Creative Encounters Blog

The Skool of Creativity

simonjack — Mon, 01 Oct 2012 23:44:07 +0000

The Skool of Creativity (SoC) has opened its doors to everyone. So whenever you see the lightbulb and the sock, you know there’ creativity afoot!

You can find the very first SoC lesson right here on Phinkit:

Things Aren’t Always as They Seem.

In fact, Creative Encounters helped to found Phinkit. It’s a creativity based social business site and you’ll find much more from me (Simon Jack) on there. Just click the logo beneath to be taken there.

Free Online Creative Thinking Course

simonjack — Sat, 24 Mar 2012 11:21:05 +0000

I’ve just released a free creative thinking course to the world. Yeeeha!

>>Creative Thinking Essentials<<

Oh so you don’t quite share my excitement?

Well perhaps if I explain why you need creativity?

There’s so much information out there, with so many supposed experts and ‘gurus’ pedalling their own brand of success secrets. Yikes- what a recipe for a headache! Then there’s the danger of going round and round in circles, chasing new advice and the ‘next big thing’. Fine to keep abreast, but too much reliance will ultimately cause you to lose focus and stall.

But once you’ve really got to grips with creativity, you won’t need anything else! You will become your own business guru and begin to make wonderfully creative decisions that drive real progress. Why trust an unknown when you know you can do it your way!?

Excited now??!

This free course is the baby sister of the full course ‘Discover Your Creative Genius‘. But it still packs a punch, with 3 short and sharp modules that are going to change the way you think forever. Here’s a run-down:

1. Kick the Habit

Break routine to invigorate your creativity. Simply question why you’re doing something that same old way. It’s either that or staying stuck in a rut of alternative ignorance.

2. Method in the Madness

Even the silliest ideas have great potential. Give yourself freedom to blurt out even your most absurd ideas then rationalise them by extracting useful concepts.

3. I Did it My Way

If it ain’t broke, you can still fix it! Don’t just accept solutions because they are the only ones available. Design your own! Uncover your frustrations and reinvent ideas that truly meet your needs.

Now get out there, and surprise yourself with what you can achieve!

Ideas Poker

simonjack — Thu, 22 Mar 2012 13:15:02 +0000

What’s the most productive and fun way to come up with the best ideas from a brainstorming session?

Ideas Poker of course!

Ideas Poker works on the basis that truly great ideas form when the best bits of individual ideas are combined. Essentially, you can harness the entire group’s intelligence rather than rely on solo efforts to come up with the goods.

Here’s how to play…

1. In a group, brainstorm ideas for a particular challenge, with each idea written down on a separate index card. You then collect all ideas in a pack and each player is dealt 2 cards. Then similar to the way you’d play Texas Hold Em, you play 3 rounds, each time with a card from the pack being dealt into the middle.

2. During each round, players have to try and find ways of connecting the ideas or elements of ideas to form a new idea. So as the 3 rounds progress, there become more options for new connections.

3. Once the 3 rounds are over, you can score the game based on the ‘hands’ people have managed to invent. Each player will describe which idea cards they have used to connect their new idea together.

The scoring system is based the following poker hands. This rewards the players’ ability to make multiple new connections.

Note: Make sure you capture all ideas. Even though you may not get a winning hand through the number of connections, you may still come up with some great ideas in the process.

If you play Ideas Poker, let me know how you get on for heaven’s sake!

Why not check out more great creativity games now!?

Discover Your Creative Genius

simonjack — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 11:18:18 +0000

How great would it be to think like a genius?

Hmm, but just ponder that for a second…

I already have enough to do without having to solve advanced maths problems, recite obscure historical facts and I have absolutely no intention of appearing on Mastermind any time soon. Not to mention my strong desire to avoid being branded as a mighty smart-arse and all of a sudden having to hang out with nerds.

I don’t know about you, but that’s definitely not for me!

But what if you could tap into a part of you that makes you think more effectively and also have more fun? That’s your creative genius. That’s what makes you see beyond the obvious, wow people with your on the spot insights and surprise yourself with your brilliant ideas.

Yes please, I’ll have some of that!

