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Famous Quotes to Enliven Your Speechs and Training
(visit regularly or ask for quotes to emailed direct to you as they are added). They are organised in Topics.
Group Work
Although the scientific investigations of group work are but a few years old, I don't hesitate to predict that group work - that is, the handling of human beings not as isolated individuals, but in the social setting of groups, will soon be one of the most important theoretical and practical fields ... there is no hope for creating a better world without a deeper scientific insight into the ... essentials of group life. Kurt Lewin (1943)
Two Heads are better than one (John Heywood)
All for One, One for All (Andre Dumas)
It is easier to change individuals formed into a group than to change any of them seperately. (Kurt Lewin 1951)
The more voices we allow to speak about one thing, the more eyes, different eyes we can use to observe one thing, the more complete will our concept of this thing, our objectivity be. (Nietzsche)
Problem Solving
We cannot solve problems with the same thinking that created them (Albert Einstein)
Any fact facing us is not as important as our attitude toward it, for that determines our success or failure (Norman Vincent Peale)
Change Process
Lasting improvement does not take place by pronouncements or official progarms. Change takes place slowly inside each of us andby the choices we think through in quiet wakeful moments lying bed just before dawn. (Peter Block the Empowered Manager)
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SO, WHAT IS CREATIVITY
I was recently reading an excellent book by Wayne Bennett, the coach of the Queensland State of Origin team and the Brisbane Broncos. I actually trained under Wayne Bennett when I was in the Brisbane school boys team many, many years ago and had followed his career and coaching with interest. This book is a great summary of where he has come from and where he is today. He’s unquestionably one of the best coaches in the country, if not the best. He has continually taken the Queensland State of Origin team to victory, as was the case again this year. The Brisbane Broncos have been a champion team year after year producing many great Queensland players. What’s the secret to his success?
His book called ‘Don’t die with the music in you’ is a ripper. I loved it and so have the numerous people I have recommended to read it.
So, what’s all this have to do with creativity? There were two words that I took from this book. The first word I took from this book is persistence. Although Wayne Bennett makes reference to this word in terms of leadership I think it also has a very important place in the process of creativity. If you think back to your creative heroes or anybody that influences you in a creative sense than one of the characteristics which you would identify with that person is persistence. Its’ finding another way to do things when the going gets tough. It’s persisting with the desire to find an answer even if you don’t know it in the first two or three minutes. Quite often in our workshops when I give people a puzzle, if they cant solve it within the first 60 seconds they loose heart and start to be distracted. If you want to stimulate your creativity you need to learn to persist and when you don’t know something keep trying until you do.
The other word that I though stood out was curiosity. Questioning is undoubtedly one of the base stones for creative thinking. If we don’t have a curious mind we’re never looking for a new or different way to do things. We must be curious in our endeavours. By being curious we constantly ask ourselves more and better questions. We need to be saying to ourselves, what else can we do here? How else can this be done? What could we change? Why is it like that?
This distance and curiosity along with courage are probably the three key words that I would remind you to think about when stimulating your creative mind. We’ve discussed the fact before that we all have the ability to be creative but I believe these three words separate one person to the next. I.e. the person that believes they’re creative and that person whose not.
It’s a terrific book, it’s an easy read and one that I suggest you grab this weekend.
An audio program by Gary Bertwistle "Studio of The Mind" is available online gary@bluemoon.net.au
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DO YOU HAVE A PASSION FOR WHAT YOU ARE DOING
Confucius once said that 'If you love what you do, you will never work another day in your life". How many people can truthfully say that ? Most people think about their work or what they do as a necessary evil, as merely a means to an end. Many even consider it to be their unfortunate fate in life. In the process they sacrifice their childhood dreams of doing something worth mentioning, something they feel passionate about. Those adopting such thinking habits experience their workplaces as morbid hellholes where they have to spend hours every day just to make ends meet. A father once explained that his son was rather big for his age and, as a results, was chosen to carry and play the timpani in the school band. The band's need for a strong person to carry the large bass drum was reasonable, but no one bothered to ask the student whether he wanted to play the timpani. It turned out that the had no desire whatsoever to play the timpani. He had no passion for the task at hand and gave up playing in the band. The band lost a valuable member who had the potential to play an instrument of his choose with enthusiasm. Just like this young man we, too, need to enjoy what we are doing to be able to continue with conviction. As with the Industrial Revolution, the Information Age is an era when one person can, with ease, do work with their high-speed computers and interconnectedness via the worldwide web, the more they are expected to delivery. As expectations of what people can do rise, so do their working hours. People are spending more and more of their time at work. Similarly the world of sport has become extremely competitive and professional. Athletes are training longer and harder than ever before as they push the boundaries of human performance. It is critical to teams and organisations that people enjoy what they do, that individuals do what they are passionate about. Quick test: Stop for a moment, take a step back and ask yourself the following questions:
Does what I do really excite me?
