In Defense of Brainstorming

It’s trendy these days to denigrate group brainstorming.  I’ve recently read two articles on this theme in major publications that I highly respect.  Neither of these articles convinced me to give up on the creative process that we’ve spent many years using successfully with our clients.  This article in this week’s The New Yorker magazine seemed to call out for a response from ThinkShop.  Here it is.

I’m one of those business consultants using the creative process that Jonah Lehrer criticizes in his article “GroupThink.”  I’ve worked with teams and individuals in brainstorming groups for twenty years.  Brainstorming sessions take place every hour of every day in every industry across the globe, and I’m the first to admit that they are not all productive.  Unfortunately, many brainstorming sessions are led by untrained facilitators or no facilitators at all, without a process, with a homogenous group of people in an environment that’s not conducive to creative collaboration.  A highly skilled facilitator, working in the right environment, with an eclectic group, can lead an effective brainstorming session that produces creative and actionable results.

A central criticism of brainstorming, according to Mr. Lehrer, is that participants are encouraged not to criticize ideas.  While this is true during part of a brainstorming session where every possible opportunity and idea is explored (and yes, free association is encouraged!), a well-run brainstorming session includes a great degree of constructive criticism.  For every hour that a brainstorming team spends generating ideas without criticism, another hour should be spent constructively evaluating ideas, looking at key concerns and coming up with ways to make the ideas stronger.  I’ve never led a session where “the most important thing to do when working together is to stay positive and get along, to not hurt anyone’s feelings.”  Respectful and fiery debate is essential and encouraged!

In an ideal world, we’d all have access to Building 20, the flexible workspace where people of different disciplines co-mingled, bounced ideas off each other and ended up creating some pretty amazing innovations like Bose speakers and many others.  Lehrer’s point that the right environment and mix of people is critical to successful innovation is right on the mark.  His arguments against brainstorming, though, are not supported.  A professionally run brainstorming session can be a virtual Building 20, an inspiring place where people of diverse backgrounds gather to free associate, constructively criticize and produce the next big thing.

Author: Michelle Conrad

Is failure a state of mind?

When something fails, it is done, finished, the end.  There is no energy or passion for failure.  Hide the failed idea in the closet and forget about it because it is (whisper) a failure.  We say with a somber tone, “The product failed in market.” “Martha failed to meet expectations for her job.” “John failed his science test.” Yet embedded in each of those statements is an untold story, a journey, something to learn, or to do differently the next time.

What would happen if we eliminated failure from our lexicon?  Instead of saying “The product failed” you might report, “The product didn’t meet sales goals.”  Now you can investigate causes for low sales. “Martha failed to meet expectations for her job” might become, “Martha does not have the Excel spreadsheet skills required to create financial reports.”  Replace “John failed his science test” with “John missed all of the questions on his test about plant science.”  Now Martha and John know where to focus their energy to improve. By reframing failure, we are able to move into action instead of hitting a static wall.  We are able to focus on action items instead of getting swept away in the negative emotion of failure.

I think failure is a state of mind – it’s your choice to look at a situation as a failure or as an opportunity to learn.  Focus on the cause of your problem or situation and you have a place to begin generating solutions, to change behavior, to improve and create better outcomes next time.

We know that fear of failure can block creative thinking.  In previous blogs we’ve talked about the importance of embracing failure as a way to encourage big thinking and risk-taking.  Celebrating failure can pave the way for future success, igniting creative thinking for the next big breakthrough.

Babe Ruth was one of the greatest hitters of all time, with a career record of 714 home runs.  He was also a master of strikeouts.  That’s because he always swung for home runs.  Ruth either succeeded big or failed spectacularly.   He didn’t let fear of failure get in his way.

So go out and swing for home runs and if you happen to strike out, make a conscious choice to shift into a mindset of positive learning, open to insights and new possibilities that result from your experience.

Let us know what you think.  Is failure a state of mind?

Author:  Chris Fagan

10 Gifts That Inspire Creativity

The holidays can feel like a very uncreative time of year.  The same tree, tinsel, sugary-icing and plastic toys.  It’s tricky to tamper with traditions, but there is one aspect of the holidays where it’s easy to raise the bar.  With just a little extra thought, you can give gifts that spark curiosity, encourage creative thinking, or pique a new interest.  Here’s our gift to you, a few ideas to get you started:

For Kids

The Briefcase:  Head to your local office supply store, select any kind of container that could serve as a briefcase and fill it with supplies.  Here’s your potential inventory:  a small whiteboard and whiteboard markers, a mini clipboard, receipt books, bank deposit slips, lots of tape, correction paper, Post-Its, pens, paper clips, index cards, name labels, dot labels and small notebooks.  Use letter stickers to monogram the briefcase for a touch of personalization.

Different from art supplies, office supplies have an aura of importance because kids often watch adults use them and hide them in desk drawers.  New tangents of dramatic play emerge, from police writing tickets with receipt books to school with a changing daily agenda written on the whiteboard.

