Rarely have I visited an organization that effectively uses the "brainstorming" process. What is often happening could more likely be described as an analytical debate. Once debate enters, a need to prove or defend an idea, all creativity stops. So, if what people are using isn't working, what's the alternative?



Tom Peters once said that virtually no new idea in the last fifty years has been the result of the formal planning process. That suggests that the more formal the approach to a problem, the less likely a creative solution will evolve. It also suggests that the primary barrier to creativity is thinking. Once a group of people locks into analytical thinking on an issue, creativity has stopped.

Creativity simply means putting two novel ideas together and finding that they are useful. Novel ideas are any that fall outside the normal way of thinking. When analyzing, debating, criticizing and evaluating an idea, we are involved in the "normal" way of looking at things. The risk is that in that normal analytical view, we don't see anything on the outside.

Anyone who has ever had an "ah ha" knows what this means. First, something clicks and a solution or possibility instantly becomes clear. Immediately after that comes the "of course" phase. "Of Course! It is so clear, why didn't I see it before?" It was always right there but outside the range of "normal" thinking you were locked on.

So, how do we get creative ideas? Where do they come from and what can we do to foster them?

Mind Set Shift

There are two mind set shifts that significantly help people get creative. The first has to do with the "I'm not a creative person" focus. If you believe you are not creative, you will ignore the times you are creative and reinforce the times you are not. Get a group of 5-year-olds together. Give them a card board box that held a refrigerator, some foam padding, crayons and they go to work. The box can become anything from an operating room to a space ship. Instantly, it can change from one thing to another. 5-year-olds are really good at this. You were a 5-year-old once. Somewhere inside you, that ability still exists! You ARE creative.

Second, Jonas Salk once said that the solution to any problem pre-exists. That means that the solution exists in the same exact conditions that are creating the "problem". In any situation you are working with, the solution is right there. If you aren't seeing it, change the way you are thinking about it!

If you have ever had an "ah ha" and experienced the immediate "of course" that follows, you know the solution was right there. Where was the solution before you saw it? Right there! Where is the solution to any challenge you are working with? Right there!

Perspective and Patience

Leonardo daVinci believed that to gain knowledge about the form of a problem, it was vital to restructure it to see it in many different ways. He felt like the first way he thought about anything was too biased toward the usual way he thought about everything. So, he would challenge himself to come up with five or six different perspectives on an issue.

Who and what else is involved here: employees, customers, family members, training programs, recruiting, retention and company reputation. What would the challenge look like viewed through the eyes of everyone else involved? Pick several to work with. I once had a group looking at ways to improve the quality of meetings who decided to discuss meetings from the perspective of the agenda. That provided some useful insights.

Often, people leap at the first suggestion offered and begin debating it. The more perspectives you develop, the more likely you are to find one that will lead you in the direction you want to go. When you have only one plan or perspective, your chances are not nearly as good. Patience is required at the beginning of a brainstorming process to identify several different perspectives on how to approach the challenge. Patience pays!