Does what I do count?
Do I look forward to doing what I am doing?
Do I still have goals or have I given up on them?
Do I feel passionate about my goals?
Will achieving my goals make a difference to anybody?
Will achieving my goals add richness to my life?
Will I share my goals with others, or doesn't it matter?
Reproduced from On Track to the top by Jacques van Schalkwyk. Eight Ways of Awesome Athletes and Business Leaders
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WE NEED OUR PEOPLE TO THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX
Managers and executives often ask for programs to make their staff “think outside the box”. What these organisations really need is to see is that to foster organisational innovation, you must start with individual skills for managing ideas.
When organisations look for innovative thinking programs, the typical symptoms, as they see it are:
Lack of teamwork within a department or business
Important decisions seem to be made at the last minute
New ideas are rare or non-existent
People are reactive – virtually unable or unwilling to take initiative
These symptoms relate to both the government sector and the corporate sector. At best, organisations develop skills to react to problems. However, many fail to do this adequately. The losers are customers who do not benefit from problem free services or products.
What is the role for HR and Training to get people to think outside the box?
This is a truly important question, which needs a much broader examination than most organisations are prepared to take. The result is a tremendous waste of brainpower in our organisations. Workshops that give people a brainstorming tool or two are not the solution.
The solution will be found in looking deeper into the issue of what prevents people from thinking in new and original ways. To start, let deal with this question – “what’s makes an innovative organisation innovative?”.
PriceWaterhouseCoopers looked at 300 large UK corporations to tackle this challenge. The measure used was the ability to continually launch new products and services and profit from them (in terms of the percent of turnover coming from sales of new products and services in comparison to overall revenues). This bottomline measure ranked companies and PWC studied the top companies in depth. The results were surprising.
What it did not find
Innovation is not the domain of certain industries such as technology or marketing. In fact, some technology companies were not innovative at all while some commodity-based companies were.
We do not have innovative industries – we have innovative companies in all industries.
Innovation is not the role of R&D – all departments must contribute ideas and innovations to grow the bottomline.
What it did find
Innovative organisations have above average earnings for their industry.
Innovative organisations – regardless of their industry – have certain common attributes. These attributes reflect their programs and policies in three key areas:
Innovative organisations have well defined “idea management policies”. Idea management policies are those that encourage people to actively seek out ideas, to manage these ideas, and to act on them.
Innovative organisations create a climate that is open to new ideas. There is no point in teaching people to create ideas if the organisation is not prepared to use them.
Innovative organisations are led by executives who carefully balance leadership and management, who empower people to take initiative, recognise and reward those who encourage staff to take broader approaches.
It is the first of the common attributes that we must explore – Idea Management.
To put the need for greater personal skills to manage ideas in context, it is useful to go back to a book published in 1953 called Applied Imagination. The reason for doing so is that its author mentioned a process to improve the effectiveness of meetings when he wrote, “we need to harness our brains to storm through problems”. This was later referred to as “brainstorming”. The key is to notice that Alex Osborn invested 278 pages in techniques, ideas and suggestions to help individuals to be more creative as individuals, and 17 pages in the group process of brainstorming. His philosophy is that we must maximise our personal skills first, apply them, and then resort to a team once we’ve exhausted our personal contribution toward solving a problem. This almost seems at odds with today’s preoccupation with teamwork.
To broaden your appreciation as to the potential of what this implies, here is a summary of an innovation training program developed by the Singapore Prime Minister’s Office. Its goal was to make the public service more innovative. I edited that actual guide that was forwarded to thousands of civil servants. It represents a very sophisticated training program.
Idea management was broken down into six components. Managers and staff were challenged to contribute to a more innovative culture by developing their capacity to innovate. These competencies are the foundation vital to the innovation process:
Idea Generation – Innovation starts with finding new ideas when and where they are needed. One writer call this, “deliberate creative thinking”. We can use tools that create new ways of thinking that help us find new ideas.
Ideas Developing – Our first ideas are often raw and need to be enhanced, combined or connected to transform average ideas into great ones.
Idea Evaluation – By learning to evaluate ideas we find those capable of creating the results we want.
Ideas Marketing and Proposing – To get commitment to any new idea takes communication. Learning to sell your idea is as important as finding it in the first place.
Ideas Implementing – Transforming our ideas into action plans and results is our goal.
Team Learning – The final element is to ensure that team lessons are learned during the innovation process.
