculous” ideas and use them as springboards to develop practical ideas Ask, “How might we look at this idea differently?” Appreciate Different Styles People have different styles and this might cause issues in your idea generation session. Be aware that: There are...
by John Brooker | Apr 22, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Tools
Yes! And… Creative Gorilla # 102 People often face new situations. You can facilitate them to perform better with a simple model…. Enhance The Physical and Social Environment “Do not wait for extraordinary circumstances to do good; try to use ordinary situations.” Jean Paul Richter (1763 – 1825) German Writer Do you want to improve someone’s performance in a new situation? I have worked with a number of new groups this year in workshops. Whenever I work with them I use a simple model called the “New Situation Model” to help people settle in with each other and encourage communication. I developed this model with my colleague, Caroline Harvey, based on our experience and using research. Explaining the Model A brief explanation of each stage (Note there is no proscribed order), is that we have found that a typical person (but not everyone) in a new situation wants to: Adopt the correct state Know who others are and how they relate Understand the situation Have a constructive outlook Influence the situation Contribute well Have an opportunity to voice their opinion Enhance the environment in which they find themselves, both physical and social Each of these steps is what I term a “facilitator”. The more facilitators you can address, the better the result. Whilst we use it in workshops, you might also use the model as a checklist when you: Plan for new people joining your group Plan for forming a project team Are in a new situation yourself (it may enable you to develop or suggest a constructive course of action) So Imagine that you have a new person...
by John Brooker | Apr 11, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 101 When running creative workshops, balance quality of outcome against time by keeping it simple… “So much to do, if I only had time,” Lyric by P Delanoe, Jack Fishman & Michel Fugai Do you want to achieve more in your meetings? Recently, I spent some time with a client to review an agenda they had designed for a creative idea generation and evaluation workshop. I was not facilitating but they asked for feedback. The design had very clear outputs, with good ideas to ensure participation. However, instinctively I sensed that they would not achieve all they wanted to because the design was too complex for the time available. We therefore spent time looking at ways to simplify the design, so they could achieve the desired outcomes. So In essence you can simplify three factors in a workshop, (although reducing the number of people attending is another option): The Input – The information that people require before they can start the creative thinking session The Activities – What the group does to process the information and achieve the output The Output – What the group produces at the end of the activity, e.g. a set of evaluated ideas Here are some suggestions for ways you can simplify them. Treat these as general principles as there are always exceptions. Input Identify work that could be done beforehand so that you do not waste time in the meeting e.g. (A). Before a process redesign meeting, draft the current process and validate it during the meeting. (B). Before an evaluation session, identify the criteria that you will...
by John Brooker | Apr 9, 2012 | Facilitate meetings
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 99 Here are principals to make your meetings have more impact…… ““The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity” Ascribed to Dorothy Parker, Novelist” Want to improve your meetings? Hi! It’s a beautiful sunny day here in London, glorious spring weather. I am just back from a two hour bike ride and I feel great. I did some exploring, ventured down some new “secret” paths that I had not noticed before, saw stunning scenery and even met a number of people who replied to my, “Good morning”. I was whipped by stinging nettles, shaken to bits on bridleways (horse tracks) and stuck in mud in a hoof hole, but I came back energised, uplifted and so raring to go, I am writing this in my cycle shorts. You know that feeling? Like when you come out of meetings? Energised, uplifted, motivated! Or maybe not. More likely you come out bored, listless and seeking caffeine to change your state. It doesn’t have to be that way. Meetings are something I have thought about a lot this week as I redesigned my “Training with More Impact” course and designed a couple of workshops for clients. The course is based on five principles which I have adapted over the years from various aspects of accelerated learning and brain friendly (see www.kaizentraining.com) training. Whilst cycling, I reflected that meetings are about learning too, at least they should be. Therefore, it would be useful to share these principles with creative leaders like you, so that you might apply them to your meetings. SO Here are the...
