Are you having problems at work and in your company that you can’t seem to solve? Are you tired of doing SWOT analysis just to end up having no conclusion at all? Creativity is your best ally when looking for ways to solve problems. Here are five tricks you can use whenever you are faced with challenges you can’t seem to overcome:
- Break old ways of thinking. Stuck in rut? Identify something at work you always do in the same old way. Next time you come to do that task, ask yourself if you can do it in another way instead. Consider it a creative challenge to find 20 ways of doing that routine task and do not give in until you have succeeded. The idea is not necessarily to find a new solution to everyday tasks, but to help you identify all the things in life you do out of pure habit.
- Mix the unmixable. When trying to solve a problem, try to find a connection to something that seems to have nothing at all in common with the problem. For example, how can an egg be used to improve telephony? What does a sewing machine have to do with broadband? This kind of activity is an excellent creativity booster as our brains actually thrive on finding connections between different things, no matter how unrelated. Don’t be put off if your first ideas seem unrealistic. Think, reflect, and accept the wild ideas that pop up and try to turn them into sensible, business-like solutions.
- Use the “tell it to me as if I were a four-year-old” method. If you do not understand an idea when it is presented to you, then there is a practical way of finding out whether this is due to the fact that it was badly presented or whether it is just a bad, unclear idea packaged in fine words. The trick is to ask the person to describe his idea to you as if you were a child. As the story, “The Emperor’s New Clothes,” illustrates, children often are good at ignoring smoke screens and detecting the truth. Use this capacity to make your ideas more honest.
- Rock the boat of certainty. The history of humankind is packed to the seams with truths that later proved not to be true after all, and we cannot understand how people could have been so stupid. Take, for example, how in 1895, the British Academy of Science declared that flying machines were a technical impossibility, and then a couple of years later, the Wright brothers were able to invent a flying aircraft. Write down 10 truths about your branch—i.e., things you are sure will never change and then see if you can come up with an idea that tears a hole in those truths.
- Locate thinking places. Where do you think best? Identify these places and then make sure you work there more often. At more than a hundred lectures, I have asked this question to my audience, “Where do you get your best ideas?” Aside from bars, bathrooms, buses, and beds, I often get answers such as “when I run” and “when I play with my kids.” Seldom has anyone answered, “When I’m at work.” There is a Dilbert cartoon strip where Dilbert is filling out his time report: Five hours at a long, unproductive meeting = work. Half an hour in the shower thinking of improvements to my design = leisure.
Find more of these tricks in Fredrik Haren’s best-selling book, “The Idea Book” available at http://www.amazon.com/author/fredrikharen. Haren is a global speaker and author on global business creativity. He is also the founder of Ideas Island—where he lets people stay on any of his private islands for free to work and focus on their ideas. For more information, visit www.fredrikharen.com/theideabook
