Likes to think

Con-di-vergence

When looking at an idea, there are usually two main themes of thinking. These two different ways of looking at things are: Convergent Thinking and Divergent Thinking.

Convergence:
Involves judging and aims to eliminate all options but one.
Divergence:
Involves moving away from current beliefs and options

So why do you need to know about this?

When being creative, especially within a group, these two types of thinking affect the how productive you are. It’s important to understand their impact so that we can personally ensure we are offering what is most needed in a group at any one time.

Convergent Thinking

This type of thinking (which is the most natural) is used to find a single thought or idea and to challenge all others to beat it. Any other ideas that do not measure up are discarded.
When you have a series of good, well thought out ideas, and you’re not sure which one to choose - this process is good. However, when you are in the middle of being creative, it’s no good shooting down every single idea, because it’s not amazing the very second it’s thought of.

Divergent Thinking

You will find that there are many ideas you will create that wont sound too practical when you first think of them. If you give them room to blossom however, they can mature in to brilliant and intelligent ideas. You can increase the amount of ideas you have by changing the way you look at old ideas, or by looking at your new ideas from different angles.

So what about the ones that don’t make it? Isn’t it a waste of time working on ideas that don’t mature?

The benefit of working on an idea, even if you know it’s not going to work, or you’re unsure whether it will, are:

Most of all, you’ll have fun, which is important (humour is a right brain activity, as is your creativity).
Ideas beget ideas (every time you throw ideas around, you think of even more).
Most of all, you get experience at playing with ideas.

A very important creative skill is to be able to take something you don’t like, and make it into something you do like. This is the essence of changing things for the better; there is always a starting point. The same goes for ideas, just because you don’t like the idea, that doesn’t mean you’ll never like any version of the idea.

Imagine a ‘discussion’ between three people Nimisha, Craig and Darren, on the subject of increasing empathy:

Nimisha: ‘How about giving training on empathy skills?’

Craig: ‘We did empathy ages ago and it didn’t work’.

Darren: ‘They’ll only end up being ‘too’ empathetic, a that scares the customers away’.

Nimisha: ‘What about an incentive scheme for showing empathy?’

Craig: ‘That will only de-motivate the staff that aren’t empathetic’.

Darren: ‘What they need, is not more training but a kick up the backside; they should know how to be empathetic anyway’.

How long will Nimisha continue to offer ideas? Convergent thinking, which involves judging and aims to eliminate all options but one, drives out divergent thinking. The two have to be kept separate. Divergent thinking needs a safe environment, free from judging, where ideas can feed off one another.

The first and most important lesson for creative thinking is that the two types of thinking have to be kept separate. You cannot have only good ideas, but if you have enough ideas there may be some good ones amongst them.

So, is convergent thinking always bad?

Certainly not, there are many times when convergent thinking helps. Convergent thinking only really becomes negative and is a draw back when one gets stuck, and only uses this style. Being aware of its time and place is the most important thing, so as to ensure you don’t sour your productivity.

When is convergent thinking good?

A lawyer is a good example of someone who would use convergent thinking in a productive manor. Lawyers will often think of all the arguments for and against something systematically in an attempt to anticipate potential pitfalls in their clients’ position.

You too can spend time systematically attempting to find potential problems with the ideas your working on; as long as you are aware that that is what you are doing. In most situations however, you should try to only interject convergent thinking in to a small percentage of your working time.

Inside Out - Motivation the right way round

People are motivated from the inside out; providing external gratification like giving them DVD players etc will help someone that is currently motivated stay that way. But if someone feels undervalued at their core, then no amount of trinkets and prizes will do. Only by helping that person overcome their state can we move on to making them happy. Allowing them the rush of recieving material goods will do now good for them, or your team in the long run.

People are people; they are always people. This is not to say that they are all the same. Just that it doesn’t matter where they are, what they are doing, or how much they are being paid. They are still people, and should be treated that way.

You can have different opinions, you can have different methods, and you can have different priorities. But as long as you all genuinely share the same common and specific goals, you are a team.

People are not mushrooms. Mushrooms grow well if you keep them in the dark and feed them hourse manure, people on the other hand do not.

I heard somewhere that, “In order to have good ideas, you must first have many.”

Okay, so lets say you’ve found some magical way of developing ideas. You might be using techniques like those suggested by Edward de Bono, or, you might just be naturally brilliant at coming up with ideas. Now, you have a list as long as your arm of ideas, and no clue as to which one to start on first, or which ones to bin.