A Cardboard Box:  We’ve all watched kids play only with the cardboard box that contained the elaborate and expensive toy.  Skip the plastic toy and give kids the tools to make anything they can dream up.  You’ll need lots of cardboard, multi-colored masking tape, some fabric scraps and a little paint.  Here are directions and inspiration for making everything from a city to costumes to pizza to full-sized furniture all from cardboard.  As an added touch, wrap the book Not A Box by Antoinette Portis in a cardboard box and use the story as a springboard for your projects.

An Endless Story:  Find a special box or bag and fill it with small objects that inspire storytelling.  I’ve used tiny people, plastic animals, rubber bands, marbles, paperclips, scraps of yarn and buttons.  Use the objects in the box to play storytelling games.  You might select three random objects and tell your child a story incorporating the objects.  Then ask your child to select three objects and tell you a story.  To keep the game fresh, surprise your child with new objects.

Blocks:  Wood blocks are one of the best catalysts for open-ended, creative play.   These blocks are offered by City and Country School, whose founder Caroline Pratt invented the unit block that is a basic material in schools across the United States.  Kids develop an intrinsic understanding of math concepts like patterns and fractions while collaborating to build cities, castles, skate parks and any other structure they can imagine.  The re-emergence of blocks in education is profiled in this article.

Books:  Giving kids books feels good.  Giving kids books with messages about thinking differently, the value of making mistakes and using simple tools to create new things, feels even better.  For a great list of picture books that inspire creativity, click here.

 

For Adults

Movement:  New research suggests a possible link between movement and creative thinking.  Most people don’t need research data to convince them that engaging in unfamiliar physical activities stimulates their brain in new ways.  Just the suggestion of trapeze school takes my mind in new directions (and sends lightening bolts of fear across my heart).  Sign your giftee up for a movement class that is a bit of a stretch, and one you know they’ll be excited to try.  For some people that may be a one-hour yoga class or a trial session with a personal trainer.  For others it may be rock climbing or STREB’s PopAction class.

Books and Resources:  Perfect for the non-artist, Make Art Make Mistakes is full of fun exercises like “Draw a fight between yellow and purple,” and “How might you show blue and red dancing?”  It’s an open-ended coloring book for adults.  The Observation Deck is a card deck of prompts like “Create a Conflict” and “Raise the Stakes.”  The prompt cards can be used on their own to suggest new directions and ideas, and you can consult the accompanying book for stories about how famous authors have used each strategy.  If someone on your gift list needs to make a personal or professional change, give her a boost with Innovation You by Jeff DeGraff.  With a conversational tone and engaging anecdotes, this book translates the innovation practices used by corporations into strategies individuals can use to bring more creativity into their lives.

A New Interest:  I practiced metalsmithing for years because a friend signed me up for classes.  I can make a decent pizza crust as a result of a class I was given.  It’s true that I could have signed myself up for these things, but because of time, I might not have.  By giving me gift certificates for these classes, my friends made trying new things a priority for me.

Find a class that might be interesting to your giftee and sign them up for a new experience.  Check with local colleges and universities for classes on everything from botany to literature to improv to architecture.

Food:  Help the adventurous foodies on your list bring the latest culinary trend home with a molecular gastronomy kit.  Maybe they’ll invite you over for some frozen chocolate wind or grapefruit air.  Simple, unique ingredients can light a creative spark for the home cook.  Preserved lemons aren’t usually on my shopping list, but the jar I received last year inspired me to create two new dishes.  A jar of blueberry syrup became the focal point for winter desserts at my house (imagine freshly fallen snow topped with blueberry syrup).  Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything is the only cookbook that makes me feel like a creative cook, as opposed to one married to recipes.  While there are specific directions, they are somehow sketchier than other cookbooks, leaving more to my imagination.  And Bittman provides endless variations that encourage me to keep generating ideas where he left off.

A Collection:  Think about what your giftee truly loves and help them start collecting it.  Collections of favorite things inspire us because of their design, color or our emotional connections to them.  On every vacation, my family collects rocks from the places we visit.  My husband collects antique levels.  A family friend has a collection of drinking glasses from all 50 states.  Other ideas include unique buttons, concert posters, and picture frames.  If a collection can be connected to a memory you’ve shared with the giftee, all the better.  A collection’s display can be as important as the objects themselves.  Provide what your giftee needs to display their collection in an appealing way.

Have you received a gift that inspired your creativity?  Tell us about it.

Author:  Michelle Conrad

Ten Creatively Destructive Thoughts

Someone recently said to me, “There are no new ideas.”

I was walking down the street pondering this thought the other day, when I overheard an animated conversation between an elderly woman in a wheel chair and her young attendant.  The attendant said, “Did you get my email about the 10 Destructive Thoughts?”  The woman in the wheelchair, twisting the yellow ribbon from a Happy Birthday balloon around her finger said, “No, but I can’t wait to read it!”  I was intrigued.  What are the 10 Destructive Thoughts and why would someone be excited to read them?

