Sauteing, Stirfry, Cruise Ships, and Other Exercises in Creativity
Recently I was hired to facilitate an "idea generating" session for a local company. The
owners, wisely, wanted to harness the creativity of their staff to help the company grow
and develop. By the end of the session, everyone was amazed at how many ideas could
be generated in two hours. The experience reminded me how powerful creativity is and
how easily and joyously it can be tapped.
Whole books have been written on creativity techniques. Here are a couple of my
favorites.
Just about everyone has heard of brainstorming, first coined in the 1950s by New York
advertising executive Alex Osborne. The basic rules of brainstorming are: 1) generate
LOTS of ideas; 2) go for the wild, the silly and the impractical (As Osborne said, "It is
easier to tone down a wild idea than to think up a new one."); 3) "piggyback" on others'
ideas by expanding, consolidating, substituting, reversing, and rearranging; 4) suspend
judgment on all ideas offered; and 5) encourage speed.
The last two can incur problems. Sometimes we forget that positive judgments are still
judgments, and just as insidious as criticism. Comments like, "Great idea!" and "That's a
really good point" sound supportive, but they can subtly influence participants to flavor
future ideas toward a similar reaction. After all, who among us doesn't like approval? How
easy it is to start thinking, "What can I say that will gain me approval like that?"
As for speed, I've seen participants invest long pregnant moments sorting through all the
sedimentary layers of one idea rather than building on it or moving on to others. A slow,
reflective pace yields creativity in other contexts, but with brainstorming, speed is a great
catalyst because it minimizes analyzing. Think sauteing or stir-frying. There's plenty of
time to marinate later.
The way a brainstorming question is structured also affects creativity. Here's what I've
seen work best:
Use a current challenge faced by the organization, framed as a question
"How can we better serve our existing clients?" To this I've heard everything from
reasonable ideas ("Offer a discount to repeat customers") to the zany and silly ("Let's
work in the nude!").
Offer a provocative twist on an accepted wisdom
Years ago in a seminar I led in the East Bay, I challenged a group with this question:
"What are some positive results of the Oakland fires?" In other words, turn a situation
normally perceived as negative on its head in order to force people out of predictable
attitudes. "Pattern disruption" is one definition of creativity.
Keep the question tightly focused
"How can we be more creative?" is too open-ended. More focused and effective: "How
can we give people a better shopping experience in our store?"
Team participants with people they don't ordinarily work with
Separate best friends. Mix allies with adversaries, entry-level clerks with top dogs.
Ruthlessly reconstitute groups as needed. An important sub-text of any creativity process
is to break up the inevitable clans that occur in the workplace and help people warm up to
each other. Ideas are great--but it's people who implement them, and people have to
cooperate for the implementation to succeed.
Because brainstorming has been around for so long, it's easy to dismiss it, but in 2004, it
remains as powerful a technique for generating ideas in a democratic spirit as it was fifty
years ago.
A second exercise people enjoy and benefit from is word play. Imagery is powerful; it's
the original seed of any business, movement or change. Playing with metaphors is
particularly helpful when people are struggling to bring clarity to a fuzzy issue. I have
invited working groups to use the power of imagery to describe their organization or
situation--and to dream a new one into being. For example, consider this question:
If our company was a form of transportation, what would it be, and what does that say
about us?
"We're a truck that has lost its brakes on a downhill grade."
"We're a cruise ship--sedate, protective of our customers, low-risk and over-conservative."
"We're like Southwest. No frills, but fun."
"We're a mountain bike: strong and tough. We thrive under bumpy conditions."
You can use other images similarly. A group of design-oriented engineers I worked with
had a heyday with the question, "What shape are we?"
With brainstorming and word play, generating ideas is only the first step. Then comes
refining, narrowing and deciding how to use the ideas.
Beyond content, the key to any kind of group exercise is participation. As we all know,
when people are having fun, barriers drop. Hierarchies slip away. Everyone's ideas are
valid. The new kid on the block and the guy who's worked there for 30 years, the
wallflower and the extrovert, all are involved, all feel welcome. Out of that sense of
belonging and creative energy, anything is possible.