Want a team-building activity for an afternoon that "only" costs $500?  Got a few geeks in your office?  Have I got an idea for you:  the LEGO Ultimate Collector's Millennium Falcon.  Check out this post, and make sure to watch the YouTube video of seven people putting one together in just over two hours. 




And if anyone wants to get me something cool for Christmas...

How would your next presentation go if you only had twenty slides and could show each one for "only" twenty seconds (for a total of 6 minutes 40 seconds?  A format embracing these very constraints is called Pecha Kucha, and was started by two architects in Tokyo as part of a designers' show and tell.  It seems like a natural fit for an Idea Market, as a replacement for a panel presentation, or any time a lot of presenters have something to say.

I'm doing a very short speech (nine minutes) on innovation in two days, and am going to give this presentation format a try.  I'll let you know how it goes.  In the meantime, if you'd like to learn more, check out several examples on You Tube, or this recent Wired magazine article.  If you are in the St. Louis area and want to have a Pecha Kucha night, let me know.

As I wrote the other day, I have joined XPLANE as a full time consultant.  I want to thank everyone who has reached out to me to offer me their congratulations and support.  I also want to answer several of the questions I’ve received, and figured it was far easier to do in a blog post.  So here goes:

WHAT IS XPLANE?  XPLANE (Wikipedia Entry) is one of the pioneers in Visual Thinking, which is the process of distilling complex processes and concepts into easy-to-understand and visually striking XPLANATIONS.  In short, XPLANE helps companies improve their business communication.  XPLANE has offices in St. Louis, Portland and Madrid.

WHY XPLANE?  Since I returned to St. Louis over a year ago, I have been spending many of my Thursday afternoons at XPLANE’s Visual Thinking School, a weekly design and thinking exercise conducted primarily for internal XPLANE personnel.  I was invited by XPLANE CEO Dave Gray to attend, and found myself intrigued by the way XPLANE used drawing and visuals to communicate complex business processes.  At the same time, XPLANE folks started coming to my Idea Markets, where I began to incorporate many visual thinking and drawing exercises and found it startling how much more effective a little “out of comfort zone” drawing could be than simply a verbal-based exercise.  After several months of VTS, Dave asked me why I didn’t work for XPLANE.  Surprised by the question, I began to consider it.  Six months later, and after a trip to visit the Portland office, I’m here.

WHAT WILL I DO?  My official title is “Consultant,” though that really doesn’t describe what I’ll be doing.  Part of XPLANE’s unique process is pairing up a consultant/facilitator (me) with an artist/concept designer (the people with real talent), and going to a client’s office for a day-long discovery session.  Instead of taking written notes, the artist will actually use live drawing to help visualize the client’s story, audience, goals and needs.  By combining this live-sketching with a number of brainstorming and drawing, XPLANE is able to elicit a far more complete picture (literally!) of what the client wants to communicate.  Here’s an overview of the process.

My role is to be the consultant/facilitator in the client sessions.  In addition, I will work within XPLANE to expand the consulting practice and further develop the  process for multiple client scenarios — not just those that need an XPLANE “product” delivered at the end of the engagement.  Finally, I am going to work on a “visual thinking module” that will bring the benefits of visual thinking to workshops, conferences and retreats. 

In short, I get to do the same kinds of things I was doing before, but within a really cool organization, with amazingly talented people, and for much larger clients.

XPLANE will also begin to sponsor the Idea Markets.  More on that soon.

WHAT ABOUT THIS BLOG?  I will keep the [non]billable hour going.  I am working on a redesign, and you will see some cool new things in the next 90 days. I am also going to be re-purposing much of the older content in ways to make it more accessible to newer readers.

WHAT ABOUT LEXTHINK?  Dennis, JoAnna and I will be having a sit down soon to figure out what’s next.  We have too many cool things planned for LexThink to let it go.  Stay tuned.

WHAT ELSE?  If you have any more questions, shoot me an email at homann@gmail.com or mhomann@xplane.com, and I’d be happy to answer them.  I am so excited to be working for XPLANE.  I have spent most of my working life as an entrepreneur, and to find an employer where the entrepreneurial spirit is part of the fabric of the organization is really cool.  Thanks for all your support!

Matt

If you are like me, you take a lot of digital photos to boost your creativity and inspire you.  Check out this series of articles on Fodor's to help you take travel pictures like a pro.

Annette Clancy shares a great facilitation tip:  The Fantasy Board Game.  It works like this:

... each person in the room gets to pick a person - real or imagined, alive or dead to place on the board. It's a fun brainstorming session and the more it is played the wilder the suggestions get (and you can tell a lot about someone by who they suggest!). It's easier to pick a fantasy person than name someone you might know in a personal capacity. I then do an exercise with people about why they picked the person they did - and the list of attributes and qualities simply flows! We then have a list of all of the skills and qualities needed to populate the board that will look to the future and it's not a difficult task at this point to compare that list with the skill base of people currently sitting on the board. Augmenting, changing or moving around tends to be a much more logical task once the illogical one of picking fantasy people has been completed.

