Five ways to fire up your team's creativity
Now that teams are able to get back together, you may want to use your next team away day to spark creative ideas and solutions. Here are five steps you can take to get the most out of the time together:
1. Choose your timing carefully
To be meaningful and focused, creative processes should never start with a blank sheet of paper. Our best creative thinking typically comes when we respond to a challenge. And to channel any ideas, it’s also helpful to have a shared vision around the outcomes we are seeking.
This is why it’s important to get your timing right for that creative session. Can you define the goals you need to focus the creative process? Have you taken the time to ensure everyone in in the room understands and can get behind those goals?
2. Give permission to take risks
Whilst your goals should be as tightly defined as possible, when it comes to identifying promising ideas or solutions it’s important to let ‘100 flowers bloom’. Set yourselves some ground rules to make this possible. Make sure you explicitly welcome bold thinking and left-field ideas. For major initiatives, De Bono’s six hats thinking technique can free you up to both spark innovative ideas and scrutinise them in parallel.
3. Learn from your own success
We can learn far more from what we already do well than we often realise. Start your creative session with some reflections on your team’s previous projects and ventures that have been successful. This has two benefits: it enables you to replicate what you know already works, and it puts participants into a positive, energised state that will help them spark new ideas.
We worked with the elected representatives of a large union to analyse where they had successfully influenced policy in recent years. We were able to draw out at a set of success criteria that would be instrumental in them identifying where to focus their next campaign.
For help in this area, see Dan Heath: How to Find Bright Spots - YouTube.
4. Look outside for inspiration
If you can, find an offsite venue to help bring some distance from the day-to-day, and set smartphones aside so people can clear their minds. Then look beyond your immediate sphere for inspiration.
Recently, we asked communications team members at an away day to each bring an image, idea or an object from an external campaign that had inspired them in some way. It was a joy to hear their examples, and it provided them with real food for thought. External speakers with a success story to share can also help lift everyone’s sights.
5. Aim for a good pace, and lots of movement and interaction
When we feel physically energised, we see a corresponding boost in our mental energy. Structure your team session to allow for lots of hands-on work, regular movement between exercises and groups and a good pace.
We’ve found the 1-2-4-All and 25:10 crowdsourcing techniques particularly helpful in generating new ideas. A full overview of both techniques is available through the Liberating Structures web site: Liberating Structures - Introduction.
By observing, discussing and analysing something new, we can generate fresh thinking and distinctive ideas. Not only is it more fun to do this creative thinking in groups, these conversations are often the most productive when done face-to-face.
If you have other reasons for getting your team together, you might find the following articles helpful:
How to revisit and crystallise your team’s purpose