Apr 142013
 

Your brainstorming sessions are going nowhere?
Try these improv techniques


Improv techniques

Source: http://bit.ly/10VOBQc

First of all, I should say that those improv techniques don’t involve having you stand up in front of an audience with a mic in hand and a stool at your side. It’s much less involving than that. In fact, they are extremely simple and yet incredibly effective. Read on to find out more.

We’ve all been in those meetings either at work, in the classroom, in a family gathering deciding on a vacation together, or in a community group where we need to generate new ideas and come up with an agreement on those ideas. Very often, we witness some brave souls offering their ideas, to have them rebuked with a harsh “NO!” or its sneaky cousin “yes, BUT…”.

At that point, whatever creativity flow was in the room screeches to a dead stop or is replaced by a confrontational back-and-forth where all parties hunker down and are dead set on defending their ideas and ignoring any other ideas. In the end, the strong personalities end up imposing their ideas. The end result: very few ideas are generated, egos get hurt and everyone comes out frustrated.

What if there is a better way that would remove the risk of  strong personalities or personal glory getting in the way of the creative process? A way where everyone has to actually listen to the members of the group’s ideas and be willing to embrace them for at least a little bit? A way where everyone involved ends up looking good?


3 simple improv techniques


Those techniques come from the world of improvisation where creativity and flow of ideas is paramount. They have been taught for decades to aspiring comedians (think Steve Colbert) and recently to a much more diverse audience ranging from adventurous business leaders, to nerds, to husband/wife in couple therapy.

The techniques (actually more they are more like guidelines) are incredibly simple:

  1. Use “yes, AND…” (vs. “no!” and “yes, BUT…”) because it forces you to listen to the other person’s ideas and to accept their idea (even if it’s just for a bit) in order to allow you to build on it. It’s about acceptance. Knowing that everyone will have to accept your idea as part of the exercise will embolden you to offer more creative ideas instead of sticking to safe suggestions.
  2. Accept every offer. That’s one of the cardinal rule of improvisation. Go with the flow and never antagonize the person who suggested the idea.
  3. Make the others look good. This gets your ego out of the way. Establish the rule to make your counterpart look good and shed some positive light on their best ideas.

Don’t be fooled by the simplicity of those improv techniques. They do work and not solely on the stage of comedy clubs.

So, the next time you are in a group setting, seeking to generate ideas, offer those 3 guidelines at the beginning of meeting and witness how the dynamics of the group will radically improve. You will be surprised by how well the techniques work.

Have you have ever tried those techniques?  Will you try them in the future and share the outcome? I’d love to hear your feedback ! Use the comment section below.

Mar 272013
 

Mind Pumping: “Pumping” it’s not for muscle only…


Mind Pumping

Credit: http://bit.ly/ZqC9Wg

I started rereading Michael Michalko’s book: Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative-Thinking techniques, as a source of inspiration for a post for this blog. This book is so amazingly rich on ideas and techniques on creative thinking, it’s absolutely dizzying. It seems that any 1/2 page would be enough material for a good LighBulbBite.

But since I had to choose, I’d like to try to summarize chapter two, titled Mind Pumping.

The author’s premise for mind pumping, is that if you want to be creative, it’s not enough to have the intention of being creative, you must act like a creative person by going through the motion of an “idea person“.


