How to create a hundred ideas
As I have blogged about previously, in a knowldege economy your value is dependent on the quality of your thinking and the quality of your decisions. One component of that is coming up with lots of different ideas and that seems to be something many people really struggle with. So here is my 7-step guide to creating a hundred ideas for any given problem.
1) Get the right environment
By far the worst place you can generate good ideas is sat round a table, during work hours, in your work clothes and with no music. Yet this is where people spend hours every week in meetings. The 3 places that most people are most creative are the 3 Bs:
- In Bed
- In the Bath
- In the Bar
These are the most creative environments you can be in and these are excellent environments for generating new ideas. Bed and bath tend to be best for free-idea-association and letting your mind wander and play with ideas. Bars are best for bouncing ideas around with other people, preferably with good music and good alcohol involved. It is no coincidence that most business ideas are generated over lunch or evening drinks.
In order of priority, from worst to best, this is where I would convene a group if I wanted to generate lot of good ideas:
- The office at work
- Workplace meeting room
- A meeting venue outside your organisation
- A cafe or coffee bar
- A stimulating creative environment (such as an art gallery)
2) Get the right group
If everyone in the group is the same gender, the same race, the same age and with similar academic background, then you will get very similar suggestions and ideas. As well as going for diversity in age, gender and age, it is useful to get people from different professional backgrounds and a good mix of introverts and extroverts. This will pay dividends in the diversity of ideas and suggestions.
3) Clearing the idea constipation
The first 10 ideas you will have will usually be approaches that have been used in the past or "standard responses" to a problem. So if there is a financial crisis in a hospital, you will often hear vacancy freezes, stop agency nurse spending, stop training spending, bed closures, mergers, etc and these ideas are always the worst.
There is a kind of idea constipation which occurs and you need to clear the initial blockage before the good ideas flow freely. That is why it is worth aiming for 20, 50 or a 100 ideas because your first 10 will very often be the poorest ideas. Typically when I am working with a group and they begin evaluating all the ideas, it is often the ones at the end of the process which are considered the best.
4) Mindmapping and brainstorming
The real advantage of mindmapping and brainstorming is that it promotes non-linear thinking. Our brains are designed to connect disparate ideas and work in a non-linear way and mindmapping and brainstorming are processes that closely mimic the way our brains work.
5) Spark don't judge
One of the real dangers is that you begin evaluating the options early on, whether it is a quick evaluation (i.e. "that won't work" or "we've tried that") or a longer evaluation (where you begin earnestly debating a single option). Both of these processes will slow down and potentially stop the flow of ideas and will mean you are stuck with your earlier (and worse) ideas rather than the later (and best) ideas.
6) Go for the crazy
Often crazy and zany suggestions will make your brain come up with several other ideas and suggestions. They can also start new trains of ideas, such as "if this problem was an animal, what would it be" or "which superhero could solve the problem". Humour can work really well here, as can using visual images, toys, etc.
7) Keeping an idea journal
As you get better at idea generation, you will find your brain will naturally generate more and more ideas. I keep an idea journal which contains every creative idea that I have had over the last 7 years. I am now up to 1,080 ideas and they include such thoughts as:
Who in your life is allowed to interrupted you whenever they want - the larger the number of people who have that power, the lower your happiness and your quality of life?
Why do we give hundreds of pounds worth of our time away without thought when we would never give money in the same?
What if an off-licence was run as a social enterprise?
Is your career in the hands of someone else? Can someone make your work life miserable on a whim? Do the people who make decisions about your future and your life really care about you? Do you think these people are idiots?
Periodically I review these ideas and often they spark new ideas, new presentations or I find links with other projects I am involved in. So I hope this helps you come up with lots more ideas and get the most out of groups and meetings. If all else fails, at the next meeting you have to go to, take some vodka and an iPod player and (assuming you still have a job the next day) you might be surprised just how much creativity is around and inside you.