by John Brooker | Mar 2, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 62 Encourage people to think they are innovative and there is a good chance they’ll innovate. “If you can put the mind in a healthy place, you can have dramatic physiological consequences.” Ellen Langer, Professor of Psychology, Harvard University Could you improve your business by encouraging a change in mindset? One of the pleasures of travelling is that I get to read the newspaper at breakfast. Reading the South African version of the Sunday Times the other week I came across an article about a piece of research conducted by Harvard University. In essence it said that if you imagine that you are losing weight, you will, as long as you do some exercise. The researchers noticed that housekeepers in hotels were less healthy than expected even though they exceeded the daily recommended exercise limits. To establish if a change in mindset might make a difference, they divided the staff into two groups. They told Group 1 that their work gave them enough exercise to lose weight and keep fit and explained how many calories they should burn a day. They told the Group 2 members nothing. People in Group 1 lost an average of 1kg each in a month with other significant benefits. The Group 2 individuals had no change. What a great result, albeit with the caveat that just changing the mindset is not good enough, you do have to do some exercise as well. (Sorry to all of you dreaming away 10 kilos of surplus energy stores whilst stirring your tea). The cynic may say that by focusing a person’s mind...
by John Brooker | Feb 29, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 59 Sometimes people accept second best solutions because they don’t take the trouble to explore a little more. “The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.” Martin Luther King Are you satisfied or satisficed with some of your solutions? In the Netherlands last weekend, I ran an Open University course on creative problem solving (I hope that’s triggered good memories for the many of you who are OU MBA graduates). I had a brilliant group, very friendly and ready for some fun. Our venue was great, however, I found a problem; it was a long way to the rest room. It was en route from the hotel reception to the classroom, but a long return trip from the classroom. If I had to take a quick “comfort break” during an exercise (those of you who facilitate will know you often get no chance for a break at break time), I would exit the classroom, turn right and make a mad dash, sometimes a very mad dash! A most inconvenient convenience. A couple of hours before the end of the course, I sent small teams out in search of space to draft giant maps of their learning. Ten minutes later I went looking for them, turned left, walked through a set of double doors and almost fell in to a rest room, just five metres from the classroom. I burst out laughing and used it, just because I could! OK, going to the rest room is...
by John Brooker | Feb 24, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 54 “If you signal that you are trying to be creative it may make others more receptive to your ideas “You can ring my be-e-ell, ring my bell.” Lyric ~ Frederick Knight Are your creative efforts faltering because people fail to recognise that you are being creative? You are cycling along a wide path. In front of you, someone is mooching along in a day dream, walking a dog on an extending lead, so you slow right down and move two metres to the left to overtake them. Suddenly, the dog makes a dash to the left and your brakes squeal as you perform an emergency stop to avoid garroting it on its lead. “You should get a bell,” says the dog owner defensively. “I have,” you reply curtly. “Try using it then,” retorts the dog owner. “Try keeping your dog under control,” you respond and pedal off, furiously. Of course that would never happen to you, would it, because if you had a bell on your bike, you would ring it? Well, I was that cyclist and I thought, “He’s two metres to the side; I don’t need to ring my bell.” That incident happened two weeks ago. Cycling round this morning, I made a point of ringing my bell whenever I approached a dog owner from behind, even if there were plenty of space to pass. I received many “thank yous” and pondered the different scenarios. These people were in a relaxed mode and instead of me creeping slowly past and startling them, I rang my bell, giving them time to...
by John Brooker | Feb 13, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 45 Warm laughter typically identifies an idea worth exploring and explore you should. “You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille.” Lyrics, Bynum and Bowling, sung by Kenny Roger Are you exploring the right ideas in your idea generation sessions? Here is another hotel story, this time from Rwanda, home of many gorilla tribes, where I facilitated a course last week. On Wednesday morning I swam in a lovely pool, the tiles fetchingly specked with white where the blue paint had flaked off. Refreshed, I returned to my room to find the shower running at five drips per minute. Frustrated, I turned to the bath and realised there was no shower attachment but a good head of water in the tap. I hate baths so, stymied, I decided to wash my hair under the tap. In the bath I realised that the tap, sited half a metre from one end of the bath, only extended a couple of centimetres from the bath side. My frustration grew. I shampooed my hair and tried to rinse it by cupping water in my hands and pouring it over, but the water being soft, my hair wouldn’t rinse. Frustration at danger levels, I squashed my head against the bath under the tap and rinsed one side. But to rinse the other I had to contort my body in the short end of the bath. Then I saw my arms and the soles of my feet were covered in blue paint from the pool. I imagined my children seeing me squeezed into one end of the bath, head...
by John Brooker | Feb 6, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Facilitate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla # 37 Check your assumptions if you want to avoid mistakes… “If we all worked on the assumption that what is accepted as true is really true, there would be little hope of advance.” Orville Wright Are you checking your assumptions sufficiently? It’s likely you make assumptions all the time, consciously or unconsciously. After all, you have to assume when you leave the house a meteorite won’t hit you on the head – otherwise you wouldn’t leave. I was reminded of assumptions at lunch the other day. Chatting to a German student who grew up in Berlin, I mentioned that I had been back there a couple of times since the wall came down, but the city no longer had the frisson of excitement present when I lived there in the seventies – when people imagined that Russian tanks might rumble down the Kurfustendamm tomorrow. There was a momentary pause in the conversation, which puzzled me until I realised later that he had grown up in the Russian zone of Berlin. I made the wrong assumption and once again my foot had an unexpected visit to my mouth. The positive result was that it made me think about the assumptions we make all the time. It appears to me that when tackling challenges there are two types of assumption: The “liberating assumption” – that which frees us to move forward, e.g. “people will read this article” The “blocking assumption” – that which stops us moving forward e.g. “we will never get the resources for this”. So When exploring situations, the creative leader should...