9 great Mind Pumping exercises


  1. Idea quota: Set yourself an idea quota for a challenge that you are working on; say 5 ideas, every day for one week. Having a quota forces you to actively generate ideas rather than waiting for ideas to occur to you
  2. Getting tone: Really paying attention to the world around you will help you develop the extraordinary capacity to look at mundane things and see the miraculous
  3. Dukes of habit: Instead of always doing the things the same way, deliberately program changes into your daily life: take a different route to work, listen to a different radio station each day (different newspaper), change your reading habit (fiction vs. nonfiction), switch hobby, etc…
  4. Feeding your head: To quote Gore Vidal, “The Brain that doesn’t feed itself, eats itself”. So, read to feed your mind but:
    • Select carefully: how good an exercise for my creative mind will this provide?
    • Take notes
    • Read biographies: there are a treasure-house of ideas
    • Read how-to books on any subject
    • Read magazines on varied subjects
    • Read nonfiction: when reading nonfiction books, practice thinking up solutions to any problems presented in the book. JFK’s favorite exercise.
    • Think: think as you read and find connections/parallels between what you read and your problems
  5. Content analysis: observe the world around you (popular culture, your job, places where you travel, local/international news, conferences, etc…) and analyze what you see/absorb, look for connections, trends and patterns, and seek new opportunities/ideas out of your analysis.
  6. Brainbanks: collect and store ideas/thoughts like a pack rat: quotes, designs, ideas, questions, pictures, and words that might trigger ideas by associations. (I personally use Evernote for that very purpose).
  7. Travel Junkie: whenever you are feeling stale/bored, go to new store, trade/craft show, exhibition, library, museum, etc… Wander with an open mind and wait for something to catch your attention and connect it to your problems/challenges
  8. Think right: make your thinking more fluent (number of ideas) and more flexible (more creative).
    • Making lists is a powerful way to increase fluency. Example: list all the possible uses of WD40
    • Flexibility in thought means the ability to see beyond the ordinary/conventional. Be more improvisational and intuitive by focusing on processes rather than outcomes.
  9. Idea log: One of CIA’s favorite techniques for recording information in a written form. This enables the agent to instantly focus on all the ideas, comparisons, interrelationships and data relating to a given problem.

This was one chapter out of 39! Get the book for many more techniques/ideas.

Hopefully, this LBB will give you ideas on how to become more creative.  Don’t try all of them at once but do try some and let me how know how they work out for you.

I invite you to share your thoughts, feedback or your favorite Mind Pumping exercises below in the comment area. Looking forward to reading them!

 

Mar 102013
 

A very creative way to promote ideas within a group:
Mutual Fun


In the following video, Professor Hayagreeva Rao from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, delivers the message that killing ideas is way more important that collecting ideas.

Now, there’s the right way to do it and the wrong way to do it.

In most companies, the decision of promoting or killing ideas is left in the hands of a small committee  referred as the “Murder Board” by Professor Rao. According to Professor Rao, the murder board ‘s decisions may come across as arbitrary and in the worst cases subject those proposing the ideas to ridicule, humiliation and rejection, thereby killing their initiative. As a result, people watching those actions will become reluctant to suggest ideas in the future. The end result is that the smart people who were hired by those same companies become “dumb” or rather mute/silent.

To me the most interesting idea brought up by the video is the case-study of the company Rite Solutions. Their brilliant idea is to organize all the company’s idea into a “Stock Market for Collective Genius” that they call: Mutual Fun (no “d”).

 


3 principles behind mutual fun


In a nutshell, the concept behind Mutual Fun is organized around these 3 principles:

  • Every employee is given $10,000 of “opinion money” to buy savings bonds and stocks
  • Originators of ideas (either conservative or far-out ideas) are encouraged to develop “expect-us” (prospectus) and get “prophets” to get stock listed
  • Others can buy stocks, offer suggestions, and volunteer time.

Low-quality ideas don’t find “prophets” or are quickly eliminated for lack of support. However, since those ideas have been viewed by many employees, they may become the material for new ideas which might get more traction.

Anybody can suggest ideas and Professor Rao recalls that the receptionist of the company for example had 2 ideas in the Mutual Fun.

Rite Solutions developed some pretty sophisticated tools to show the “stocks” and stock activity in the Mutual Fun with charts, news stories, levels of funding, etc… to help stock owners to manage their stock portfolio.

So, instead of solely relying on the opinion of a few individual (the murder board), Rise Solutions was able to tap into the wisdom of the company as a whole by looking at the ideas that rise to the top of the Mutual Fun market. Those ideas then get fully funded with real money (called “adventure capital”, cute) to implement the ideas contained in those stocks.

I wish such a tool existed as Open Source for other companies like mine to use.

Maybe something for me to work on…

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