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Answer: Focus and accelerate your thinking. My consulting clients inspired me to blog. Most are people who manage a team and want to do things differently but need help engaging their people in new thinking. Their organizations are more old-school than progressive and so they are swimming upstream in their...
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Jumpstart innovation, part 2
KPMG Enterprise asked me to write another article – reprinted below – to help their clients jumpstart innovation within their organizations. I will speak to their clients May 24th; like the average company overwhelmed by the “how-to” of innovation, many...
Lessons from the improv stage
I have been a student of improv for 4 years and often use it in my facilitation and consulting work with corporate clients. It is a source of great team building exercises and lessons about effective collaboration via the “Yes, and” rule of improv.
Recently I...
Install three key habits to help with focus
How many habits could you change at one time? Two months ago, a naturopath suggested I renovate my diet radically. “You’re asking me to change every habit around buying, preparing and eating food,” I said wearily. He shrugged.
There is a rule of thumb – it...
Use characters to convey concepts
Conveying a complex concept to an audience in a simple and compelling way can be tough. One creative trick is to associate it with a specific character – it opens up very distinct, creative ways to communicate. Geico, for example, uses a gecko with a British accent...
Deliver a 5-minute pitch!
In December the folks at the Centre for Social Innovation (CSI) asked me to teach participants in their Climate Spark event how to deliver a 5-minute pitch. Ten finalists in this social venture challenge – social/green entrepreneurs with a great business idea –...
Let the visuals do the talking
My favourite part of each new year is the “best of” summaries from the previous year. They are great inspirations for new ideas so bookmark them for your “trigger library” and refer to them when looking to unstick your thinking! Today I link to...
Help your team find clarity
The new year is a time for clarity. If you are part of a team, invest a couple of hours to ensure there is agreement on the basics: 1) what the team is doing and why; 2) who is accountable for doing the work; and 3) how the work is done. Uncertainty on the basics leads...
Create ideas that break through to be implemented
Everyone is talking about innovation. I aim to cut through the noise with this one simple truth: Innovation starts with ideas, and ideas start with people. Therefore, to stimulate innovation, you need to talk to people in a language they understand and offer a way to...
Be specific with your ask
In a previous post, I said “state the ask in all communication” and now I have a rich example – the video below – of the lost opportunity when “the ask” (call to action) is ambiguous rather than specific. It’s a powerful video with...
Fly through decision-making
“How do we make team decision-making more efficient?” is a question I hear from the teams I coach on collaboration. Usually they’ve just come from a frustrating event: a discussion that went on and on without producing a valid option, or a decision result...
Use “unrules” when brainstorming
Anyone who has attended an unproductive brainstorming session will agree that ground rules are important. However, the notion of rules seems contrary to creativity. This is why I developed “the unrules” for my own sessions; they combine common sense and...
Debunk myths about creativity
Posted by Inge on Oct 23, 2011I facilitate corporate teams through idea sessions and often a participant will say to me “Oh, I’m not creative” in a quiet and defeated tone. Although their motive is likely to lower my expectations for their idea output, such a self-defeating...
Tool: BrainStretches
A challenge with group brainstorming in the workplace is switching gears from the “Do this! Do that!” of daily tasks to the “Hmmm, what if?” of creative thinking. Without a proper BrainStretch, group members may try to brainstorm from a tactical...
Jumpstart innovation with one truth
KPMG Enterprise asked me to write an article – reprinted below – to help their clients jumpstart innovation within their organizations. Many companies are stalled; the way past it begins with a dose of simple truth:
Innovation starts (and stops) with people
In...
Adapt diagrams to express concepts
Conveying data with diagrams – pie charts, flowcharts, etc. – is routine. Be innovative: use diagrams to convey concepts! Many people are visual learners; if you want them to follow your thinking, draw them a picture! The example opposite shows the comparative...
Move, learn, eat
Surfing the web for inspiration is very effective. There’s always the danger you’ll get swallowed up, hopping from site to site. However, when you land on something really cool, it justifies all the time it took to get there.
Either allow the cool thing to...
“Get creative” when executing business...
There’s a false perception that creativity only applies to creative things. Not so. Even if you have a straight-up business plan that is (mostly) a duplicate of last year’s plan, there may be more call for creativity than you think.
Here’s why: even...
Use “Match Maker” to find new ideas
We mix’n'match everyday – these pants with this shirt make an outfit; peanut butter and banana makes a sandwich; this single friend and the guy next door make a cute couple. We rarely call it a creative technique. However, matching up things – either similar...
“Cross Breed” to generate new ideas
Generating ideas by applying a random concept to the problem at hand (“crossbreeding”) is a well-publicized technique because, historically, it happens “accidentally” under the heading of “Eureka!” A few classic examples…
3M...
Use a “Mind Map” to find new ideas
Mind mapping is not a new tool. Once upon a time it was a simple tool that could be scribbled quickly. Then came the websites and the software – and now mind mapping is a bit intimidating to the average user.
I’ve simplified things with the exercise I provide...
