by John Brooker | Apr 29, 2015 | Collaborate, Develop Opportunities, Free Articles, Innovate, Overcome Challenges
“Before thinking outside the box, think how you might make your box bigger?” John Brooker Understanding and widening the boundaries of a situation can help you to create more options and better solutions… I took my daughter to compete in the second round of an inter school public speaking competition organised by the Rotary Club. Teams of children, made a speech (no visuals allowed!) to an audience of around sixty people, about a topic of their choice. One introduces the topic and speaker, the second presents the case and a third gives thanks. This is a great challenge for the children and provides an element of entertainment as well as some thoughtful points. During a talk on “Breaking the Mould”, which challenged conventional thinking about small people, one girl in her introduction mentioned that phrase so often heard in the same breath as creativity, “Think outside the box”. She set me thinking. In my world, when setting outcomes with the group on a creativity course, people say regularly that this is what they want to be able to do. My normal response is that “thinking outside the box” is a fair outcome. Could they also make the box bigger? This question usually produces confusion and no wonder, as “think outside the box” derives from the old nine dot puzzle of how to connect all nine dots with a single unbroken line. No matter how big you make that box, you are still going to have to go outside the box to obtain a result. So to avoid confusion, let me explain that in my response, I mix box metaphors....
by John Brooker | Apr 26, 2012 | Innovate
Yes! And… Creative Gorilla # 106 Do we need to rethink how we value time for innovation in organisations…? “I would like to propose a large (think Stonehenge) mechanical clock, powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year, bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every millennium” Danny Hillis, Computer Scientist. To see how it has progressed, click here Do you have time to think? I met a business associate the other day for a coffee and a chat. We were discussing his new role and he said that the day before, he had got up at 4 a.m. for a flight to Berlin, had spent all day in negotiations and arrived home at 9.00 p.m, very tired. “You just don’t get any time working in an organisation any more,” he said. Keep reading! I am not going to get in to the work / life balance discussion which has already laid waste to a few forests! My perspective is that we need… a new currency. No, not a replacement for the Euro, Dollar or Pound, that are issued by central banks. This currency is based on the value of time. A currency must have a name and as this is my concept, I named it the Thunk, the value of time. I reasoned that I value time in business because it enables me to think clearly and when I have been thinking, I will often say, “I have had a good thunk about this”. You may say my grammar is appalling, but the Oxford dictionary tells me that “Thunk” is an informal or humorous past...
by John Brooker | Apr 24, 2012 | Innovate
Yes! And… Creative Gorilla # 104 Controls need to take in to account the behaviour they provoke… “Police said crashes happened because motorists slowed down ahead of the camera and then speeded up once they were clear of it.” Report in Daily Mail (England) 7 Jan 2009 How can you ensure controls achieve what you want? Have you noticed when many motorists see a “fixed speed” camera, which measures an excess speed at a fixed point, they slow down until past the measuring lines and then accelerate madly – like the camera has some weird acceleration beam? However, when driving through sections of motorway with “average speed cameras” that measure your speed over a fixed distance, most people keep to the limit, although some slow down and speed up to meet the average. Passing through an “average speed” control area recently, I wondered how we might relate these behaviour patterns to organisations. Finding no instant answers, I placed a question on the Giants, Wizards and Goblins forum on Linked In. Here is a summary of the responses. What questions might they raise for your organisation? Speed cameras are a control to stop people taking risk. They should be sited only where there is most risk if they are not to have an adverse effect on traffic Speed cameras form part of an overall system to reduce fatalities. There is little evidence to show they have this effect [Source] Speed cameras, both types, measure speed. They do not tell us if the driver is incompetent, the tyres bald or the car uninsured Speed cameras are viewed as revenue earning systems...
by John Brooker | Apr 23, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate, Tools
Yes! And… Creative Gorilla # 103 Creative idea generation sessions will work better if people follow guidelines on behaviour… “People will accept your ideas much more readily if you tell them Benjamin Franklin said it first..” David H. Comins Do you want your idea generation sessions to work better? The other night, I helped out at my son’s Scout meeting. We gathered the children and got them to play a game. However, three of them thought that this game was not cool, so they did all they could to mess up the game for everybody else. Despite much enthusiasm from others, the game fizzled out. This reminded me of many meetings I attended in corporate life, in particular idea generation meetings, where it is quite simple for people to dampen enthusiasm. Recently, a client asked me to give a short talk to build some energy in a group before an idea generation session. I built the talk around four guidelines for making an idea generation session work more effectively. So Here are the four guidelines, which you might find useful when diverging, that is, when generating ideas. By the way, can you find an acronym for these guidelines? Build on Ideas A great way to obtain more creative ideas is to build on the ideas of others so: Say, “Yes! And…” not “Yes! But…” Accept “silly” or “ridiculous” ideas and use them as springboards to develop practical ideas Ask, “How might we look at this idea differently?” Appreciate Different Styles People have different styles and this might cause issues in your idea generation session. Be aware that: There are...
by John Brooker | Mar 18, 2012 | Facilitate meetings, Innovate
YES! AND… Creative Gorilla # 78 The quickest way to stop people generating new ideas is to belittle the deliverer of creative ideas … “Scudamore made his first sensible move in 19 days by calling time on his crazy idea.” Daily Mail Have you ever had an idea stamped on…how did it make you feel? On the tube recently, I noticed the back page of the “Daily Mail” and the quotation above. The “crazy idea” referred to, was to hold a 39th game of football for each team in the English Premier League. They would play in places like Australia and China, so fans in those countries could see top teams, like Manchester United, Chelsea and Fulham (joke there for English football supporters), play locally. Reading the article further, I came across some colourful phrases related to the idea, “subjected to worldwide derision”, “an abuse to football”, “humiliating circumstances” and “giant gaffe”. Other newspapers have printed articles on a similar theme. I could write another article on “selling the idea” (and probably will) but for this one, let’s focus on the reaction to the idea, which has been hysterical to say the least. Richard Scudamore is the Chief Executive of the English Premier League, a league that gets a lot of money from international business e.g. TV rights, sales of kit etc. It is surely his job to develop new ideas for the League and its teams to make more money internationally; and more money invested in the country is good for United Kingdom Inc. Whilst this idea may not be the right one for many reasons, surely we...
