Whenever we experience change in life, it triggers a fearful reaction in our brains due to the uncertainty about the outcome of this change. But what if we could turn this fear into excitement by changing our perspective from passively waiting to actively achieving? In his book *Think Creative -Tools For Navigating Change*, David Chislett explains that if you look at change through a creative lens, you are invited to take control of your destiny. You become an agent of change rather than its victim.
He offers a number of creative thinking tools that you and your team can use to access the creative capacity that he believes is inherent in all human beings. Let’s discuss a few:
Brainstorms in business have a bad reputation, because they too often result in no definite outcomes. The Backwards Brainstorm reverses that dynamic. Instead of asking, ‘What can we do to improve customer satisfaction?’, ask, ‘What can we do to chase all our customers away?’
You’ll find that your team encourages each other to think of wilder, more far-fetched ideas. Once you’re done, invert all the things you should not do, and you’ll have a list of things you can do.
“What if…?” is one of the most powerful questions in the world. Chislett suggests asking this question by saying, "Imagine you have all the budget, the resources, the authority and the skills to do whatever you can think of now. What would you do?”
Like the Backwards Brainstorm, “What if...” provides psychological safety by giving permission to step into fantasy. What if toys had feelings? Well, that’s one way Pixar could have come up with Toy Story.
This technique helps you move beyond the low-hanging fruit of obvious answers and clichés by imagining a world that doesn’t already exist. It tells you to push yourself beyond the known and the obvious and into the new.
When you flip the script, you change the story you’re telling yourself and others about a particular thing…and this in turn transforms the thing itself.
The Lean methodology, for example, was developed in the automotive manufacturing industry in Japan, but has flipped its script and now features heavily in modern business strategies. Similarly, Agile flipped its way out of software development and into mainstream business. In each case, one detail – the industry of origin – was flipped to give the idea a new life.
For a deeper dive into creative thinking tools, check out Chislett’s complete book.
