Creativity assignment complete

Well I completed and handed my assignment in. The SDC process was great and I really learned a great deal. Aspects of the course have really caught my imagination and I have decided to start applying some of the concepts that I learned in the process to my work and everyday life.

I am going to try change my habits to include more creative past-times. I realise that creativity is complex and needs attention in order to better solve my day to day and organisational problems that I face.

You can check it out here – glvvau001-sdc-individual-assignment

Almost Finished my assignment

Well, I’ve been working on my assignment feverishly and I’m almost done! Its been quite an interesting process and I have worked out some of the drivers of my creativity. The key boundary question that I was tackling with the ‘Systems Thinking approach’ was: “How do I maximise my creative ability in order to better solve the probelms that I face?”

It’s been good to realise that I need to change my creative habits first so that I can ‘train’ myself to become more creative. Also, I realised that it’s no good trying to force ‘divergent thinking’ this is an outcome rather than a driver!

Here are some photos of Catie “helping” me with my affinity diagram …

Catie took the last one herself

thoughts from session 12 – liz mills

Drama / Voice:

• Self taught – ended up teaching a bit of everything
• Theatre is a space of the imagination
  • Suspend your disbelief … enter a world that is imaginative
  • 1st prize = create the theatre work is that you want to arrive at the thing that you can’t imagine
  • Push for thing that you can’t yet know.

• Can you teach creativity? Yes

Principles:

1. Grow and teach a particular kind of responsiveness – YES, and openness
   • YES response, removing the blocks (suspend judgment)
   • Leads you beyond the dull bit
   • BLOCK = trying to be too cleaver … go with the idea that is present.
   • Keep going until the ‘right’ side of the brain and the fun side comes out.
   • Go through the period of familiar and … as you start to ‘run out of ideas’ that’s when the creativity begins.
   • Discipline and push into the creative space
   • Accept the idea and then to try it out is the thing that works.

1. Generate a whole lot of ideas to discard.
   • Never start with the story, rather start with the generation of ideas
   • Choice and “converge” ideas
   • The moment you make a choice you open a door and allow another set of possibilities to become available

1. Curtain always goes up (there is a deadline)
   • Director know what is lost, but the audience doesn’t
   • There is always crisis
   • Push of phases and realization of the task increases creativity

1. Trust ‘image’ as much as ‘word’
   • Think in a huge amount of images and not necessarily through language.
     • Language sometimes inhibits the creativity because words can’t always describe the ‘action’

1. Appropriate space – listen a lot to others about what they have to say about their work.
   • Take phrase exiting in another place … and try to apply it to my space.
   • Can create images not in linear images …
   • Gives me a different understanding about the space that I am working in.

• Need to find the balance between ‘personal’ and ‘private’ … need to work from a ‘personal’ space.
• Make sure that you are ‘performing’ to yourself and you are able to do it for yourself.
• Important to have disciplines practice in order to master your craft.
• Passion for ‘theatre’ is irrational and beautiful.

thoughts from session 11 – creative commons

Shopping Cart – IDEO – Dave Kelly

• Used to be – Chaos discouraged
• Culture of anyone can talk to anyone
• Secret weapon for innovation – designs that don’t need modification are only found in nature
• Process of better design … find the invisible stuff
• Not experts in any area but rather experts in the area of design process
  • Project Leader – because he’s good with group
  • All same level / No titles / permanent hierarchy
  • Can’t always have “listeners”

• Find the real experts instead of trying to do it all yourself – learn form others
• Can’t be at their desk all the time
• Mocked the establishment (corporate structure)
• Demonstrate and attempt
• Deep Dive = total emersion in the problem
  • One conversation at a time, build on the ideas of others
  • Need to have wild ideas and build on them … encourage
  • Focussed chaos

• Vote with post-its … team enlightened trial and error better
• Times for there to be autocratic .. Towards the end of the process need to stop the cycle
• Train the clients before showing them the office …
  • Being playful is hugely important to innovative
  • Design and build your own office space

• Try and ask for “forgiveness rather than ask for permission”
• Piece of each idea … “Fail often so that you succeed faster” i.e. experiment, everything is part of a learning experience
• Design beautiful
• Hard work, open mind, demand of fresh ideas, team work

thoughts from session 10 – Daniel H Pink

It is important that you do what you were intrinsically made to do and his biggest mistake … Law school … why did you do that? – Parents

o Go to school… get good grades … college … get a degree/job with a bit of prestige

· Abilities that mattered most were … Engineers / Doctors / Accountant / Lawyer abilities

· Brain metaphor – of the economy

o Left and right hemisphere

o Left hemisphere mattered most and still 100% necessary, BUT no longer sufficient

o Right – artist, big thinking

· Tilt from left brain thinking to right brain thinking – not a theory, truth is organisations need

· Effect – Scales are tilting towards right

o Abundance, Asia, Automation

o Abundance:

Baby boomers … 100 baby boomers turning 60 every 18 minutes, how do I live my best life?

o Asia:

· $65k in US = in India $15K per year

· Off-shore suppliers = Overhyped in short term but underhyped in the long term

o Automation – SARS online tax

· Can some one overseas do it cheaper

· Routine

· Need high concept and high

o Need novelty and nuance (not routine and right answers)

· 6 abilities that matter most

o Design … not a function

· Literate in design

· Eg: GM in the art and entertainment business (mobile sculptor)

