\n
![\"IMG_5293\"](\"http:\/\/changeologyblog.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/02\/img_5293.jpg\")
<\/a><\/b>\nNormally, I\u2019ve noticed that people have great resistance to blurting our seemingly crazy, unfiltered ideas. The reason is, of course, fear of embarrassment. As a result, good ideas tend to get snuffed out before they even get spoken.
\nHow to overcome it? I\u2019ve been experimenting for a while, and, so far, one method with great promise is to run brainstorms in two stages<\/b>.
\nFirst, brainstorm the focus question as you normally would.
\nThen repeat the same brainstorm, except this time, the rule is that ALL ideas have to be \u201cimpossible and ludicrous\u201d. This works really well, generating far more creative responses. (Then mix all the ideas together for prioritizing).
\nBut the problem was by no means cracked, until I asked my \u201ccrowd\u201d for ideas last year<\/a>. I unleashed a cornucopia of cool ideas, and I\u2019ve since experimented with some in Changeology workshops (with lots of professional agency staff). These ones definitely work:
\n1) Everyone puts on party hats for the brainstorm.<\/span><\/b>
\n2) Start with a kids game, like Who’s afraid of Mr Wolf? \u00a0[thanks Bev Debrincat \u2013 see below]
\n3) Offer small prizes for the wackiest ideas. \u00a0[thanks Dr Bhakti Devi]
\n4) A pile of Lego on each table.
\n5) A pile of kids plastic toys on each table.
\nThe idea is that, to be free and playful with ideas, it\u2019s good to be reminded of being 4 years old again: that time of freedom, when we weren\u2019t afraid of getting things wrong.
\n
<\/a>The party hats were definitely a massive creativity accelerator! I had a table of risk management consultants who were blocked for ideas. When they put on the party hats the flow of creativity was volcanic\u2026including a hilarious story line for a fatigue risk management advertisement. When it comes to planning your event, whether it\u2019s a wedding, birthday party or corporate event, you want absolutely everything to be perfect. A great starting point is to pick out your colors, the tablecloth, we recommend to visit cvlinens.com, you will find table covers wholesale<\/a>, with afordable prices.![\n<\/a>\n](\"http:\/\/changeologyblog.files.wordpress.com\/2014\/02\/img_4375.jpg\"){kind=link}
\n<\/a>
\n
<\/a>Lego, just sitting on the tables, also worked beautifully. Some people constructed neat little animals and buildings, others made props for presentations.\nThe little toys I borrowed from my four year old (they are what I call his \u201cplastic mulch\u201d). They are so evocative of all sorts of cultural memes. I suspect they may have the power to open lots of new possibilities for people. I\u2019m going to make them a standard feature.
\n
<\/a>\nOther crowd-sourced ideas that I haven\u2019t yet experimented with were:
\n– “A quick game that loosens people up around mistakes is to throw balls around the room. Every time someone drops a ball the whole group celebrates.” [thanks Holly Hammond]
\n– Competitive brainstorming. Pit teams against each other to come up with as many ideas as possible in a defined amount of time. Could involve running to put post-its on a chart. The pressure to generate ideas quickly reduces self-censoring. [thanks Holly Hammond]
\n– “On every table I placed two random, unrelated items, eg. a stapler and a phone, a toothbrush and a toaster etc. (To be honest I basically just ran around my house collecting things as I headed out the door to present the workshop). I then asked each table to work together to design and draw something on butchers paper based on these two items. At first they were a bit hesitant but once they got talking about it the room was soon loud with ideas and people madly drawing and laughing. The activity was a huge success, and some of the ideas that came from it were quite extraordinary.” [Thanks Elsie Nelsen]
\n– A brief session of \u201cwhat don\u2019t we want\u201d, with the more outlandish responses the better. We were looking at general workplace environment planning and responses were along the lines of \u201cAll laughter banned\u201d, \u201cConversations not pertaining to work to be limited to 2 minutes\u201d, \u201cAll ideas to be pre-approved by committee\u201d, \u201cNumber one priority is maximising income and minimising cost\u201d etc etc. A session like this can be a lot of fun, get people laughing and talking, while also clarifying what\u2019s important. [thanks Helen Kemp]
\nI\u2019m still collecting ideas and keen to hear any you’d like to share.
\nP.S. For those who are interested, here are the rules for What\u2019s the Time Mr Wolf?<\/em><\/span>
\n1) Assemble the children against the wall in a line.<\/span>
\n2) Choose a \u201cMr. Wolf\u201d. Ask Mr. Wolf to stand at one end of the playing area.<\/span>
\n3) Mr Wolf turns his or her back so he\/she cannot see the kids.<\/span>
\n4) The row of children chant: \u201cWhat\u2019s the time Mr. Wolf?\u201d<\/span>
\n5) Mr. Wolf will turn around and answer a time (for example, 4 o\u2019clock). Then turn away again.<\/span>
\n6) The children advance the number of steps called out and then repeat the chant, waiting for a response and so on.<\/span>
\n7) Eventually they will be standing very close to Mr. Wolf. Mr. Wolf can, at any moment once the line of children is close, respond \u201cLunch Time\u201d in a loud growl.<\/span>
\n8) This is the cue for lots of screaming (remind them not to scream) and running because now Mr. Wolf has to chase the rest of the children and tag one of them.<\/span>
\n9) Change Mr. Wolf. The child who was the wolf can choose another person (opposite gender) to be the next wolf.<\/span><\/p>\n
I\u2019ve been experimenting with ways to encourage wacky, creative thinking during project design workshops. Normally, I\u2019ve noticed that people have great resistance to blurting our seemingly crazy, unfiltered ideas. The reason is, of course, fear of embarrassment. As a result, good ideas tend to get snuffed out before they even get spoken. How to overcome […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-facilitation-2","category-innovation-2","has-post-thumbnail","fallback-thumbnail"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pac6ss-aO","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=670"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2835,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/670\/revisions\/2835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.enablingchange.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}