Sounds tough? Nonsense! I reckon you can discover it quite easily… with no more than a positive attitude and a little bit of guidance.

So here are 10 principles behind discovering your creative genius:

1- Kick the Habit

Break routine to invigorate your creativity. Simply question why you’re doing something that same old way. It’s either that or staying stuck in a rut of alternative ignorance.

2- Kill Your Internal Censor

Your internal censor is keeping you on the straight and narrow. Great. The trouble is it can be health and safety for the brain gone mad! So subdue your censor, be a little risque and free your creative voice.

3- You’ve Been Reframed

Seek new meaning in your challenges. Quite simply, the more ways you find of expressing something, the more options you will have to start creating with.

4- Method in the Madness

Even the silliest ideas have great potential. Give yourself freedom to blurt out even your most absurd ideas then rationalise them by extracting useful concepts.

5- I Did it My Way

6- Preconception is Mental Contraception

If assumptions always stayed the same, where would change and progress come from?! Destroy rigid thinking structures by busting your assumptions and fertilise your mind ready to re-create from within.

7- One Plus One Gives One

Why do all the hard work to create from scratch when there are ready-formed ideas that you can splice together to create even greater value?! Look to combine ideas from different fields for unexpected and exciting new creations.

8- Use the Force

Sometimes breaking out of your existing frame of reference can be a beast. To avoid mulling over the same old thoughts, go abstract and use offbeat metaphors and random stimulation to spur new thought paths.

9- Fun and Mental is Fundamental

If it’s funny, it’s likely to be the start of something beautifully creative. Learn a few comedy techniques to create provocative arrangements then just see where this leads your thinking.

10- A Win-Whinge Situation

Idea evaluation is your chance to show your thinking superiority right? Wrong!! Critical thinking can kill creativity, so make sure the two are done separately. Also learn to let your subconscious be your guide- whilst you chill out, your subconscious is beavering away at a winning solution. How sweet is that deal?!

Ok, interesting, but not quite doing it for you in the genius stakes? Well come on, it’s not that easy. Fortunately I have put together a brilliant online course (ahem, shameless self promotion) to take you through these 10 steps and really get to grips with the various techniques.

Find out more and enroll here: Discover Your Creative Genius.

In fact, I’m so confident it’s going to make a superb creative thinker of you, I’ve even put a money back guarantee on it!

If you want to just dip your toes in, you can enroll in Creative Thinking Essentials absolutely free!

What’s more, I’ll be on hand if your creative genius is shy and needs a little initial hand-holding. Even if your creative genius is bold and wants to do a bit of showboating, I’ll be there waiting with the ego massage oil!

Back On It!

simonjack — Mon, 19 Mar 2012 10:06:46 +0000

Yikes, the Creative Encounters blog has been a bit quiet lately. Hmm perhaps just overwintering, ready to be reborn in the spring.

Woah deep.

But it’s back. And with many exciting things going on. There’s loads of juicy content waiting in the wings.

The Caption Competition has sprung back into life and is better than ever now there’s a real prize!

There’s also now the online course: Discover Your Creative Genius, which promises to give anyone the ability to come up with better ideas. Big claim but I’m confident!

Plus I’m involved in an exciting new ‘social media’ project- Phinkit. Finally, a site to put personality into my online business interactions without being judged on my ‘professionalism’ or the number of people I have collected!

Gotta rush now.. lots to do, but see you again very soon!

Simon

Funny Business – Changing the Scales

simonjack — Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:30:28 +0000

What's the word on the street?!

Today we’re changing the scales to make a regular situation seem funny and harnessing new insights for creative ideas on the Funny Business challenge of ‘making training more memorable’.

A classic example of changing the scales comes from the sitcom Red Dwarf in the episode ‘Backwards’. Rimmer is administering a Starbug driving test for Kryten and he begins with the theory…

Rimmer: You’re travelling at half the speed of light. What is the stopping distance?

Kryton: 4 years, 3 months.

Rimmer: And the thinking time?

Kryton: A fortnight.

Here the classic stopping distances question in car driving examinations has been blown way out of proportion for hilarious effect.

