Tracy Stanley

Consultant | Author

Tracy Stanley News

Getting unstuck through opposite thinking

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When you’ve been stuck searching for a solution to a wicked problem, have you tried Opposite Thinking? This involves taking an opposite approach to solving the problem and identifying those things that will help you to achieve the opposite of what you really want to achieve. Instead of asking,

‘How do I solve or prevent this problem?’ ask,

‘How could I make the problem worse?’

This discussion can be fun and provide new insights into the problem, which then helps you to identify new solutions.

Barbara Wilson describes how to undertake negative brainstorming in our book, Creativity Cycling: Help your team solve complex problems with creative tools. She suggests that if you are working with a team, use a brainstorming approach to identify different ways that you can avoid or stop the problem from being solved. Put your ideas up on a whiteboard so everyone can see them. Then use a reversal exercise to discuss how you could turn each idea into something positive.

I’ve talked previously about the importance of identifying the assumptions we have about a problem, and about the solution, as they can constrain our thinking. I found an interesting video that presents an approach that maps out our assumptions as a first step in engaging in opposite thinking. Here’s a link to the video from Board of Innovation which will give you more ideas on how you can shake up your thinking to knotty problems.

References

Creativity Cycling: Help your team solve complex problems with creative tools by Barbara Wilson and Tracy Stanley

Negative Brainstorming Link

Mindtools article

Image source

Entrepreneurial journey: The Speckio Story

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Many of you will be familiar with the Chinese proverb –

A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step

In the case of a Startup weekend, the journey starts with a lightning-fast, 10 000 metre sprint.

Except you’re not running the race on your own: you’ve just formed a team with people you don’t know who you’ll need to rely on to cross caverns and scale mountains. It’s all rather nerve wracking.

On 22 September, Team Speckio won the Global Techstars Startup Weekend Women event with their idea being to use behavioural nudges to raise self-awareness and understanding of others.

The event was held at the River City Labs in Brisbane and the team comprised –  Christina Cardarello, Britt Furlanis, Patrice Cotter, Tanya O’Shea, myself Tracy Stanley and Michael Moore. (Michael was invited to join the team when we recognised we would benefit from additional tech skills. He had come along to the event to support his Mum who was in one of the other teams).

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Marvelous metaphors

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I suspect we’re not aware of how often we use metaphors to explain something through the lens of something else. Let me provide a few examples.

In Australia, metaphors are generously sprinkled throughout our language. For example,

A dog’s breakfast

meaning a messy or complicated situation, while being

Mad as a cut snake

describes someone who is really angry.

Metaphors help us to think and see and feel and experience a situation through another sensory lens. (And sometimes to mix humour into an explanation).

Tom Albrighton talks about metaphors as bridges from the close and familiar to the distant and strange, explaining the unknown in terms of the known. He adds that metaphors are valuable tools in business, particularly when people need to communicate complex and dry ideas. By their very nature they are imperfect. Like spotlights, they illuminate some things while leaving others in the dark. This means they sometimes outlive their usefulness.

Sophie Playle beseeches writers to use metaphors as they surprise the brain. They can simultaneously make writing delightfully succinct while concentrating meaning. I like how she proposes that you pair two unexpected images to interrupt your reader’s expected train of thought. This is similar to the process used in innovation of combining two products to create something entirely new and unexpected such as the wine press and coin punch to make the printing press or more recently a winter coat that doubles as a sleeping bag.

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The importance of knowledge management and of not losing old ideas

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Photo by Leslie Holder on Unsplash

Where does critical knowledge reside in your organisation? In a database? In SharePoint? In people’s heads?

I remember Glen Carlson of Key Persons of Influence saying that –

the gap between where you are and where you want to be – is often knowledge

It’s an empowering statement.

So where do you acquire and keep this knowledge?

We live in a world where knowledge is plentiful and there are many knowledge capture systems inside and outside of our organisations.

But do we use them? Are you able to find the knowledge that we need when we need them or do we spend hours trawling through websites and data bases?

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What makes employee engagement programs work?

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Formalised programs are often used to enhance employee engagement in large organisations. These programs typically involve employee surveys, communication activities and action planning. It is hoped these undertakings will identify where changes can be made to improve employee engagement and to facilitate those changes. It is also hoped that as engagement increases, so too will business performance.  

Photo taken in Silver Chefs offices in Vancouver, Canada

It’s a big ask… 

…not least because employee engagement is a complex concept with actions requiring an appreciation of human behaviour and motivation, team climate and organisational culture. 

I’ve been interested in employee engagement for a while and have been chatting with human resource colleagues about their experiences in supporting employee engagement initiatives. Human resource practitioners and corporate communication teams typically carry responsibility for delivery of employee engagement programs. Because of this, I was interested in obtaining their insights into: 

  1. What employee engagement was?
  2. What factors most contributed to employee engagement?
  3. What were the biggest drivers of disengagement?
  4. What were the biggest obstacles to increasing engagement?
  5. What support or resources were critical for success?
  6. If they had to do it again (‘it’ being a large engagement program), what would they do differently?
  7. What things most influenced their own engagement?

They gave me rich perspectives in each area. A synthesis of what they shared follows. 

 1. What is employee engagement?

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How the best leaders encourage creativity

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Photo credit: Hudson Hintze on Unsplash

Can you remember a leader who encouraged you to think differently?
What questions did they ask? How did they behave with you and with others?

Your responses to these questions will give you insights into how leaders make it feel safe for you to speak up or to experiment with a new idea. Having the right environment is key for creativity to flourish and the leader’s behaviour is key to creating this environment. In the right environment team members will be curious, ask lots of questions and seek out new information.

Barbara Wilson and I have put together some useful insights into the role of the leader as a coach and facilitator that may help you in your efforts to encourage creativity. If you are the leader of a team you have multiple roles such as facilitator and coach. Let’s look at these roles in turn.

Leader as facilitator

Facilitation is an important and often undervalued competence. As a facilitator you will typically use a combination of individual reflection and group processes to get the best ideas and to help eliminate conformity of thinking.

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