A problem crops up in an organisation and groups start gathering in innumerable meetings, brainstorming sessions and sometimes even workshops to generate brilliant ideas and produce novel suggestions. But the end result is more often than not, the same – run-of-the-mill ideas leading to mediocre solutions!
So the question arises – what should the team leader/facilitator do to stimulate creation of better ideas as well as accelerate the process of arriving at resourceful solutions even for the most complex challenges?
Well, fact is that every group can generate inventive thinking; all that they need is an occasional push in the right direction to get them going.
Therefore, as a leader, the onus is on you to tap the group potential by releasing the creative genius and thus creating solutions that can even transform the organisation!
Following are a few tips on getting the ideas flowing:
The prep: Most people step into a meeting/brainstorming session literally ‘ unarmed'. Equipping them with information about the problem in advance will generate pre-think that makes them better prepared to confront the challenge. It is also necessary to establish a relaxed environment during the meeting; else the group genius will get stifled.
It pays to set goals like ‘at least 20 ideas' so that the group will strive to achieve them.
A hint: set the goal a little higher than you think is possible but not so high that it becomes unattainable and thus discouraging. Also, try to overcome hidden agendas, power plays and turf fights that can inhibit the group from attaining its goals.
Perspective: It often happens that a group gets stuck on a single solution and concentrates solely on discussing the single perspective, its results and offshoots to no end. This inevitably locks down the group and slows down the idea flow completely.
Leonardo Da Vinci propounded restructuring the problem in different ways, your role is to subtly ‘unlock' the group by forcing them to reconceptualise the situation from different perspectives. Simply moving on through such a review can often generate an astounding quantity of ideas and thus novel solutions.
If the group is still stuck, you can force progress by linking the problem to disparate items through words, objects or even pictures.
You can even draw on Aristotle's metaphorical thinking to create analogies and comparisons. Let the imagination run wild as you generate connections and then think in terms of, “How could this item solve our problem?” or “What attributes of this object could help us?” This route is worth a try as it is bound to initiate a lively and engaging discussion and thus creating erstwhile unimaginable ideas!
Go visual – Einstein did not propagate visualisation tactics for no reason. You can give life to the otherwise dull and dreary ideas written on the white board. Encourage group members to actually draw their ideas and solutions.
Yes, actually DRAW! This is a powerful medium as the ‘ silly' doodling will open the mind and stimulate ingenious thought, at times leading to that perfect idea!
Instead of directly focussing on the issue, you can take the discussion to a new level by actually examining the opposite situation. Asking opposite questions like “How can we get people to NOT buy our product” or “How can we drive our customers away” may seem outside the boundaries of logic, but it is bound to generate unexpected and even breakthrough ideas. Such a contrary reflection will also cross into new domains by illuminating on how to avoid the same issues!
Combinations: By now, there will be numerous ideas on your flip chart and the group is almost ready to pick the best and discard the rest. Yet, instead of considering them individually, you can encourage the group to combine a few to come up with more novel solutions.
Thus, these techniques will enable you, the team leader to generate more and more (though not all exceptional) ideas – some may be childish, some stupid and some downright weird. But the huge volume itself will provide you a wider choice when narrowing down to select good ones and there may even be a few pleasant surprises in store. And these are what will take the otherwise regular meetings to the next level of GENIUS!
But, do not stop at just taking the best decision. Do encourage the group to take steps to implement the solution and later review the results so that further improvements can be found.
To sum up, there are a variety of approaches that you can use to improve both the quantity and quality of ideas in a group.
What's more, you can apply some or all of the above tactics to generate ideas when working in a group or even trying to solve a problem on your own!
Payal Chanania
No comments:
Post a Comment