Then I realized that before my eavesdropping distracted me, I was thinking a creatively destructive thought.  I was remembering how deflated I felt when my friend said, “There are no new ideas.”  I imagined that I heard the whining sound of air leaving a big brightly colored balloon, as my thoughts sank back to reality.  If this negative thought is powerful enough to bring me down that fast, I wondered about the effects of the opposing thought, “New ideas are everywhere.”  Much better, like the world is full of possibilities!

While I know I can’t win the $245 million lottery by thinking about it, I do believe that thinking positively can change your thought patterns, moods and behaviors.  If you don’t agree, try this at the gym:  repeat to yourself, “There’s no point,” while doing pushups.  It’s a real downer.  Try it again with your own version of, “I am superwoman.”  I think you’ll experience the difference.

With a nod to Stuart Smalley, I’ll assert that identifying our creatively destructive thoughts can help us understand their power and use it to promote a more positive mindset.  So here are 10 Creatively Destructive Thoughts and their antidotes, the opposing, creatively energizing thoughts, for your consideration:

1.  “There are no new ideas,” aka “It’s been done.”  Maybe there are themes of ideas that have been carried down through time, but I contend that completely new approaches, insights, products and methods are created every day.  The list of new ideas is endless, so let’s just name a few. Drybar, the highly successful blowout only hair salon, 1Q84, Huraki Murakami’s bizarre and wonderful new book, crispy kale chips, the sure-fire way to get kids to eat their greens.

Antidote:  “New ideas are everywhere.”  “It’s never been done like this before.”

2.  “I’m not creative.”  Kids who are great at making visual art are told very early in their lives, “You’re so creative.”  Kids who are not inclined to draw or paint are not given this praise.  Labels like these influence how a child thinks about him or herself and their creative abilities for life.  It’s important to recognize and reinforce the many forms of creativity, not just artistic expression.  Creative thinking is subtler, it’s revealed in the way children use language, engage in dramatic play and solve problems.

As adults, we have the choice to resist the labels others give us and that we give ourselves.  Approaching life creatively is a choice, one that you can make every day.

Antidote:  “I am creative.”  You can make this more specific by identifying your particular creative talent.

3. “That’s kid stuff.”  Not all creative efforts require play, but most could benefit from it.  It has been well documented that play leads to more flexible, creative thinking in all humans.  Still many people are reluctant to engage in playful activities, even in the pursuit of new ideas.  Many people choose to hold on to their serious, all-business facades, rather than risk looking like they might be enjoying themselves doing something seemingly purposeless.

But play has a purpose.  Its purpose is to allow you to indulge your curiosities, learn something new and expand your frame of reference.  If you haven’t played in a while, choose something you enjoy doing and immerse yourself in it regularly.

Antidote:  “Play will make me a more flexible, creative thinker.”

4.  “I don’t have time.”  The only way to create remarkable work is to spend time with a project, ideally every day.  Taking on a creative project may require that you shuffle your priorities and reduce some distracting behaviors.  Start work an hour early a few times a week and use the time for creative thinking.  Turn off the TV and computer a few nights a week.  Spend your lunch breaks with your creative work.  Use an hour or two of your weekend free time.   Protect these time slots as sacred space for deep thinking.

Antidote:  “I’ll make time for creative work because it’s important to me.”

5.  “I’ve got more important things to do.”  I feel a little bit guilty if I don’t appear to be doing something productive.  Deep, creative thinking requires a certain amount of spacing out, wandering around allowing thoughts to form.  Allow yourself a certain amount of time each day or each week to be unproductive.  Resist the external and internal pressure to make something from your creative work.  You might paint a masterpiece or you might simply enjoy the fresh perspective that comes from thinking differently.

Antidote:  “Spacing out and letting thoughts simmer can lead to breakthroughs.”

6.  “It won’t work.”  It might not, the first few times.  But the fear of failure is a poor reason to stop trying.  It’s important to celebrate failure and congratulate yourself for taking risks.  Have a monthly Failure Party where you applaud yourself for trying, examine the failing elements of your ideas and find ways to turn them around, reverse an element, substitute a different part or exaggerate the parts that are working.

Antidote:  “Failure is a key part of the creative process.”

7.  “It’s too much work.”  Creative endeavors are daunting.  It is much easier to work on definable tasks with clear answers and finish lines, rather than follow creative impulses that lead to unknown territory.   If you’re already feeling overwhelmed by your daily life, it’s hard to imagine adding another project, albeit a creative one, to your to-do list.

If you reframe your creative work time as play time, it can become a refreshing respite in your day.  Work with a friend, in a different location, in bite-sized chunks while playing loud music.  Do whatever you need to do to make the time and effort you spend with your creative project feel energizing, rather than depleting.

Antidote:  “Creative work is an energizing respite.”

