How Creative Thinking Skills Can Help Your Organization Excel

By Author: Barbara Stennes
Total Articles: 4
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Dr. Edward de Bono, who coined the phrase “lateral thinking”, asserts that it is essential to disrupt the conventional way our brain thinks in order to come up with ideas that are creative and innovative. By encouraging reasoning which is not traditional, this process finds a solution to problems through an indirect approach.

Creativity and innovation distinguish your organization from your competitors. In fact, only organizations that innovate will continue to grow, while the rest remain stagnant. It is thereby important that you equip your employees with creative thinking skillswhich will enable them to produce powerful thinking results.

In Lateral Thinking, there are four types of thinking tools:

1. Idea generating tools: to create breakthrough ideas

2. Focus tools: to ensure that the correct problem is solved

3. Harvest tools: to ensure that a tangible solution is reached

4. Treatment Tools: to create specific ideas for decision-making

Armed with these innovation tools, employees ...
... will find it much easier to come up with new ideas ‘on demand’. This will also help them communicate better, reduce conflict, and improve team results. With the help of these tools and de Bono’s six thinking hats employees will learn to solve problems in a more comprehensive and analytical manner, which is a more constructive alternative to arguments or drifting discussions.

While creative thinking skillsare important, it is also essential that you identify a candidate who can be trained as a strategic planning facilitator. This candidate should be able to facilitate meetings smoothly and ensure that the objectives are met. Here are the traits that you should be looking for:

• Logical and analytical thinker: discussions tend to get complex and emotional. A facilitator should be able to direct the group

• A good motivator and likes to work with people: facilitation is all about managing people, hence a strategic planning facilitatormust enjoy dealing with people

• Excellent communicator: apart from being a good listener, he/she should be able to deliver thoughts in a clear and crisp manner

• Does not lose sight of the goal. The candidate should be able to push the group in subtle ways towards tangible outcomes

• Friendly and non-judgmental. The candidate should put everyone at ease and convey warmth to the group

While it might be difficult to find a candidate who has all the traits listed above; you can pick one who has most of these traits and train them on the rest. These are just a few ways in which innovation tools and lateral thinking can help your organization excel.