by John Brooker | Mar 30, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 90 When you need to meet a customer’s need quickly, there’s a lot to be said for a prototype… “I love these emails. I would really love them if you did podcasts” A Creative Gorilla reader, in an e-mail. Are you prototyping yet? The above quotation popped in to my e-mail box at the beginning of the month. Should I do a Podcast? I mulled over it for a week or so. “Nobody would want to listen,” “My voice sounds terrible on recordings,” “I haven’t got a clue how to do a podcast.” Oh yes, I had a fine list of excuses not to do it, but one day, with an hour to spare, I took the plunge, just because someone had asked for it. I researched software programmes for recording podcasts which took just fifteen minutes on the web, thanks to a handy review. I selected Propaganda because it was rated as simple, functional and good value. Downloading it direct from the US took ten minutes, a Visa Card and a willingness to invest USD 49. I have a microphone so plugged it in, looked at the tutorial (highly unusual for a man, that) and set to work recording. I was in need of silence. Cue calls from my wife, questions from my children and a loud presenter on kids TV. I ended up in the bedroom. Peace! I began recording and a neighbour set off loud fireworks. Not the best creative climate, but all creativity has its obstacles. Eventually, I completed recording and played it back. “Er, umm, ahh,” smacking of the...
by John Brooker | Mar 28, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 88 If you set up too many rules and measures, people start to focus more on the rules and measures and less on what is really important … “We started off trying to set up a small anarchist community, but people wouldn’t obey the rules.” Alan Bennett, Playwright in “Getting On” Do more rules and laws really help? Do you know that scientists predicted that high mounted brake lights would reduce rear end car collisions by 50% and that studies reveal it is in reality 4.3%? Are you aware that anti lock braking systems have had a negligible effect on accident reduction because drivers with ABS drive faster and closer to other cars? I found these facts in an extract from Tom Vanderbilt’s book “Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do”. I noticed the article because he mentioned that in Kensington High Street, London, where I (and several Gorilla readers) used to work, fatal, serious and minor traffic injuries dropped by 60% in one year. “Wow,” you might think, “What miraculous road safety improvements did they install?” In fact, they removed the bulk of the previously installed road safety improvements, including 95% of the traffic signs and the guardrails along the pavement (sidewalk). Drivers are less distracted and so pay more attention to other road users whilst pedestrians are more cautious. How can we relate this to business? In 2002 the US Government introduced the Sarbanes Oxley Act, improving financial reporting to protect investors from the actions of a few criminals who had falsely reported company revenues and profits. Speaking with someone who...
by John Brooker | Mar 26, 2012 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Innovate
If you take a risk and run a creative workshop it can pay dividends… “Can you imagine, they asked me to do an extra session so we could do the “Disney Technique!” Open University MBA Student . The excited quotation above is from a student (we’ll call her Inga) who attended my MBA – Creativity and Innovation Workshop. In this case, Inga achieved more than just running her own workshop, but more of that later. Let me tell you first what she did. As part of a course assignment, Inga chose to produce some new concepts for an existing product in her company. She was rather nervous about facilitating a workshop but decided to use the creative and facilitation techniques she had experienced during our workshop. Here’s a summary of what Inga did: Session 1 She took a small group (four people including her) to the park to run the workshop: On the way, each person had three minutes to speak uninterrupted about the customers for the product and their lifestyle In the park, they summarised their points on paper They reviewed key points about the original product concept and added a few more They reviewed material on what makes a concept successful in their company, prior to identifying new concepts They looked at key consumer trends for 2009, using material gained previously from the Internet They looked at benefits to the consumer, splitting them into rational and emotional benefits. At this point, they wanted to know why these benefits were important but ran out of time so stopped for further review. This session lasted just an hour. One...
by John Brooker | Mar 23, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 83 Creative Tension is something you must use if you are to be more creative … “I believe that working together is about institutionalizing tension so we can make breakthroughs” Jim Farley, Chief Marketing Officer at Ford Motor Company Do you have creative tensions? When you think of Venice, do you imagine riding in a gondola, cruising the sun dappled canals, an operatic gondolier at the helm? Wake up. The gondolas are still there (for the tourists), but if you go, you’ll notice the locals use water buses and taxis, vaporetti and motoscafi, in the local parlance. Riding a vaporetto on holiday last year, I noticed how fast they sped along the canal and the wash they caused. This wash erodes the very buildings the Venetians are striving to preserve, leading to tension between the preservationists and the boat owners. I reflected that this is a good example of what I call “Creative Tension”. You may be aware that Dr Peter Senge, Senior Lecturer at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, describes Creative Tension in this way: “Creative Tension comes from seeing clearly where we want to be, our “vision,” and telling the truth about where we are, our “current reality.” The gap between the two generates a natural tension.” Personally I consider this to be Strategic Tension. Creative Tension to me is: “Differing views on how something should be achieved lead to creative tension between the different parties, resulting in a better outcome”. This last point is important. Without the better outcome, we simply have tension that leads to stalemate or one party imposing their...
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...