8.  “I’m not inspired.”  It’s tempting to wait for inspiration to come to us.   Sometimes those ‘aha’ moments where I think of a previously elusive solution while driving or taking a shower seem almost magical.  Actually, a lot of preparation went into making those moments happen.  Studying a problem from many angles, using creative exercises to generate solutions, walking down the street in an open frame of mind, listening to new music.  These are all sources of inspiration for me.   Identify your sources and tap into them regularly, not just when you need an idea.  Then let it all percolate.

Antidote:  “I gather inspiration all the time.”

9.  “There’s no money in it.”  Whenever I pursue something entrepreneurial that might not translate into immediate financial success, I hear a bellowing voice inside my head.  When I left a cushy job to form a start-up the voice yelled, “You might end up living in a box under a bridge!”

It’s almost impossible to judge the financial viability of any brand new idea, much less the merits of a creative project.  Focusing on money too early in the creative process is guaranteed to kill a great idea.  Protect your new ideas and creative projects by turning off the money meter.  There’ll be plenty of time for financial analysis later.

Antidote:  “I’ll worry about money later.”

10.  “What if it works?”  What if you shuffle your priorities to include deep thinking, you play, let it percolate, tell yourself you’re creative and even let go of money concerns for a while, and it all works!  You create something remarkable and the world takes note!  That’s great, right?  Yes, and maybe slightly scary.  Now you have a creative reputation to uphold.  I’ve heard writers say their second book is the hardest because there are higher expectations.  The fear of not being able to pull it off again could potentially stop someone from trying in the first place.  Let go of the pressure to perform and approach your next creative endeavor with a spirit of exploration, curiosity and discovery.

Antidote:  “If I can do it once, I’ll do it again.”

Do you ever catch yourself thinking creatively destructive thoughts?  What are they, and how do you overcome them?”

Author:  Michelle Conrad

Are you addicted to ideas?

I have a confession to make.  I’m addicted to generating ideas.  There is nothing better than a blank sheet of paper, begging for new ideas.  I can easily spend hours generating ideas for virtually any problem, challenge or creative need.  Lucky for me, at ThinkShop I work with clients to help them generate breakthrough ideas for their businesses.  When it comes to my own ideas, I sometimes lose momentum when moving an idea from a concept in my mind to a creation in the world.

Admittedly, I have trouble turning off the idea switch.  Ideas constantly flow into my head, tempting and distracting me, begging me for attention.   Over the years I’ve learned to deliberately move from idea generation into idea implementation, using many of the techniques that we use with our ThinkShop clients.  If you’re an idea addict like me, here are some things you can do to move from imagination to action:

1. Recognize your strengths and weaknesses.   Are you naturally more of an idea generator or an idea implementer?  If you can relate to my earlier description, then you probably prefer to generate ideas.  If you tend to run short of ideas but love to move ideas forward, you’re more likely to be an implementer.  For those in this category, take a look at our post entitled  Ten Tips to Spark Innovative Thinking.   Recognizing your strengths and weaknesses within the creative process is the first step to making great ideas happen.

2. Say “no” to say “yes”.  Implementation starts with choosing one idea from your long brainstorming list.  First, establish your criteria for success.  Does the idea need to be executable within a short timeframe?  Do you need an idea that fits within a fixed budget?  Is there a specific target customer you’re trying to reach? Remember to say “no” to many ideas in order to have the time and resources to say “yes” to one.

3.  Start small.  Don’t start by executing your most ambitious idea.  Train your brain to implement smaller ideas, every day.  Just as ThinkShop recommends that you exercise your creative brain every day, you can also finish a small part of a larger idea every day to tone your implementation muscle.

4. Be deliberate.  Follow a deliberate process to move ideas from concept to creation.  The steps in ThinkShop’s creative process are:  Focus, Imagine, Choose, Develop and Act.  Spend time in the Choose, Develop and Act phases to move ideas forward.  After you’ve chosen an idea, develop it by adding details and addressing any concerns.  Refine some more.  Then create an action plan for executing the idea.

5. If you don’t have time, it’s not a priority.  Sometimes when one of my ideas doesn’t get traction, my default excuse is, “I just don’t have time to work on it.”  We are all busy.  Things get done when they become a priority.  Schedule time each day to work on your idea.

6. If you don’t have the skills, get help.  At some point in the implementation process you may find that you simply can’t move forward without the help of others.  Find a co-worker with the implementation mindset to help.  Hire someone to do those tasks that are beyond your skill set.  When I realized that I couldn’t easily create a website to promote a new idea, I hired someone to help and the task got done.

7. Embrace your fears.  When it comes to bringing new ideas into the world, we all have fears. Whether you are writing a book, developing a new product, training for a marathon or giving a speech, you’ll likely run into fear along the way.  You may experience fear of failure, fear of success, fear of looking stupid – you get the idea.  Understand and embrace your fear to diffuse its power.

8. Remember your purpose.  Sometimes when you are deep into the implementation process, you lose touch with your original excitement for an idea.  It’s easy to lose motivation and momentum when you are six months into writing a book or on the fifth iteration of your new product idea.  Close your eyes and remember the original purpose of your idea.  Why is this a good idea?  Why is it meaningful to you?  Watch as the passion for the idea flows back into your implementation process.

