Note: This article is part of an experiment with AI, specifically with the DinoBrain tool. The initial version produced by the tool is published in its entirety, and I will be editing it personally, making clear what content is added by tagging (BP).

Importance of creativity in agile teams

Creativity plays a fundamental role in agile teams, as it allows to generate innovative ideas and effective solutions to the challenges that arise in the development of projects. Fostering creativity in these teams provides numerous benefits that contribute to the success and growth of the organization.

Benefits of Fostering Creativity in Agile Teams

When creativity is fostered in agile teams, it opens up a wide range of benefits that directly impact project performance and results:

Generation of innovative ideas: creativity stimulates the generation of fresh, original and out-of-the-box ideas. This allows finding unique and disruptive solutions to complex situations.
Increased collaboration and effective communication: Fostering creativity involves all team members, promoting collaboration and fluid communication. This strengthens team cohesion and promotes synergy among team members.
Efficient problem solving: Creativity helps to face problems from different perspectives, generating optimal solutions. It allows thinking ‘outside the box’ and finding innovative alternatives to the obstacles that may arise.
Greater commitment and involvement: When creativity is encouraged, team members feel valued and their sense of belonging increases. This translates into greater commitment and involvement in the project, which in turn boosts the quality of the work performed.
Development of key skills: Creativity stimulates the development of skills such as critical thinking, adaptability and flexibility, essential competencies in an agile environment.

The role of games in the development of creativity

Games play a fundamental role in the development of creativity in agile teams. These playful activities provide a safe and fun environment where team members can explore new ideas, develop their imagination and challenge their conventional thinking. Games encourage collaboration, the exchange of perspectives and the search for innovative solutions, all in an interactive learning context.

Tools and methodologies to foster creativity in agile teams

Creativity is a fundamental element in agile teams, as it allows them to generate innovative solutions and adapt to changes effectively. In this sense, there are several tools and methodologies that can be used to foster creativity in these teams and thus enhance their performance.

Design thinking: fostering innovation in the creative process

A widely recognized methodology to foster creativity in agile teams is design thinking. This methodology is based on a user-centered approach, which seeks to understand the user’s needs and generate innovative solutions to meet them. Through different stages such as empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping and testing, design thinking encourages the generation of disruptive ideas and different perspectives that drive creativity in the team.

Agile methodology: flexibility and adaptability in the creative approach

Agile methodology is another key tool for fostering creativity in agile teams. This methodology is characterized by its iterative and incremental approach, where collaboration, effective communication and team decision making are encouraged. By adopting agile practices such as Scrum or Kanban, teams can be more flexible and adapt quickly to changes, which facilitates the generation of creative ideas and the constant search for improvements in the development process.

In addition, agile methodology promotes transparency and continuous feedback, which allows to constantly evaluate and improve the ideas and solutions proposed by the team. This boosts creativity by providing opportunities for learning, experimentation and adaptation in the creative process.

Conclusions

In short, having the right tools and methodologies in place is essential to foster creativity in agile teams. Both design thinking and agile methodologies are effective approaches to enhance innovation and flexibility in the creative process. Through these tools, teams can generate disruptive ideas, adapt quickly to change and generate effective solutions to meet user needs. By fostering creativity in agile teams, it promotes collaboration, effective communication and the generation of successful results in project development.

Remember that Asana offers resources and features that can support fostering creativity in agile teams, providing collaborative tools for effective communication and task tracking and management that support agile project development.

Games to foster creativity in agile teams

Games are powerful tools to stimulate creativity in agile teams. Through playful and fun activities, they promote an environment conducive to exploring new ideas, encouraging collaboration and solving problems effectively. In this section, we will highlight three specific games that will help boost creativity within your agile team.

Possibilities game: exploring new ideas and perspectives

The game of possibilities is an activity that invites team members to think outside conventional boundaries. It consists of generating different fictitious or alternative scenarios related to the project or task at hand. Through the exploration of these possibilities, creativity and imagination are boosted, allowing the discovery of new solutions and perspectives not previously considered.

Winner/loser: promoting collaboration and problem solving

The winner/loser game is a dynamic that promotes collaboration and problem solving in the agile team. It consists of posing a challenging situation that requires the participation of all members to achieve a common goal. As they advance in the game, obstacles and challenges are presented that they must overcome together, encouraging creativity to find solutions and strengthening teamwork.

Mixing objectives: stimulating creativity and teamwork

Mixing objectives is a dynamic that seeks to stimulate creativity and teamwork by combining different goals and challenges. Each team member is assigned individual goals and then invited to collaborate and find ways to merge their goals to achieve joint results. This boosts creativity by addressing the need to adapt and mix ideas, generating original solutions and promoting collaboration among team members.

Actions to foster creativity in agile teams

Actions applied to foster creativity in agile teams are fundamental to enhance innovation and creative thinking. Below are some of the most effective actions:

Make time for creativity in the development process.

Sometimes, the fast pace of agile teams can limit the space for creativity. It is important to set aside dedicated times exclusively for generating ideas and exploring new solutions. Establishing specific times for creativity in project planning ensures that it is given due importance and provides an environment conducive to the generation of innovative ideas.

Avoid micromanagement and encourage autonomy and freedom of ideas.

Micromanagement can stifle the creativity and innovativeness of agile teams. It is critical to trust team members by giving them autonomy and freedom to propose ideas and solutions. By allowing them to make decisions and experiment, creativity is encouraged and innovative solutions are fostered. Trust in the team is the basis for developing an environment where creativity flourishes.

Asking why: fostering reflection and critical thinking

To foster creativity in agile teams, it is essential to promote critical thinking. Asking challenging questions, such as ‘why are we doing this this way’ or ‘are there other options we haven’t considered’, stimulates reflection and challenges team members to question existing assumptions. Through this practice, teams can find innovative and creative solutions.

Engage in the decision-making process: drive creative thinking throughout the team.

Promoting the active participation of all team members in the decision-making process is key to fostering creativity in agile teams. By involving all members, you gain diverse perspectives that enrich the creative process and generate more innovative solutions. Actively listening to the ideas and opinions of all team members and fostering a climate of respect and collaboration enhances creative thinking as a whole.

The post Empowering creativity in agile teams through games appeared first on Creative Sensei.

I have started by writing a book to guide how to do this – Join the Playful Revolution – and have designed a course, in collaboration with Mobiliza Academy, to accompany those who want a little more support. From there, my efforts are aimed at informing all potential beneficiaries, hence this blog. If you are an agile coach, scrum master, team leader, or just an innovative person, you will find content of interest in this blog -or so I hope-.

I have recently discovered a tool, DinoBrain, that allows me to generate ready-made text to maximize traffic according to SEO. In this way, I will be publishing articles created by that tool, as part of an experiment in AI+SEO, which I will later edit and enrich with my own information. These articles are tagged with ‘IA’ and include the following text as the first paragraph:

Note: This article is part of an experiment with AI, specifically with the DinoBrain tool. The initial version produced by the tool is published in its entirety, and I will be editing it personally, making clear what is the content added by means of the tag (BP).
If you detect serious errors, plagiarism or anything else, do not hesitate to contact me to correct them. That’s what experiments are for.

And if you are intrigued by the topic of AI to position your project and reach more audience, you can try the tool and support my project at the same time, since it is an affiliate link: link coming soon

The post Experiment: using Artificial Intelligence to bring creativity and play to the workplace appeared first on Creative Sensei.

In previous posts I have explained How to write a decent book and How to Publish a decent book. Now I want to share the ‘prequel’ to those two events.

Creativity is a process of learning new things, and thinking about them, leaving them for a while and revisiting them later.

I’ve found an old doc with my very first blog posts, from 2007. I’ve realised that I have wanted to write about creativity for more than 15 years… I wrote other things in the following years, from leadership lessons from sports, to a blog on Autism and Technology I run for 4 years, and different thoughts on fostering creativity in a team (my team). But I needed a long incubation period before I delivered my book Join The Playful Revolution.

Here you can read some of those earlier posts, originally in Spanish. There is some ancient tech in there (and an update too).

