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Why do creative thinking exercises in the workplace fail to produce a ground-breaking shift for the organisation? How can we encourage creative thinking in the workplace?
Let’s start with that well-worn saying ‘thinking outside the box’. My personal experience is that the ruling culture of the corporate world is exponential profits for shareholders, and this limits creative thinking. This idea acts as a filter and so many creative ideas are sifted out before they are expressed. Employees feel repressed and brilliance is censored. Basically, people end up trying to get create new ideas within a confined space. To really find the gems of creative thinking in a corporate creative thinking exercise, you need to free people to truly think outside the box and forget about the constraints. Throw out all the rules and simply ask ‘what if anything was possible’. The creative space is that in which anything is possible. Remember this!
The censor is always present in the workplace. Of course everyone is concerned about how they are perceived by others and thus how well they are doing. Who wants to say something that may be perceived as stupid or irrelevant when their boss is in the room? On the other hand, there is the competitive spirit in the workplace. Some people may think that coming up with innovative an idea is only worthwhile when there is personal reward and acknowledgement offered in exchange. If you are leading a creative thinking exercise in the workplace, you need to be aware of and balance these two contradictory human drives. Give everyone strokes and get rid of the censor!
Extroverts drown out introverts. In any group situation you will have those who want to take centre stage (overtly or covertly), and those who just want to just fade into the background and ‘think about it’. You will get the best out of introverts if each person is required to work alone, and you will force extroverts to really think 'outside the box'. When people work in groups, then the extroverts will drown out the introverts -- always! Put simply, you will get more ideas if people are required to brainstorm individually rather than as a group, and yes the paradox is that brainstorming works best as an individual exercise (to really get 'out the box' in exploring ideas) and a group exercise (to evaluate and collate and make plans from all ideas).
Individual rewards are a bad idea as the censor and the competitive spirit derail the whole process. The innovation that will create an award-winning paradigm shift for your company will eventually be a group rather than an individual effort, so spoil and reward everyone, genuinely!
Individual rewards are a bad idea as the censor and the competitive spirit derail the whole process. The innovation that will create an award-winning paradigm shift for your company will eventually be a group rather than an individual effort, so spoil and reward everyone, genuinely!
Warm-up is essential. Spend as much as half an hour doing warm-up exercises such as associative thinking, divergent thinking, working with mandalas, juggling (there’s a creative thinking exercise that I have not shared with you yet -‑ and I have a maverick twist for my juggling exercises), and so on.
A creative thinking exercise such as brainstorming is the first step in the process of, for example, creating a new product. For each idea, you need to then brainstorm every implication, consequence, requirement, and so on. Even a frivolous idea will produce gems (this won't work because of this but this gives me an idea that I can apply to something else), so give people the time and space to go through this second step.
Educate people about the basics of creative thinking before you require them to do a creative thinking exercise. Here are some basic principles:
1 In creative thinking exercises such as brainstorming, quantity is more important than quality. Participants must rather provide nonsensical ideas than not produce the required number in the time allowed (e.g. more than ten ideas in fifteen minutes).
2 Not only give a time limit but announce a time count down of each minute to put participants under pressure to produce quantity in the time allowed (Five minutes left! You have to give me ten ideas and you have only Five minutes left!)
3 The goal of brainstorming is not to produce a final perfect plan, but to find lots of innovative ideas. Each can then be teased out and analysed, then ideas can be combined, and those ideas that work can be used. Stress that all and any ideas are acceptable in a brainstorming exercises, no matter how unworkable or off topic they may seem.
2 Not only give a time limit but announce a time count down of each minute to put participants under pressure to produce quantity in the time allowed (Five minutes left! You have to give me ten ideas and you have only Five minutes left!)
3 The goal of brainstorming is not to produce a final perfect plan, but to find lots of innovative ideas. Each can then be teased out and analysed, then ideas can be combined, and those ideas that work can be used. Stress that all and any ideas are acceptable in a brainstorming exercises, no matter how unworkable or off topic they may seem.
Creativity can be chaotic, but order can be created out of chaos! Let participants enjoy the chaotic space of creativity and find their own order from that chaos.
© SD Vahl, 2012
SD Vahl hereby asserts her right to be identified as the author of this work.
SD Vahl hereby asserts her right to be identified as the author of this work.
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