Sixty-Day Creative-Thinking Facilitation Skills Training Program
What If … you could significantly accelerate innovation across your organization? At the center of this sixty day creative-thinking facilitation skills training program (self-directed with coaching) is a comprehensive and disciplined method, and set of tools and techniques for systematically igniting creative-thinking facilitation skills. Upon completion of this innovative, multi-dimensional program, creative-thinking facilitators will discover how to…

• Use and apply a practical, repeatable, and researched-based creative-thinking process, and robust set of creative-thinking
       tools, techniques, and exercises to accelerate innovation
• Learn and apply creative-thinking facilitation skills in a disciplined and flexible way that significantly increases the likelihood
       that the skills and practices will become habits
• Receive timely performance and development feedback on creative-thinking facilitation skills from a creative-thinking coach
• Transfer the creative-thinking methods, techniques, tools, and practices across your organization
• Rediscover and reenergize your motivation, passion, and resilience, and get your creative juices flowing at a high rate.
• Develop and strengthen cognitive and versatility creative-thinking skills

The Bursts of Fresh Squeezed Ideas Program @ a Glance, depicted below, outlines the components of the program. The program is comprised of sponsors, creative-thinking facilitators, a creative-thinking cohort and a creative-thinking coach.

   Sponsor

The role of the sponsor is to:

• Assist in defining and scoping the challenge, or project to be worked on
• Provide guidance and feedback throughout the challenge or project
• Assist in removing or minimizing any roadblocks that crop up along the way

   Creative-Thinking Facilitator

The role of the creative-thinking facilitator is to:

• Attend opening and closing workshops (when applicable) where you gain valuable practice in facilitating creative-
       thinking meetings
• Facilitate on the job creative-thinking meetings throughout the eight week program
• Apply divergent and convergent creative-thinking tools, techniques, and practices on a weekly basis against the identified
       challenge or project
• Journal key learning's, insights, barriers, and darn good creative-thinking practices
• Receive feedback from designated feedback providers
• Collaborate with a creative-thinking coach to stay sharp
• Exchange darn good creative-thinking practices, and gain additional insights from the creative-thinking cohort.

   Creative-Thinking Cohort

The creative-thinking cohort is a de-facto learning group that you may go through the program with (based on timing and schedules). The role of the creative-thinking cohort is to:

• Share darn good creative-thinking practices and insights
• Use one another as sounding boards for creative-thinking ideas, tools, techniques, and practices
• Build a network of creative-thinking colleagues for a broad-based, diverse, and steady supply of ideas, tools, techniques,
       and practices

   Creative-Thinking Coach

The creative-thinking coach is the guide for the program. His/her role is to:

• Facilitate the opening and closing workshops (when applicable)
• Conduct coaching sessions with the creative-thinking facilitator(s)
• Facilitate on-going darn good practice exchanges after the completion of the eight week program

Each week is designed and sequenced for the creative-thinking facilitator to develop a set of creative-thinking and problem-solving skills and key behaviors by implementing a regimen of tools, techniques, and exercises. In essence the creative-thinking facilitator lives with specific tools and techniques for a week. The following is a sampling of key behaviors, tools, & techniques.

Key Behaviors	Tools/Techniques
Uses Imaginative and Rich Imagery Explores & Identifies Challenges & Goals Collects Data that is Useful Sees Problems as Opportunities Stays Alert and Open to Possibilities Generates an Abundance of Ideas Strengthens the Most Promising Ideas Takes Bold Action	Just Suppose Mind Map the Central Issue Make Smart Guesses Pump them Up Laugh at the Voice of Judgment Take an Excursion 3 Plusses & a Wish Initiates Many Prototypes

Upon completing each week, the creative-thinking facilitator documents key learning's. On a bi-weekly basis the creative-thinking facilitator has a discussion with the creative-thinking coach. And on a monthly basis, the creative-thinking facilitators share key learning's and darn good practices with the creative-thinking cohort.

During Phase 1, the creative-thinking facilitator looks at challenges and goals through different lenses and "peels back" the layers. Reframing the challenge or goal provides further clarification and allows the exploration of different possibilities. Accordingly, Phase 1 has the following high level process steps:

Explore the Challenge

Explore, define, and shape challenge(s) and goal(s)

Generate challenge and goal statement(s)

Prioritize and shape the challenge(s) or goal(s)

Visualize the Future

Visualize the desired future environment

Assess the current environment

Identify the gaps that exist between the current and desire future environment

Get the Facts

Make smart guesses about opportunity areas or causes of problems

Identify the essential facts and information; find the real opportunity or problem

Analyze the data; see relationships and confirm them with data

Clarify the Opportunity

Redefine, refocus, and clarify the opportunity or problem

Write a well-defined opportunity or problem statement

People tend to stick with what they know when confronted with an opportunity or problem rather than explore new ideas. During Phase 2, the creative-thinking facilitator is dedicated to raining an abundance of imaginative ideas and alternatives, breaking, and making new connections, being counterintuitive, taking a break to incubate, strengthening, prioritizing, and selecting solutions, and embracing ambiguity. With these goals, Phase 2 has the following high level process steps:

