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Business Creativity & Innovation

Tag Archives: problem solving

Kick Start Your Creativity

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Kick start your creativityMany people get “Creative’s block” when they are faced with a requirement to come up with ideas or solve a problem. At other times their creativity overflows! Others, after having no time to play or practise, wish they had more free time, and when they finally get it, they are not in the mood. This article provides some tips which might help you kick start your creativity if ever you get stuck. These suggestions might not cure your problem but they should start you on the path to finding something that will. Note that for this to be useful in the world of business you should have some use in mind for this else it is simply messing around (but good fun).

Make time for being creative. With the demands of business/life, you will never get round to being creative  ever again! Try to spend at least half an hour doing something different. Maybe sketch an idea that you have had for a while, measure out a prototype in your office or go and look for some appropriate new colours. If you’re creative activities relate to generating ideas then make sure that you have a notepad and pen handy to capture them.

Plan ahead. If you know that you are going to have regular ‘creative breaks’ then think about what you would like to do or achieve in them. If you need specific tools (A4 paper, pens, juggling balls, mat to lie on) then get them ready in advance. Spend your time being creative not getting ready to be creative!

Keep a creativity journal. In this journal, you can write down any ideas that come into your head any time of day or night (yes you should keep it beside your bed). These can be ideas, problem solutions, preferences, questions or just a list of things to try.

Gather ideas from your surroundings. Look all around you, outside the window, on the shelves, under the bed, on the counter… take photos or look at something interesting from more than one view. But be patient: It may take some time to try to find an interesting subject to play with! Try to do different things to force changes in your surroundings. Take a new route to work, catch a different bus, go to a different sandwich shop, sit the wrong way round in the bath (but mind the taps). If you need to store these then make use of your creativity journal.

Gather knowledge. Learn from the greats and the not so greats! There are plenty of things out there that you can learn and master, and even more failures that you can learn from. The internet, TV, newspapers and just listening to your elders all provide a rich source of knowledge.

Take photos. Many of us have cameras or smart phones. Take pictures and use the voice recording feature also. Anything captured can be used to help present your ideas or to act as a springboard for future creativity sessions.

Listening To Unreason

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One of my favourite books is Charles Handy’s ‘The Age of Unreason’ where he puts forward some unreasonable ideas to solve problems. Using unreason can be both simple and effective but it also appeals because I like to find solutions that are right under other peoples noses. When there is a complicated problem to solve, many people will look for a complicated solution as if one must go with the other. Sometimes the elegant (and simple) solution can be found using unreason. Consider a common problem, that of traffic on our motorways. In order to get more cars along a given stretch of motorway we often have campaigns to increase the speed limit. Our motorways are not just race tracks. They have junctions, accidents and many different vehicles and driving styles which cause  disturbances in the traffic. Often reducing the speed limit (as seen on many of our UK motorways with variable speed limits) actually decreases journey times. So in order to solve many of our business issues we could accept less money, work less hours or reduce our profits. At home we could buy smaller houses or hoard less possessions! In short we could stop looking for innovative solutions in the same place as everybody else. We could actually look for the wrong answers and maybe turn up a right answer or two.

Solving Multi Layered Problems

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I can hear some readers saying to themselves ‘but I have not got any multi layered problems’. Well have I got news for you (sorry for the plagiarism there). Most problems bar the very simplest are multi level. Asking ‘Why’ over and over again is considered to be an alternative or creative technique for investigating issues. Let us consider the following scenario from a medium sized business.

Initially there are reports that sales are not as good as forecast and so the spotlight falls on the sales force. There are cries to sack and replace salesmen but one thoughtful soul begins to ask why? The following scenario unfolds:

via Solving Multi Layered Problems.

BBC NEWS | Magazine | The brilliance of creative chaos

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Are we able to think clearly when surrounded by mess because chaos is inherent in all our minds, even those of the great writers and thinkers, asks Clive James.

The great thing about this slot is that I can pontificate. But a wise pontificator should always remember that he won’t solve a global problem in 10 minutes, or even do much more than usefully touch on it in 10 hours. There are two main reasons for that. One reason is that the global problems are, by their nature, devilishly complicated. But everyone knows, or should know, that.

The other reason is less obvious, because it lies within the nature of the pontificator. He, or she – in my case he – speaks with a special pontificating voice: integrated, judicious even in its doubts, purporting to contain the distilled wisdom of a lifetime’s experience. Almost always, I suspect, this voice is at odds with the personality from which it emerges, and in my case the discrepancy is so glaring that even I can spot it. Read the full article BBC NEWS | Magazine | The brilliance of creative chaos.

Give Your Colleagues A Whack On The Head!

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Now that I have your attention, please do no resort to violence, I just want to wake you up!