It is never too late to create

Creativity is an attitude, rather than an aptitude. We are born with the ability to create and imagine, and if not it is enough to watch children play and draw, but it can hibernate when it is attacked by the virus of correctness, the great enemy of error, a fundamental element in the creative process.

Apparently, age, sex, or socio-cultural level are not obstacles to being creative. If there is a decisive factor in knowing who is creative and who is not, it is the degree of fear of failure. It is necessary to make mistakes many times before finding a valid result, and each mistake is part of the elimination process, that little voice that says ‘not that way’, and that makes us keep looking.

While it is true that age can diminish perception and memory skills, with age there is also usually more experience and cultural background that more than compensates for it. The good news is that creativity is trainable, there are specific techniques (e.g. brainstorming), numerous books and online resources, and it is also something we can practice daily in our usual activities: from trying a new route to work, varying a recipe or finding a way to hang a picture when we do not have a hammer… 

Attitude, ladies and gentlemen. Age, talent or lack of, are not excuses: If you want to you can, and now is the best time to start.

What I need to be creative

1.- An active and curious brain – it is the only essential thing. When we have to look for an alternative ingredient because our guests are coming for dinner in half an hour, and we have forgotten to buy the meat (on a Sunday, when the stores are not open, and our neighbors are on vacation…) Well, an idea is the only thing we need, but right now!

2.- Paper and pencil – the cheapest, most versatile and accessible technology, to remember that happy idea or to think on paper…

3.- A brick – out of the 20 possible uses of a brick… this one was a joke (they say that a sense of humor is for creative people)

4.- A computer – from writers to architects, musicians, visual artists, engineers, scientists… I think it goes without saying…

5.- The internet – as a source of information and as a tool for collaboration.

PDA for creatives (back in 2007)

A PDA, or Personal Digital Assistant, of today is a device with superior features to the first Digital Agendas from which they have derived, and even to those of the first personal computers. It is a handheld device managed by an operating system adapted to its characteristics, such as Palm SO, created by the first PDA manufacturer, Palm, or Windows CE, included in the so-called ‘Pocket PC’. Recently there is a version of Linux for PDAs.

Almost all data input and output is produced through its touch screen, which has been increasing in size and resolution since its inception. The development of handwriting recognition applications, such as those also seen in tablet PCs, has been quite crucial in this respect. At their heart are processors that allow them to work with complex data and multimedia material, and it is increasingly easy for them to communicate with each other and other devices.

An example of a typical mid-range PDA would have a 512 Mhz processor, card slots, Bluetooth, Wifi and the ability to connect other external devices such as a USB stick, keyboard, camera or GPS. A wide variety of applications can be installed which, in addition to the typical organizer and agenda functions, allow you to create and view data in the form of text (.doc, .pdf, etc.), spreadsheets, databases, images, videos, and music. With other applications you can create multimedia content, browse the Internet, view mail, draw, play games and a host of other activities. The premise is, if you can do it on a PC, you have to be able to do it on a PDA.

Some of the things that can be done with a PDA in the field of creativity, in addition to the more typical functions, could be the following:

 ∙ writing notes or ideas, by hand.

∙ making sketches and mind maps

∙ drawing and painting

∙ writing full texts

∙ take pictures

∙ retouching photos

∙ record audio

∙ play audio

∙ compose music

∙ record video

∙ play video

2022 (may) update:

Where you read PDA think ‘tablet’, and we probably can do all that and more. I own a 2018 iPad, with an Apple Pencil, and it is my favorite tool ever.

My top apps are the following:

∙ writing notes or ideas, by hand. – Paper

∙ making sketches and mind maps – Paper

∙ drawing and painting – Paper, Canva

∙ writing full texts – Google Documents

∙ retouching photos – Snapseed

∙ record audio – built in, GarageBand

∙ compose music – Garage Band

I hope you enjoyed a visit to the history of a book.

Remember to play!

The post How to write a book – incubation phase appeared first on Creative Sensei.

Here you can read my retrospective of the process at different time points.

(December 6th update)

Surviving a crowdfunding

The team at Creator Institute had a full pre-sale process with templates you had to populate in order to make the pre-sale process simpler. They did it over a crowdfunding platform called Indiegogo.

It was a whole month of anxiety, promotion and calls. It was also a month of catching up with people, meeting new people and learning to articulate the essence of my project. And I was really humbled by the response I got. In addition, I came out with a stronger intent of seeing the book message grow.

Now, I ended up exhausted and needed to take a break from the process. 

My learnings on this phase where several:

• I was out of my comfort zone since day one. That feeling didn’t go away, but I developed the habit of doing what I had to do anyway because my purpose was more important than my mild introversion. For the introverts out there: your book probably will aim to educate or entertain to some level, or anything else. You owe it to the readers who can benefit from reading it to make the best effort to reach them, otherwise, you will be doing your book and your audience a disservice. Swallow your introversion and follow the steps without looking back, the crowdfunding is just one step of the path you have chosen.
• The Book Creators program is US based. When they suggest arranging 20’ calls for quick interviews, it is ok for US based interviews. When they suggest ‘catching up’ calls of 20’… well, that timeframe doesn’t work in Spain or other mediterranean, latin or more relational cultures. You just don’t come out of the blue and keep it short. So, for those introverts, or from more relational cultures, I suggest it may be better to start catching up with people as soon as you start the book project. You may mention in passing what you are up to, opening the door to more detailed explanation closer to the time. Then you will be able to keep it shorter than 60-90’. Otherwise, you will need to allocate a lot of time to crowdfunding month. Some other people did a longer campaign, but I was so tired I just wanted it to end.
• I chose the program because it was in English, but my backers happened to be mostly Spanish speaking. Many of my international co-authors struggled with something similar. I managed by translating my campaign page, and providing digital only perks, to avoid the international shipping. Also, I moved the translation of the book to the top of my priority developments (I already have a first draft).

To sum it up, give yourself enough time to reconnect with people way beyond it is required.

Ruthless editing

When I finished my first draft, I was happy I had put it all out. Over 50K words of content that had to be polished.

Four months after submitting the first draft, I started the revisions. As soon as I started reading the acquiring editor’s comment the pride wore off. Another humbling moment. This was going to be a piece of work.

I went into procrastinator mode because I didn’t want to face it. Eventually I got started. Adding details, explanations that have been left unfinished and transitions between ideas. And starting to break sentences down too: five line sentences are a little too much. I ended up with near 60K words, and I had not yet created the most practical part, with detailed techniques and session blueprints, nor bibliography.

They told us to be ruthless in the editing, and I followed through. I have managed to silence the editor mode while creating but this was the editing stage. I thought I would be using the scissors… but ended up using a chainsaw cutting down 35% of the content. 

I have a special place in my heart for all the editors and beta readers who had to read through my earlier versions… They are the heroes of the final product. Although the book could be better, I think it is readable, and that is thanks to all the editors and beta readers’ contribution. And we are talking about more than ten people…

My learnings on this stage:

• I wrote my first draft trying to put everything I had to share about the topic. The editing process was a practice of putting the reader at the center. I wanted a better and useful experience, thus, I removed non essential principles, theories, techniques and stories. I hope it is less comprehensible but more actionable.
• It takes a village to create a book, and having a coach with you is amazingly helpful
• Writing a book is a challenge, and a big commitment, but having a team behind you who have worked out the process, frees you to focus on your book and topic. You save endless hours of finding out what to do and how to do it. Plus, as a deadline writer, I benefit from having a clear calendar of the process. 

Pre-publishing stage

This part is a little more fun. You send parts of the book out to gather early praise. You share three cover concepts with your backers to gather some feedback, do copy editing revisions, proofreading, layout design, choose final title and cover, choose amazon categories… And you start to see the final product. You start feeling this become real. It is an exciting time.

In this stage you are going to be transitioning from writer of a book project to a published author status. You toy with the “what next” theme. But what is clear is that you are just starting the journey to reach your audience.

Being published is a huge milestone in itself. But if you aim to impact readers, you need readers, and that means marketing. And as a self published author, the responsibility is all yours.