· Eg: CEO Proctor & Gamble (Powder for waching machine) … Its all design

· MFA is new MBA

o Story

· 14 year old girl in Africa vs Head librarian at Cambridge

· Story … differentiation in a crowded market place

· Differentiator in a market place

· Cordless phone verus Wine story

o Symphony

· Not always focus focus focus

· Ability to combine the big picture into something useful

· Learn how to draw

· Seeing things differently

o Empathy

· You can’t outsource and automate it

· JSPE (Empathy index) Higher empathy saves money and gets people better qucker

o Play

· Sense of humor (games – video games)

· Laughter club … good for you psychology

o Meaning

· Meaning is moving to the centre of successful business

· A business cannot live in order to make profits

· Improve everyone on the planet

· Best companies are Not Only for profit companies

thoughts from session 9

Today’s Topics – Creative Project

• The inter-modular process is part of the growth plan
• Classic ‘bosberaad’ situation … where big ideas
• “Life is what happens when you are busy making plans” – John Lennon
• Connections lost without being face to face – personal contact = catalyst?
• Deadline
• “Authority” Leader needed to drive it?
• Some technical problems relating to wiki
• Bigger the group difficult to get consensus

Assumptions

• Assumed that things would automatically happen
• Someone else will make it happen.
• Easy … manage different things
• Consensus … who said that we have to have consensus?
• If there is consensus (easily) then need to be suspect
• Assumed equal = fair … Not all equal … need to have the diversity

From: Eddie Obeng & Gary Hamel

Most Important Facts Covered Today

• Managing commitment & priorities in a ‘new world’ problem.
• Accountability
• Enthusiasm
• Communication
• Buy in
• Consequences – personal peer accountability

SDC – Individual Assignment

Worked hard this weekend on my SDC individual assignment. It was good to go through my notes (those that I was able to retreive) from the previous session and refresh my mind on the concepts and understandings that we discussed.

My project is coming along quite nicely, so far I have 111 learning points and I’ve arranged them into the grouped variables as I did for the Strat assignment. I must say, though, the Systems Thinking approach to problem solving is GREAT. I’m using it at work as well in some situations that hopefully will impact the business for the better.

I’ve attached some of the photies that I took of my thought process … see below

Backups &%#$%@^

Well I had a whole bunch of problems with my laptop this week so I thought it would be a good idea to reinstall Windows …. not. Of course the backups all run smoothly and you think that everything is included when you do run the backup …. not!

I realised after reinstalling everything that my ‘OneNote’ notes that I took in class for my SDC were all gone! The vids’ that I downloaded from my classmates and everything I had done up to that point had vanished. Oh well. At least I have my blog posts of the interesting points that we discussed in class.

I now have to try to remember all the ‘concepts’ for my journal that I had logged in an excel spreadsheet.

I guess its all good because now I know that in future I will double check that EVERYTHING is backed up and also I get to go through these notes to pick out my key learnings.

thoughts from session 7 – John Vlismas

Comic (How does a comic move his audience)

• Revere but disregard (an attitude of openness)
  • Don’t make judgment call e.g. philosopher never makes judgments
  • A good team will understand the value of everyone
  • Disregard everything, and must be able to question things, because the system might be weak
• Read but distill (gathering your intelligence)
  • Intelligence is knowledge of current environment …
  • Research before doing everything … can be walking into a crowd and ask questions interrogating my environment
  • Awareness and pay attention to environment … this is the true research
  • No point just reading … need to be able to distill
  • Need to ask ‘Why’ questions and not ‘What’ questions
    • Why leads you to another ‘Why’ question.
• Register but detach (ego bang bang)
  • Important to make an impact (no blending)
  • Register with people … but don’t take what people say personally
  • Ego … putting ego aside also increases your intelligence. Need to keep ego check
  • Locus of control not internal … ‘child has a tantrum’
    • Hold them tight and help them (60 – 90 seconds)
  • Shut down the peripheral
• Reframe but destroy (getting your ‘mind hands’ dirty)
  • E.g. Taxis … work for us mobilise this economy

    Everything same as us …

    How can we criticize the system that we created?

  • Need to reframe the issue … set aside history and look at it in a new way.
    
  • Must deal with the bad decisions – ’cause they never go away
  • Destroy 90% of stuff we come up with
  • SA is too good at keeping ideas / holding on.
  • Chuck away stuff … I don’t have the power to get rid of a a good idea
• Rigor but dynamism (freedom in bondage)
  • ‘Artists are chaotic people?’ … need to have incredible discipline.
  • Need to have this structure/rules
  • Then there is dynamism … must have the balance
    • Changing the changes allowing for more changes
• Resonate but demonstrate (move and be moved)
  • Start to apply them and feel what they feel
  • No filters
  • Demonstrate what you are aware of.
  • To move people you have to move with them
• Journey / quest to find the perfect gig.
  

   
   

   
   

   
   

thoughts from session 6 – graphic facilitation

Today’s Topics:

• BLOOM (Author)
  
• Cognitive learning Sequence (Progressive):
  • Knowledge – wrote learning (History, Facts)
  • Comprehension – understanding
  • Application
  • Analysis
  • Synthesis (Integrate learning)
  • Evaluation (Start to evaluate the learning)

  The best kokis to use for Graphic Facilitation are found at – Mr Sketch

  These are great sites for more information around Graphic Facilitation:

  www.makemark.com

  www.grove.com

Most Important Facts Covered Today:

Advanced Graphics

Graphic Recording

Resources