Maybe, you’ve put out a suggestion box and it’s full to the brim.

When confronted with something like this, quite unsurprisingly, people can become flummoxed. From a third person point of view, the situation might seem easy to handle; all too often when the pressure is on - we sometimes loose focus and fail to act.

Following, is a method you can call on when you’re stressed and need to find some focus or a starting point to begin the flow.

Being able to distinguish good and bad ideas is a very basic task. If you’re having difficulty though, and want to de-compile a large list effectively, then here’s how to do it.

First of all, lets understand what’s wrong with just deciding whether an idea is good or bad. This way of doing things will produce a large number of ideas that would be determined as acceptable, as well as ideas that are seen as being not acceptable.

Having a vast quantity of good ideas is great, but it doesn’t help you to quickly decide what idea you should work on first.

For instance, once you have gathered 30 good ideas, out of 200 hundred total ideas, you have to then decide which ones need to be started on, and which do not.

Effort, Impact and Need Scoring

This is a scoring system base on how much time and energy it would take to make something work, and how good the result could potentially be if it were successful.

Effort Score

Firstly, we give each idea (after a short chat about it’s pros and cons) a score out of 5.

It goes like this, the easier the idea is to make happen, the higher the score.

Hard Work 1 2 3 4 5 Easy Going

Impact Score

Now, we must give it a value depending on how we feel it will impact the environment the idea is enacted in. This one goes like this, the better and more positive result would be given a high score, and an idea that wouldn’t have much of an effect would be lower.

Little Impact 1 2 3 4 5 Big Impact

Need score

Finally we arrive at the score that represents common consensus. This score is used to finalise our total relating to the need for the idea to be implemented. You could score this high just because everyone wants it to happen, even though it might not have that great an impact, or may be hard to achieve.

Don’t really Need 1 2 3 4 5 Really Need

Total score

Using these three score together, will give you a very effective means of finding the most practical ideas to start on. As long as you don’t constantly just answer with 1s and 5s you should come out with a large array of different totals.

Ideas scoring 15 will be very easy to implement, well loved and have a highly positive affect on the environment it’s made effective in.

Ideas scoring 10 could be ones that would be easy, though maybe not having that much effect on where it is placed; however, the people around will greatly appreciate it. Similarly, other scores that are 10s may be very hard to achieve, but still have both a high impact on the environment and on the people involved.

Quite obviously, at the bottom of the barrel, you will find the ideas that are hard to act on; don’t have much affect on the environment or business and most people don’t even care about.

Still too many?

You have a bucket load of ideas, a have shoveled up all the rubbish and still have too many left. Maybe you’re just too good and thinking up brilliant ideas. Maybe you have three ideas that have managed to score 15 points.

Well, good for you - your options are as follows:

• Do all of them at the same time by increasing resources, people or investment.

• Change the scoring, so that each of the great ideas are scored again - but from one to ten each time.

• Change your prospective - better still, use someone else’s and get them to do the scoring.

• Or the good old ’short-strew’ method.

I’ve long thought there to be a distinction between the labels: mistake and error.

Although mistakes are themselves errors, they tend to become something a little different.

Take the word mistake. I love the word mistake; mis-take. It sounds like: I looked at something and on first take it looked okay - but in hindsight it seems my judgement was incorrect.

That’s what a mistake is… a mistake requires a good amount of admittance; when you can’t admit them – they’re not mistakes – they’re errors.

What’s wrong with errors?

Errors are blind, maybe someone else sees them – but you do not.

Errors are wrong decision, bad choices; action based on failed expectations. And there’s one main aspect that keeps an error from maturing into a mis-take and that is: the reluctance to learn.

Another glance, a second-take, or a better look - all make errors into something better. “Whoops, better not do that again” is a far reaching improvement over neglecting to spot a error in the first place - or worse, deluding yourself despite evidence, advice and feedback to the contrary.

Failures, fiascoes, catastrophes even; are not the enemy. They may feel a little uncomfortable for a while, but that’s no reason to resent them. Attaching negative feelings to already stressful events, though entirely natural, isn’t productive.

Patience, understanding and diligence are the key. If you make a mis-take, don’t fly off the handle; if you miss and opportunity, try to find out why; and when something is happening right under your feet - don’t just sit back and wait for it to consume you - take positive steps to correct it.