Releasing creativity at work has never been more important than when times are tough. Our workshop “Extreme thinking – releasing creativity” encourages us all to seek creative ways of counter-acting the negativity of austerity. In earlier workshops in our Antidotes to Austerity series we considered the impact of leadership that:
- Challenges underlying assumptions
- Hold the tensions between what might seem competing and conflicting demands.
These approaches are central to any attempt to focus on releasing creativity at work.
Releasing Creativity at Work: Extreme thinking
It often takes a challenge to think differently before we start to explore more creative solutions. If we only think about modifying what we currently do, there is little scope for being more radical. One powerful way to think differently is to apply what we call extreme thinking. To go to the extremes and think big and small. For example, what would happen if you doubled your customers, or halved your the cost of delivering your service. Thinking to extremes forces you to look at different solutions. They may not be where you finally end up, but they drive you to think differently, and in so doing release creativity in the workplace.
This session will help you to:
- Apply thinking techniques for creativity.
- Explore different perspectives to aid creative solutions.
- Evaluate approaches to managing with limited resources.
- Develop techniques to do more with less.
- Investigate scarcity and abundance mentalities
- Investigate “Tipping Point” principles – small changes which have big impacts.
- Apply principles to test the potential of new ideas.
In some ways austerity itself can be a driver of creativity. When resources are scarce you need to think differently about what you can do with the resources you do have.
As the reknowned scientist Lord Rutherford once said:
We’ve got no money so we’ve got to think.