by John Brooker | Apr 9, 2012 | Facilitate meetings
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 99 Here are principals to make your meetings have more impact…… ““The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity” Ascribed to Dorothy Parker, Novelist” Want to improve your meetings? Hi! It’s a beautiful sunny day here in London, glorious spring weather. I am just back from a two hour bike ride and I feel great. I did some exploring, ventured down some new “secret” paths that I had not noticed before, saw stunning scenery and even met a number of people who replied to my, “Good morning”. I was whipped by stinging nettles, shaken to bits on bridleways (horse tracks) and stuck in mud in a hoof hole, but I came back energised, uplifted and so raring to go, I am writing this in my cycle shorts. You know that feeling? Like when you come out of meetings? Energised, uplifted, motivated! Or maybe not. More likely you come out bored, listless and seeking caffeine to change your state. It doesn’t have to be that way. Meetings are something I have thought about a lot this week as I redesigned my “Training with More Impact” course and designed a couple of workshops for clients. The course is based on five principles which I have adapted over the years from various aspects of accelerated learning and brain friendly (see www.kaizentraining.com) training. Whilst cycling, I reflected that meetings are about learning too, at least they should be. Therefore, it would be useful to share these principles with creative leaders like you, so that you might apply them to your meetings. SO Here are the...
by John Brooker | Jan 16, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Facilitate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla # 16 You have a choice of techniques you can use to tackle your challenges, mix and match them. “Lister: “They’re not comin’ back… I’m lost in deep space… I’m three million years from home… No life, no bed, no nothin’… Just me… and 3 1/2 tons of curry. [pause] Fan-smeggin-TASTIC!” (From, Red Dwarf, a UK TV programme) It is 11.00 p.m. You have been out for the night in a Welsh town. It is too far to walk home so you want to get a taxi. You are also hungry and want an Indian meal. Unfortunately, you have only enough money either for the taxi or the curry. How might you satisfy both needs?? I was at dinner with a team from a client the other day and one of them, Duncan, recounted the story above. His solution was both funny and ingenious. He knew the restaurant would deliver meals over a certain cost to your home. So he went in, ordered a home delivery meal and then asked if they could drop him off at the same time as the meal. Which they did! I thought Duncan’s solution showed real creativity so let’s analyse it to see what we can learn about the creative process. First, he proved a formula of creativity, Creativity = Knowledge x Imagination x Evaluation [source Parnes, with thanks to Min Basadur for providing the reference]. I will leave you to work out how Duncan proved C. He also proved, (by asking for what he wanted), that creativity is useful only if we add the...
