GET CREATIVE
Unleash your creativity
Coming up with new and innovative ideas to help manage people, resources, events and workloads is vital to the successful PASAYS NIGEL COLLIN
More and more businesses demand new and fresh ideas from everyone. PAs need to think on their feet and respond to the changing workplaces in which they work. The pressure is on to come up with new and innovative ideas and solutions because if you don’t, someone else will. Although we may not see ourselves as creative or in creative roles, we do need to think more creatively and look at things from different and unique perspectives. Creative thinking involves practice, so to kick-start
your ‘creative side’ here are four thinking tools to help you get into the creative mindset and generate fresh ideas.
Your time starts now In a race against time let your thoughts flood out and jot down as many as possible. Don’t think about them, don’t judge them – just write them down. Being under pressure puts you in a position where you can’t procrastinate and you just have to get on with it.
1 Clearly state your task at hand 2 Give yourself no more than 60 seconds 3 Don’t think about it – just write
A few things will happen, all of them good. As you
don’t have time to think you may find a gem pops out from your subconscious. Or the very process of dumping your thoughts may clear the way for the really good stuff, or you may get on a roll and keep going. This is a great tool to help you come up with ideas when having to write a report, presentation, speech or coming up with strategy and actions for addressing issues in the workplace.
ATM Here’s a tool which asks three questions forcing you to look at something from a totally different point of view.
■ What can you Add? ■ What can you Take Away? ■ What can you Modify?
As an example let’s say our task is to find ways to
reduce consumer power in our workplace by cutting greenhouse emissions.
■ What can we Add? What if we add timers to bathroom lights to prevent them being left on?
■ What can we Take Away? What if we took away screen savers and let monitors go to black?
■ What can we Modify? What if we replace incandescent bulbs with energy saving ones? Or reduce the air condi- tioning temperature?
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www.executivepa.com » Oct/Nov 2010 Applying the ATM to a work project or issue will help
you come up with new ideas and fresh ways of thinking around the issue.
Day break There’s something refreshing about getting up in the dark, turning on the computer and working until day- light. It must be something to do with a change of routine but I find I get heaps done – and productive heaps as well. If you’re a morning person already then try working late into the night. Shift your routine and jolt yourself out of existing habits. This is great for getting back some lost motivation and exciting that creative side of your brain.
Write a list Writing a list forces you to make associations, links, dis- cover tangents, thoughts and stepping stones to other thoughts and impulses, all of which can be useful in trig- gering more creative ideas. Now don’t hold back – let the list flow as a stream of consciousness. Once you start you’ll find associated words and topics just keep coming. So if your topic is ‘cars’ you may end up with a list of ‘road, race, toy, slot car, paint, blue, gold, prestige, cheap, old, new, sedan, dashboard, gear stick, zoom, fast, Bathurst, wreck, crash, chase, movie, Tom Cruise’ etc. Then once you’ve got your list you can look back over
it, group any similar words and connections which may be useful. This will spur more thoughts and ideas and you’ll discover whole new areas to investigate. E
on their feet and respond to the changing workplaces in which they work. The pressure is on to come up with new and innovative ideas and solutions because if you don’t, someone else will
“PAs need to think ”
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