9. Visualize the end product.  If you’re more of a right brain thinker, you likely think in pictures and visualize ideas.  When I’m mired in less enticing implementation tasks, I try to visualize the end product as a way to keep motivated.  If you imagine your idea in the world, it’s more likely to get there.

1o. Celebrate along the way.  Some ideas take months or years to complete.  I like to celebrate successes along the way with special rewards – dinner out at a favorite restaurant, a massage, a day off to play.  Break the implementation of your idea into smaller steps, reward yourself, then celebrate in a big way when your idea is complete.

Author:  Chris Fagan

Talking Creativity on Talk Radio

Yesterday I was a guest on the Walk the Talk with Kim radio show on KKNW 1150am (www.walkthetalkwithkim.com).  If you had a chance to listen in, I hope you enjoyed the show.  I shared a few tips for creating great ideas and talked about turning my personal adventures into a way to give back.

Creativity Tips

As promised, here is a quick summary of the brainstorming tips I talked about on the show:

Speak in How tos and I wishes:  When brainstorming, use the language How to and I wish to promote speculation and problem-solving.  Create clear concise headlines for ideas.  Record all of your ideas.

Open your Mind:  Suspend judgment, don’t censor yourself or others.  Be free with your ideas. Say yes to everything.  Look for the value in every idea.  Idea generation and idea evaluation are different modes of thinking…use one mode at a time.

More is Better: To discover truly creative solutions, strive for quantity.  After you’ve unearthed the tried and true, dig deeper to find ideas that surprise you.

If you’d like to try out the creative exercise that I described during the show, follow these instructions:

Challenge Assumptions:  When you lift conditions that seem permanent and unchangeable, you can unleash a flood of new ways to think about a challenge.  Start this exercise by writing down an assumption about your situation.  When it comes to recruiting volunteers for a nonprofit organization, you may assume that you compete with other nonprofits for volunteers.   Next, make a shocking statement about your situation that challenges that assumption.  Our shocking statement:  We need to collaborate with other nonprofits to recruit volunteers.  This instantly changes the way that you think about your challenge.  This statement inspired these starter ideas:

1. How to collaborate and share volunteers between two complementary organizations
2. How to create a pool of volunteers within my community
3. How to pool the vetting process of volunteers
4. I wish to learn how other organizations in my community recruit and retain volunteers
5. I wish to expand the donor pool for all

Use the statements as stimuli to generate more fully developed ideas.  For example, a hospital could partner with a local school district to recruit, vet and share volunteers.

Giving Back

As discussed on the show, I applied ThinkShop’s innovation process to create a fundraising event called Kilimanjaro for Kids.  It’s an idea that turns my family adventures into a way to give back.

In December of this year, my family (including my 10 year-old son) will bike 200 miles from the base of Kilimanjaro to the coast of Tanzania, then climb Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa.   We are working with the nonprofit Friends of Africa Education to raise funds to build two new classrooms for St. Margaret’s Academy in Tanzania.  Learn more or donate to this great cause at www.kilimanjaroforkids.com.  You can also follow our journey at www.facebook.com/kilimanjaroforkids.

Author:  Chris Fagan

10 Guidelines for Brainstorming Success

My independent calculations suggest that there are a zillion brainstorming sessions going on across the world at any given moment.  We know that we can’t be in a zillion places at once, yet we at ThinkShop want to ensure that every brainstorming session is productive and engaging.  We also know that many of you are asked to facilitate brainstorming sessions and that budgets and time do not permit you all to attend our ShopTalk  facilitation training.  So today we’re offering these 10 Guidelines to help you run more successful brainstorming sessions within your business or organization.

1.  Choose an unbiased facilitator:  A great facilitator is a process expert, seamlessly guiding a team to reach their outcomes.  A consummate multi-tasker, the facilitator is charged with creating and managing the team’s agenda, recording every idea, asking probing questions, preparing creative exercises, and keeping all group members happily participating.  Since your brain is in the full On position in this role and you’re listening intently to the content to ensure that the team is on the right track, you may be tempted to contribute an idea once in a while.  That’s OK, but it’s best to save your ideas for when you’re not leading the group.  You’ll be able to focus on guiding the process, and maintain your unbiased perspective.

If you can’t work with an outside facilitator, choose an Inside Outside facilitator, someone who works in a different department or area of the company.  A facilitator that is not directly involved with the content will bring an impartial and fresh perspective.

And a critical point here:  the Boss, no matter how talented, should never facilitate.  The pressure to impress may squash the team’s creative impulses.

2.  Identify one key decision-maker:  Identify the team member who has the most power and authority to direct the efforts of the team and take action on the ideas after the brainstorming session.  Meet with this person before the session to nail down specific objectives.  The decision-maker is the content expert, providing input on areas to pursue further and with the team’s help, selecting ideas that are fresh and interesting.

