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Anti-Conventional Thinking (ACT)by Jeffrey Baumgartner Download the 20 page introduction to ACT paper (PDF) Have you tried brainstorming, ideas campaigns, crowdsourcing and other idea generation activities only to be disappointed by the results? Does it seem most corporate brainstorm sessions generate little more than pat phrases comprising the management’s favourite buzz words? Does your idea management system fill up largely with predictable ideas that at best might result in incremental innovations? If so, you are not alone. The truth is, many of these creative exercises – and in spite of what anyone tells you about innovation, idea generation is a creative activity that can eventually result in innovation – are poorly conceived. They are designed to generate as many ideas as possible in the hopes that once the obvious, conventional solutions to problems are exhausted, more creative, unconventional ideas will come to the surface. Yet in truth, the only time this happens is when highly creative people are participating in the brainstorm. Fortunately, there is a solution that allows normally creative people to behave more like highly creative people and so generate better ideas. I call this method Anti-Conventional Thinking (ACT). It requires that you throw away many of the rules you have learned about brainstorming and idea generation. What is ACT? Think about it. Creative ideas can be defined as new, unconventional ideas that are formed by combining two or more established ideas in new ways. By definition, then, creative ideas are unconventional. So, it only makes sense to seek them when looking for ideas. To do this, we need to tweak some of the fundamental rules of brainstorming. But first, we need to be clear on what it means to be “anti-conventional”. How to Be Anti-Conventional Being anti-conventional means to be purposefully unconventional. That is to consider what is the conventional reaction to any situation and explicitly doing something different. Being anti-conventional can be as simple as saying “Hey there!” rather than the traditional “good morning” to your colleagues in the morning. If most of your colleagues drive to work, you can be anti-conventional by bicycling or walking to work. If the usual way to present results to management is in a PowerPoint presentation of bullet points, you can do your presentation in a slide-show of artistic images or, better yet, do away with PowerPoint all together. However, being anti-conventional does not mean being rude, dishonest or unethical. Sure, you might consider unethical approaches in the idea generation phase, but only in order to devise ethical approaches that might be inspired by unethical alternatives. In fact, the best means of getting away with being anti-conventional is to be especially polite and well mannered. Although we are mostly concerned about applying anti-conventional thinking to the idea generation process, purposefully being a little anti-conventional on a daily basis will help you to think more creatively and find creative solutions more easily. With this in mind, let’s look at how ACT can help you be far more creative at work. The Cult of the Idea But, most corporate idea generation exercises, whether small brainstorming sessions or massive crowdsourcing extravaganzas are designed to generate lots and lots of conventional ideas. They typically succeed. Moreover, the classic brainstorming rule of no criticising of ideas, which is designed to avoid inhibiting people from suggesting radical ideas can actually result in the inhibition of radical ideas. We will get back to this in a moment. Creative Challenges
Such challenges fail to inspire truly creative thought and invite highly conventional solutions. Instead, challenges should inspire people to think. Consider these alternatives:
It should be clear that such challenges will have the opposite effect to traditional corporate brainstorms where people suggest lots of conventional ideas, but are afraid of being mocked for suggesting wild and crazy ideas. With these examples, you are actually encouraging unconventional ideas and discouraging the conventional. But why should the challenge remain the same throughout the brainstorm or ideas campaign? If you look at truly creative people, like artists, at work, you will see that they continually re-frame their focus. In effect, they create sub-challenges as they define solutions to their challenges. A sculptor carving away at a piece of wood to make an abstract female figure will likely be inspired by the wood as she works, changing the proportions and positioning of the figure. The end result will still be the female body, but the details may well be different from her initial vision. Comic teams preparing scripts for a television show will start with a theme for the show, but if someone comes up with a brilliant joke, it may result in taking the characters in a direction unanticipated before the joke was written into the script. Likewise, when solving corporate problems, you need to be flexible with the challenge. Of course you need to maintain the big picture. But why not create subchallenges as creative participants generate great, unconventional ideas? After all, incredible ideas can change your outlook on the challenge you are addressing. Unconventional Ideas Only, Please To allay this fear, Alex Osborn (who invented brainstorming) rightfully included the rule that Hence that you should never criticise ideas in a brainstorm. But the truth is, unless a brainstorm comprises highly creative people (and it is important to note that Mr. Osborn ran an advertising agency, so his pioneering brainstorms surely did include highly creative people), participants will squelch their own outrageous ideas before sharing them with colleagues This is doubly true if the creative challenge they are addressing is conventional in nature. This is because we all have inner censors that review our ideas before taking action on them. These inner censors are a necessary part of the mind. They analyse ideas and prevent us from doing things that could get us in trouble. For instance, if you are urgently in need of money, your inner censor will (I hope), prevent you from taking action on an idea to mug the rich old lady who lives across the road and always carries lots of cash in her handbag. Likewise, this censor also prevents us from saying rude things in polite company. Sadly, it also prevents many of us from suggesting outrageous ideas at work for fear of real or imagined consequences. So, rather than push people to turn off their inner censors, which is unnatural and difficult, it makes more sense to use those censors to stop conventional ideas and let unconventional ideas pass. How? Simply start with an unconventional challenge and then establish a rule that ONLY unconventional ideas are allowed. Moreover, rather than prohibit criticism, welcome it! But, there should be three rules:
This will serve several purposes that will result in fewer ideas than traditional brainstorming, but those ideas will be far more creative. Firstly, by rejecting conventional ideas – which will be obvious to anyone in the company anyway – you reduce the administrative overload that comes from having to review lots of mediocre ideas. Secondly, by allowing people to defend their ideas and their colleagues’ ideas, you push people to think in more depth about their ideas and toimprove them in ways that make them more viable for your company. Your Goal Is Not Quantity. It Is Unconventionality This is why the process is called “anti-conventional” thinking. Your aim is to go against the conventional and be unconventional. Be a rebel. Be different. Be Creative. An insane idea that results in a breakthrough innovation is worth far more than a dozen small ideas that result in incremental innovation. ACT Also Works Solo
In fact, this is essentially what creative people such as artists, musicians, writers and others do all the time. They purposefully reject conventional solutions for unconventional solutions. Pablo Picasso did not ask himself how he could paint better portraits. Rather he asked outrageous questions such as how could he show three dimensional subjects from multiple viewpoints on a two dimensional canvas? His solution to this problem was to invent, along with Georges Braque, cubism: a radically new and extremely creative art movement. Be Creative at Every Step Only Scratched the Surface Anticonventional Thinking Training and FacilitationWould you like me to give a workshop on anticonventional thinking in your company? I can teach you and your colleagues how anticonventional thinking works in an interactive workshop that combines a lecture, discussion and a lot of group exercises that enable you to put anticonventional thinking to practice immediately! Learn more about my anticonventional thinking workshops here or contact me here. I'd really enjoy working with you!
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