Organisations, just like people, can get set in their ways. Relying on established ways of working and fixed patterns when solving problems not only stifles innovation, but can lead to a narrow perspective and moments of self delusion when you kid yourself that things are going ok ,and there is nothing else you can do. Here are three ways to help your organisation  wake up:

  • Challenge existing rationale. Every organisation has shared explanations for doing things the way they do. Be critical about these explanations and ask the question ‘why is this standard practice?’
  • Expose faulty either/or thinking and decision making. Sometimes we are forced to make irrational choices about how to work. Don’t let your choice be A or B. Propose options  C or D as new ways of working and evaluate them all.
  • Focus on the long term. By focusing on the  near future you will be more inclined just to keep on doing the same old things. Help to wake up your colleagues by letting them see the bigger picture, and understand not only the short-term gains but also the long-term consequences.

Be gentle!

The Power Of ‘Why?’

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Sometimes it is ‘obvious’ what our problem is and so the answer is obvious too. This may very well be the case, but just in case it is not or perhaps to uncover a better solution we might need to uncover the real reason for something going wrong.

Problems and issues also tend to be multi layered and we have to scratch below the surface to work out what is really happening. Be careful when using it as continuously asking someone else ‘Why?’ may make them defensive.

Imagine the simple scenario ‘sales are falling’. One possible assumption might be that our sales people are no good at their job so we might replace them or retrain them. First, let us ask ‘Why?’

Q. Why are sales falling?
A. Because customers don’t like our products

Q. Why don’t they like our products?
A. Because they are outdated, not as cool as this year’s model

Q. Why are our products outdated?
A. Because we have not developed any new ones for 5 years

Q. Why have we not done this before?
A. Because the boss has not allowed us

Q. Why has the boss behaved in this way?
A. Because they have no spare time to spend

In this simple example our initial assumption of having a poor sales force is incorrect, the underlying issue is that the boss (possibly you!) has no time either because of high workload or poor time management. We can also see that the issue has multiple layers and unless the issues at lower layers are resolved then our initial problem is unlikely to be properly resolved.

You could thus use this for:

  • Identifying the need for a new product or service
  • Determining why your competitors are more attractive to customers
  • Asking why your costs are higher than they should be

… and many more.

Innovation – forget the words Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing

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Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing have become buzz words of late which is a shame as it encourages those who blindly adopt best practice to jump on the bandwagon. It is often said that to truly understand a situation you must know enough to be afraid and there are too many consultants pushing concepts on unsuspecting businesses and organisations without really understanding what they are telling organisations to do.

The thing is that Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing really are valuable tools in our quest for Innovation. When innovating we have a dilemma, do we try to keep the fruits of our labours secret for as long as possible to secure as great a competitive advantage as possible, or do we throw our net outside of our organization to gather the maximum number of ideas and encourage communications/interactions with outside (and possibly competitor) organisations?

There are many issues surrounding Open Innovation, such as how to manage it, how to select the participants/collaborators and exploiting the results. Much of this is common sense if you have your wits about you. Essentially you have a choice, keep it in house or look outside, perhaps even conducting your business in public as some educational establishments do. The aim though, is to understand, not blindly follow the ‘How To Innovate For Dummies’ guide.

The fuel for Innovation is ideas and to generate ideas we need people to interact with each other. The more debate and creative tension, the higher the quality of ideas generated and the greater their number will be also. To get to this stage we need more bodies, a crowd. Crowdsourcing is effectively outsourcing the generation of ideas and the solution of problems to a crowd. The UK government’s attempt to gather ideas for policies via their website is an example of this. Your crowd can communicate remotely or be in the same location (see the Open Space technique) and interaction fuel debate or facilitate building of ideas.

Once again there are issues such as managing your crowd and capturing ideas, but once you are aware of the principle of Innovation then everything is pretty much common sense.

So please forget the words Open Innovation and Crowdsourcing but do learn as much as possible about them, understand the concepts and employ them properly. If you really do know enough to be afraid then you understand the concepts fully enough to be able to employ them to create success for your organisation.

Why Brainstorming Is BAD

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No, BAD is not an acronym. I simply hate brainstorming and try to avoid it wherever possible. This stems from an introduction (many years ago) to the type of brainstorming that we all hate – sitting round a table with a pile of Post-It notes being told by the boss to come up with ideas. I objected because we never got anywhere and a great deal of time was wasted.

Some people do, however, use brainstorming and have some success. There are a significant number of people who do not. Why is this?

Simples, as a well known Meerkat might say (apologies if you live outside the UK). Creative problem solving is a series of phases which alternate in using convergent and divergent thinking (focusing on one thing or generating many options). If you wish to generate ideas you need to know the objective. What are you generating ideas for and is it really the right thing to be doing? This is convergent thinking and needs to be done and there are even creative techniques for this part of the process.

Next comes a divergent phase to generate options. This is where brainstorming comes in. All techniques can be categorised according to whether they are convergent/divergent, group/solo etc so it is essential to use the correct type of technique in corresponding phase. So use brainstorming for divergence – it is a divergent technique. And this is where those who tried to get me started went terribly wrong.

We sat round a table using a divergent technique to ‘solve a problem’ without working out exactly what the problem was. The only way this would have worked is by pure luck (and we never got lucky). There are other issues of course regarding environment, group make up etc but if you use the wrong tool for the job it is not going to work no matter how hard you try.