by John Brooker | Jan 28, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Facilitate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla # 28 The search for a solution should be as much fun as finding it… “The Palaeolithic hunters who painted the unsurpassed animal murals on the ceiling of the cave at Altamira had only rudimentary tools. Art is older than production for use, and play older than work. Man was shaped less by what he had to do than by what he did in playful moments. It is the child in man that is the source of his uniqueness and creativeness, and the playground is the optimal milieu for the unfolding of his capacities.” Eric Hoffer Do you allow yourself and your team the opportunity to enjoy tackling challenges as much as finding the solution? On our recent holiday in a game reserve we went in search of a leopard. We drove for miles in an open top Land Rover, knowing there was a leopard around but not knowing quite where. We didn’t find it, but we had a great time looking! It struck me as we drove around that we spend a lot of time tackling challenges in our work. Finding the solution is rewarding, but we spend a lot more time searching than finding, so wouldn’t it be great if we could enjoy the “hunt” too? This relates to “Value Play”, one of the twelve precepts (or principles) for fostering creativity in an organisation that John Martin writes about in the Open University course on Creativity, Innovation and Change (click for further details of the course). “Value play” means (in my words) to allow yourself and others to be childlike (not...
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 4, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
Yes! And… Creative Gorilla # 4 How might you increase motivation in your organisation by creating flow? We’re in Flow “It’s a Zen feeling, like meditation or concentration. One thing you’re after is when things become automatic… somehow the right thing is done without your ever thinking about it or doing anything at all… it just happens and you are more concentrated.” Rock climber, quoted in Good Business: Leadership, Flow and the Making of Meaning by Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi (“chick SENT me high”). Have you ever felt a similar kind of feeling to that described in the quotation above? Either at work or whilst pursuing a hobby? Csikzentihalyi describes this feeling as flow, which occurs when both challenges and skills are high and equal to each other. I was on holiday in Brittany and reading Csikzentmihalyi’s book (a bit sad, reading business books on holiday!). His description was brought home to me when we watched a Breton band (bagpipes, drums and pipes) in the local square. They were brilliant, really lively music played very well, but I was most struck by their conductor. A small stocky lady, she would conduct when the band played a particularly difficult piece and her conducting was a performance in itself… She conducted with her legs, torso and elbows (you had to be there) and it worked brilliantly, every instrument stopping and starting on time and in beat. As she conducted, she seemed to be transported; a beaming smile on her face. As I watched I thought, “she’s in flow” and the whole band seemed to be in it too. A memorable evening. Cziksentmihalyi states...
