by John Brooker | Mar 21, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 81 A great way you can obtain a shared sense of the future is to verbalise it in an interview … “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.” Alan Kay, Computer Scientist Do you need to explore the future? Have you ever seen a “Samurai warrior” playing “Fly Me to the Moon” on a grand piano, whilst his Japanese colleagues croon along? This was just part of a slightly surreal entertainment I enjoyed at a recent Solutions Focus conference in Cologne. This was a ten out of ten event, a benchmark for other conferences, with great entertainment (my singing apart) and a great deal of learning. What was particularly useful for me was to learn new ways to use old tools and I’d like to share one with you. Traditionally, when seeking to explore the future, I have groups draw pictures or use magazine photographs. This encourages discussion as people explore metaphors they can use to describe their situation. At the conference, Hans Peter Korn, a Swiss consultant, demonstrated an excellent alternative. In this case we are using a business scenario, but you could use it for any context. How to do it If you would like a full description visit Hans Peter’s site and download the PDF with the same name as this article). It works like this. You start with a statement e.g. How will my business still be competitive in five years’ time? How will it look, what will we be doing? Peter next uses the idea of a time machine to take people five years in...
by John Brooker | Mar 20, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 80 If you want to have more creative ideas, you need to change your signals and divert other trains of thought through your brain station “There are trains that don’t come by again or ones that don’t even stop at the right station.” Juande Ramos, Former Coach of Tottenham FC, discussing his reasons for joining the club. Do you need to change your signals? We were on holiday in Venice, a perfect place I thought, to get creative ideas for a Gorilla article. Certainly there were catalysts; the picture on my mobile telephone changing from the Houses of Parliament to the Leaning Tower of Pisa, as I switched it on in Venice airport (what a lovely idea!); the way the Venetians use the water for everything (e.g. collecting the rubbish); the absence of modern buildings; the speed of the vaporetti (water buses) helping to destroy the foundations of buildings the Venetians are trying to save. I had so many ideas they were all running round in my head until my wife bought me a wonderful blank paged notebook (Moleskine brand) and I sat on a train from Venice to Padova and began sketching the ideas in a radiant map. As I mapped I thought how maps are remniscent of railway junctions, which set me thinking about metaphors for creative thinking and so I had yet another idea! Information bombards us all the time through our senses and the brain filters out the information we don’t need at that time so we don’t go crazy. To use the railway metaphor, think of information like...
by John Brooker | Mar 19, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 79 There might be an alternative use for some of your products or services if you spend a little time thinking about it… “The best car safety device is a rear-view mirror with a cop in it.” Dudley Moore, Comedian and Actor Could you adapt some of your products and services to other markets with just a little thought? I’m in one of my idea phases this morning, which tends to make me a bit absentminded (anyone inferring that it might be age related may stop reading now). I was in the shower when I realised I hadn’t shaved. No problem, I’d shave in the shower; but I had no mirror. Looking down I saw the big chrome head of the waste plug and picked it up. It was a near perfect shaving mirror; it even made my face slimmer, a double whammy (and you can use it for plucking your eyebrows too gentlemen!) I wondered if the firm who made it realises this and could use it as a benefit. “Chrome waste plug with new vanity mirror facility. Even better, they could market it as a vanity mirror that doubles as a waste plug. Put that in your handbag, gentlemen. (No one is going to accuse me of political incorrectness in this article!) So This set me thinking how many other things in the same environment could be used for different purposes and could we apply the thought to organisations? There is so much emphasis on “reuse and recycle” it struck me that it would be worthwhile for organisations to have a workshop...
by John Brooker | Mar 18, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 78 The quickest way to stop people generating new ideas is to belittle the deliverer of creative ideas … “Scudamore made his first sensible move in 19 days by calling time on his crazy idea.” Daily Mail Have you ever had an idea stamped on…how did it make you feel? On the tube recently, I noticed the back page of the “Daily Mail” and the quotation above. The “crazy idea” referred to, was to hold a 39th game of football for each team in the English Premier League. They would play in places like Australia and China, so fans in those countries could see top teams, like Manchester United, Chelsea and Fulham (joke there for English football supporters), play locally. Reading the article further, I came across some colourful phrases related to the idea, “subjected to worldwide derision”, “an abuse to football”, “humiliating circumstances” and “giant gaffe”. Other newspapers have printed articles on a similar theme. I could write another article on “selling the idea” (and probably will) but for this one, let’s focus on the reaction to the idea, which has been hysterical to say the least. Richard Scudamore is the Chief Executive of the English Premier League, a league that gets a lot of money from international business e.g. TV rights, sales of kit etc. It is surely his job to develop new ideas for the League and its teams to make more money internationally; and more money invested in the country is good for United Kingdom Inc. Whilst this idea may not be the right one for many reasons, surely we...
by John Brooker | Mar 17, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 77 You need to check your facts if you want to overcome challenges… “You can’t make progress in a bear hunt if you follow the tracks of a deer.” Dean Koontz – Author in “The Good Guy” “You can’t make progress in a beer hunt if you follow a bad steer.” John Brooker – Author in “The Cross Keys” Have you checked the facts…? Sometimes, I have to do something stupid to remember the basics of Creative Thinking. Recently, I co-hosted an informal gathering in a pub in London for students who had recently passed their Open University MBA exams. It was a “drop in evening” when we would meet anyone who turned up at 6.00 p.m. in “The Counting House” pub in London. Regrettably, Elvin Box, my co-host, was stuck on a train at that time. I followed my map and found myself outside “The Cross Keys” pub where a man directed me to turn left down an alleyway, walk some distance and then I would find “The Counting House”. Following his instructions, I arrived at the end of the alley where a number of people stood outside a pub door. As there was no pub sign, I inquired if it were “The Counting House” and a lady assured me it was. Finding a seat in the very crowded bar, I put up a “Beer Mat Night” sign (to the amusement of fellow drinkers) and proceeded to wait… and wait. Elvin called at 7.00 p.m. to say he was half an hour away. Still...
by John Brooker | Mar 15, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 75 The power of choosing in a workshop is not the count but the discussion of why you chose in that way … “Free and fair discussion will ever be found the firmest friend to truth. “ Unknown How can you make evaluation more powerful? I ran a flexible thinking workshop recently and once again, people said “the power of discussion” was a key learning point. Why should discussion be so powerful? Let’s explore… In the course I demonstrate the use of the Options Matrix technique, one used quite commonly by groups to choose between various options. Above I show a simplified matrix based on the challenge of “How to get more funds for the project?” The scoring is based on how well the idea matches up to the criteria, in this case: Excellent = 4; Very good = 3; Good = 2; Poor = 1 Typically the process is: Those involved in choosing give a rating for each option or idea against each criterion, e.g. Mary rates idea “C” as Poor against Criteria 1, Zane rates it Excellent and Joe rates it as Excellent too The rating is averaged and a score given i.e. 1 + 4 + 4 = 9 / 3 people = 3 The average rating against each criterion is added to give a total The option with the highest total score is chosen (Option “B” in our example) and we have an objective result Or do we? Actually what we have is the objective result of a subjective process, or what I call “Subjective objectivity”. So What we...
