Could you do it in reverse

I collected the mail from my mailbox yesterday at 11am and saw the postal delivery worker, the ‘postie’, finishing delivering mail to other letterboxes.

Usually she delivers the mail to our area at about 3pm.

‘Hi!’ I said. ‘Hey you seem a bit earlier, a different time today?’

‘Yes', she said, 'I thought I’d do my round in reverse today; you know, keep it fresh.

She went on...'It’s easy to become a machine, doing the same thing, same way, same route, riding up streets the same direction, the same order and same views. But wow, this has really snapped me out of things today; I’ve had to think and not just go by habit.'

She delivered the mail and a great insight.

What’s the current way you do something? And how could you reverse it? Even a small part of it? Go try.

Creativity and novel thinking data suggests this helps us see new things, make new connections, make sense in other ways.

Most of all, it changes our locked-in perspective.

Are we on the same page yet

Getting on the same page is a collaborative and strategic need we have and yet it can take such an effort for us to get there.

Perhaps some transparency might help. That word 'transparency' ... meaning 'easy to be seen'.

How transparent is your thinking? How well can you see what you're thinking so you can communicate it, share it and transfer it to others?

It can take us so long to get our heads around what we’re thinking, let alone understand what others are thinking! In the meantime, thoughts seem opaque, cloudy and thick - rather than transparent, clear and understandable.

And there's no need to over simplify, just to understand. We can tend to resort to lazy methods like lists and clumps of unsorted information, expecting others to do the connecting of themes, the joining of dots and the revealing of patterns.

But oh, that keeps us on different pages.

We can do better.

Today’s cray-cray world of information, ideas, happenings and data needs us to be able to:

🎫 get to grips with information quickly,

🎫 get ourselves (as a group) on the same page, and then

🎫 decide ... so we can get on with it. This is sensemaking.

A clever tool to help you problem solve

While plenty of tasks, projects and initiatives are about minimising problems, fixing things and reducing issues, there's a time when it helps to make a problem bigger.

A favourite 'think outside the box' book I enjoy flinging open at random places is John Kuprenas' (with Matthew Frederick) book 101 things I learned in Engineering School.

It's a chunky hardcover edition and you really know you're holding it despite its A5-ish size.

Inside are pages and pages of intriguing explanations of concepts applicable to life ... beyond engineering.

I'm no engineer, yet I have a curiosity for how things work, why things are the way they are and what we can do about that.

There's something about how engineers, designers and architects think -- and problem solve -- that can be helpful to us, no matter the setting, situation or challenge we face. 

One of John's 101 things is to 'enlarge the problem space'. He says

"Almost every problem is larger than it initially appears. 

Explore and enlarge it at the outset - not to make more work, but because the scope of the problem almost certainly will creep - it will grow larger - on its own. 

It's easier to reduce the problem space later in the process than to enlarge it after starting down a path toward an inadequate solution".

It's one of the reasons I give groups and teams this creative and innovation thinking tool to make problems bigger.

I slot this activity into workshops when teams are working on strategy, design thinking, customer journeys and other tricky problems.

I called it: 'It's Bigger'.

It's some cloud shapes or circles up on a whiteboard or I'll get them (yes, executives and senior leaders too) to sketch in a notebook, blank page or in an app on their tablet. Then let them talk.

Here's how it works:

1. First, write the Issue
2. Then add in some points, thoughts, hunches about what the bigger problem is,
3. ... then the b-i-g-g-e-r problem 
4. .. and then the BIGGER problem.

From there you can come up with some totally new solutions.

You could apply this type of thinking to problems you see around you at work, in your community, in your life ... even complex and wicked problems that are seriously tough to solve like social issues and global challenges can be discussed and strategised using the 'It's Bigger' approach.

John Kuprenas says:

there is the problem, then the cause of the problem, then the cause of the cause of the problem and the cause of the cause of the cause... 

...you get it! 

It's a process that let's you look at creativity, innovation and problem solving by making it bigger before you get your hands dirty by doing something about it. 

I'll use this thinking and creativity tool with a large retailer this week as we workshop some of their new ideas and initiatives to challenging problems. Then it will get a run in a not-for-profit workshop as a team looks at how to fund their social enterprise ideas.

See, you don't need to build bridges or roads or machines to be an engineer!

How to enjoy your job without killing your career

As I was setting up for a client workshop recently, plenty of team members walked past the meeting room stopped, looked in and said something like:

'Gee that looks creative'

'Wow, that's gonna be a fun session'

'Oh I wish I was in THIS session, not the dull one next door'. 

What secret creative things were in my workshop? Coloured pieces of paper and markers. That's it! That's all it took to make a space look and feel creative. It made people want to be in the room.

Some workspaces can be bland, uninteresting and crowded with workified clutter that they're not inspiring us to be innovative, creative or game changing. 

Our future career success depends on what we do now, how we approach challenges
and handle problem solving.  

We may not have the option of bringing bean bags and table tennis tables into our workspaces but we can make our own space creative. Especially the space between our ears!

You don't need much to get away from dull and duller, bland and boring, stacks of white paper and clinical walls and spaces. Even a few bricks of Lego can be a great start.

The booming popularity of the colourful blocks and the Lego Serious Play method shows people want to find new, creative and engaging ways to do things. 

 

The fact is, you can do better work
when you use play.

 

Ellen Grove presented a session on using Lego at a conference I attended and I share my visual notes from that session above. Ellen outlined how to get creative and playful using Lego, for the sometimes dull task of gathering information for a project. The four steps she presented are:

1. Constructing: make something with those blocks
2. Give meaning: explain what it is, what it means
3. Make a story: create and share a story about what you've made, what it means
4. Reflect & Incubate: think about what you've created, and what's next, how can you action this?

That workshop session was the busiest, loudest, most collaborative, laughter-filled room at the conference!
People went WILD for it!

If you think 'we couldn't do that at our workplace', have a read of David Gauntlett's contribution to the book 'Lego Studies'; here's the chapter he wrote on using Lego as a tool for thinking, creativity and changing the world.

You can enjoy your job, be creative, play, contribute to innovative solutions and 'bring it', without killing your career. In fact your career depends on you finding ways to tackle the challenges in front of you. 

See what you can build. You'll know the impact just one tiny creative toy block can have if you've ever stepped on one in bare feet!