Strategic Alliance Magazine Q4 2017 - 21

OUT-OF-THE-BOX THINKING

BRAINSTORMING:
A good tool to start with is to brainstorm. It's a painful exercise to really get
it employed correctly. People think that
they do it, but many don't do it correctly. You
can use brainstorming to inspire collective thought
and leverage other people to shape where we
need to be or go. Here is where people go wrong:
During the activity, you should not process. Just
write down people's thoughts. But sometimes you
process someone else's thoughts, and when you
do, you run the risk of
n Offending someone, because you are

judging if it's a good or bad idea. You might
turn people off and turn off collaboration.
n Stopping the issue. You want different

people providing different viewpoints, so
from your vantage point, you can look
through a different lens. We all have
prejudiced biases that influence our creative
thoughts. So we need outside collective
thought. You need to let them go wild.
So what happens early on during a brainstorming
event? Early brainstorming ideas are usually very
general ideas. You need to really drill, because it's
those last brainstorms that are really the creative
ones. Innovative, unique, creative thought typically comes out at the end. Get the basic ones off
the plate so that everyone can see they are generic
ideas anyone could have thought of. Go through
the process of looking at everyone's idea, and then
do a second-level brainstorm. Force participants
to give you other ideas beyond the obvious. The
next rendition typically has creative and very innovative thought. Then give everybody three
sticky dots and stack rank the top three ideas. Ask
them, "Which of these do you think are the most
creative and innovative?" Let them tell you. I have
my prejudgments or biases of what I think is a
good, comfortable idea. Sometimes when you try
to be very creative, it generates complexity. At the
end, ask whether the ideas are simple, standardized, and structured.

THE SIX THINKING HATS:
In this exercise, you actually have people put on one of six hats, all of which
signify something different. A white
hat might signify-facts; green-emotion;
yellow-caution; blue-logic; lavender-creativity; red-control. You can do this exercise as a
group, with a partner, or on your own. Different
hats generate different viewpoints. If you look at
the top brainstormed ideas with a white hat on,
you will look at innovation and creative problem
solving through the lens of "fact." Then you put
on the green hat and ask which solution prompts
the most emotional response, etc. Another way to
do this is to focus on the problem statement, put
the hat on, and ask "How do I solve this problem
using the hats?" This is brainstorming-structured. The hat becomes a game. Creative thinking
does not come easily to most people, especially
if they are wearing a control hat all the time and
not an emotion hat. If you put those hats on, you
see problems from different angles. The exercise
forces people out of their comfort zone to start
looking at problems though a different angle.

THE SMART TECHNIQUE:
If you want to use a collaborative experience for out-of-the-box problem
solving, you work with the group to
find which solution makes the most sense
to address the problem. Good managers use the
SMART approach for making goals with their
team-SMART stands for: specific, measurable,
attainable, realistic, timely. I leverage it in creative
thinking. The SMART approach can be used at
each stage of creativity. For example, is the solution attainable, or is it pie in the sky? It may get
you from Point A to Point B in your goal to build
a rocket, but is it attainable? Is it realistic? Could
you do it in a specific amount of time? Leveraging
the SMART technique around your ideas brings a
level of practicality to the process. n
21
Q4 * 2017 | STRATEGIC ALLIANCE MAGAZINE

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Strategic Alliance Magazine Q4 2017