In the Book Creators program, they cover this from day one, starting to document your journey in social media from the get go. But from now on, it is a critical task, regardless of what you think of it.

Published!!

(April ’22 update)

Compared to the long-term effort of writing and revising the book, publishing (as for ‘uploading’ to stores) was  easy.  The publisher New Degree Press has set it all up so you just have to follow the steps.

Brian Bies shared a video with all the steps to publish on Amazon, Kobo and Ingram, so our books will be distributed all over the world. The video takes about an hour to watch but if you want to stop and do the steps, it may take between 2 and 3 hours, to take it slow and steady.

To be able to publish across platforms in just one sitting, we needed some preparation in advance. We prepared author profiles, researched categories and filled a table with title,  pricing, and other details. By the afternoon you decide to publish you can do it all in one go by copying and pasting. They simplified the process for maximum reach and effect.

The only tricky part is the categorization in Amazon, but they have you covered on that too. If during the writing process we had a developmental editor, for the revision and publication we are paired with a MRE that holds your hand until the very end.

What next? Life as a published author

Fact: most self published authors sell between 250-300 books over time. 

With this reality check, we have to accept the fact that unless you do something differently, we are not going to get rich by selling books. I will talk about non-fiction here.

Marketing-wise, former book Creator authors have made more money from workshops, speaking and coaching opportunities they received because of the book, from people and organizations who wanted to put the content into practice or learn more about it.

Your goals may be different, but the direction you take should be informed by your intentions for the book and the type of impact you aim to achieve.

In my case, I’m not so fuzzy about the specifics, but I need some monetization that will probably be reinvested into translation to Spanish, audiobook and marketing to reach more people. So if you know any possible sponsors, let me know!

New Degree Press runs a few marketing workshops after publication, so you get some help along the way. They just created a Discord channel for authors of all cohorts to meet and support each other.

With all this in mind, I will be defining my next steps. I will keep you posted.

Book writing and publishing conclusions

As my final conclusions I am impressed buy the whole setup of the program that takes you by the hand it brings a lot of professionals to help you out. You learn from speakers, you meet other authors, you help other authors and you are helped by all the others. You have a community of like-minded people creating networking opportunities.

If I had the opportunity to write some other book with the Creator Institute program again I would do it (even though price has gone up, it is still a good and affordable deal). I would recommend it to anyone who has a book in them but doesn’t want to be dealing with the whole editing-publishing process on their own and who wants accountability and community. There are not many programs like these from zero, even without the idea for a book to publish the book, even to selling books.

Stick to shorter number of words if you want to be meeting deadlines more easily and simplify the editing process (25.000 words draft better than 50k).

Start building an audience as soon as you start the program. If you are an introvert or from a very relational culture you may need extra time (two or three times) or longer  periods (in months or weeks) depending on the time you can devote to crowdfunding. Also, if you are a foreigner and your people don’t speak English or your topic is not of general interest. 

But, this is a marathon, so don´t stress yourself over this. Some deadlines can be stretched, some life events may and have to take over… Just set your goals aligned with your lifestyle and modify them if big things happen – I would suggest you can change gear, but keep the engine going, so eventually, you reach your destination. But this is a very personal choice. (I needed a break, or I would have broken down).

Just trust the process, show up and do the work. All I can say is that I’m a happy published author now.

The post How to publish a decent book appeared first on Creative Sensei.

and it takes time and effort!

A few days ago, I hit the publish button on Amazon Kindle Publishing and my book Join The Playful Revolution (and paperback) was available for purchase online. It was meant to be in August’21, then December’21 but it happened on April’22. That’s life. In fact I hit the button on the 22nd, but it appears as published on the 21st, the international day of Creativity. Interesting, since it is a book that celebrates creativity and play at work.

A lot has happened since summer’20, when I was shaking off quarantine with the inner call to help people reinvent themselves, and having a little more fun on the way. Little did I know that the pandemic was not yet over. Still, I had tried to write a book for years, wanting to increase global creativity. Within that context, I set out to get things done, and started researching online: “How to write a book”. Well, I have a bias towards efficiency, so lets share that sometimes I added “in thirty days” to the search.

I found out about the Book Creator program Georgetown Professor Eric Koester was running. Originally offered to University students, they now accepted applicants from outside, high schoolers to retirees and anything in between. Great. They did it online. Sounds very good. And they had very affordable fees. I’m in. I applied and started my journey on October’20, and many hours of researching, interviewing, writing and editing later… the rest is history. Keep reading the ‘journal’ I wrote along the way (starting on November’20, to find more details about the why and the how.

The background

Years ago I wrote a book. A Phd thesis to be exact, roughly 100.000 words. I had experience in writing for a newspaper, and also managed to write an Msc thesis in two weeks (20.000 words). I had started a Phd fully confident in my writing skills, researching a topic of my own choice with great hopes and tones of enthusiasm. 

Fast forward 5 years, I have long passed submission time and arrived at the University location for a three month stint to finish writing up. And what had been boiling all throughout the research phase, hit me on my face, hard. I met the hardest form of writer’s block I had ever encountered. I spent days, weeks and months procrastinating, hiding in my flat, not talking to anyone, and specially, not writing a thing. Let’s say it was hard and solitary.

Three months became almost 18 months, and the once smiley, gregarious, happy me was replaced by the anxious me, with a snowball of work growing by the minute in front of me. To cut a long story short… I only got out of the mess “with a little help from my friends“ (Beatles song): from the one who became my accountability partner until I built writing momentum, to the one that helped out with corrections, and those who reviewed graphics, or index, etc.

Eventually, I handed in the thesis, and eventually, I graduated with a PhD in Education. But I learned much more than research methods and my topic. I had unlocked a will power way beyond my own nature, and I had learned to ask for help.

The book calling

As I shared, I had a very hard time writing my thesis. I struggled all throughout the process, so knowing that you may wonder: why on earth will you put yourself again in the situation of writing a big piece?

I will summarize the circumstances of my previous experience:

• The task was huge (aiming at 100.000 words of research content, no fluff)
• I was not confident with my English skills
• I was isolated (part, the nature of a phd, part, my own nature, although I asked for help at the end)

Well, the short answer is because I know this time will be different. And before I explain why I’m so sure about this, I will give you the long answer.

After years learning and reinventing myself in different fields, I have committed to increase the global creativity quotient. This requires that I research a little more, but also, that I have a clear message to share with this purpose. A book is helpful on both fronts. 

I had started writing bits and pieces here and there, but I was going nowhere. Enter Covid-19, shaken my world in different ways, and a definite decision to take action is made. Summer 2020, enter the scene Eric Koester’s “Book Creators” program. I cannot recall how I landed on his youtube channel, but I binge-watched the whole Book writing series, and applied to be part of the program. And here I am.

Why did I join? Because it was the opposite to my previous experience:

• The challenge is to write 20.000 words of raw material, that later will take form and grow up to 25-30.000 words, in an iterative process that takes 4-5 months. So the task is smaller, broken down, with weekly assignments, very paced. You just need to turn up every week and focus on the task at hand. They have a tried and tested process that takes people from zero to completion, and 95% is publication ready. Even if you are not ready at the end of the semester, your book will have progressed quite a bit, and you know “done is better than perfect”.
• Every author is assigned a developmental editor from an early point (week 5 of the program), and the process involves more detailed editing later on, from editors to beta readers.
• Every week there is a lecture with Eric, 2-3 guest lectures, and the opportunity to interact with other authors in the program during those sessions. On top of that, there are virtual library sessions, in case you want to schedule ‘writing time’ at the same time as others. Plus, you schedule a weekly call with your developmental editor. There is also a support person for general coordination of the program. Not to forget a couple of calls with Eric himself at the beginning, and during the process. You are definitely not alone in this.

As a bonus, I should add:

• The process focuses a lot on learning, making connections and telling stories. Writing an interview in the form of a story is a skill of its own, but that is at the core of the program, and it opens up a new world for me, coming from academic and free flow writing.
• The program includes the possibility of publishing and marketing the book, with lots of support also from the get go. 

