by John Brooker | Feb 6, 2016 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Innovate, Overcome Challenges, Tools
“…there were actually three different Walts: the dreamer, the realist, and the spoiler. You never knew which one was coming into your meeting.” Associate of Walt Disney Must you adhere strictly to creative techniques? Imagine this. It is 1.30 a.m. Your son has woken you by kicking something off his bed, you are wide awake with a mind full of ideas and you’re cursing that ba…rista in the coffee bar because you’re convinced she didn’t give you decaff cappuccino. Worse, you know you’re to blame because it tasted burnt and you still drank it because it was so d****d expensive. What are you going to do? It is now 2.19 a.m. and I have crept to my office downstairs to write this article. Hopefully my wife won’t think I’m a burglar and apply Government guidelines on tackling burglars (you can hit them with a weapon in self defence). Whilst lying awake, I had been running an idea through my head and using the Disney technique to evaluate it. The Disney technique helps clarify your thinking by having you take the perspective of three characters – the “Dreamer” (“we could do THIS and it would be terrific”), the “Critic” or “Spoiler” (“THIS will never work because of….”) and the “Realist” (“Maybe we could replace THIS with THAT and develop a plan”). Robert Dilts described in an article that Walt Disney adopted the different perspectives throughout his career to aid his creativity, albeit he never appeared to have regarded it as a technique. As I lay in bed using the technique I noticed that another “character” was lurking very close and I decided to...
by John Brooker | Sep 4, 2015 | Facilitate meetings, Tools
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by John Brooker | Jan 3, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Innovate, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus
““When people talk listen completely. Don’t be thinking what you’re going to say. Most people never listen.” Ernest Hemingway in Across the River and Into the Trees Do you listen well? Really listen? Or do you spend the time whilst others are talking, thinking of what you will say next? How much more creative might you be if you listened well and built on the ideas of others? I was in a café in a garden centre on a recent Monday, waiting at the counter for my coffee. Two ladies walked up beside me, chattering away to each other very animatedly. As I waited, my ears attuned to their conversation and I realised they were not talking to each other but at each other. One was talking about her garden and the other was talking about her mother. It was surreal and a bit sad, like a Woody Allen movie. By chance I had just attended an Improvisation Comedy course that weekend. Improvisation puts great emphasis on listening to the other performers. That’s “listening” not “hearing”. Taking the time to consider what is said and so perhaps finding a deeper meaning to the words. If we listen in Improvisation, we can build more on the creative ideas of others and we can prevent our own preconceived ideas ruining a scene with an insensible response. It also provides the other players with the confidence to develop the scene further, as Menninger says, “it makes us unfold and expand”. In short, by listening we can make the work more creative and humorous. When you speak in innovation workshops, you only hear one idea. When...
by John Brooker | Jun 5, 2012 | Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Innovate, Tools
How to avoid common mistakes when you innovate to maximise opportunities. “Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for a moment and think of it.” A. A. Milne. Do you have any obscure rituals you carry out in secret? I confess I perform one every week, the ceremonial “wheelie bin stomp”. This is not a dark practice overlooked in Harry Potter novels, but a practical solution to the problem that there is too much bulky waste packaging and too little dustbin. So I step on the garden wall, climb in the bin and begin stomping so we can push another week’s worth in the bin. Too much waste and too little bin – when someone has a problem, it means there is an opportunity to exploit with a sound proposition. Having admitted my secret and defined an opportunity, let’s move on to the core of this article. All leaders in organisations have opportunities. They may be in areas requiring new policy, meeting a need in a new market, or dealing with waste packaging, etc. Some people exploit them well and some do not. SO Here are my thoughts on how you can maximise opportunities more effectively at lower cost and with less effort. Use a structured approach to think it through This will ensure that you create a proposition that is acceptable to a wider range of people, meets...
by John Brooker | May 17, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Tools
Yes! And… Creative Gorilla # 127 Need to influence transformation? Look for what’s working… “If some stupid fans don’t understand and appreciate such a gift they can go to hell.” Mohammed Al Fayed, ex -Fulham FC Owner on erecting the Michael Jackson statue What would you do next in this situation? You are facilitating a meeting with a team that is transforming how it provides its services. You ask the people to describe their preferred future when everything is working well. What will be happening? What will people be doing, saying, thinking, feeling etc? How will the processes and systems be operating? They do it. What happens next? Typically, the next step in organisations is to describe what is stopping the team from achieving the preferred future. They list what is wrong, things they have been discussing for ever that never seem to get resolved. People become dispirited and defensive as they sense people are blaming them or their department for what is wrong. The positive energy drains away and resistance to change develops. Friction occurs, or worse, apathy. Actions aren’t followed up. Is this recognisable to you? It’s noticeable in transformation programmes, especially when the initial euphoria has ebbed away. An alternative approach for creative leaders is to identify what is working. Where can we see clues that the preferred future is happening already, examples of good practice? The purpose is to encourage people to sense that much is going well and they can build on it. In the book, “Solutions Focus”, by Mark McKergow and Paul Z Jackson they refer to these clues / examples as “Counters”....
