by John Brooker | Apr 1, 2016 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Free Articles, Innovate
“Encourage people to innovate, but employ a metaphorical guillotine to restrict discussion on innovation.” John Brooker Here are seven metaphors to help you as a Creative Leader, drive innovative behaviour. 1. Lift the veil – why does your organisation want to innovate? If your top management team plans to launch an innovation initiative, have them answer three questions first: a. What value will it bring in business terms? Will it drive more revenue, save costs, differentiate you from the competition, or improve staff retention? How will you quantify this in business terms? b. What will be the signs of progress? Recently, I reviewed for a government organisation a list of proposed measures to show innovation progress. Primarily they were input measures, (e.g. the number of people trained, the number of innovation champions appointed). Input measures often show you have built an innovation bureaucracy, not that you are more innovative. Ensure there are output measures too, e.g. the number of propositions implemented and achievement of business value. c. What will tell you this initiative is sustainable? You can create a one-off innovative proposition fairly easily. How do you recognise your organisation is sustainably innovative? Clues might be that, you identify opportunities regularly, create propositions frequently, kill poor propositions quickly and explain why you have done this. To do this you need a creative yet structured model for innovating at the front end. Creative Leader Tip: Ensure your leadership team thinks through these questions before you start an initiative. 2. Focus the lens – what type of innovation does your organisation require? Recently, a colleague and I visited a potential client...
by John Brooker | Oct 3, 2015 | Free Articles, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus, Tools
In this article, you will learn how to use metaphor and its structure. You will see how metaphors help shape your thinking and the thinking of others and how you can use them in practical ways in work and workshops. Please download this PDF article here The Power of Metaphors to Transform Teams...
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 | Sep 1, 2014 | Develop Opportunities, Facilitate meetings, Overcome Challenges, Solution Focus
YES! AND… Collaborate. Innovate. Transform – Creative Gorilla #171 How might you engage teams using metaphor? This week, I ran a workshop for SFCT UK (Solution Focus Consulting and Training). We used the Explore Metaphor tool and this article will help you to use it. The SFCT workshop was to discuss my Team Impetus Model. This is a model designed to engage teams and shape strategy, using the metaphor of a ski jump. The ski jump metaphor was conceived after some iteration. The original concept was a traditional model with steps that went up. While “up” is a very ingrained metaphor, with positive meanings, I think it is easier to walk down than up! So I redesigned the model with descending steps. After discussing the downward step model with an international group of SF users, the idea arose for a metaphor that went down, but not steps; steps are fixed and don’t provide much impetus to move forward. The “ski jump” model was conceived. The concept is that ski jump has the advantage of taking you down to gather speed and lifting you up to “fly”. The jumper has control over momentum and the flight to ensure a good distance and safe landing. How did the SFCT group view the metaphor? “Explore Metaphor” Tool I introduced them to a tool to explore metaphors, developed while writing an article on metaphors. (Click here to go to a page and scroll down to download, “The Power of Metaphors to Transform Teams”) The Explore Metaphor Tool is based on four questions, laid out in four columns in a table. Here is the table used...
by John Brooker | Apr 5, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 95 The metaphors you use can influence how you approach a situation… “The metaphors you use to describe a situation can influence how you approach it.” – John Brooker How might you influence the way people approach a situation? My colleague and I were running an interactive focus group to gauge people’s reaction to a proposed training course on Flexible Thinking for Innovation. We had received a positive reaction but I was not convinced we were hearing all opinion. I asked if anyone had any concerns. One of the group, an experienced manager, emitted an exasperated sigh and exclaimed, “Personally I think this course is a waste of **###** time.” That perked the group up a bit! “What’s your reason for stating that?” we asked. “Well, there’s no money to do anything, even if we do come up with innovative ideas.” He then used his hands to describe an obstacle in front of him. “The budget is a huge wall around us, it stops us doing anything.” We nodded, thanked him and noted his reaction; we weren’t there to argue the case. Driving home afterwards, I mused on what he had said. It was a great example of how people use metaphors to simplify and describe complex situations. It was also an example of how the metaphors people use can influence how they approach a situation. From his point of view, it was not worth doing anything because the budget was finite, an “insurmountable obstacle” or at least one he seemed no longer willing to overcome. So If metaphors can influence how people approach...
