3 Ways to Untap Creativity in Teams

Using art and visuals with teams.

It can be a little shocking to witness the power that art has in team creativity when you do not use it often. It does however work very well.   Here are some examples of when and how to use art - which will hopefully spark more ideas in you to do similar.

1.  When you have a newly formed team, art can serve as a great way to have each person tell their peers about themselves.   A simple way of introducing this is in a "get to know you session" with the team.  For the first 20 minutes (as a warmup activity), give each person paper and markers (especially if virtual) and ask them to sketch the the story of themselves, their week, their month or how they are currently feeling about the topic of your meeting.   Even if they use stick figures, chat bubbles, timelines etc. this is fine. The goal isn't to showcase their artistic abilities, it's to connect the left and right brain in an engaging manner that also engages those they recap their story too.  *Do bring a variety of different markers to assist as well. The more color options, the more creativity seems to emerge. 
2. Next time you want a team to describe how things are going, try inviting them to find visual representations of expression first. They can do this through an image search on Google, through cutouts in a magazine, or their own sketches / renders.   The end result will be forethought, converted to memorable visuals (metaphors), that then gets interpreted by their other team members and/OR by them - in an open discussion format.

   Because visuals often register in a more powerful way on the brain, the team will likely experience an increase in FEELING or RESONANCE with those visuals that tells a story

Storytelling makes everything more interesting.

Though there were a couple of great examples of how to tell a story above. Not all stories need to be visual.   A great story can be quite useful in getting people onboard with something...yet, the art of building the story and telling the story is truly a creative one. 

Of course, there are many ways to build a story - and perhaps one of the simplist approaches is the 3 (or 4) C's. Conflict, Characters, Climax, and Conclusion. 

In business terms:

1. Conflict would define the problem that needs to be solved
2. Characters would describe the who of (customers, company, competition) that are most impacted or impactful in facing the problem
3. Climax would describe the ideal utopian state (KPI's or OKR's) and the possible dystopian state (what might happen if we fail to address this)
4. Conclusion would summarize what the action plan would be

Now, let's assume the story needs to be told to a board of directors, senior leaders, a team, or cross functioning group. The story teller would likely tailor how they present their story based on the audience.  For teams and groups, the story can be told in a more casual way. For senior leaders, the story needs to be told as concisely and minimally as possible. For a board, the story needs to be told concisely, minimally, and with accompanied reports / data and details for later viewing. 

Despite the audience, here are some great tips to consider when telling stories. 

1. When sharing data, focus on the main #'s and not all of them
2. When sharing characters; add persona's & photo's
3. When sharing the climax - GO BIG! Best case and worst case will emphasize the extremes and that your team has given the necessary thought to recognize both and be on the look out for weak signals.
4. When sharing the conclusion - make sure there are no questions left unanswered about the execution plan. Itemize it, timeline it, show potential variables and responses etc.  Make it clear what the intent and actions will be given all possible problem states you might be in along the way. 

Take it on the road, frequently!

I borrow this one from the Agile community as they seem to have carved a path for what great can look like on this.

For example: One of the greatest benefits of adopting an Agile Methodology in the workplace is the continuous need to visualize all of the work (in the backlog, in progress, completed, or blocked).   They also meet frequently about their work - whether that be in daily huddles, retrospectives or similar. 

One of the more creative approaches that I have seen truly ignite the culture of sparking inspiration, sharing innovations, and creating a "vibe" of celebration for the work - happens to be occur via Roadshows, Symposiums, etc.

Of course, these events are not exclusive to Agile teams, yet they are incredibly useful to those who deliver and those who attend. 

In addition to their utility for knowledge transfer to others, they can and will get your team members into the habit of building their stories. 

In doing so, they will untap more of that creativity. Also, if given the opportunity to learn how to start with art or use stories they might continue to improve how creative they get.