I love this idea, and would suggest playing the "board game" every time an organization faces a challenge, creative or otherwise.  When brainstorming solutions to a particularly vexing problem, ask the people in the room to suggest a person that, if there, would help solve the problem.  Make sure they list the reasons why, and watch the problem begin to solve itself.

I think this idea could also work if people are asked to pick a company (Apple, Microsoft, GM, TIVO, etc.) and suggest how their chosen company would address the challenge or solve the problem.

My friend Scott shares 38 Random Thoughts About Creativity.  My fav's:

3.  It is impossible to be too creative.

9. If you get a great idea and have to stay up all night until 7 AM the next day working on it, do it.  Recognize when the world’s giving you a gift. Pay the price. In five years you’ll look back and say, “Boy am I glad I stayed up all night working on that idea!”

27. Go onto Google and type in “Creativity Exercises.” Do a few each week, one every morning, or one with your crew before a brainstorming session. After all, if you went to play 18 holes, you’d go hit a bucket of balls first, right? Same thing, different organ. Don’t neglect MENTAL warm-ups.

38. Make a list of 100 questions.About anything. It doesn’t matter. Just do it. And don’t stop untilyou’re done. THE BEST PART: questions 80-100 will end up being the mostinteresting.

Here's a really cool idea generating device from Project Renaissance called DEAM, which stands for Double-Entry A-Ha! Method.

The "Double-Entry" part of the title, the "DE" in DEAM,refers to the method's writing on two pieces of paper at the same time.On one sheet you write your brief topic-to-be-understood, or questionor problem. While you are writing that, though, you givepriority attention to whatever thoughts and perceptions you noticecoming to you during that problem-writing, and record these on thesecond sheet of paper. Often you'll fill the second sheet with suchcomments and observations before completely writing a single sentenceof your problem-statement on the first sheet.

The thoughts and perceptions and observations hadbeen there all along; they just hadn't been noticed before. Deciding tonotice them, and giving priority to them in your writing — and your actof writing them onto your second sheet — bring them into view for you.You may be amazed at how many ideas you have, and how many of thoseideas are relevant and even good, once you proceed to write downeverything that comes.

Want to get your group outside of the box?  Begin by asking them to fill one.  Host a creativity kit scavenger hunt.  Here's how:

1. Divide a group into teams of 3-5.
2. Give each group $50-100 and a big cardboard box.
3. Send each team to a different store.  Possibilities include a book store, hardware store, art store, office supply store, thrift shop and toy store.
4. Require each team to spend their money, to the penny, on items that answer certain questions like, "What would inspire you to think about something new?" and "What item has a unique texture, shape, etc?" or other similar questions.
5. When they return with their "creativity kits," have each team explain to the others why their items fit the questions they were given.
6. Next, the teams exchange their kits with one another and work on some sort of brainstorming challenge, using the kit they've just received.

Keep the boxes around the office and pull them out when you need a creativity boost.

Another exercise I'm going to try for the first time at the Idea Market tonight is a mix of drawing, knitting and conversation.  Here's how it will work:

1. People get a blank piece of paper (or a 5x8 note card) and a box of crayons. 
   
2. In groups of 3-5 (so they can share the crayons), they have to draw themselves.  No points will be awarded for artistic excellence, but ideally they'll draw a reasonable approximation of themselves and the clothes they are wearing that night.
   
3. We will post the pictures on a wall in a large circle, using painter's tape.
4. After every exercise we do during the evening, I'll ask people to use cut pieces of yarn to "connect" their picture with the pictures of the people they've just met.*
5. At the end of the evening, we'll have a graphical depiction of the interactions that took place where people can see (and remember) the folks they've met that night.

If this works like I think it will, it could be a great exercise to do in conferences, retreats or even in the corporate world.  Imagine if everyone inside an organization drew their picture and they were posted on a huge wall.  Every time employees "met" one another in person, they could literally add the "connection" to the company wall.  Managers could even use they yarn connections to map out who people should meet on a weekly basis.

I can't wait to try it!

* I may do this with markers and a grid of large post-it notes to make it work faster.

Riffing a bit off the Innovational Speaker post from last week, I'm going to introduce an exercise at tonight's Idea Market titled:  "What do you REALLY do?"  Here's how it will work:

Everybody will get a name tag and break up into groups of 2-4.  After having a brief "what do you do?" conversation with their partners, everybody must come up with a job title/description that really describes their profession/career/occupation AND that nobody has ever used before.  In lieu of their names, they'll write their new title on the tag and wear it for the rest of the evening.  The descriptions could be nearly anything, but I'm hoping for ones that are more fun than serious.  Just one example:  Divorce Lawyer = Unhappy Spouse Freedom Facilitator.