Bolster Your Creativity, Today
Need to bolster your creativity? It’s easy if, first, you remember that creative thinking and creativity isn’t the preserve of the marketing team or the R&D department and, second, you learn, develop and practice the appropriate thinking techniques. And here are some of the key techniques on offer:
1.Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats® approach
Six Hat Thinking is a problem solving technique which simply acknowledges that many perspectives are better than one.
The method itself is simple. The team leader or facilitator outlines six imaginary thinking hats, each with a different colour. When you ‘put on’ the hat as a team you then agree to operate exclusively in that mode of thinking. And when you change hats you change your thinking mode. So for example, ‘white hat’ thinking helps people to look at a problem from the perspective of ‘what information do we need?’ It provides a neutral, information gathering perspective. In contrast to this ‘red hat’ thinking provides the opportunity for the team to look at the problem from what they feel about it – from their gut instinct or intuition. And ‘black hat’ thinking gives the team permission to be overtly critical about the issue… to say what won’t work.
The beauty of Six Hats is that it allows a team to have productive discussions based on different perspectives. Instead of adversarial thinking it promotes co-operative exploration. More about Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats® courses and workshops at www.illumine.co.uk/6hat
2.‘Merlin’ the problem
The ‘Merlin’ process allows you to magically alter the problem you are facing. Let’s take a common problem such as how to increase your sales!
As Merlin you can start by enlarging the product, service or situation. So, for example, what would happen if you quadrupled the price, made a larger version or combined it with other products? And, then, in contrast, how might it open up possibilities if you reduced everything about the product, made it very small or even outsourced it altogether?
Using this approach you might also choose to eliminate the p
roblem entirely. What would happen if it didn’t exist? How might it change your thinking if you had to replace the product or service with something else that had none of the problems you are currently facing? And finally how about if you reversed the way in which the product, service or situation functions. So, for example, instead of it being about you serving the customer what would it be like if the customer served you?
More about the Creativity for Logical Thinkers workshop and Problem Solving workshop at www.illumine.co.uk/cti
Did the Mars Bar go through a Merlin process? For many years it was only one size but as other confectionaries began to gain in popularity the Mars people began to extend their thinking. As a result you can now buy bigger Mars bars (king size), and smaller bars (bite sized) and even smaller sized bars (Celebrations). You can also have Mars colder (in ice creams) and hotter (when fried in batter or applied as a chocolate sauce). Could you do the same for your product or service?
3.Reverse your situation
Often people get stuck in their ways of thinking about problems and a great way to stimulate a breakthrough is by reversing it. So, for example, we recently took a manager who needed new ideas on how to run an effective and stimulating meeting through a reversal process. We asked her how she could ensure that her next meeting would be a complete failure. This of course she found quite easy to identify:
- Invite the wrong people.
- Don’t tell people what it’s about.
- Don’t give people any advance notice.
- Interrupt whatever people are doing.
- Make the room too hot or too cold.
- Don’t give people the chance to contribute.
- Don’t arrive at any actions.
- Wander off the agenda.
And of course, once she knew what wouldn’t work, it was then easy for her to see what she needed to avoid and what she needed to put in place.
More about the Creativity for Logical Thinkers workshop
4.Make associations
There is a short story which best illustrates this technique. In this case a major telecomms company in Canada was wondering how to deal with the problem of its power lines coming down in winter. It seemed as though the lines were icing up and becoming so heavy that they couldn’t bear their own weight.
So the team started to think laterally – and no idea, however off the wall was excluded. So the first idea that someone came up with was to get the Canadian bears to come up and give the lines a good shake. But how would you get the bears to come to the poles they were asked? Ah well, you’d need to put a jar of honey on the top of each pole that would attract the bears. But how would you get the honey up the poles? Ah well, you could fly a helicopter above the poles and someone could lean out and position the pots on top of each pole. And then someone asked… but wouldn’t the air from the helicopter blades blow the snow off the lines?
And so it is that it is now common practise in Canada for helicopters to fly along the lines after heavy snowfalls in order to maintain the lines and stop them from icing up.
More about the Creativity for Logical Thinkers workshop
5.And the rest…
And finally there are a number of everyday practices you can adopt which can help you foster your attitude to creativity. Try and include at least one of these, every day. Express your creative energies… sing, dance, write, draw, design, speak, invent. Spend time wandering and wondering. Ask questions constantly and don’t accept the first answer you come up with. Take two randomly chosen objects and look for ways in which they are similar, different or can be combined. Take time out to relax. Get and/or stay fit. Listen to your intuition. Use higher frequency music to revitalise your mind and body.
This article was taken from the FREE Illumine Training, Generating and Communicating Ideas guide. Download your copy at http://www.illumine.co.uk/resources/brochures/gen-ideas.html
Find out more about our range of creativity courses and workshops at www.illumine.co.uk/cti
Tags: creative thinking techniques, creativity and innovation, Personal Creativity, Six Thinking Hats - Edward de Bono (Training), techniques from Edward de Bono
