by John Brooker | Mar 5, 2015 | Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Innovate, Overcome Challenges
If you want to enhance your creativity you need to interrupt your trains of thought … “I have coined the term “bisociation” to make a distinction between the routine skills of thinking on a single plane, and the creative act which always operates on more than one plane. Arthur Koestler, Philosopher How might you enhance creative thinking? I was on holiday in Spain last week and with glorious weather and time to think I began playing with a concept that I last wrote about in Yes! And Blog 80. This was the idea of using a railway metaphor for how people think and create ideas, leading to how you can stimulate your creative thinking. As I pondered on it, the whole concept became a lot clearer for me so I thought I would build on that last article. In this telling of the metaphor, the track is your life path. All of your learning, skills and experience sit in carriages (or coaches). The carriages at the back contain all of the information from your childhood, one each for pre-school, primary school and secondary school, perhaps one for childhood outside school (chunk the carriages how you like). This is your own “train of thought” (sorry for the pun!). Information was poured in to the carriage(s) from the world outside, either actively introduced through interaction with people, by personal experience or passively absorbed. These carriages now contain memories. You can access the carriages and the memories but logically cannot add anything as you move on to a new piece of track (another period of your life). The memories are your...
by John Brooker | Feb 18, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Innovate, Overcome Challenges
“Finding ideas is like picking blackberries” John Brooker Do you want your idea generation to be more fruitful? This week, I went to pick blackberries with the children. I realise some of you assume this means I took them to a computer store to enrich their lives with the pleasure of an e-mail overdose, (makes a change from an E number overdose). In reality we picked the last of the summer’s fruit. As we picked (and my son ate), I mused on what a great analogy blackberry picking is for idea generation. You arrive at your site and some big juicy berries hover there, groaning “Eat me, eat me,” (my son politely obliges). Three pickers ensure rapid removal of these “low hanging fruits.” As you pick one you notice it is part of a ripe bunch and you delightedly strip them. You bound around several brambles, picking away. Then it gets tougher. You gently lift prickly leaves to discover one nestling there. You duck down and look up, finding more secreted away; you peer over the top of foliage and find a tantalising bramble just out of reach, so trample down a few nearer brambles and reach them triumphantly, only to find a maggot on steroids eye-balling you with menace. Next you walk round the tangled mass of vegetation to look from different angles and spy more which have appeared as if by magic. Gradually you find the numbers dwindling but there is always one more you can see, so you “reeeeaaaach” for it. You tease it off its stalk but it slips from your fingertips as a large bramble...
by John Brooker | Jan 2, 2015 | Collaborate, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Innovate, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus
“This is how humans are: we question all our beliefs, except for the ones we really believe, and those we never think to question.” Orson Scott Card ~ American Author Do you feel uncomfortable when people challenge your thinking or beliefs? Do you ever put yourself in the position where others can challenge your beliefs? Or do you seek to avoid such situations? If you do you may be missing an opportunity to stimulate your creativity and innovation. If you have the chance to attend a workshop on Solutions Focus (SF), do attend. Solutions Focus is an approach to change and tackling people issues. It differs from more conventional approaches such as Creative Problem Solving (CPS) because it focuses on finding a solution for messy situations (i.e. there is no right answer) rather than exploring the problem. Its central hypothesis (in my words) is that focussing on the solution builds positive energy to create change whilst focussing on the problem can develop a negative energy (resistance) for change. In that hypothesis, it has links to other positive approaches such as Appreciative Inquiry (AI). Having attended a course on AI and read a book on SF [The Solutions Focus by Paul Z. Jackson and Mark McKergow], I had been seduced by the positive approach; it appealed to my nature. But seduction can be dangerous (de Laclos didn’t call his book “Les Liaisons Dangereux” for nothing) and I had doubts that SF could replace CPS entirely. After all I have spent ten years schooling myself in various aspects of CPS and I find it works. As a recent participant in...
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 | Aug 8, 2012 | Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Innovate, Overcome Challenges, Tools
“What if we: Divide; Reduce; Enlarge; Adapt (use and form); Mix; Exclude; Replace; Switch?” John Brooker DREAMERS create ideas systematically When I was a student on my Masters of Business Administration (MBA) course, I regarded as sacrosanct the theories, tools and techniques we were taught. The gurus of strategy, marketing, innovation et al were demi gods and we should bow to them reverentially. This was easy to do because as a student doing a full time job and a part time MBA, I was often short of time to think. Having gained my qualification, I became a tutor. With time to think, I was able to cast a more appraising eye over the materials and realised the gurus were as human as me. I really started to learn the materials and began to question the theories, tools and techniques. This was a revelation to me and I urge students to challenge the theories and bend the tools and techniques to their own ends. Whether it works or fails, they will have learned something by doing their own thinking. SO This week, I was reviewing Robert Eberle’s classic mnemonic “SCAMPER”: Substitute; Combine; Adapt; Magnify / Minify; Put to other uses; Eliminate / Elaborate; Rearrange / Reverse (please see Yes! And blog 136 for a short review). You can use this tool with “What If” questions to generate ideas by challenging various aspects of a situation, service or product. It makes the process very systematic. This works very well, however, this week I was in a curious mood and thought, “Put to other uses” is not that elegant (the “Put” on its...
