Report 103
Your newsletter on applied creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business.
Wednesday 7 May 2014
Issue 257
Hello and welcome to another issue of Report 103, your twice-monthly (or thereabouts) newsletter on creativity, imagination, ideas and innovation in business.
As always, if you have news about creativity, imagination, ideas, or innovation please feel free to forward it to me for potential inclusion in Report103. Your comments and feedback are also always welcome.
Information on unsubscribing, archives, reprinting articles, etc can be found at the end of this newsletter.
Anticonventional Thinking (ACT) 3.0
Following substantial experience and experimentation with anticonventional thinking, I have revised and improved it. Here is version 3.0. I'd love your feedback!
Anticonventional thinking (ACT) is a thinking technique that you can use to analyse situations and build creative visions in response to those situations. As its name implies, ACT is purposefully rejecting conventional thinking and pursuing unconventional, new ideas. However, unlike most creative thinking techniques, ACT is not about generating lots of ideas. In fact, it is not much at all about ideas. Rather, it is about deeply understanding a situation from numerous perspectives and in various contexts. Once you can do this, it becomes simple to build a viable, unconventional creative vision. ACT is modelled on the way artists, writers and other highly creative people think and collaborate. It incorporates our latest understanding of how the mind works and it responds to the numerous flaws of brainstorming and similar techniques that generate ideas but little true creativity.
ACT follows a simple flow
Identify a transcendental situation
Identify a transcendental situation, that is, a situation in which you want
to take (or at least consider taking) creative action.
Explore the situation in your inner mind
Explore the situation in your inner mind, question it, associate and compare
it with other situations; get to know the situation inside out and upside down.
You will find lots of insight and inspiration pours into your inner mind. If
possible, allow at least two and ideally several days for reflecting on the
situation during which time the situation is at the back of your mind. Always
have a notebook handy to jot down insights and ideas (it is okay to have ideas,
but do not focus on them; focus on the situation).
Play with Ideas
Start playing with ideas. Consider each idea as it comes to mind. Is it boring
and conventional? Then reject it! Is it unconventional? Then push it! Make it
less conventional, more crazy, more fun! Is it viable in terms of the needs
of your situation? If not, can you modify the idea to make it viable? If so,
do so! If not, stop wasting time on this idea and play with another one. Keep
going until a crazy idea starts to make sense in your mind. Do not worry if
the idea sounds stupid. This is a good sign. The most unconventional, creative
ideas almost always seem stupid at first.
Build a Vision
Once you have a possibly stupid and probably brilliant idea in mind, develop
it into a creative vision that you can work with. Visualise the implementation
of the idea. What needs to be done to make it work. What does it look like?
What does it sound like? How does it feel? Can you make it more outlandish.
Sometimes, in developing a vision, you may find that the idea is not so viable
after all. This happens. Dump the idea and play with other ones until you get
a better idea. Then come back to vision building.
Build a step-by-step action plan
You have before you a big, crazy and unconventional creative vision
that probably seemed like jolly good fun when you were playing with ideas and
building visions; but, frankly, seems a bit intimidating now that you need to
think about implementing it. Don't be intimidated. Rather, break the vision
up into smaller, manageable steps and then focus on each step, one at a time.
Do it
This is simple. Just do it.
ACTsession
If you are looking for an alternative to brainstorming, try an ACTsession which uses the principles of ACT and some great group collaboration techniques for developing a developed creative vision and an action plan!
The best ACTsession groups comprise five to eight people. If you are working with a larger group, break them into smaller groups. Likewise, if you want multiple creative visions, use multiple groups. Each group should aim to build a single vision.
An ACTsession flows similarly to ACT.
Identify a transcendental situation
As above
Deconstruct the transcendental situation
Explain the transcendental situation to the group. If possible, give members
a chance to reflect upon it and explore it in their inner minds for a day or
two. Make it clear that you do NOT want ideas. Only insights at this time. Be
firm, many people find it hard not to have ideas. Reconvene ito discuss and
deconstruct the situation by asking questions. If possible, allow a break of
a day or two for further, individual inner-mind reflection and mind wandering.
Formulate a sexy goal
If you intend to involve a bigger group or multiple groups in building a creative
vision, you should formulate a shared sexy goal. (brainstorming and other creative
thinking techniques use problem statements, but ACT recognises that problems
are for losers and goals are for winners). A sexy goal motivates people to think
about the transcendental situation in new ways and that makes it easier to have
unconventional ideas and build creative visions.
Play with ideas
Make it clear that boring, conventional ideas are prohibited. You should also
encourage team members to criticise and question each others' ideas freely.
This is the only way you can really discuss and develop ideas. It also enables
you to reject boring or non-viable ideas early on so that the team can focus
on unconventional ideas.
Build a vision
Once you have a suitably outlandish idea, build it into a creative
vision with the team. Ideally, instruct the team to present their results as
a story, a model, a rough prototype or a role play. This helps
focus the team on developing a cohesive vision that is relevant to the transcendental
situation. It also better involves all team members.
Step-by-step action plan
As above, but a member of the team must take responsibility for each
step and one member should take responsibility for the entire project.
Do it!
As above, do it. Don't put it off. Do it!
Facilitators
If you are facilitating an ACT session and have a creative mind, you may wish to define the sexy goal yourself. As an outside to the organisation, you will probably find it easier to come up with an outlandish, sexy goal that pushes people to think about the transcendental situation in new ways.
ACT 3.0
This is my third revision of the ACT method. It is the result of facilitating ACTsessions, discussing the method with others and incorporating inner mind thinking into the process. As a result, ACT has become more of a flow than a series of steps. Particularly, if you are using ACT on your own, you may not even notice the transition from exploring a situation in your inner mind to building a creative vision to preparing an action plan. You may even find you go back and forth somewhat. As you work on your action plan, you may need to back up and revise the vision and that may cause you to rethink your interpretation of the transcendental situation.
I am in the process of compiling ACT together with details, examples and stories in a book on anticonventional thinking to be published this summer. Meanwhile, many of the processes described here can be found here.
Learn ACT
I have facilitated ACT workshops and sessions with businesses, government bodies and non-profit organisations on four continents. I would love to train you and your colleagues how to use ACT as a part of your innovation process! You can find more about my workshops and other services here or, better yet email me by replying to this newsletter or call me on +32 2 305 6591.
Closing the Archives
In the next few weeks, I will close the archives of Report 103. Most important articles are now available in the Creativity Articles section of my web site, which is better indexed than the archives. Having many articles showing on the web site twice, once in the Report 103 archives and once in the Creativity Articles is redundant and apparently makes it harder for people to find what they want on jpb.com.
Interact with Me!
I am on the social networks and would love to connect with you there.
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recommend me with a few words about value you have received from Report 103
Twitter
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I’m @creativejeffrey
Happy thinking!
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Report 103 is edited by Jeffrey Baumgartner and is published on a monthly basis.
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