by John Brooker | Jan 1, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Innovate, Overcome Challenges
“I’m not at all creative, so I want to see how others do it.” Open University Student You can create and innovate. With knowledge of different methods and techniques and a creative climate, you can become more successful at both… The quotation above was the response from an MBA student (an experienced manager) when I asked for his learning objectives at an Open University, Creativity & Innovation course. Now I believe even gorillas can be creative, though I can’t prove it because I’ve never found one that spoke English. (This thought makes me wonder what it would be like to facilitate a group of gorillas. Would they listen more effectively than some humans?). So I asked the student what led him to believe he was not? ‘Because I am 64 on the Kirton scale and that means I am not creative’. ‘Whoa, that’s some limiting belief you’ve got their’ is a thought that crossed my mind but I empathised and explained that the ‘Kirton Adaptation Innovation’ inventory reflects whether you have a more adaptive or innovative style of problem solving, not whether you are more or less creative. [See here for information] What would you say to that student? Now, I say something like: ‘You can all create and innovate. With knowledge of the different methods and techniques and a climate conducive to clear thinking, you can become more skilled at both’. Many people say they are not creative. Some feel it is ‘arty farty’, tree hugging, warm and fuzzy stuff and they aren’t like that. Others see creativity and innovation as the generation of ideas. But this is...
by John Brooker | Sep 9, 2014 | Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus
What are the dimensions of challenges and how might you begin to build resilience? “There are no rules and regulations so rigorous, no organisation so hierarchical, no bosses so abusive that they can prevent use of your energy, ability and ingenuity. They may make it more difficult but they can’t prevent it. The real power is yours, not theirs.” Dee Hock – founder of Visa Do you or your teams need to be more “resilient”? This is a popular term in organisations at present and a recent Open University alumni course on the topic of Motivation, Mindset and Resilience stimulated my thinking on it. A while ago, I wrote a practical article (find it here), which explained a Solution Focus way to facilitate teams through difficult times. It did not though, refer specifically to resilience, which is “the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties; toughness.” However, some people on the course thought that “recover” should be “recover and move forward quickly from”. I wrote this article to encourage you to think about resilience and also to help me reflect on the course. I realise I could read a book on resilience, but I like to think topics through myself before turning to the experts. Your constructive feedback on my thinking would be most welcome. During the course, Barry Russell, from the Environment Agency, gave a talk on motivation and resilience, using the severe flooding in the UK as his context. He explained that Environment Agency staff had been so motivated to help, many had worked too many long and repeated shifts, to the point that there was a need...
by John Brooker | Sep 7, 2014 | Develop Opportunities, Innovate, Overcome Challenges, Tools
How can you trigger creative ideas? “Insights obtained from conceptual blends constitute the products of creative thinking, however, conceptual blending theory is not itself a complete theory of creativity, inasmuch as it does not illuminate the issue of where the inputs to a blend originate.” Mark Turner, author in “The Literary Mind” (Page 93) How do you trigger creative ideas? Here’s one way. At the weekend, I struggled without success to find a topic for this article. Monday morning I went for my regular walk. I had a goal to climb Pinner Hill, a strategy to use a different route to the normal and no conscious thought of the Creative Gorilla. I walked across a meadow, saw a gap in the hedge and cut through it. Surprise. I discovered a semi formal public garden I had not seen before in 20 years of living here. I wandered around looking for the exit and realised the only exit was the entry I had come through, away from the houses that surrounded it. It was like a secret garden. I was looking at the garden when my article came to mind. The seed of a topic arose, “disrupt your patterns and you might discover something new.” Inspired, I completed the first draft of the article on the walk, using the recording app on my phone. What did I do to provoke this idea? I did nothing that I planned. So Let’s consider what I did do and elicit some creative principles: I had a goal to climb the hill and deliberately chose a different route, which meant that I broke my pattern. Creative principle?...
by John Brooker | Sep 1, 2014 | Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus
YES! AND… Collaborate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla #171 How might you engage teams using metaphor? This week, I ran a workshop for SFCT UK (Solution Focus Consulting and Training). We used the Explore Metaphor tool and this article will help you to use it. The SFCT workshop was to discuss my Team Impetus Model. This is a model designed to engage teams and shape strategy, using the metaphor of a ski jump. The ski jump metaphor was conceived after some iteration. The original concept was a traditional model with steps that went up. While “up” is a very ingrained metaphor, with positive meanings, I think it is easier to walk down than up! So I redesigned the model with descending steps. After discussing the downward step model with an international group of SF users, the idea arose for a metaphor that went down, but not steps; steps are fixed and don’t provide much impetus to move forward. The “ski jump” model was conceived. The concept is that ski jump has the advantage of taking you down to gather speed and lifting you up to “fly”. The jumper has control over momentum and the flight to ensure a good distance and safe landing. How did the SFCT group view the metaphor? “Explore Metaphor” Tool I introduced them to a tool to explore metaphors, developed while writing an article on metaphors. (Click here to go to a page and scroll down to download, “The Power of Metaphors to Transform Teams”) The Explore Metaphor Tool is based on four questions, laid out in four columns in a table. Here is the table used...
by John Brooker | Aug 29, 2014 | Collaborate, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus
How might you resolve interpersonal tension between leaders? “Conflict can and should be handled constructively; when it is, relationships benefit.” In, “Who’s Pulling Your Strings?” by Harriet B. Braiker Recently, a company asked me to run a workshop for them. During a fact-finding call to establish the client’s situation and required meeting outcomes, I learned that two senior people involved in the workshop were not working well together. People had noticed tension between them in other meetings. As the client’s outcome for the pending meeting was to build an effective working relationship between three teams, it was vital that the two leaders work effectively together during the meeting. I suggested that I hold a pre meeting with the two leaders and the client arranged this. The following is an outline of the intervention that you can follow. Intervention Outline To establish a relationship with them, and to save time during the pre-meeting, I telephoned each leader to establish their view of the situation in terms of what they wanted. I asked them three questions: Imagine the pre-meeting works really well, what would your outcomes be? What would you like to be different about the situation? What would you and others notice is better if the situation improves? You can adapt these, but note that I did not ask, “What are the issues?” or “Why is there conflict?” These would focus them on the problem and achieve little. Before the meeting I wrote notes of their individual responses, and asked them to verify their own answers. I also wrote each answer on Post – it Notes (use a different colour...
by John Brooker | Aug 9, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus, Tools
Need a creative tool to explore issues? During our holiday last July we spent three days horse riding. After two days I had seen enough of horses and my back ached terribly. I was a “groucho” not a gaucho. I decided that I would sit out the third day, but my son loved riding and really wanted to go. So I said I would go with him. Bad decision. On the way back, the leaders galloped, my back seized up and I was in agony. To cut a long story short, after four months of osteopathy and pills I was better, but still had a chronic pain across the middle of my back. One night in December I went to sleep and had a dream. In the dream I saw a woman appear and slowly walk towards me. She reached out her hand and gently touched a finger to my spine on the centre of the pain; there was a loud click and the pain disappeared. I woke up and the pain had gone. I got up and was pain free for the first time in months. How did that happen? If it were just my spine clicking back in to place, why did I see the woman walking towards me and touching my back before it clicked? The power of the subconscious?. So Recalling that dream recently (please see the closing story) I thought it might be an opportunity to discuss an interesting technique I have tried occasionally, known as Image Manipulation. In this tool you explore an issue with a client without you knowing what the issue...
