Q. Does your team need to be more creative and innovative?
If the answer is yes, it begs the question how to achieve this?
You can rely on infrequent brainstorming sessions or perhaps a random idea from someone in the team.
Or a quick huddle, boring meeting or one-way presentation.
Each of these group or team activities has their place.
But why leave the development of new ideas and solutions to chance?
There is a better way.
It’s called Switch Thinking.
As the name implies its a simple way to switch (i.e. change) from your usual to a different way of thinking.
For example:
Usual: What will make a 1% difference?
Switch
Different: What will make a 100% difference?
Switching your thinking is fun, easy, simple to learn and do.
Particularly in a group or team.
The key point is that Switch Thinking can be used in everyday interactions, for any challenge, by any individual, group or team.
Consider this scenario:
Someone in your team ask you for some help over coffee because they feel stuck with a particular problem.
Now rather than give them some (often) superficial feedback, wouldn’t it be better to help your colleague to see the problem in a new way?
For example:
Usual: What is the business problem?
Switch
Different: What is the customer problem?
This simple switch of the problem can often unlock new ideas, solutions or possibilities.
The good news is that they still own the problem but you have given them a way to become unstuck.
And their response is often – ‘thank you this is all I need to move forward.’
You invested 10 minutes of your time and the payback is (hopefully) a better solution and a more engaged team member.
The message?
Switch thinking can be used in more formal settings such as brainstorming sessions and/or in day to day interactions where a simple switch in perspective, outcome, focus etc can have a powerful impact.