by John Brooker | Jul 31, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Innovate, Overcome Challenges, Tools
“There is no truth. Only perception.” Edith Sitwell (English Author) Looking at a challenge in a fresh way can transform how you tackle it… Once, I gave an after dinner talk for around 80 college lecturers and examiners attending a seminar on innovation in assessment. The premise of my talk, more an interactive lecture, was that if we could inspire people to enjoy the whole process of exams, it would reap benefits for the college and be an innovation in assessment. This idea underpinned a study day that my friend, Elvin Box, and I ran for many years, for MBA students studying Creativity, Innovation and Change. We challenged the students to enjoy and look forward to the exam rather than dread it. I had happily accepted the challenge of giving the talk, but a couple of weeks after accepting I became a little nervous, wondering what I would find to talk about that would interest and be of use to the audience. I didn’t realise how nervous I was until one night, I had a dream. In it I was delivering the talk and in front of everybody, could not think of a thing to say. In the dream, (this is absolutely true) Piers Brosnan , ex – James Bond and erstwhile singer in “Mamma Mia,” appeared and sagely told me all I needed to know. He may even have sung it, I don’t recall because when I awoke, I had forgotten all he told me! However, some of you will recognise the type of dream as the “examination dream”, one I used to have regularly before appearing in plays, constantly forgetting...
by John Brooker | Jul 30, 2015 | Collaborate, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Innovate, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus
“Where a minute before a handful of tech guys could agree on almost nothing, it took us only five minutes to identify the future perfect on which we all agreed.” Niklas Tiger. Managing Director of Hi5, Sweden. Want to solve challenges more effectively? How many meetings have you been in where you have tried to tackle a challenge in a team and it just kept going round in circles? The following is a true story related by Niklas Tiger, Managing Director of Hi5, an IT organisation in Sweden that provides outsourced IT services to customers over the Internet. Hi5 is not a client of ours but Niklas has given us permission to create an article as an example of how the Solution Focus approach to tackling challenges and change can work. (Please click on the link to read an article on Solutions Focus). I have adapted the wording for clarity slightly; otherwise this is his story, which, as it is from an organisation, I thought would be valuable for you. If you would rather read this article in an illustrated short ebook, please click here ebook A tale of two meetings. “Implementing Solutions Focus (SF) as a way of managing change in our organisation and also in collaboration with customers, really has transformed our company. A very low tech down to earth example of this happened as recently as this...
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...
by John Brooker | Apr 3, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Innovate, Overcome Challenges
“Perhaps some day we shall know how to heighten creativity. Until then, one of the best things we can do for creative men and women is to stand out of their light.” John W Gardner ~ US Educator Is your organisation trying to convert the unconvertible?? If you can recruit a few people in the organisation as champions of creativity and innovation then you should be able to increase the organisation’s capability without trying to convert everyone to your mission. I attended a concert by Harrow Young Musicians, my daughter being a member of the group. The standard was mixed, as you can imagine with children aged from seven to eighteen, but the evening was enjoyable. There were six conductors and when the whole group played (over a hundred children) four people conducted simultaneously. It worked! It seemed that each conductor was a creative leader, passing on their passion and enthusiasm for music to this large number of children. And if these six people can do that, surely we can use this as an analogy for increasing creativity and innovation (C & I) in organisations? Let’s mix in a metaphor of “traffic lights” (“robots” if you are reading this in South Africa!) and try. Imagine the conductors as the “green light” people in your organisation. These “green light” people enjoy C & I, believe it can do wonders for an organisation and will happily “bore for their country” on the topic if allowed and given the resources – even if it is not in their objectives. The child musicians are the “amber light” people in your organisation. They can...