3.  Recruit a diverse team:  The ideal team has between eight and fourteen people with diverse backgrounds and interests.  Cast a wide net when looking for participants.  Invite people from different groups or departments within your organization and consider inviting your out-of-work actor or poet friends to participate.  Diverse minds are the key to creating a diverse set of great ideas.  Be clear that participants are expected to stay for the full session.  It can be de-motivating to a group to lose team members mid-stream.

4.  Set clear, focused objectives:  Work with your decision-maker to create concise and achievable objectives.  State your objectives as How to or I wish statements, such as “How to reduce waste in our production process,” or “I wish to create healthy, portable snacks for teens.”

List four or five specific criteria for evaluating ideas (e.g., positions our brand as the healthy snack expert, appeals to moms and teens), and describe the elements that make a complete idea (e.g., name, detailed description, benefits, an illustration).  This upfront preparation will set the stage for a focused, productive session.

5.  Find a free, off-site space:  Taking a group to an off-site location can be a creative exercise in itself.  If you have a budget, rent a room at a local museum or event facility.  For the cash-strapped, a coffee shop, restaurant party room or park can provide creative inspiration free from the distractions of the office.

6.  Present and enforce the guidelines for brainstorming:  Find a way to elicit the guidelines for brainstorming from your group at the beginning of the session.  It can be as simple as asking the team how they’d like to work together.  Most likely, they’ll suggest that they’d like to suspend judgment, think freely, build on ideas, be fully present and headline their ideas.  When the participants suggest the guidelines, they are more likely to comply with them. Have a list of guidelines ready to present as a reminder.

7.  Have a big bag of tricks:  Engage the team with creative exercises that tap into multiple senses.  Use word games, explore color, play music, bring in photos.  When you’ve exhausted the potential of one exercise, quickly move on to the next.  Alternate between solo exercises, small team work and full group activities.  You’ll find examples of creatives exercises on our website.

8.  Strive for quantity:  To discover truly great ideas, strive for a large number of ideas.  First, unearth the tried and true, then push the team to dig deeper to find surprising ideas.  Embrace the ideas that seem crazy.  Prompt the team to find the nuggets of possibility hidden in far-out places.

9.  Converge and develop:  Brainstorming is so much more than just blue-sky thinking.  For a session to be truly productive, your ideas have to be more than just interesting kernels of thought.  In ThinkShop sessions, we spend up to 50% of our time selecting the ideas with the most potential, developing them fully, and creating action plans.

To converge, ask the team to vote for the ideas they feel best meet the established criteria.  The facilitators and decision-maker create a top ideas list based on the team’s votes.  Next, ask small teams to create detailed concepts for each top idea.   Constructively evaluate your finished ideas by looking at the pluses, potential issues and opportunities.

10.  Follow-up:  Provide your decision-maker with the list of top ideas and the notes from the session.  Communicate frequently with the full team of participants to let them know the status of the ideas they helped create.  If your participants feel appreciated and in the loop, they’ll be motivated to help out again.

Author:  Michelle Conrad

Bee Inspired Part 2 – Name Generation

So the bountiful harvest fantasy that I described in Bee Inspired is just that, a fantasy.   We’ve decided to forgo our harvest until next year, and leave the bees with a stocked larder for the long winter ahead.  Instead of harvesting, we’re feeding our bees copious amounts of bee tea (a syrupy concoction of sugar, water and herbs), so that they can build enough comb to store enough honey to last until Spring.

I had intended to help out with the beekeeping this summer and I enjoyed many moments sitting by the hives watching the bees fly in carrying every color of yellow pollen on their back legs and fly back out to forage for more.  My bee tending fantasy went the way of my bountiful harvest fantasy.  I discovered the hard way that I’m allergic to stinging insects.  We’ll be able to keep the hives, if I keep my distance.

But all is not lost!  Next year, we hope to have honey and the tiny bits we’ve tasted have been delicious.  So on with the naming process.

Naming Guidelines

In the post Bee Inspired, I took a look at the honey category and laid out our criteria for great names.  Here I’ll describe how we generated over a hundred names for our honey using creative exercises called Excursions.  First, our guidelines for creating names, because I know you’ll be inspired to play along:

• Resist the temptation to evaluate names positively or negatively while you’re brainstorming.  Enjoy some time in blue-sky mode, since there will be plenty of time to analyze your ideas later in the process.
• Strive for quantity.  The only way to uncover great name options is to generate a lot of name options.
• Write down every idea.  This gives every idea equal value, and you’ll have a full record of all the names you generated.
• Build on your ideas.  Use each name as a spark for additional names.
• Embrace absurd ideas and follow their trail.  Far-out ideas may lead you to some of your best names.
• When you feel you’ve exhausted the potential of a creative exercise, quickly move on to something else.  
• Use a wide variety of exercises that tap into all of your senses and help you fully explore your subject.  We used words, pictures, colors and music.
• How do you know when you’re done?  When you’ve got several names that intuitively you feel great about.  Early in the process, it’s best to have a list of top ideas that you try on for size, rather than attaching all of your hopes to one idea.