Ensure ideas create value
When you set out to solve a creative challenge, it’s easy to focus on the idea itself vs. the VALUE the idea will bring to the organization once implemented. Creativity is seductive and needs to be framed with the realities of business in a way that doesn’t...
Ignite ideas using a Trigger Library
When you’re stuck in a rut with your ideas, look at stuff outside your paradigm to pull you out of that rut. By “outside your paradigm,” I mean outside your industry, your product/service, your customer demographic and/or your primary market, etc....
Redefine what needs a creative response
Now and again I hear, “There isn’t much that’s creative in my end of the business. That belongs to the marketing guys.” It makes me grin: every business opportunity/issue that requires new thinking is a creative challenge. Yes, it’s a bit...
Exercise your creative brain!
Your brain is like a muscle – a thinking muscle. With exercise it becomes faster, stronger and more flexible. Just as taking the stairs is a time-efficient way to keep your body fit, there are convenient ways to exercise your brain. Tip: if you have children, share...
Women in Leadership and Business Conference
I send out a warm thank you to all the fantastic people I met at the Women in Leadership and Business Conference where I was asked to speak by organizer and visionary Ildi Wiley. With a talk and a book both titled ”Creative Conversations – a way for leaders and...
Tool: TD4 Cheatsheet
Do you want your team’s decision-making to be more efficient? If yes, start by downloading a one-page pdf summarizing TD4 – Team Decision-making in 4 Steps. There are more tips in Fly through decision-making.
If you’d like your team to learn TD4 in a...
Tool: Challenge Statement exercise
Download instructions (a one-page pdf) for building a Challenge Statement. If you want your ideas to break through and be implemented, it’s essential that you take the time to focus before you brainstorm. This step, called “define the challenge”, is...
Pose a “burning question”
The way to engage an audience is to make your topic meaningful to them via a “burning question” (BQ). It highlights the problem or “pain” you are solving and/or the the opportunity you have captured! (The BQ can also be a provocative statement that infers a...
Use “Virtual Tour” to find new ideas
This creativity tool is inspired by the virtual tour offered on house/apartment hunting websites – 360 degree photographs of a space that invite you to imagine what it might feel like to live in the space.
Virtual Tour works in a similar way: you start by imagining...
Creative Expeditions workshops
The workshops below strengthen team collaboration while developing new skills in team members. They use an interactive format and invite participants to apply the learning to actual work in progress. I tailor the content to the teams so it feels more like coaching...
Experience “supercharged” communicatio...
We all struggle with communicating complex topics. It’s hard to simplify the story we’re telling and it’s hard to capture the attention of an audience bombarded by media every minute of the day. Watch this video, The Empathic Civilisation, and note...
Use clipart but exercise restraint
Clipart is so readily available, it’s prone to abuse. We’ve all seen PowerPoint presentations with clipart that distracts because it’s too frequent or too random. If you exercise restraint, you can use clipart to enhance (vs. clutter) your...
Use “Wish List” to find new ideas
The subconscious is the holding place for unborn ideas; the trick is to release them. Sometimes ideas are buried in wishes; thoughts that we might normally discard as being too unrealistic for any “real” problem-solving effort. Wish List invites you to let...
Learn from IKEA cinema catalogue
Posted by Inge on Sep 3, 2010
Check out IKEA’s unique way of announcing its 2010 catalogue: a creative detour of the rules for product placement in the movies. Ikea took advantage of the fact that their products are frequently (and accidentally) a part of the set. That said, the products...
Let ‘em rant!
Rants can be used to find solutions when people are responding negatively to change (e.g., a restructuring) or lack of change (e.g., persistent inefficiencies). If you allow them to express “why I hate this,” you can move them into “what will we do about it?”....
Use mystery to attract guests to an event
Here’s a story about the value of Challenge Statements from the vaults: In 1989, when I was Creative Director for a huge PR firm, I was responsible for an elaborate client appreciation event hosted by Pepsi in conjunction with the Toronto premiere of Phantom of...
Find inspiration in “star” innovations
A great way to kickstart creative thinking is to google recent innovations. To use your time efficiently, go to a site that showcases many innovations with a brief summary for each. An example is “Innovation insanity” – 67 business-to-consumer innovations...
Use “Star Gazer” to find new ideas
We’re a celebrity-obsessed culture; star gazing is a habit. It is also the starting point of a creativity tool that invites you to connect random things – in this case, famous people, books, movies, trends, etc. – with your challenge in order to trigger...
Find metaphors in dogs and potato chips
Recently I supplied the Twin Trigger Exercise to help you use metaphors to trigger ideas. Now I share two examples. The invention of Pringles Potato Chips is a favourite story because I interviewed the inventor, Bill Gordon. Fido cell phones is another favourite...
Use “Twin Trigger” to find metaphors
Metaphors and analogies deepen our understanding of a concept by linking it to something similar in another paradigm. For example, “Floats like a butterfly, stings like bee” conveys the grace and power of boxer Mohammed Ali by linking his movements to those...
Urban Art in Belgium by Mehmet Ali Uysal
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