Let’s have a go…

How about a 1 week intensive course on importance of time management? This time might be better spent by providing easily digestible short skills sessions on a regular basis. This will ensure skills are constantly reaffirmed and improved.

Imagine hiring a conference centre complete with dazzling visual presentations on huge screens and celebrity guest speakers- but only for the purposes of training a tiny group. It would be completely over the top. But bringing it back to reality, people will forget if no effort is put in to providing them with an experience. So make people feel like superstars and worth the effort, no matter how many in attendance.

There’s more Funny Business just around the corner…

Funny Business – Overstatement

simonjack — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 09:48:28 +0000

Overstatement is a form of exaggeration, only more specifically related to an individual’s response.

This is how overstatement works:

Take a situation, ideally one that’s loaded with a bit of tension.
Find the logical response. What would you normally expect to happen?
Do the opposite. Make the response unexpected and irrational.
Exaggerate to make the response wildly inappropriate.

Here are a few examples of wildly inappropriate responses:

- Pulled over for speeding. Apologise by offering the policeman a beer.

- Having marital problems. Hire a stunt double to sub in for heated arguments with the misses.

- Providing pole vaulting classes for prison inmates.

So let’s apply this technique to our Funny Business challenge of ‘making training more memorable’ and see what creative solutions can be extracted…

Instead of feedback forms, participants could hold up Olympic-judge-style scorecards or maybe each participant has a Britain’s Got Talent style buzzer and when 3 crosses light up the trainer has to change the act to be more entertaining. Take this further and the trainer could be wired up to an electric shock system and they get a small jolt if they are not inspiring. Combining these ideas could lead to the following creative solution…. People are given colour coded place cards that they can flip over when they are confused. The trainer would immediately gain feedback and be able to instruct the group and particular individuals with greater effect. This would provide a means of giving ongoing feedback rather than just at the end when nothing can be done about it.
Why manually split the group into teams for break-out sessions when you could instate team captains to pick ‘players’ in turn? Reminiscent of football practice at school, inevitably, those with the weakest skills will be picked last (oh the painful memories). However, turning this into a creative solution, you could run an exercise where you assign certain people a persona with a prominent character flaw and captains have to pick their teams to best effect from the selection of ‘skills’ on offer e.g. ‘know it all’, ‘nitpicker’, ‘bully’, ‘apathetic’, ‘overbearing’, ‘follower’. This would demonstrate how different personas can affect group dynamics and how to overcome their ill effects. It would be a great exercise for soft skills training e.g. facilitation, management and leadership styles.

So that’s overstatement. There will be more Funny Business very soon…

Funny Business – Understatement

simonjack — Thu, 24 Nov 2011 15:30:39 +0000

Who remembers the Ministry of Silly Walks? If you’re not familiar with this Monty Python classic, you must watch!

Ordinarily the ministry of silly walks would be a totally absurd government department (not wanting to open up a can of worms by using government and absurd in the same sentence!). But in this sequence, no matter how much legs jangle, protrude and contort, everyone maintains a straight face and a serious business discussion ensues. It’s a great example of an understated reaction to a silly, silly situation.

The blueprint is fairly simple:

Take a common situation and exaggerate it to a level of absurdity.
Identify what the logical response would be in that situation.
Make the actual reaction as close to the opposite of logical as possible.
Find a way of turning this reaction into a positive solution.

So let’s try it with our Funny Business challenge of ‘making training more memorable’…

Example 1= Imagine people bored and staring out of a window, only to look directly into another boring training session! A possible positive solution is to run training courses in parallel and arrange for people to swap between different sessions during the day to keep energy and enthusiasm up.

Example 2= Adolescent boys not paying any attention whatsoever even though a very sexy, scantily clad woman is taking the class. I guess even the best courses can be made dull if the content isn’t engaging beneath the surface and the speaker doesn’t have the right sort of pizzazz.

Example 3= A fire breaks out during a health and safety training course! And the trainer’s response: “Please all read your health and safety guide chapter 8 then we’ll learn about the correct emergency response for this situation”. The lesson here is not to be overly pedantic. People crave autonomy and freedom of expression, so enable them with skills and the ability and trust them to use with their intuition when the time is right. Otherwise skills will become very impersonal, be forgotten or at best, be approached with mere compliance.