Creative Exercises

Here are a few of the exercises we used to generate names for our honey.  We want to hear your ideas, so remember to jot them down.

Mindmap

Sometimes ideas are buried deep in the recesses of your mind and you literally need a map to find them.  Mindmapping is a technique for uncovering associations and meanings that lead to new ideas.

To get started, I selected a key word from my list of criteria.  I wrote the word PURE in the center of a piece of paper and asked myself, “What does PURE make me think of?”  I wrote my thoughts on lines that branch out from the key word, and reminded myself to free associate.  I filled a page with thoughts and associations.   Then I used my map as inspiration for creating names.

Words with multiple meanings are always fun to play with.  From my map, the word Fair jumped out at me because it can mean just or reasonable, pale or light, adequate or OK and festival.  How about Just Honey, HoneyLight and Festival Honey?  The word Honest sparked Bee Honest Honey and Honest Bee Honey.  Free followed Uncontaminated and sparked two of my favorite name contenders FreeBee Honey and BeeReal.

The word Wholesome took me on an unexpected virtual trip back to Iowa and my hometown.  And pop, there I found Hometown Honey!

 25 Things

Since the world of bees is so complex and contains so many interesting concepts, I decided to write them all down in one place.  I made a list of 25 Things I know about bees.  Then I selected a few of the most interesting concepts and began generating more names.

Here are the highlights from my list of 25 Things and the names they inspired:

Only 25% of wild hives survive:  To Bee or Not To Bee, BeeLeavit, BeeAble, BeeWise, The Fittest Bees, Bee Alive, Bee Healthy, HiveAlive, Let It Bee

Bees pollinate 40% of the world’s food supply:  Thanks Honey, Beecology, Flower Farm Honey, Sunny Honey, Sunny Skies, Clear Skies, Honey Wise, Pretty Pollen, Flower Tonic, Plant Potion

Bees sometimes swarm:  Swarm Sauce, Bee Venom, Killer Bee Honey, Sting, The Antidote, Poison Potion, Hive Brew, Hive Water, Hive Tonic, Killer Honey

All worker bees are female:  Mama’s Mixture, Lady Liquid, Busy Lady Honey, Vixen Venom

Bees never sleep:  Hard Day’s Night Honey, Hard Workin’ Honey, Up All Night, Never Rest Nectar, Worker Bee Honey

Color Exploration

After I played with words for a while, I moved on to color.  I took a set of paint chips that I collected at a hardware store and chose a few random colors.  I searched for a few objects to represent each color.  I wrote down adjectives that describe the colors and my associations with each color.  Then I used these thoughts to generate more names.

Green:  sprouts, growth, envy, fresh, sustainable, lush, raw, tender, verdant

Yellow:  amber, apricot, blond, lemon, straw, caution, to age or mature

Blue:  cool, modern, ocean, sad, robin’s egg, turquoise

Here are some of the names sparked by this exercise:  Amber Tonic, Raw Brew, Liquid Love, Lush Life Honey, Heavenly Hives, Hearty Hive, Healthy Hive, Fresh Hive, Tender Hive, New Hive, The Bee Collective, Busy Colony, Hexagon Honey and Bee Tea.

Photo Exploration

A very large, very old apple tree stands right next to our hives.  In the eight years that we’ve lived in Columbia County, this tree has produced only tiny, inedible apples.  This year, we’ve harvested crates of delicious apples from this tree, as you can see in the photo.  Was this a result of my husband’s care taking and careful pruning, or did the bees have something to do with it?  Maybe a combination of human and bee tending produced this wonderful harvest.  We don’t know, but I do know that this picture inspired many more name ideas for our honey, such as Bountiful Harvest, Apple Maker, Apple Honey, Awakening, New Start, Fresh Start, Alive Again, First Fruit, Apple of my Eye, Eve’s Nectar and Hapiary.

What’s Next

I have over 125 names for our honey, and I’m open to hear more.  If you’re inspired, try one of the exercises I described above.  Send me your names, I’ll add them to the list.  In a later post, I’ll describe how I’ll select the top names, constructively evaluate each of them and choose the winner.

Author:  Michelle Conrad

Make Your Best Ideas Happen in ThinkShop’s Creative Thinking Online Workshop!

Come one, come all to ThinkShop’s Create on Purpose Online Workshop.  In this powerful 5-week course, you’ll learn a process and tools for generating, developing and bringing forward your best ideas.

Everyone is creative.  Some people find inspiration everywhere and seem to have an endless supply of new ideas.  Drawings on the back of the dinner napkin, pages and pages of notes on i-phones and scribbles on post-it notes describe fantastic concepts.  Yet for a variety of reasons, be it lack of time, resources or planning, those ideas stay in their nascent state as wonderful mental riffs.  Other people inadvertently stifle their natural creativity simply because they don’t think of themselves as creative.  Because they are excellent planners and implementers they are often called on to do those tasks and rarely have the opportunity to exercise their right brains.