Specific training programs were developed for each of these areas and offered by the Singapore Civil Service College. The Public Service is already known for its efficiency and effectiveness. The bottomline for the Prime Minister Office’s which commissioned the work is the need to go forward “by building a culture of innovation that ensures we will find new ways to create greater value for the organisation, its people and those we serve”.
The next time someone in your organisation says, “we need to think outside the box” try to assess where the problem really lies. It is generating ideas, harvesting them, or turning them into action. This can provide a stronger framework for identifying training needs.
Wow! that’s a Great Idea! is a 170 page idea manual for managers or business owners wanted to improve their idea management skills and to foster more innovative thinking on their team or in their organisation.
Conference Navigator Guide – this unique idea journal is your ticket to more effective conference participation. It will prompt to find more and bigger ideas at your next conference.
Idea Navigator Guide – do you still carry around a school notebook for your notes? You are no longer in school. It’s time for a handy guide for your day to day management of your notes and ideas. It includes a section on making meetings more innovative and how to turn ideas into action.
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This quiz was actually contributed by a participant in one of my seminars. The contributor's name has been lost to me. However, if a reader knows its origin, I would happy to give credit in a later column. It’s a good way to set an upbeat mood in any session, especially one that will address creative thinking, problem solving, teamwork, or other subjects relative to complex descision-making.Tell participants you’re about to conduct a quick aptitude test. After posing the question, give the group a chance to respond before giving the answer. Take only one question at a time.
Q. How do you put a giraffe in a refrigerator?
A. Open the refrigerator, put in the giraffe and close the door.
This question tests whether or not you overly complicate situations in your attempt to solve them.
Q. How do you put an elephant in a refrigerator?
The correct answer is NOT "Open the refrigerator, put in the elephant and close the door."
A. Open the refrigerator, take out the giraffe, put in the elephant and shut the door.
This question tests your abilities to foresee obstacles in your preparation to deal with them.
Q. The Lion King is hosting an animal conference. All the animals attend except one.
Which animal does not attend?
A. The elephant. The elephant is still in the refrigerator.
This question tests whether or not you are capable of synthesizing new pieces of information with information you've already acquired.
Q. There is a river where all the crocodiles live. How do you cross it?
A. Just swim across. All the crocodiles are attending the Lion King's Animal Convention!
This question tests your reasoning abilities.
Summary
If you answered all four questions correctly, you are indeed a professional capable of great problem solving.
If you answered three questions correctly, you have some work to do, but there's hope for you.
If you answered two out of four, consider another line of work.
If you answered only one correctly, consider a line of work that doesn't require higher mental functions (i.e. ______________ or ______________).
You are welcome to fill in the blanks anything that would cause your participants to chuckle — maybe “management” or “training.”
Copyright 2001. Dave Arch and Associates. All rights reserved.
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YOUR PARTICIPANTS FOR A LEARNING EXPERIENCE
It is a mistake to think that your participants know how to learn effectively and understand the learning process. Many trainers nonetheless make this assumption every day. The result is that participants likely arrive for a training session with no clear understanding of what their role is or what you will provide.
To help eliminate stress, confusion and potentially a learning failure, you would be wise to consider ways to prepare participants for their learning experience. I have found that when I put more effort into planning and preparation, there has been greater success and satisfaction for my learners and me.
The most important factor to remember is your learners.
Everything you do in training should be learner centered and focused on ensuring that a transfer of knowledge has occurred so that participants can use what they received in real-world situations. In this chapter, you will explore some of the techniques and strategies that have worked for me in training various types of learning over the past three decades. For example to help learners take ownership for a programs content and recognize the value it can bring, get participants involved early in the session. At the beginning of the session, discuss session objectives. Separate participants into small groups of six to eight people. Select a leader and scribe for each group by giving a small game spinner to each group (get these from board games you own or at a games/toy store). Have each person in a group take turns spinning the dial until a pre-designated number, letter, colour, or whatever is selected. That person “volunteers” to be the group leader. He or she can then turn to the person on the right or left and select the scribe, who will capture group ideas on a flip chart page. Next, to help identify needs and involve participants in an active learning process, pass out a handout that contains a single sentence question to prompt thinking about the course. You may want to use a variety of questions so that each small group works on different issues. Sample questions might be:
At the end of this session, what new knowledge do you hope to have ?
Based on the session objectives, how do you see program content adding value to you, your customers and your organization?
Why is this program topic important to you, your customers and your organization?
Allow 5-10 minutes for brainstorming and then have groups present ideas to the rest of their peers for discussion and comment
Extract taken from:
The Creative Training Idea Book by Robert W Lucas.
Inspired Tips and Techniques for Engaging and Effective Learning $79.95 + $9.00 freight
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