Last week I was in Spain on Peter Thomson’s mentoring course and it was brilliant! I learnt so much great stuff and I wanted to share some of it with you.
One of the things I learnt was a really good creative problem solving exercise. I find that in business problems are cropping up all over the place! And normally I’ve got so many ideas swirling around my mind I often don’t know where to begin with it all. Sometimes I think life ends up passing me by, because I’m focused on the day to day stuff, so I never give myself chance to take a step back and come up with some creative problem solving solutions.
If you ever feel like this then here is an exercise that can really help you…
The Dictionary Problem Solving Solution
Think of your problem and then pick up the nearest book, pick a random page and put your finger in and pick out the nearest noun and then using that word come up with ideas as to how you could solve that problem. Freely associate the word with your problem.
For example: you want to increase your turnover by 37% within a year and you picked out the word ‘table’ you could…
• Get the best mentors around a table and discuss it.
• Create tables in a word document: who are your best clients? Best services? Etc.
Let your mind wander and write whatever pops into your head! Let yourself be as creative as possible and you even write down the crazy ideas too. You might think, ‘a table has 4 legs, so does a horse, so maybe I should go for a horse ride and try and come up with ideas’. Or maybe you could stand on a table and have a look around and see whether you can spot something that might be able to help. Do whatever comes into your head.
Give yourself a chance to be really creative and challenge your problems with creative, outside the box thinking.
Give it a go… get a book, pick a page, put your finger in and choose the nearest noun and get thinking!
I’m going to be sharing some more ideas I learned in Spain soon. I hope you find this one useful.