The book writing

So how am I doing so far? Well, having a full time job and a family gets me busy, but I try to make it to the lecture and one speaker night a week, and keep the weekly assignments even if at the minimum. I have to confess that I started researching the topic and potential interviewees ahead of the beginning of the course, because I knew I would have a tight agenda.

I have interviewed two fellow authors and one of the speakers, and have received pointers and good leads from peers too. One of the things I enjoy most about our cohort is that there are participants who are still in high school, seasoned professionals and everything in between. It is a very fulfilling experience.

The program is fast paced, and can be overwhelming for some. The trick is not to worry about ‘the program’ nor ‘the book’, but focus on what you have on your plate for the week. Basically: Trust the process. They have tried and tested it for a few iterations so far, moving from the classroom of Georgetown University, to other universities, to an open program like the one I’m participating in.

Even though I don´t know the majority of the guests in the speaker series, I like to turn up because they are all interesting people who are doing things, which is inspirational. Also, I get to learn about things that are unrelated to my topic, but being my topic “creativity”, and “curiosity” one of its pillars, expanding my knowledge base is fantastic to develop my own creativity.

As for writing, the program acknowledges the different writing realities. Instead of requiring a daily writing commitment, which is the usual recommendation, it makes you think on the type of writer you really are (not the one you would like to be): habit writer (you turn up every day), episodic writer (when inspiration strikes you deliver, but is not systematic), and deadline writer (long last minute sprints to deliver). And the size of the assignment is such, with smaller milestones and deadlines, that it is possible for all types to meet the targets. And they have tested it.

I have been surprised by the generosity of quite a few people that didn’t know me at all, to share some time with me. Not only am I learning a lot, it is a very humbling experience and all I want is to make it worthwhile, and give back tons of value in the book. I warn everyone that is going to be a short book, a first attempt, and I hope not the last. I want to change the workplace, but I may go after education next :)

I’ve tried the story plots in order to write stories out of raw interview material, and it is so broken down that I found it tricky at the beginning but very satisfying, and I’m looking forward to writing something more.

Will keep you posted.#

Green light

25th of march update

At the end of January I submitted 30K words of raw content for overall revision by the publisher, New Degree Press and I was green lit for publication, making it to that 95% group. So far so good.

Now it was time to make that raw material into coherent chapters and structure, which created a moment of panic. I had my original outline, when I was conceptualizing the book, but I also had a different outline from a conversation with my coach Eric. And hit a wall. I didn’t know where to start and old fears knocked on my door. But it was brief. I chose a middle ground and merged the two approaches, somehow, and put them away for later.

I decided to go on individual chapters I knew would make sense and bring in the scattered pieces together, but move on. It was critical to have a completed draft, if imperfect -so imperfect it is embarrassing-. I typed away for days and weeks not looking back to any of the corrections my editor was providing me with… just forward, like a Forrest Gump of the writers.

On the 5th of March I submitted my First Draft with 51.000 words. That was a ride!!!

Choosing a Title

I ran a small poll on three possible titles for my book, which is not yet decided. these were the options:

• Creativity and Play at Work
• Innovation Cracks
• Playful Revolution

The clear winner was Playful Revolution, and while I still have make a final decision, I took notice and started to use it as a hashtag for my book project: #playfulrevolution

Pre-sale

On April 2nd, I will launch my pre-sale campaign. We have been working on creating the video clip that will explain it, which has also been an ‘interesting’ process on its own.

I’m humbled about the amount of people that are getting involved in this project, from editors, marketing people, speakers, interviewees, fellow authors, admin staff, author coaches, publishers… It really takes a village. So many people have supported me in this journey, that started like a personal challenge but it has become so much more.

I wanted to put out tools for people to bring more creativity and play to their workplace, specifically in technological companies. So far, I have expanded my thinking, and realized that there is an excruciating need for more play and creativity in the world (mostly the adult world), and ‘work’ is where a great number of adults spend quite a bit of time. One reason is that play opens the door for creativity, which fuels innovation, and I don’t need to explain why we need this urgently. Play also reduces anxiety and stress, which are a major problem in western countries and some others.

With all this in mind, I want to start a movement, the #playfulrevolution. If we had more play at work, we could say “let’s go to play” when we go to work (like somebody suggested to me), and bring the same joyful attitude, openness to experimentation and collaboration… Wouldn’t our days be different? Wouldn´t the outcome of our work be different?

If you think the world needs more play and creativity, considering supporting the project in one of these ways:

• buy the ebook here, (this link from Spain: amazon.es) or the paperback here (or in amazon.es) (if you don´t see the links or they don´t work, just search for the title on Amazon)
• share this link jointheplayfulrevolution.com with all your friends and colleagues (think of 5-10 people who may be interested or may know someone who may be interested)
• leave an honest review on Amazon
• and subscribe to our newsletter:  jointheplayfulrevolution.com

In the meantime, keep on reading (and wait for part 2 of this story: How to publish a decent book).

Play!

The post How to write a decent book appeared first on Creative Sensei.

Why you should create your own visual material to think, create and communicate

Visual communication is growing at every minute. And there is a good reason for it: we understand images 60.000 times faster than language. That means, if you are a content creator, a team leader or a business person, that you will have a few things to share and the sooner, the better.

But what if you are not visual, can´t draw, or you are not artistic? Fear not. It is about ideas not art. We are going for symbolic representation here, and you will see, that means very simple shapes. You will be able to benefit from even the most basic skills that require only that you are able to write single letters. 

You can see the process of drawing the above diagram and listening to the explanation here:

Here you can find a visual thinking primer that shows you how to start without drawing:

When you use visuals to present your ideas, people will be able to follow along, understand you better and faster, and when there is a need for a consensus, it will be reached faster. Images are powerful.

But you will understand it better with examples of what you can do:

• Before you have a message to share – learn (visual summaries)
• To come up with a message to share – ideate (brain dump -mind maps)
• Simplify your message – visual vocabulary
• Tell your story – visual elevator pitch
• Share your message – social media material
• Engage your people – live meeting facilitation

How to use visual summaries or sketchnotes for learning

Before you have a message to share, or when you are thinking about a theme, you may want to do some background research. While you do, you could start honing your beginner drawing skills by taking notes with a bit of visual spice. At the beginning, you can just use frames to surround chunks of text, and slowly, add a little image here and there, until you develop your very own sketchnote.

Sketchnoting is a term popularised by Mike Rodhe in his book The Sketchnoting Handbook, and it requires more skills than just drawing: listening, synthesising what you hear, then thinking of an image to represent it, then drawing the image. Some people with experience are able to process a message and interpret it visually in real time. That is not the purpose here, where you may be researching to create content for a presentation or social media.

Here is an example of what I drew during an interview to Tyler Hayes, a serial entrepreneur and CEO of Atom Limbs. He was being interviewed by Eric Koester during the Speaker Nights at Creator Institute. I didn´t know anything about him, nor most of the guests, but I kept showing up to learn about new people and topics, while writing my book Join The Playful Revolution. It was a way to feed my knowledge base and stimulate my creativity with a degree of novelty and randomness.

How to organise your thinking with Mind maps

Once you have done some research or filled your brain bucket with ideas, it is time to start harvesting. I love mind maps to perform a ‘brain dump’ of everything I can recall about a topic. I was introduced to them by my English teacher, while helping me prepare to write an essay. What I like about them is that they are an easy introduction to visual organisation of ideas without drawing.

A mind map is a tree-like network of concepts. You start with a main idea in the center of the page. Next you write the main subtopics around it, and connect them to the main idea. For each subtopic, you add a level of detail, and you can keep going with more granularity if you need to. Here is a simple image to show you an example:

When I was thinking about writing a book about creativity, I approached it by systematically responding to the journalists 6 W related to the book: who, what, why, how, when, where. Each of these concepts led me to different topics I could write about, as you can see below:

You can use this framework for any content creation. I have used 6W to help a project manager clarify and simplify the elements of a complex project. If you have to talk about a new technology, an initial framework could be: background, competitors, benefits, costs, and so on. As you see in the picture, you can add some color to it too.