• Rain Ideas
• Organize the ideas and alternatives by themes
• Hit the most promising ideas


• Take a Break & Incubate
• Step away from the opportunity or problem
• Combine, synthesize, and integrate ideas and elements


• Strengthen & Select the Best Ideas & Solutions
• Strengthen the ideas that have the greatest potential
• Synthesize and integrate the ideas to form a solution(s)
• Select the solution(s) that best meet your criteria and objectives

Nothing has happened until a product, process, service idea, or solution gets prototyped, tested, and implemented. From there, the reaction of the marketplace needs to be gauged quickly. So the mantra can be summed up as - prototype fast, and if the marketplace reacts positively, fully allocate resources to its implementation and accelerate the momentum. If the marketplace reacts negatively and isn't going to buy - fail fast, early, and cheap - then quickly adapt and change course. Upon successful implementation, anchor the gains with organizational systems, processes, and culture. To that end, the creative-thinking facilitator moves through Phase 3 by taking the following high level process steps:

• Get the Momentum
• Develop and implement rapid action plans
• Develop and implement quicksand avoidance and contingency plans


• Accelerate the Momentum and Adapt
• Develop and implement a performance dashboard
• Verify performance results
• Adapt and re-allocate resources
• Anchor the gains

(Adopted from Amabile, 1996; Treffinger, 1996; Torrance & Safter, 1999; and Puccio, Murdock & Mance, 2005)

A creative-thinking process is certainly important and required. Equally important are the skills necessary to think creatively. And possibly most important is the motivation to act. The stronger the creative-thinking skill set, the greater the likelihood a steady stream of rich and robust ideas and solutions will be developed. The stronger the motivation to innovate, the higher the probability the best ideas and solutions will be implemented. The art is for the creative-thinking facilitator to stay motivated, know when to call on a particular creative-thinking skill or set of skills, and at what step in the creative-thinking process.

Paul Torrance (1979) offered the following framework to describe the characteristics of creative-thinking and problem-solving:

• Fluency: The quantity of ideas that can be produced. The ability to generate ideas easily and quickly.
• Flexibility: The breadth of different types, varieties, and categories of ideas that can be produced. The ability to use varying
       stimuli, viewpoints, or perspectives to think of ideas.
• Originality: The uniqueness and quantity of ideas that can be produced. The ability to produce different, original, and
       unusual ideas.
• Elaboration: The detail richness of ideas. The ability to make ideas more interesting, stronger, appealing, and complete.

Using these characteristics as a framework, the creative-thinking skills are organized into three areas of emphasis - cognitive and versatility skills; and motivational elements.

   Cognitive Skills

Cognitive skills are one broad foundational creative-thinking and problem-solving skill area. These can include thinking styles, abilities, and aptitudes. Treffinger (1996) identified productive thinking skills to include: critical thinking (drawing out specific meaning); creative-thinking (new and useful ideas); problem-solving (identifying and solving a known issue); and decision-making (choosing the best alternative). When drawing upon these various productive thinking skills, the creative-thinker and problem-solver summons his/her expertise. Amabile (1996) defined this expertise to consist of: factual and specialized knowledge in a focused area or task; technical fluency and proficiency; and talents in a specified area or task. It takes time to develop a deep level of expertise in a specific area. It requires intensive, focused effort over sustained periods of time. The five cognitive skills focused on in this program are the following:

• Identify Goals & Objectives: Explore, define, and shape challenges, goals, objectives, opportunities, and problems; reframe
       them in ways that they can be pursued and solved by broadening them or breaking them down.
• Discover What's Most Important: Identify the essential facts and information, and highlight what is critical; analyze data and
       see relationships between things; understand complexities, and seek new interpretations or meanings from data or input.
• Generate Novel & Useful Ideas: Generate a rich variety and abundance of novel, unusual,and useful ideas and alternatives
       quickly and easily; build upon and stoke other ideas.
• Integrate & Synthesize: Elaborate on the positives and potential in ideas to make them more interesting, stronger, appealing,
       and complete; identify the drawbacks and develop ways to overcome them; refine and select the most promising.
• Plan for Action: Develop short, medium, and long-term implementation plans; identify and implement problem-prevention and
       contingency plans; develop, implement and use performance indicators to make decisions and reallocate resources
       as required.