Most of us fall somewhere on this spectrum of Only Thinking to Only Doing.  Sometimes ideas flow freely, and other times we feel creatively stuck.  The path to implementing a new idea is only occasionally obvious and frequently murky.

All of us can benefit from a process and tools for creating and bringing new ideas to fruition.  When you feel full of ideas, you will benefit from the discipline provided by our step-by-step process which helps you select, develop and refine your best ideas.  When you are short on ideas, a process provides a much-needed creative spark.

Read our blog post describing the benefits of this exciting, new online course.

Who Should Attend?  Everyone!  Whether you’re a marketing genius, real estate agent, brand manager, teacher or astronaut — we all need agile, flexible minds and better ideas in our work and personal lives.

The Details

Hosts:  ThinkShop Co-Founders Chris Fagan and Michelle Conrad facilitate live classes each week

Dates:  5 Wednesdays from June 22nd to July 20

Time:  12:00 pm – 1:30 pm EST (11:00 am – 12:30 pm CST, 9:00 am – 10:30 am PST)

Format:  Interactive and visually rich online meetings are backed up by provocative homeplay assignments, an extensive manual loaded with creative exercises, and two drop-in calls where you can ask questions and learn from others in the Create On Purpose community.

Class Archive:  You’ll have access to an archive of recorded classes should you miss a class or wish to review what you’ve learned.

What You’ll Get

• A process that will help you focus your thinking, and generate, refine and bring forward your best ideas
• Professional training from the convenience of your office or home
• New ideas for personal and professional challenges
• Access to the Create On Purpose community, a group of creative thinkers from across the country
• A fun and energizing experience that will make creative thinking your natural state of mind
• The knowledge and confidence to use the Create on Purpose process on your own

Reserve your space by Friday, May 27th and receive a 10% discount. Click here and enter the code “earlybird” at checkout.  The class is limited to 10 spaces to ensure a quality experience for all.

What Participants are Saying

“America’s edge in the world economy is creativity and innovation, yet we don’t really know how to teach creative thinking and problem solving processes to our students or our workforce.  Create on Purpose fills this need.  It throws open the paint box of possibilities for creating everything from art to new products.  Its step-by-step strategy is an effective, enjoyable and meaningful way to learn these important skills.”

- Connie Fletcher, Washington State Board of Education

“The Create On Purpose process is an amazing approach for bringing fresh ideas to an issue.  The process helps you clearly articulate your goals, making the paths to execution crystal clear and so exciting!  I’ll use this learning over and over again, both personally and professionally!”

- Irene Tengwall, General Mills

Author:  Michelle Conrad

Ramps on the Rise, a Celebration of the Baby Leek

This past weekend a group of chefs from New York City and the Hudson Valley hosted the first Ramp Fest in Hudson, New York.  Ramps are wildly popular among chefs for several reasons.  They are the first foreagable green to appear after a long grey winter of root vegetables.  They are elusive, with a very short growing season, a few weeks max in mid-April and early May.  And they have a stronger, wilder flavor than their cultivated cousins.

Ramps, aka baby leeks, ramsons, buckrams and wild onions, smell like garlic, taste a bit like onions and sort of resemble scallions.   They can be steamed, sautéed, juiced, baked, pickled and can add flavor to almost any dish.

Ramp pop-tarts

As a constantly striving home cook, it was inspiring to see how each chef at the festival took the ramp in a unique direction.  We sampled ramp pop-tarts, a ramp and bacon quiche, and goat in a ramp leaf curry with a pickled ramp garnish.  Zak Pelaccio from the Fatty Crab followed this dish with shots of bourbon and a ramp pickle chaser.  Also on offer were wild mushroom risotto fritters with a lemon ramp emulsion and a potato ramp soup.

The most memorable dish for me was a ramp and lime sorbet.  It was unexpectedly tasty, refreshing and sweet with just a hint of rampy pungence.  I’ve experimented with throwing all kinds of green things into ice cream, smoothies and sorbets to get my kids to eat vegetables, but this was on a whole different level.  Chef Daniel Nilsson of DA|BA in Hudson served his concoction by the spoonful, which added to its specialness, and allowed him to have a conversation with just about everyone passing by.  I had several conversations and several spoonfuls, and am thinking of trying this one at home. 

The chicken ramp sausages with grilled ramps and romesco sauce from Ramp Fest founder-organizer Jeff Gimmel of Swoon Kitchenbar flew off the serving plate.   This is one dish for which people stood and waited in line.  

The day after the Ramp Fest, we found our local ramp supply right down the road from our house.  You can sometimes find them in grocery stores ($9.99/lb at Whole Foods), but it’s much more fun to forage.   To protect ramps from over-harvesting, just harvest the leaves, not the whole plant.

Last night, we had ramps and pea shoots sautéed in butter with a little balsamic vinegar.  Simple, tasty and gone faster than ramp season!

Author:  Michelle Conrad