How to simplify your message with visual vocabulary

At this point you have a series of topics to talk about, and it is time to simplify your message by synthetising it with the use of images. You need to develop your own visual vocabulary, maybe 5-10 images to represent the most important or frequent concepts you use at work. But don´t get stressed: If you can write, you already have enough skills for the kind of drawing I will share with you.

If you can draw a circle, and an inverted U underneath… you just drew a person.

That was easy. 

Next: a horizontal rectangle and two circles underneath, at each side. It is a car. I know it doesn´t look like one, but you can write CAR underneath too. Or BUS or TRAIN… whatever you want it to mean. Remember, we are drawing to share ideas, not creating art. 

We are looking not just at an image that represents our concept (i.e a bulb to represent ideas), but to do so with the minimum effort sufficient to represent the concept. Thus my simple rectangular car.

But you may think “yes, that is all very nice, but I’m in business and continuity is a thing: how do I represent Resilience?” I’m glad you asked. Normally, since I’m very visual and have been practicing sketchnoting for five years plus, I have a visual library in my head I can draw from. Diversity? I get my ‘person’ with different head shapes (see picture above). Brainstorm?  A cloud with a thunder. But when Carlos Carpizo from Kosmos Arts & Tech requested Resiliency in our visual thinking coaching session… I didn´t know what to draw, just like you may feel when you start and have no library yet.

Solution: go to google, write the term + ‘icon’, and search for images only. In our case, that would be ‘resilience icon’. Alternatively, you can go to https://thenounproject.com/ and write your concept as is (i.e “resilience”). You would be scanning to find an image that is both representative and easy to draw. Then you should practice drawing each of your visual concepts 20, 30 or 50 times, until you feel confident enough.

How to create a visual elevator pitch

Great, you developed your visual library, and now what? Use it… to take notes, to make a point, or even to present your company’s (project, idea) elevator pitch. I assume you are familiar with the elevator pitch concept, where you present the benefits of a product or service and the people who benefit from it in a compelling yet brief manner… enough to fit in the time you reach your floor in an elevator. First you need to refine the message, then you represent it visually.

There is some skill in structuring an elevator pitch. Following Graham Cochrane simple framework for a service, I suggest you some:

• I am (WHO) “a visual thinking coach”
• And I help (WHOM) “tech & bizz people and entrepreneurs”
• WHAT “communicate their ideas effectively by using visual skills”

Another example is my summary of my vision to develop Design Thinking. I distilled the necessary skills you need to practice regularly, then added the principles I embed in every practice session. It was a process that took some time, and lead to the creation of my Creative Coffee sessions I share in my book Join The Playful Revolution. The skills were empathy, collaboration, storytelling, visual language and creativity. The principles: play and humor.

Case study: a Visual Thinking coaching session with a tech company 

Kosmos Arts & Tech is a social company that builds on art and technology to bring job opportunities to youth at risk of exclusion in Mexico and USA. They hired me to help them with communicating the companies values to their clients: young people between 17-23 years of age undertaking their training program.

Before our practical session, we exchanged emails where I asked them:

• Their elevator pitch: Who they are, what they do, why they do it (so I got a bit of context)
• A list of frequently used terms so I could prepare in advance.

Later in the session, I first gave them a primer in visual thinking, to learn basic skills, and then we moved onto practicing with their company’s specific vocabulary:

This was their list:

• Home
• Community / Anti-selfie (thinking of self only as evidenced by the % of selfie photos)
• Belonging 
• Mindset
• Emotion
• Perspective shift / New perspective
• Curiosity
• Critical Thinking
• Creative Thinking
• Resiliency

Finally, we moved onto finding a cohesive way to present their project.

Kosmos Arts & Tech elevator pitch is:

• What they are: Kosmos is a positive space where technically savvy disadvantaged young adults can learn new skills, at the intersection of tech and art, yielding life ready professionals.
• How they do this: Technical Skills training are hosted under artists’ workshops or art centers where we transversally braid intentional art interactions into the core program of skill capacity development. We want our students to have the opportunity to learn how to learn. By teaching a base skill  we provide the technical basics, however our model of intentional interactions develops enabling sub-skills that will position them to have the skills and base knowledge they need to learn how to learn.

• Why they do this: Opportunity should be for all. We believe art is a key component that is very underestimated in the tech industry. Through art interactions we push our students to think outside the box, to explore different possibilities and horizons and to just experience and let their imagination flow. This way we develop competencies such as curiosity, critical & creative thinking, collaboration, communication and compassion. 

To develop their final image, I focused on their Why, where art (represented by the palette) is the foundation over which they develop (and mix) their set of competencies (colors and attributes).

How to create Social media material with your simple drawings the easy way

Finally, another use for your brand new visual vocabulary and drawing skills is to create images to share your project, message or brand in social media. 

To streamline my process I use my iPad (2018)   with an Apple Pencil (generation 1) and the apps Paper (free) and Canva (also free). That is the oldest iPad that will allow me to use the Apple pencil. However, you only need any tablet or mobile phone that will allow you to draw with your finger or a basic stylus. 

I may hand draw my concept in Paper, save as a picture and share it in Social Media as is, like in my sketch about the book editing process (I didn’t show up with scissors to ‘cut’ but with a chainsaw… so much I cut)

Or I may elaborate it more, with details, and color, but still in Paper, like in my word count graph about the same book editing process (now you understand my feeling).

Eventually, I may upload the image to Canva.com to add some more elements to create a more elaborate image, or series, like The Story of a Book example below.

How to engage your team with visual facilitation of meetings and retrospectives

There is one more use for drawing that can make your team and meeting participants happier: visual facilitation. I’m just going to prompt you to run meetings using visual templates aligned with the agenda, whether it is a strategy session, a retrospective or anything else.

If you are running a project planning session, the following template may help you guide the discussion:

1. Goals for the project
2. Potential risks
3. What may give the project or team impulse
4. What may delay the project or team

You can facilitate in many ways but I have used the following methods:

• You asks participants about each point (in order), while you write down the responses on the wall (did I say you need to reproduce the picture in a big panel?)
• Alternatively, you give participants time to write down their contributions on sticky notes, then ask them to clean up duplicates, and come to a consensus

For retros, you could use the boat template, or the star template where the focus is on:

• Things to do more of
• Things to do less of
• Things to keep doing
• Things to stop doing
• Things to start doing

In the case of remote teams, you can use collaborative whiteboards like Miro or Mural with the same frameworks (they both allow for drawing and use of digital sticky notes, as well as uploading images, or using their own templates).

Where to learn more

I hope you are encouraged to start your visual thinking journey, one way or another. Here you have more resources to keep learning.

Verbaltovisual.com

The Sketchnoting Handbook –  Mike Rhode 

The back of the napkin – Dan Roam 

Mind Map Mastery – Tony Buzan 

 At Risk of Greatness – Carlos Carpizo 

For a wider range of creative and playful activities to empower your team, see my book Join The Playful Revolution, if you follow the instructions on the book page, you will access to several resources!

(Some of the above contain affiliate links, which means you pay the same but I get a small amount that helps support this project.)

The post Easy Visual Thinking skills for techies, business and entrepreneurs appeared first on Creative Sensei.

Before you dive in, make sure to scroll down later to grab your copy of the Instagram guide Terri has created for the readers of this blog. I hope you enjoy it!

The Author

Terri Nakamura is a successful entrepreneur, content creator, and award-winning graphic designer. She’s an early adopter of social media and has been a technology influencer, a social media influencer for the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) and was named one of the 100 most influential tech women on Twitter by Business Insider. Terri recognized the potential of using Instagram as a blogging platform, leading her to write her first book on the subject, Blogging On Instagram: Engagement Writing On One of the World’s Best Social Media Platforms.

Terri lives in Seattle in a 130-year-old Victorian house with her cats Hunter and Grey, and her husband Kahuna Dave. In addition to writing, designing and keeping up with social media, she is co-founder and President of Alki Surf Shop, Seattle.

The Book

“If you are a writer, blogger or social media marketer, you will find blogging on Instagram the most gratifying channel for expression and interaction.”

