Recipe for success:
ONE CREATIVE WAY TO CLIMB OUT OF THE BOX

For decades, managers, consultants, recruiters and clients have asked their audiences to think outside the box. The funny thing is that the box doesn’t necessarily hinder creative, refreshed or new ways of thinking — it’s the thinking that does. How so?

Consider it this way: It doesn’t matter how much you spend on the latest and greatest running shoes. If you don’t condition your body in a variety of ways, you’ll never break a minute in the 100-yard dash.

The same can be said for your mind. If you don’t condition or "cross train" it, you’ll never think outside the box. Who cares? For starters:

• Your employer and/or clients
• Anyone interested in continuous learning
• Your company’s bottom line
• You, if you seek joy and satisfaction

Tip: Spend a day creating a collage

If you want to stimulate creativity, gain insight into a particular topic or idea, or build a cohesive team, try a collaging exercise.

Used in cultures around the globe, the act of selecting and creating images from existing materials to represent a thought can be a powerful way to channel an idea from the subconscious or to gain agreement and a common understanding in a group.

Collaging forces us to take ideas out of our minds, and engage our physical selves in finding and manipulating materials to represent a feeling, an idea or a perception. This act of manifesting an intangible quality into a physical state allows you to see the issue in an entirely new light, flexing and coordinating the muscle and the mind in new ways.

Know this: Any time that you engage in a practice not normally seen in the workplace you’re breaking a pattern that may have been your barrier to new ideas or a stronger team interaction. Likewise, veering outside the lines of what’s considered "normal business practice" might not be comfortable. We urge you to give it a try. The outcomes are typically so rewarding, you’ll use the exercise time and again, and think of new ones!

How to collage:
The best part about collaging is that there aren’t any rules. (The first steps in letting creativity fly!) Some pointers include:

Frame it (the idea and the collage!): You will want to frame the exercise as an experiment if your company culture isn’t used to sessions such as this. Share your intentions and reasoning for inviting them to participate. Also, literally frame the collage after you’ve completed it, serving as a reminder of the ideas that sprang from the exercise.

Reserve more time than you think necessary: Collaging mindfully takes time. The exercise is so much more than pasting images on posterboard. Ask that participants be very deliberate in their selections and how they place them on the posterboard. Block out time to discuss each of the "clippings" that people have chosen. Allow the discussion to branch out into topics that might not seem related to the collage topic. These are the keys to building a team and following a thread of an idea that could turn into the "next big thing."

Overload on materials: Make sure you have a large variety of magazines, fabrics, dried pasta — whatever materials you and the group members might want to use. To demonstrate your desire to build the team or gather everyone’s input, invite participants to bring materials that they want to use.

Make it yours: The last thing that we’d like to see happen with a collaging exercise is that it gets turned into a management guru’s checklist task, devoid of the underlying meaning and involvement inherent in the process. Modify the exercise to fit your culture and your project or team needs.

Want more practical tips? Stop by the Brain Food Cafeteria