   Versatility Skills

Versatility skills consist of the various methods, approaches, and capabilities a problem-solver uses to tackle challenges, opportunities, and problems. Torrance (1972); Amabile (1996); Goleman, Kauffman, & Ray (1993); Puccio, Murdock & Mance (2005) among other creativity researchers have written about the strong correlation between cognitive and versatility skills, and how our thinking is greatly influenced by and interleaved with our underlying emotions and feelings. Additionally, Gordon (1961) and Prince (1970) popularized the use of heuristics in creative-problem-solving. A heuristic is a flexible thinking approach - the opposite of an algorithm. Examples of heuristics include: (a) when all else fails, try something counterintuitive; (b) make the familiar strange; and (c) make the strange familiar. The five versatility creative-thinking skills focused on in this program are the following:

• Be Curious: Remain flexible, play with and create new ideas and content; ask challenging, penetrating, and provocative
       questions; defer judgment and keep options open as long as possible; actively seek out new information, ideas, and opposing
       opinions, and resist the tension to make decisions prematurely.
• Imagine What's Possible: Use rich, colorful, and vibrant imagery to visualize the future vision; be imaginative, dream, and use
       fantasy; ask what-if questions about things that don't yet exist; remain optimistic, affirmative, and open to what's possible.
• See it Differently: Look at situations through different lenses, and see things from a different visual, perceptual, or cognitive
       perspective; use wide categories to think beyond currently defined parameters, and broaden the system or requirements within
       which a challenge or goal exists; look at and describe the internal working of things.
• Be Unique & Original: Resist conformity, be independent in thought, and adapt thinking to do different things; break out of
       habitual responses and performance scripts; develop fresh, unique, not obvious, and contrarian points of view and content;
       adapt thinking to do different things.
• Break Old & Make New Connections: Combine, synthesize, and piggyback seemingly unrelated ideas, parts, and elements;
       seek out, play close attention to, and take advantage of incongruities; take a break and incubate.

   Motivational Elements

Beyond the skills, Amabile (1996) as well as other creativity researchers have identified the varied sources, characteristics, and attributes that also contribute to the richness of a person's creative-thinking and problem-solving skills, including: personality characteristics, traits, and preferences; working, problem-solving styles and lifestyles (methods of dealing with experiences, opportunities, and challenges); the work or cultural environments; extrinsic and intrinsic task motivation, and social influences (lack of concern or need for social approval); and biochemical and neurological factors. All these characteristics and attributes influence a problem-solvers' approach and impact the veracity of how versatile, imaginative, and persistent he/she may be in pursing a challenge, goal, opportunity, or problem. The five motivational elements focused on in this program are the following:

• Use Motivation, Passion & Energy: Pay attention to, channel, and leverage your passion, energy, internal motives, and drivers;
       become deeply absorbed and involved in the activities you truly care about and love - and find a way to make a living doing it.
• Leverage Strengths: Play to, focus on, and rely on natural aptitudes, talents, knowledge, information, and skills; don't try to be
       well rounded; manage, compensate for, and neutralize weaknesses.
• Build Resilience: Embrace positive developments and setbacks and learn from them; take action, learn by doing, and
       implement your solutions; use positive affirmations and eliminate the destructive voice-of-judgment from your thinking; quickly
       let go of disappointments, forget them and move on.
• Use Emotion, Humor & Joy: See the humor in things and use it to recognize and respond to opposites and surprises; create
       an atmosphere where you can be playful, spontaneous, and joyful with ideas - and flow with them where they take you; allow
       your ideas and alternatives to be illogical, wishful, and emotional.
• Take Risks: Trust and follow gut instincts and intuition; quickly get to prototype; recognize the importance of new information;
       develop problem-prevention and contingency actions.

   Orchestrating Motivation and the Skills

The synergy occurs when the creative-thinker leverages and channels internal motivation, and orchestrates the use of creative-thinking and problem-solving skills to work harmoniously within the creative- thinking process. Certain challenges, goals, opportunities, and problems require differing mixes - summoning internal motivation, and calling upon the different skills in varying amounts and with varying frequencies. With the right mixture, the synapses in the creative-thinking brain continue to fire, and the bursts of fresh-squeezed ideas and alternatives just keep flowing, one right after another.

   Key References

Amabile, T. M. (1996). Creativity in Context, Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Goleman, D., Kaufman, P., Ray, M. (1993). The creative spirit. New York, NY: Penguin Group.

Gordon, W. J. J. (1961). Synectics, NYC: Harper & Row.

Osborn, A. F. (1953). Applied imagination. Principles and procedures of creative-problem-solving. New York: Scribner's Sons.

Prince, G. M. (1973). The practice of creativity: NYC: Collier.

Puccio G. J., Murdock, M. C., & Mance. (2005). Current developments in creative-problem-solving for organizations: A focus on thinking skills and styles. The Korean Journal of Thinking & Problem jSolving., 15(2), 43076.

Torrance, E. and Safter, T. (1999). Making the creative leap beyond. The Creative Education Foundation Press.

Treffinger, Dl J. (1996). Dimensions of creativity. Idea Capsule # 9004. Sarasota, FL: Center for Creative Learning.