Most of us see Instagram strictly as a tool for sharing photo or video content but, after blogging for many years, author Terri Nakamura noticed that her blog-style posts on Instagram would consistently deliver increased feedback and engagement. Realizing an opportunity, Terri moved to curate more long-format content for Instagram, finding success and genuine connections along the way.

Blogging on Instagram: Engagement Writing on One of the World’s Best Social Media Platforms is your personal guide to effective engagement writing on Instagram. Meticulously detailed and descriptive, the book teaches how to craft images and captions to foster real interaction; growing your follower base organically while consistently delivering value to fans. Terri brings in research from social media industry leaders as well as the voices of influencers both large and small who love using Instagram to blog. Explore their stories and more as Terri invites you into the world of blogging on Instagram.

Get the book here

Blogging on Instagram: Engagement Writing on One of the World’s Best Social Media Platforms —  (affiliate link, if you use it, you pay the same price but I get a small fee that helps support this project)

The Gift

Here is the generous gift from Terri Nakamura to all readers of this blog. She has created this Instagram guide exclusively for you, to help you make the most of Instagram as a creator. If you find it useful, please spread the word and follow @terrinakamura in her digital homeland (Instagram).

Begoña Pino — © Terri Nakamura giveaway R1

Contact Terri Nakamura

• Web: https://www.terrinakamura.com/
• Instagram: @terrinakamura
• links: https://linktre.ee/terrinakamura
• email: terri.nakamura@gmail.com
• phone: 206.973.7291(Seattle, US)

The post Creators – Terri Nakamura “Blogging on Instagram” appeared first on Creative Sensei.

I had the opportunity to ask Simon Sinek that very question: How do I start a movement? Well, I used different words, but if you have a message you want to share with the world, this wording may resonate better.

Simon was being interviewed by professor Eric Koester at the Speaker Series within the Book Creators program at the Creator Institute. He was sharing insights about his writing process, how he is a ‘pressure writer’ who sometimes gets into a plane to get into a flow and write for three hours.

How sometimes he finds a problem, tries to solve it and then share it, in the form of a book, like the problem with trust he reflects on Leaders Eat Last. And how, some other times, he can be talking about some ideas, finding answers to several questions in a book, like in the Infinite Game. I was very fond of the not really competitive environment he described as worthy rivalry (where the opponent helps you be better), as it elicit some particular image I had to depict on my notes:

I was writing a book about creativity and play at the workplace. Well, I had handed in the first draft a few months earlier and was on my way to revision. But during the interview I was granted the opportunity to ask him a question. I felt very honored and a little anxious then. I had been following Simon’s work for years, from the Golden Circle in Start With Why, to his lessons from Leaders Eat Last.

What happened when he spoke made me change course on the book. Now I want to share with you the story I share in the introductory chapter of my book Join The Playful Revolution as he disclosed the secret to starting a movement:

What do you believe in?

Simon Sinek is a leadership expert and the best-selling author of Start With Why and Leaders Eat Last. His 2009 TEDx Talk “How Great Leaders Inspire Action,” with over fifty-five million views, introduces the concept of the Golden Circle. This refers to the way great leaders communicate in a very different way from everyone else, be that Apple or Martin Luther King.

The three elements of the Golden Circle are: why, how, and what. At the core of the approach is starting with why: the company’s purpose, cause, belief, and the reason for it to exist.

In a recent conversation with Simon, I asked him how to start a global playful movement.

“I’m trying to bring more playfulness to the workplace to spark more creativity and innovation, while bringing happiness as well. So, how do you start to create a global movement?” I asked.

Simon paused for a moment to assess the question and then responded.

“I’m a great believer to start with the place that you are good at. I was good at speaking my idea before I was writing about my idea.”

He suggested you pick your preferred format and go with it to hone your thinking: blog, video, podcast, consulting, speaking, etc. Then, he provided an example of how he developed the concept of the Golden Circle, described in detail his book Start with Why.

“I treated it like a science experiment. I didn’t claim to be right. I didn’t claim that I had all the answers. When people would say, ‘will it work in this industry?’ My answer was, ‘I don’t know. I’ve never worked in that industry. Let’s try.’”

He continued, “I was very honest about that. I’m looking for the opportunities for the theory to fail, so I can improve the theory. What ended up happening was that the people who believed in my work gave me entry and tinkered with me. They let me tinker on their companies or their organizations.”

As Simon explained, his format of choice was speaking and he was talking about his ideas in order to refine them, but over time he noticed a shift.

He said, “I stopped talking about what I did and started talking about what I believed. Then, I was more and more being introduced to people who believe what I believe.”During the conversation, I was nodding at his every word. I could not be more in tune with him, but what he said next changed the focus of this book entirely.

“Stop telling people what you want to do and start telling people what you believe in. When you’re talking right now, you don’t really care about innovation. It’s a side effect, it’s a benefit that’s relevant to some people.”

Mmm, that came in as a knock, because I had just written a book about innovation, or so I thought. As soon as he started saying it, I smiled as if my mask had dropped. He could read right through me.

And he carried on.

“You’re in sales mode trying to throw spaghetti against the wall, hoping some of it will stick.”

He got me! I think I blushed a little and there was no place to hide.

He kept reasoning, “but talking about the thing that you believe… You believe in play. You believe that play is really important and we’ve forgotten the joy of play. It turns out that if you can embrace play, it brings all kinds of things: more happiness, it reduces stress, and drives innovation.”

Yes! He articulated it in a much nicer way. I had verbalized something different, but he put the focus on where my heart was, not my words.

“If I’m talking about play and then somebody smiles and goes, ‘you’re right.’ They’re more likely to invite you to figure something out with them. You have to practice talking about the thing you believe, and then saying yes to the people who believe what you believe, and saying no to people who don’t,” he added.

This is why I included this story, to share what I believe in the hope it may resonate with you.

Simon gave me one more example:

“In the early days, when I lived paycheck to paycheck, I didn’t have any money. I needed every client, it was really hard time. I remember word was starting to spread about a thing called “The Why,” and I remember somebody got my phone number. They heard about my work through somebody else I’d worked with, and they got to the phone: ‘I heard about you from [whoever]. Convince me why I should hire you?’ And I said, ‘Don’t.’ Because anybody who said ‘Convince me,’ I knew it was the wrong mindset. I needed somebody who said: ‘I heard what you do, I don’t think it’s perfect, but I think you’re onto something. I’d love to talk to you.’ I said yes to that, even if it paid less money. And so I was very diligent about choosing people to believe what I believe because they were the ones more likely to help spread the idea.”

I Believe

I believe in Play.
I believe that Play is really important and we’ve forgotten the joy of Play.
I believe Play is essential to spark the creative genius of every human.
I believe Play is a great collaboration environment.
I believe we need creativity to solve global problems.
I also believe we need Play to remain healthy and happy.
I believe Play can bring joy back to the workplace.

What do you believe in?

Note: some of the links are affiliate links. That means you pay the same but I get a little money to help support this project (thanks!).

The post How to start a movement and change the world like Simon Sinek appeared first on Creative Sensei.

Disciplines like Futures Design, Prospective and Scenario Planning help to clarify the vision of multiple futures and increase your degree of readiness. They explore the key aspects that impact on your business, the trends and the indicators that they are going in a particular direction. With that initial analysis, they paint different scenarios presenting their particular set of challenges. Thinking of strategies to address those challenges will give you a roadmap to action in case that scenario becomes a reality.

A little research will show a complex body of work, processes and techniques that can feel overwhelming. This article intends to give you the very basics to run your very own Futures Design workshop. Once you are familiar with the process (it is easier than you think), you may want to dive deep into the world of Scenario Planning, Foresight, Prospective and other exotic names for similar processes.  Scenario Planning is the particular flavor of Futures Design you will learn here. But you can gain some insights and understanding from practising first.

What is the Future?

There are infinite possible futures, many plausible, some probable and a few preferable. The only certain thing is that one of those futures will be a reality. 

