Developing Creative Thinking

Developing Creative Thinking – embracing formal meeting management is always a good idea in business – but when we are seeking new ideas or solutions requiring creative thinking then our fifty years experience of business management ensures our tried and tested methodologies take us through.

There is a common misconception that creative thinking and therefore the ability to make innovative decisions, is an inborn talent that cannot be learned. Try to develop the quality and originality of your ideas by adopting new methods of thinking.

Embracing new ideas

People and organisations form habits of thinking just as they form other habits. Many organisations that reject new thinking outright do so because they view changes as risk. There are, however, ways to defeat this negativity and encouraging acceptance of the new. For example with any type of ‘ideas meeting’ we forbid the use of the response “Yes, but …”.  It’s classic ideas killer and we ban it until a predetermined number of new ideas have been explored or discussed.

Thinking positively

If you’re cautious then by nature you are not very likely to think adventurously, but if you are highly creative, you may be impatient with sceptics who see only objections in a discussion. Do not allow colleagues to get locked into these or any other mindsets that prevent them from listening to other points of view with an open mind. If you think the debates is becoming too negative say so and ask everybody present to try and make a positive, creative contribution. This will help you avoid sterile debate in which everyone defends their own fixed position attacks all others.

Deciding on action

The object of generating new ideas is to find the best one and act on it. There is a five stage model sometimes given the acronym AGISA for the group thinking process. It starts with analysis, in which you seek to uncover the issues affecting the decision. That enables you to set goals (either opportunities or problems). Then you search for ideas which are either ‘conventional’, ‘mildly original’ or ‘unconventional, needing further discussion’. At the selection stage, ideas are examined for weakness and solutions are discarded or adopted. Those adopted call for action in which the accepted decision is implemented.

Points to remember

• Assumptions should always be challenged.
• Conventional thinking should not be rejected just because it is conventional.
• New ideas are as valuable as any others which would not be adopted simply because her new ideas

Martin Button is the Managing Director of UK Vending Ltd, Britain’s longest serving vending company. UK Vending Ltd (UKV) is a national supplier of prestige vending products and a provider of unique financial packages supporting UKV sales. UKV is a family owned business started some fifty years ago by Martin’s father John. It was the first vending company anywhere in the world hosted on the internet when most had not yet heard of the World Wide Web. One of Google’s ‘naturals’, UKV had an online shop before Amazon and Ebay. UKV had a successful background in email marketing before most companies had begun to understand its power. Imaginative marketing coupled with excellent staff recruitment and management, planning and customer service may be key to UKV’s long-term success in this competitive market. However, sheer business savvy and insight is what makes it work.