Drinking at the Fountain of Creativity

Client problem

When business is growing, there is no need (or no time) for innovation. But when business peaks or dips, creativity is needed in truck-loads.  One client in the technology sector realized that its Business Development Managers (BDM) were becoming complacent and needed new techniques to awaken their inner creativity.

Not all of these BDMs welcomed the idea of awakening their inner creativity.  The business needed to cultivate a culture of entrepreneurship and of creative enterprise but it felt stymied; and because it couldn’t recruit new creative talent, the strategy was to cultivate it.

Our involvement

Elton Mellor’s brief was to devise a roll-out training event for all BDMs that challenged people’s attitudes and gave them the tools to happily ‘drink at the fountain of creativity’.  We needed to deliver logical justifications, tools and structured frameworks.  And we also needed time to play, non-sense, aimless meandering and blinding insights. 

Our key task was to teach and inspire those who were ready for innovation. Secondly we steered groups when they got stuck. Our third task was to coach the logical thinkers to dip their toes into the water.

What we delivered

With two days to play with, we created a format that would appeal to logical heads and creative hearts. Day one was a day of creative and lateral tools, structures and unusual processes.  Day two was a competition, where Head of Business Development delivered a real-time business problem and challenged the group to tap their creative talents to find new, innovative solutions. The winning team dined out: the losing teams won fast-food vouchers.

Results

In final presentation, many teams offered new solutions to old problems and gave the senior management team a whole collection of excellent ideas. With the entire BDM community focused on challenging business thinking and embracing change, it was an ideal opportunity to bring the team together.

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