In the futures cone by Voros you see that, in the present moment, there is one reality taking place, while infinite futures are possible. It is only when time passes that one of them become the reality. You can draw a linear picture of the past, because you know what happened. Projections fail because they estimate the future based on the past trajectory.

In the universe of infinite possible futures, you find a set of bizarre possibilities, more plausible ones, some with more probabilities than others. There are more preferable futures, and if you go idealistic, then there are utopian futures. If you go on the very negative, undesirable futures, you find the dystopian futures. 

Why do you need to design the future?

At the beginning of 2020, I was handing out the report on a prospective (or speculative) future exercise about our industry I had facilitated. I designed the workshops based on the Scenario Planning descriptions by Stadlers (2015) and Wade (2014), and added my playful touch with Dixit cards for scenario design, and LEGO models for challenge identification.

This type of exercise is a mix of observation of trends, design, and future-casting. It requires identifying the major drivers of the changes in the industry you are looking at. Next it is necessary to analyse the directions they can move to (positive and negative). Then, drawing a matrix of impact and uncertainty, with all the drivers. Those with the most impact and uncertainty levels are selected to create possible scenarios combining them all. 

Each scenario will pose a different set of challenges. If you get ready (or design a strategy) for those challenges in as many scenarios as possible, you will be more ready for them. That is, if you include some not so plausible scenarios in the equation.

I had invited participants to think of impactful yet uncertain events. The original exercise aimed at 2030 as the timeline. Since it was an experimental process, we focused on shorter term scenarios, and the most likely (plausible) ones, to gain some practical insights. Then, a global pandemic hit, and made the whole exercise futile… or maybe not -we did consider an economic crisis, though.

Our global society is changing at an increasing speed in complexity and uncertainty, what is commonly called the Volatile, Uncertain, Complex, and Ambiguous (VUCA) environment. 

The crisis accelerated changes like digital transformation across the globe. And individuals and businesses adapted to the ‘new reality’. 

To me, these events have emphasised the need for a more adventurous design of scenarios (at least one of them) when doing prospective future design, but also, it means that VUCA got even more volatile, and this is the new reality. Jamais Cascio coined the term BANI (Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible) as a new framework to replace VUCA:

BANI — Brittle, Anxious, Nonlinear, and Incomprehensible — is a framework to articulate the increasingly commonplace situations in which simple volatility or complexity are insufficient lenses through which to understand what’s taking place. Situations in which conditions aren’t simply unstable, they’re chaotic. In which outcomes aren’t simply hard to foresee, they’re completely unpredictable. 

In order to deal with exponential change, you can’t base all your decisions in what you know. There has been a breaking point and you may need to bring together all your resilience, soft skills and creativity to adapt to the new world. 

Seven steps to design the future with scenario planning?

Here is my distillation of Wade’s Scenario Planning with influence of Stadlers’s material. The basic steps are:

1. CONTEXT – Introduce the session motivation, context and goal
2. DRIVERS – Identify business-relevant Drivers 
3. DIRECTIONS – Identify the two future directions of these drivers (+ and -)
4. UNCERTAINTIES – Identify drivers with high impact and uncertainty (Critical Uncertainties)
5. SCENARIOS – Compose 4 possible scenarios with the two most critical drivers.
6. CHALLENGES – Identify key challenges for each scenario
7. STRATEGIES – Identify possible strategies for each challenge

Ideally, you would compose a team with 8-10 participants with different expertise, from technical to business. A first workshop can be run in four blocks of 90’.

Sessions:

• 1 session of workshop approach and identification of drivers
• 2 sessions to identify early indicators and select critical drivers
• 1 session for the development of 2 scenarios and the challenges of different stakeholders

You should follow-up the workshop with regular checkings: monitor the early indicators of each driver, because it indicates that the scenario is getting closer to reality (e.g. from possible to probable).

Step 1 – How to introduce the context and goal

The first step is to decide on a specific goal. You may have some motivation: Maybe you have been in business for a while, and new players are threatening to take away some of your customer base. Is that a trend that will fade or will become stronger? You need to address both possibilities. That would be one key point to communicate.

But, to make the most of the time of the participants, it would be useful to carry out some prospective work beforehand. This would provide people with some extra background information, what are the trends and most relevant drivers of the industry. However, if you have assembled a team with a variety of knowledge, they may be able to share it with the rest to have a rough context.

In this stage, it is also useful to introduce people to the process -definition of futures, methodology, content and structure of the sessions-.

Step 2 – How to identify business-relevant Drivers

Each industry is affected by different drivers. For example, a travel agency may be impacted directly by the economy, whereas the world of Internet of Things may not be as relevant (as for today). 

The first task of the team is to come up with different drivers for your industry. That is, any driver.

TASK 1: LIST

• Setup: give people a pack of sticky notes and a permanent black marker
• Duration: 2’
• Instruction: “Write down in sticky notes any drivers that may impact your industry, one driver per sticky note” 
• Description: people should be writing down the drivers and putting them up on the wall.

TASK 2: ORGANISATION

• Duration: 1’
• Instruction: “Group the sticky notes that describe the same driver -even if with a different name”
• Description: after people have organised the drivers, the facilitator can take one of each and make the final list in another area, separated as if in columns. If there are too many, you can run a voting round to limit them to a manageable number (6-8).

Step 3 – How to identify the future directions of the drivers

TASK 3: DIRECTIONS

• Setup: draw a vertical line with tape under each driver. Make a mark in the middle.
• Duration: 10’
• Instruction: “We are doing this together”, for each driver: “What is the end result if driver XX grows and if it loses steam?”
• Description: if the driver grows in power, that may result on ZZ dominating the space, whereas, if it loses steam, a potential threat (or a promising advance) just disappears. The facilitator will write both results on sticky notes and will put the positive on top of the driver’s vertical line, and the negative at the bottom.

TASK 4: EARLY INDICATORS

• Duration: 2’ per driver (10-15’)
• Instruction: “What would be the events that get us closer to each direction? For example, if a Bigtech is coming to your industry to dominate it, the first event or indicator could be that they buy a company of your industry.”
• Description: This would be conventional brainstorming, with the facilitator taking note. It is better to work with one direction at a time. The outcome is a set of drivers to track periodically, and a series of events to look for as early indicators that the result of that driver is approaching. It is convenient to record this for future reference (I normally take pictures).

Step 4 – How to identify drivers with high impact and uncertainty or Critical Uncertainties

TASK 5: UNCERTAINTY MATRIX

• Setup: Draw on a panel an L shape, with Impact on the left (- at the bottom and + on top), and Uncertainty at the bottom (- on the left, + on the right).
• Duration: 5’-10’
• Instruction: “Place the drivers in the matrix, according to the degree of impact in your business and uncertainty about their realisation”.
• Description: they will do this as a group, with two or three placing the drivers on the matrix, but then devoting some time to clarify any disagreement in the criteria. After they are done, the focus should be the top-right part of the matrix: the drivers with most impact and higher level of uncertainty. 

The rationale behind this is: if it does not impact you, don´t worry, if it is impactful but certain… then plan accordingly – you know it is coming, but you don’t need this exercise for it. Now, if it impacts you but is uncertain… you really want to explore it.

If there are more than three or four, you may want to run a voting round to pick the top 2 (three at most) to move through the exercise.

Step 5 – How to compose possible scenarios with the most critical drivers.

You bring two drivers, with both their positive-negative directions (towards more or less) which generate 4 scenarios. 

Three driver’s directions would generate 8 scenarios. For an initial exercise with limited time, you may choose to focus on the 2 most relevant or with the greatest impact as you voted before. You can explore the rest in follow up sessions. 

Now, the way I suggest you compose the scenarios is using Dixit cards for inspiration. I have used the game Dixit for a variety of things, and scenario planning is one of them. 

TASK 6: VISUAL SCENARIO

• Setup: split the group in teams and provide each team with a set of Dixit cards (at least 20), an Scenario template (an A3 sheet as in the image below), sticky notes and permanent black markers. Prepare the sheets with the chosen drivers directions in the Drivers box: that is the scenario we are planning for.
• Duration: 10’-15’
• Instructions: “You have a choice of images to pick from. Think of the driver-direction and pick a couple of images that resonate with it.”
• Description: People will select a visual representation that matches the driver. Depending on time, and the number of drivers, they can work together, one by one, or divide the work.

