brittj

lynclair:

Love this article that talks about creative problem solving.  It can be taught:  

I find this particular few paragraphs to be extremely effective.  

If you find your team is not particularly creative (or after you think you’ve exhausted the top of the mind solutions), put a list (words or pictures) on the boardroom wall that includes shapes, colours, objects, countries etc and start a random word generation exercise. It relaxes everyone, gets them laughing and joking, and that’s exactly the mood you need to be in to get good solutions.

(Just thinking about a problem can put one in the worst possible mood for creative thinking.)

Scribble all the words generated on a big sheet of paper and get the team to come up with one idea, linked however tenuously, to that word. 80% will be completely nonsense, but it’s the 20% that will spark off some new trains of thought. 

And HAVE FUN with it! It’s a sure fire way to inspire creative and innovative thinking.

Despite the fact that creative problem solving may uncover more, or different, problems than you originally anticipated, the process does work. For managers, all it requires is the willingness to admit that maybe, just maybe, creativity is part of the management function.