by John Brooker | Jan 14, 2012 | Facilitate meetings
YES! AND… Facilitate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla # 14 We owe people who attend our presentations or training courses the right to some creativity… “This is a battle, a war and the casualties could be your hearts and minds” Robin Williams in the film “Dead Poets Society” This week I facilitated a course for trainees who are not professional trainers but provide training as part of their role. The majority of them train on technical or process topics and to date their delivery has consisted mainly of PowerPoint presentations and talking to the audience, with a few exercises included. The key challenge I posed the participants was “How might you provide your course (or presentation) without a single PowerPoint slide?” The most rewarding part of the course for me was to observe people move from a state of scepticism, (“Well, I can see it working on soft subjects but it wouldn’t work with my technical topic”), to a state of enthusiasm, keen to try new ways to share information, help people recall it and encourage them to use the knowledge they gain. One of my inspirations for the course is the film “Dead Poets Society”, set in a top American preparatory school in the late 1950’s. Robin Williams as the English teacher avoids the tedium of “chalk and talk” (Didn’t they have PowerPoint in the Fifties Daddy?) and rote learning. He wins over his sceptical pupils by involving their minds, body and emotions in learning, so that they truly understand the message and meaning in every poem. He uses methods that will inspire them to recall the...
by John Brooker | Jan 12, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Facilitate, Innovate, Transform – Creative Gorilla # 12 If you seek a way to challenge conventional thinking, try this technique… “Not even the fastest, most modern jet can come close to matching Santa’s speed.” Petty Officer Bev Allen, NORAD If you are looking for a way to challenge conventional thinking, might Santa give you food for thought? On Christmas Eve my children had great fun (me too!) tracking Santa’s progress towards London on the web site www.noradsanta.org (NORAD is a US / Canadian military radar defence organisation. If you have young kids, do check out their Santa site next year). As we watched videos of Santa crossing many different cities in the world the children marvelled at the speed at which he progressed and the idea for this article sprang to mind. Thanks for the unexpected present Santa (and the people at NORAD). A technique you can use to challenge convention is to ask the “What If” question. What if we had to deliver these goods to millions of customers in the world in one night? (Wonder where that idea came from?). What if we could reduce the lead-time for this process from sixty days to one? What if we had a policy of NO redundancies? If you examine these questions, you should see that they are challenging accepted norms, the “rules” and the assumptions (which may be implicit) about a situation. “It takes sixty days to process this form”. “If business slows down, we make people redundant”. You can use the question as a stand-alone technique to aid your creative thinking but I find a...
by John Brooker | Jan 11, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Facilitate, Innovate, Transform – Creative Gorilla # 11 Here are five principles to help you design meetings with more impact… “The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity” Ascribed to Dorothy Parker, Novelist Do you want your meetings to have more impact? 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...
by John Brooker | Jan 10, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Facilitate, Innovate, Transform Creative Gorilla # 10 You may never be as creative as Beethoven, but would you like inspiration when you need it? “I need some help, some inspiration. (But it’s not coming easily)” Natasha Bedingfield “These Words“ I needed to write this Creative Gorilla article one evening when I had been facilitating all day and Natasha Bedingfield had written the above words for me. Luckily in these situations I have a short cut to tap in to some inspiration. I play my favourite piece of classical music, Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, played by the Boston Philarmonic, conducted by Benjamin Zander. There is a moment in the Fourth Movement (“Double Fugue. Allegro energico chorus “) in which Beethoven (forgive me if I describe this poorly, I am not a music scholar) counterpoints three strands of music in a climax that raises the hairs on my neck. My spirits soar. At the moment he wrote this piece one might truly believe Beethoven was kissed by a higher being. Ludwig’s genius worked its magic again as I listened to the music and my mind began to work. Those of you conversant with Neuro Linguistic Programming will know that this is a change of “state” from unproductive to productive, by altering my focus (listening to a favourite piece rather than thinking of less inspiring things). In addition, I can reinforce the new state by altering my physiology. Often this involves just tilting my head back to listen, but sometimes I stand up (and if no one is looking, I might try a bit of conducting too!) You will have your...
by John Brooker | Jan 9, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Facilitate, Innovate, Transform – Creative Gorilla# 9 How can you be lucky and creative? “If an unlucky man sold umbrellas, it would stop raining. If he sold candles, the sun would never set; and if he made coffins, people would stop dying.” Yiddish saying quoted in “The Luck Factor by Professor Richard Wiseman This week I am running a course in Togo. It’s a hot, humid place; livid with mosquitoes eating Brooker Thermidor and my hotel is listed by the Foreign Office as being in a dangerous area. So am I unlucky to be here? Well, I swim in an Olympic sized pool every morning, the food is good, my co – instructor left me a good bottle of wine and the trainees are warm and welcoming. I figure I’m pretty lucky to be here and with that attitude, Professor Wiseman in his book (click the link in the quotation above) says that I am likely to be a lucky person. Great, but what has that to do with creativity? The book outlines how you can make yourself lucky in a few simple steps. As I read the book I can’t help notice the similarities between the characteristics of creative people and the lucky people described in the book. Take his Principle One (and sub principles): “Maximise your chance opportunities…lucky people create notice and act upon the chance opportunities in their life. They network well, have a relaxed attitude and are open to new experiences”. Substitute “creative” for “lucky” and you could read that in any book on creativity. Likewise Principle Two: “Listen to your lucky hunches… lucky...
by John Brooker | Jan 7, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
How might you use naive thinking to aid creativity and innovation? “I know. It’s called a flatulator!” Andrew Brooker aged 6 ½ years. Do you consider it necessary to be an expert to generate creative ideas? The family and I were going through Waterloo station, travelling on a moving walkway. Eleanor, my daughter, asked, “If the moving steps going up are called an escalator, what do you call these flat ones?” I mumbled something about “moving walkways” when Andrew, my son, shouted, “I know, they’re called flatulators!” With visions of wind assisted pedestrians in my head I roared with laughter. What a great idea! Andrew had no idea of the potential alternative meaning when suggesting the name “Flatulator”, but he made a good guess. Often, naive people like him can offer us good insights and new trains of thought when we are struggling to create an original idea. They know little or nothing about the subject so are not limited by the conventional thinking that exists and can provide radically different input. As a Creative Leader you can use this device of naive thinking in three ways: 1. Bring in someone with no knowledge of your topic, give them a basic understanding of the issue / situation and then ask them for other ways to look at your situation or ideas (perhaps alone but more likely in a group of more knowledgeable people) 2. You can use a variation on the “What If” technique alone or in a group. Essentially this means asking yourself and / or others to imagine what a five year old would think of a...