Next up is understatement’s partner in crime… overstatement.

Funny Business – Satire

simonjack — Tue, 22 Nov 2011 16:09:27 +0000

Today there’s some satirical funny business. With satire, the weapon is irony; pretend to accept reasoning in order to expose the absurdity. And to up the comic ante, you can really exaggerate the defunct aspects.

Here’s the blueprint:

Find an aspect of your challenge that you disagree with or think is obsolete. There may even be a handy negative stereotype to work with.
Reframe that negative aspect so that it becomes the main focus of an absurd solution.
Exaggerate and raise the humour stakes!
Extract key concepts in order to rework this provocative springboard into a practical creative solution.

Let’s apply satire to our funny business challenge of ‘making training more memorable’.

Example 1: Training is ineffective at remedying stubborn behaviours.

So provide training skills in all the undesirable management skills that we all know so well e.g. blame, mistrust, jargon, ego, snideness. You can just imagine the agenda!

The truth here is sometimes people will continue their ingrained behaviours unless the need to change is pointed out. Therefore, training might not only teach necessary skills but the attitudes required in order to ensure they are successfully implemented.

Example 2: Training is an inconvenience.

You’ve organised training on the most fascinating subject that is guaranteed to change people’s lives. But no-one is there as you haven’t provided lunch! Maybe the answer is to get a consensus on when and where people would like training instead of only giving one option. This might open up the possibility of having broader and more inspiring training out of business hours if enough people want to commit.

Example 3: Training sends people to sleep!

But at your training event you’re sorted as you’ve provided free pillows and sleeping masks for each participant! Teaching practical skills is always going to have an element of mundane. The answer is to ensure you inject regular life into the session- a bit of levity every 6-10 minutes works wonders for maintaining invigoration levels.

Next in the Funny Business series it’s the turn of understatement…

Funny Business – Exaggeration

simonjack — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 23:02:19 +0000

Continuing with the Funny Business, we’re looking at how comedy can lead to creativity at work. Previously we’ve explored reversal and role reversal and now it’s the turn of exaggeration.

Exaggeration takes the familiar then dashes our expectations by serving up a larger-than-life perspective. A classic and very visual example is the caricature. A caricature makes us laugh as we immediately recognise the person even though their particular features have been wildly accentuated. Essentially we want to make a caricature of our business problems- exaggerate certain features to blow perspectives way out of proportion.

Here’s the blueprint:

1. Identify the main concepts you’re looking to improve in your business challenge.

2. Take these concepts to the extreme. What’s the most dramatic way you could achieve the results?

3. Link your exaggerated situation back to reality by finding a practical connection.

We’ll apply this blueprint to our ongoing Funny Business challenge of ‘making training more memorable’. Making memorable is the concept, so let’s exaggerate…

Example 1= Training is conducted by an Army Drill Sergeant.

The Sergeant would be licking the ‘troops’ into shape ready for action in real conditions. Perhaps the training would be gearing up for war games at the end. The practicality here is that a training course could culminate in two teams pitted against each other, with spoils for the victors who are most able to apply their newfound skills.

Example 2= The training course is run by a stuntman/fire juggler/Cirque du Soleil.

Training would be a memorable spectacle, although any real business lessons might be overshadowed. However, what if you rewarded people that have opted into all the essential training by allowing them to sign up to a course of their choice (anything from time management to circus skills)? This would broaden horizons as well as make people happier and more fulfilled. Most importantly, they might approach usual business training with more enthusiasm with the anticipation of rewards.

Example 3= Repeat the same training over and over until it sticks.

Everyday would be like Groundhog Day. The only way to break the monotonous cycle would be to physically intervene and change the consequences. Just as in the film, each day Bill Murray is trying a new way to win over Andy McDowall, your goal is to work out the precise sequence of activities to achieve a harmonious response amongst your participants. So do a mental Groundhog Day of your previous training sessions and really search yourself to find those endearing aspects and those that are liable to get lost in the depths of time.

Next up in the Funny Business series is satire…