Creative thinking can help you come up with new ideas in order to solve particularly tricky problems. There are plenty of creativity techniques available to help you get started. Here are three of our favourites.
1. Word Association
This technique uses the generation of a random word to help you to think more creatively. You can use it on your own, or with a group.
What to do:
- Select a word (a noun, verb or adjective) at random from a magazine, newspaper or dictionary.
- Try to find some ‘bridging ideas’ that will connect the random word to the topic you’re trying to generate ideas around. For example, suppose you were trying to generate ideas about dining rooms and the random word was spaceman. The bridging idea could be to think about the implications of having a dining room in space, and the impact gravity would have on eating.
- Try replacing the problem object with the random word and see what ideas you can generate.
- How can you apply ideas behind the random word to your problem?
- What are the benefits you want to achieve? How could the random word help you?
- NB: try not to replace a random word because you don’t think it’s suitable.
2. Mind Mapping
Mind mapping is an effective method for generating ideas by association, which you can use on your own for problem-solving, decision-making, presentations, learning and note-taking.
What to do:
- On a piece of paper write a short heading (preferably one or two words) for your overall theme, e.g. leadership, in a circle in the centre of the page.
- Draw branches coming out from this theme and label them with sub-topics, e.g. Strategy, Models, Skills, Benefits.
- Draw further, thinner branches coming out from each of these sub-topics, e.g. you could break Skills down into Presence, Influence, Coaching and Motivation.
- Create as many more levels as you feel is necessary.
- You might want to personalise your mind map using colours and/or pictures to make it more inspiring and memorable.
3. Post-it Notes
Post-it can be a useful and quick way of generating ideas in a group to find a solution to a problem or issue.
What to do:
- Give everyone some Post-it notes and a pen.
- Write the topic/issue to be discussed at the top of a flipchart or whiteboard. Leave plenty of room to place the Post-it notes underneath.
- Write the question ‘Why has this happened?’ under the topic heading.
- Ask team members to generate as many ideas as possible on why the problem has occurred or the issue has been raised, and write each idea on a separate Post-it note.
- Once everyone has done this, ask them to do the same with the questions: ‘What can we do?’ and ‘How will we do it?’ Remember to write separate headings on your flipchart or whiteboard for each question, with room left under each heading for the Post-it notes.
- Once everyone has done this, invite each team member to stick their Post-it notes onto the flipchart or whiteboard under the correct heading.
- Taking each question separately, group the notes into themes/related issues.
- Discuss the ideas that have been generated
- Ask the group to vote on the ideas that they like best.
- You can then discuss how to act on the chosen ideas and plan your next steps.