Creating ideas, really good ideas, is what some would call a gift.
However, you can learn the art of creating great ideas on demand relatively easily. Its just a matter of learning good ways to trigger more relevant ideas. It can all be done with some simple thinking steps together with capturing your thoughts on paper as you progress.
Trigger your ideas.
The first and most fundamental thinking step is to work out what you actually want to achieve. This is the 'ST' of 'STride4' ....'ST' for Set Target.
Next comes 'Reality check' ...The 'R' of stride. Tuning into your target and the actual reality of the situation works to trigger more relevant 'ideas'; ....the 'i' of str'i'de.
The triggers work especially well if you write down your 'target' and your 'reality checks'. This really gets you thinking it through and works to prompt those idea triggers and see things more clearly.
You can do it right now with a piece of plain paper, ... Printer paper works well and the bigger the sheet size the better.
Take your piece of paper and across the top short edge of the paper write down what you want to achieve....you set your target. Let's use an example target of loosing weight. It's not a business example, but its relevant to many of us!
Now you could just write 'loose weight' at the top, but just two words is a bit limiting on your relevant creative solutions potential. So can you include in your target why you want to loose weight? Loose weight so that I can ......... Ideally try to use ten or so words so that it stretches across the whole of the top of the page. Each of the descriptive words in your target will increase your chances of triggering ideas in the next steps. Now as you ponder how to write out your target with a decent number of words you may think for example, what I actually want to achieve is improved fitness rather than just reducing weight. So adjust and modify your target as you write it down . Every person's target and every businesses target could be different in some way. Your target is Your target! Here are some examples along the lines of loosing weight.
* Improve the health and fitness of my workforce to get more productivity and 'spark'.
* Loose 'y' kg and be able to run 100m in 'X' seconds so I can make the first football team.
* Drop three clothes sizes so that I can wear clothes that I like.
* Loose two stone and increase the strength in my legs so that I can run for the bus with ease / go on that skiing trip.
So, once you have written your target across the page top, turn you paper sideways so that the long edge is now across the top and the target you have just written is to the left.
You are now ready to list out your reality checks working down the page in a column keeping to the left hand side. This leaves the centre of the page for ideas.
For the weight reduction target here are some pretty basic reality checks.
* I will need to eat the right foods in the right quantities.
* I will need to avoid eating before sleeping.
* Exercise is key.
* Forming good habits that I can stick to over the long term is key.
* Finding regular time to exercise is key.
You may or may not agree with these realities.... Everyone has their own interpretation of reality!
Half way through writing out your reality checks you may think of an idea. ...I know I could join / form a slimming club / team to get more into a routine. As soon as an idea is sparked either good or bad, you need to capture it. Write it down in the centre of the page. If you have a red pen to hand write it in red.... It's the red spark of a new idea! Even better, get yourself a four colour pen so that you can write your targets in blue and your reality checks in green, your ideas in red and your actions in black. [This is an adaptation of Edward de Bono's 'Six thinking hats' Plus Mind maps creator, Tony Buzan advocates using lots of different colours]
If you have another idea after your first just keep going writing them down. The key thing is to get lots of ideas. Write them all down. One crazy idea can lead to another and another and eventually some good ideas. You are looking for those sparks. Keep writing things down as it gets you into a flow of productivity on over any initial blocks.... You become super tuned in.
Back to the reality checks. The ones I have listed so far are pretty basic, universal ones for weight loss. To create some ideas triggers for relevant ideas for your target, you can progress a lot more by listing some relevant reality checks to the actual wording of your target. Look at each word or aspect of your target and write down more reality checks. Also a personal target such as weight loss is very personal to you. In your reality check you need to therefore list the real realities about you! Also, if in doing this, you can challenge your long held beliefs about yourself, you are more likely to trigger fresh ideas.
I use stride4 more for business and design targets though. Here the 'people' realities will be not so much about yourself and more about the customer, your competitors, your bosses' views, your fellow workers' views, abilities and tendencies etc.
You can read more about the reality check in the step2 tutorial. Remember, for a grater number of new, targeted ideas, the whole point is to look at the bigger picture and to challenge your preconceptions. You can do this by thinking again, and by comparing notes with others. And remember, we now have the internet which now enables us to discuss practically any thing with as sorts of people. They can be like minded people in a similar situation to you, or totally different people.
So it's now over to you to try out generating some stridemaps of your own. As stride4.net develops, I will build up various forums where we can post and discuss our reality checks.
I will also be adding more posts on the nature of ideas and working with ideas. The main thing about ideas though is...
1. Accept that different people are going to have different ideas because they have different realities.
2. If you go with the first idea that comes into your head, the chances are you have not thought out what actually needs to be achieved. It is very likely that you could instead find a better idea that in the long run saves you or your business a lot of time effort and expense.
3. People are going to have a tendency to hang onto their ideas and defend them. If you already work in design, you will already know that's just the way it is.
4. Stride4 can cut though it all by breaking down problems into steps and acknowledging that people have different targets and realities. Targets and realities that are acceptable to discuss and debate.
The next tutorial step is the 'Do Effective action' step. ....An idea is just an idea until its acted on. But life is short and business is fast. We need to choose effective actions to do.
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