Developing Creative Thinking
There is a common misconception that creative thinking, and therefore the ability to make innovative decisions is an inborn talent that cannot be learned. Try to develop the quality and originality of your ideas by adopting new methods of thinking.
GENERATING NEW IDEAS
The creation of new ideas is vital to bring fresh light to the decision-making process. When sourcing fresh ideas, strive to achieve the right balance between imagination and practicality. Your first hurdle, however, lies in generating ideas from others.
CHALLENGING TRADITIONS
When making decisions, do not accept blindly tried and tested ”conventional wisdom”. Try it yourself, be ruthless in its application, and open-minded about alternatives. It is not wrong to use a conventional approach, but do so only after you have fully and fairly examined other new and more innovative ideas. Compare the obvious and easy with unorthodox and difficult, and you may well find the latter by far the better solution.
EMBRACING NEW IDEAS
People and organizations-form habits of thinking just as they form other habits. Many organizations that reject new thinking outright do so because they view change as a risk. There are, however, ways to defeat this negativity and encourage an acceptance of the new. For example, in any type of ideas meeting, forbid the use of the response ”yes, but….”- a classic idea-killer-until a predetermined number of new ideas have been explored and discussed.
BRAINSTORMING FOR IDEAS
Brainstorming meetings are held specifically to generate new ideas. Gather a group of people, three to eight ideally, and ask each to submit an idea or list of ideas relevant to the decision being made. As each idea is produced, the group facilitator should record it. Be democratic. Do not reject any ideas and be sure to value a junior’s idea as highly as that of a senior. Do not allow interruptions or discussions to wander too far off the subject in question, but encourage the free, creative flow of ideas and associations. The more ideas generated the better, but do not judge or analyze them, or make any decision during the session. Put together all the ideas generated into clusters so that you end up with groups of related ideas. At this point, start to create a short list of the best ideas.
PRODUCING NEW IDEAS
When setting up any group to generate ideas, choose the participants to reflect differences in expertise and experience. Define the issues and the relevant criteria clearly, and make sure that all ideas are recorded. It is useful to have a facilitator, who does not contribute ideas, to keep the session on the course. Part of the facilitator’s role is to promote lateral thinking. If a seemingly absurd proposition is offered, he or she should use it to provoke fresh thinking.
When enough ideas have been presented, end the meeting. Select the ideas that are worthy of further investigation, and follow up promptly. You could use the same group of people to evaluate the analysis and advise on the best alternative.
THINKING POSITIVELY
If you are cautious by nature, you are not very likely to think adventurously, but if you are highly creative, you may be impatient with skeptics who see only the objections in a discussion. Do not allow colleagues to get locked into these or any other mindsets that prevent them from listening to other points of view with an open mind. If you think a debate is becoming too negative, say that and ask everybody to try and make a positive contribution.
DECIDING ON ACTION
The object of generating new ideas is to find the best one and act on it. It starts with analysis, in which you seek to uncover the issues affecting the decision. That enables you to set goals – either opportunities or problems. Then you search for ideas, which are either ”conventional, mildly original” or ”unconventional, needing further discussion .” At the selection stage, ideas are examined for weaknesses, and solutions are discarded or adopted. Those adopted calls for action in which the accepted decision is implemented.
ASSESSING THE VALIDITY OF IDEAS
After you have generated a range of ideas, you need to assess them. Apply objective criteria and use rational methods to narrow down the range of choices, and keep an open mind when deciding which ideas you want to take forwards to the next stage.
NARROWING THE OPTIONS
Use ”what if?” analysis when the time comes to assess the value of ideas. Ask yourself what would be the likely consequences of adopting decisions A, B, or C? Discuss and establish the answers in group debates that consider the situation from all angles. Make the most of these meetings by asking people to present their views one at a time rather than descending into a free-for-all debate.
NARROWING DOWN IDEAS
The best way to reduce a long list of options to a manageable size is to have clear criteria. For example, for an investment decision, the criteria could relate to maximum investment, payback period, return on capital, and strategic fit. Having selected criteria, you can safely discard ideas that fail these tests. If such screening is unsuitable, for example, on recruitment issues, list the pros and cons of each alternative, and then attribute scores of up to plus 10 for each con according to relative importance. Discard the lowest minus-scoring options.
