Let’s face it, many organisations today wave the corporate flag for creativity, but far fewer are able to point to specific improvements that have arisen from creative initiatives. And many seem to remain focused on the ‘same old - same old’.

They should be able to do so. Creativity is a ‘must- have’; both for individuals who want to forge exciting careers and for organisations that depend on their people bringing innovative practices and new thinking to their work. But how can leaders and managers get their people harnessing their creative talent and bringing it to their work in a way that makes a significant impact? The answer is by both ensuring their people learn key creativity thinking techniques and by ensuring they know how to apply that thinking to the right issue. Let me explain.

When it comes to creative thinking, one trap that many people fall into is to waste a great deal of creative time and effort focusing on challenges and issues which simply aren’t the right ones. This may not mean that they are completely off-track. Rather it is often a reflection of their limited experience in creative thinking. In other words, it’s all very well to know how to use creative techniques such as brainstorming or lateral thinking, but even the best techniques need to be applied efficiently. And, when it comes to creativity, that means knowing how to narrow or broaden your focus.

Let me take a simple example of how a change of focus can significantly help with the creative thinking process.

In this example, a team has come up with a problem that it is facing, to which it wants to apply some creative thinking. The problem: ‘How to drive more traffic to the company’s website’ isn’t a bad issue for the team to address, but is it one that will take them where they want to go? Let’s see what extra leverage the team might achieve by narrowing or broadening its focus.

A narrower focus within the same territory might well have the team asking about keyword selection and search engine optimisation. These are key factors that drive audiences to websites, and you can predict from the narrowing of this focus that it would probably have the team taking some action to find out more information or doing some research. Equally, the team might start questioning what particular audience they want to drive to their website, and, again, this might require them to take actions to find out more.

On the other hand, a team starting with the same issue and then broadening their focus could end up in a very different direction. For example, the team with a broader focus might start asking how the website compares with other media in terms of capturing an audience or generating leads. Or the team might start asking questions about how the website supports specific business objectives.

The point here is not to suggest that one particular focus is better or worse than the other, but rather to highlight the power that comes in creative thinking when an individual or a team has thought hard about the real challenge facing them and what sort of solutions might be useful.

In this context, the questions that complement the creative thinking process are critical. Questions that break free of assumptions, which ask ‘what if?’, and which are open ended are the sorts of questions to encourage. If you are going to foster creativity then it requires people to take risks, to be intuitive and to come up with uncharacteristic ideas. However, people who are not used to creative thinking often appreciate a little help along the way. In this respect, creativity techniques are designed specifically to help people combine their analytical left brain thinking with their more creative right brain functions.

So does all of this make a practical difference?
It certainly can do, and the training which Illumine is delivering at the worldwide insurer, Allianz, illustrates this perfectly. Here is a company which has developed a mission to create an environment where every idea counts; where employees are motivated to get creative, and where the take-up from ideas is seen to bring bottom line payback in terms of new products, new markets and hard savings. Find out more about Allianz’s focus here…

More ways to learn and practice creativity and innovation techniques
The Illumination Workshop® - The workshop provides a unique introduction to how the creative process works. Organisations and individuals are encouraged to bring along real life situations which are tackled by a broad range of practical creativity techniques which can be used in the workplace.
Find out more about The Illumination Workshop® here

This article first appeared in our January 2008 Illuminating Newsletter.

Tags: Creative focus, Creative Process Model, Creativity and Innovation, Creativity training, Questioning techniques

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