Train Your Team to Become Creative
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Many people often ask me, how can I get people who I work with to think more creative. Unfortunately we are seeing less and less creative folks this day in age. Somehow between being a child with a wild imagination and growing up we loose that creativity we all naturally had. We become more concentrated on mathematics, science, history, and all other studies, which are all equally important. However, the concept of grasping your creativity gets lost with all that left-brain thinking. The problem occurs when the challenge disappears in academic curriculum and you are no longer asked to exercise your creative muscles. That is why I decided to write this post. It is a proven technique I use with my co-workers to get them to think like creative geniuses. After a while you would think they were thinking like Creatives all their lives.
To be creative means to create. To have conceptual thoughts and expressions. The idea to formulate thoughts that ideally produce innovation. I am sure you get the point. Sure enough all we have to do is get our co workers to think live the definitions above. Here is how?
The Idea
The concept is simple, but the execution might get a bit unpleasant or weird. All that is needed to be done is to get them thinking creatively without pressuring them. Get their mind off of their work and teach them through other means than work. Meaning if you have a work problem, don’t try this methodology on that work problem. It simply won’t work and results will be sub par.
- Give your team so leeway time from work, about half an hour or so.
- Gather them in the conference room, or any other place where everyone can be in a circle.
- Give the entire team a blank canvas. This doesn’t have to be a painting canvas.
- Get Creative. Use the side walk with chalk, white board, sticky pads, anything you can use to create.
- Now ask the team to build a product of the future.
- Keep in mind they can only use the supplies you give them.
- But try not to restrict them. Lets say you gave them pens and sticky notes. They should be free to tear those sticky notes and build a model. Draw on sticky notes and assemble it piece by piece. It is open to them.
- Give them about half and hour to build a product of the future.
What This Does
It is simple, they were given an objective and had to come up with a solution in thirty minutes that is presentable. Not only will they feel unpreassured because it isn’t like the company will go out of business if they make the wrong decision. This allows them to get dangerous, be bold, take risks, and hopefully with a team collaboration they will come out with something really cool and innovative. You may have a new product to market once they are done. This same technique can be applied within your organization to improve the quality of thinking. Same exercise, but real scenario. If they do things like this enough times, being dangerous might end up being smart.
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July 18th, 2007 at 10:55 am
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