TASK 7: SCENARIO DESCRIPTION

• Duration: 10’-15’
• Instructions: “Explain the scenario using the images as a metaphor”
• Description: People will have to improvise a verbal explanation, using the images as a prompt. That way they will shape the scenario in a storytelling form. After explaining it to the group, they should summarise it on a sticky note. 

Step 6 – How to identify key challenges for each scenario in futures design

Having listened to the scenario description, everyone will have a more specfic idea of the scenario. Enough to put themselves into it, with a particular role: clients, employees, or any other stakeholder.

In this step, participants will try to think as the stakeholders and spot the main challenges they would face in the particular scenario.

TASK 8 – A DAY IN THE LIFE

• Setup: each team of participants will receive a bunch of LEGOs (no more than 50 pieces per person is needed, maybe less), a template for challenges as in the image below, sticky notes and a permanent black marker.
• Duration: 15’
• Instruction: “Build a model of a day in the life of stakeholder XX in the scenario YY”
• Description: It is best to build a model individually, thus, participants can work in parallel, and divide the work. If there are not enough role-scenarios for each, team members can work on the same, then share them and build a common one to share with the group.

TASK 9 – CHALLENGES

• Duration: 10’
• Instruction: “You need to write as many challenges as possible for a particular stakeholder in a particular scenario, and then you will move to the next one”
• Description: A team or participant -depending on numbers- will focus on a stakeholder-scenario at a time. They will have about 1-2’ to brainstorm the challenges they think they will face. Then they will move onto the next stakeholder-scenario, and so on. If you run three rounds, each stakeholder-scenario will have a variety of challenges.

TASK 10 – PRIORITISE

• Setup: place the challenges in the wall and give voting dots to participants (one per stakeholder-scenario)
• Duration: 3’
• Instruction: “You need to vote for the most relevant challenges”
• Description: Participants will have to vote for the most relevant challenges, which will provide a priority list.

Step 7 – How to identify possible strategies for each challenge of each scenario?

This is the final stage of the scenario planning exercise. By now, people are familiar with the context, drivers, scenarios and the specific challenges or particular stakeholders. It is solution time.

You can use a table like below to organise the solutions.

TASK 11 – STRATEGIES

• Setup: sticky notes and permanent black markers
• Duration: 10’
• Instructions: “How might we prepare for challenge XX?”
• Description: Participants will solve one particular challenge at a time. Depending on time, they can work in teams or individually. You run a first brainwriting sprint for 1-2’, then everybody move to the next challenge. Rinse and repeat a few times. You may want to organise and prioritise the strategies, or leave them all for later. In any case, you will end up with a set of strategies to respond to the challenges.
• Will my business be future proof after scenario planning?

Nobody can predict the future, but the exercise can give you some indicators to monitor, and some challenges to be prepared for. Ideally, you keep observing, and updating the exercise periodically.

If you keep track of the early indicators, you can start applying the strategies you already thought of to solve the challenges posed by that scenario. It will always be better than see it coming and doing nothing.

Should you design the future alone or in a team?

Ideally, you would gather a multidisciplinary team, both in terms of knowledge domain -tech, business, etc.- and thinking styles -imaginative, analytical, optimistic, pessimistic, and so on. In the scenario design phase you need people who can explain the context, as well as people who can think outside the box, imagining worlds that are not yet here.

In the phase where you choose the key drivers, the collective knowledge would be most powerful. The same way that, to choose the key challenges, people with a strategic vision may contribute more.

Then again, other people may be invited to generate ideas to solve the selected challenges…

If you are forced to work alone, you may need to use techniques like De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats to analyse each scenario with a different focus.

How long does it take?

The scenario planning and challenge identification can be done in one day (6 effective hours). You can break it down in two days, three hours each, or, as I have, in 4 sessions of 90’. However, it is best to go with either format in a very short span. I believe it is most effective to do it in one or two days.

This part should be followed up with an ideation workshop 3-6 hours, to find solutions to the most critical challenges in the different scenarios. If doing parallel team storming sessions, you can cut down the time, as long as you have enough participants. 

Ideally, a team of 4-6 people can generate several ideas within 15’ of team storming dedicated to a unique challenge. If you have 4 scenarios and 3 top challenges in each, that could take 4-6 hours (including breaks… 12 ideation sprints may be really taxing). Divide by 2 if you have double the people…

Where do I learn more about Futures Design or Scenario Planning?

Here your have my top 5 resources in complexity order, feel free to explore them in any other sequence:

1. Strategy 101 – Scenario Planning (Christian Stadler) – This is one of the first videos I watched to learn how to do scenario planning. In less than 10’ it gave me an overview of the general process. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAkCUTgUi7I
2. Woody Wade: “Scenario Planning” – Thinking Differently about Future Innovation – This video was the main source for the workshop design you have read about here. ​​https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKhUKHzE8hk
3. Woody Wade “See Your New Normal” (free ebook) – Wade explain forecasting with a 1-2 year horizon due to covid instead of 8-10 years. https://www.woodywade.com/ebooks/see-your-new-normal
4. Actionable Futures Toolkit – A toolkit created by designers (you get to download the session canvases), explained in their web. I found it after I had run my workshop, and did a test on remote with it. My recommendation is that you gain some confidence with a simple workshop and then ‘graduate’ to something like this. Of course, if you are an experienced facilitator, you may be already familiar with some of the techniques, and it will be easier for you. https://futures.nordkapp.fi/
5. Future life (Spanish) – This is a professional toolkit to design and facilitate workshops. It includes a variety of techniques and resources for you to choose from and create ad-hoc workshops, and spice them up if you repeat with the same group. It builds on Element 4, a Design Thinking toolkit, that can be used in combination with this for the ideation part (solving the problems you may envision). Only in Spanish at the moment. https://element4.es/futuro/

@Creativesensei 2022

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Here you can find the top five activities to guide your first steps activating your team creativity: improvisation, story dice, provocation, brain-writing and SCAMPER. These cover playful approaches to warmup the creative muscles, generate and expand disruptive ideas.

I have included them in my book Join The Playful Revolution – How To Bring Creativity and Play to the Workplace, where you can find some more detailed descriptions of some techniques such as brain-writing. You will also find a couple of bonus techniques not included in the book, for your eyes only. I hope you find these useful.

By the way, if you are looking at ways to facilitate group creativity in a remote setting, her you may find some useful information: Remote Team Creativity.

(Note: Some of the references in this article may contain affiliate links, which means if you buy the product you are supporting this project with a small commission at no cost for you).

Activity 1: Improvisation “Yes, and”

I borrowed this technique from improv comedy (Hough, 2011). A very important principle is that in improv comedy, they expect you to make your teammates look good. This, in exchange, builds trust. And it requires empathy too.

The technique I use basically consists of one participant starting to build a story with any statement. It can be something mundane, the first thing they did that morning, for example.

• Participant 1: “This morning, when I woke up, I did not want to get up because I felt terribly tired”

Then, the next participant continues by saying “Yes, and xxx”, and so on.

• Participant 2: “Yes and, I slammed the alarm clock across the room when it rang”
• Participant 3: “Yes and, because it was summer, I had left the window open”
• Participant 4: “Yes and, the alarm clock fell through the window all the way to the ground”

The last participant will say “Yes, and YYY”, but will try to close the story.

• Participant 5: “Yes and, I live on a second floor, and I heard somebody whining and cursing, so I switched the light off”

The whole point here is to build on your predecessor by adding to the story. This approach will neutralize the “Yes, but” attitude you may find when offering a new idea. The rule requires that you accept your partner’s proposition as is, and add value to it. No “But”, just “And”.

If you have created an initial story with a team, using the “Yes, and” framework, then you can challenge them with variations, depending on time availability:

• Retell the story in half the time, which will force you to leave things out.
• “I woke up very tired”
• “and, I slammed the clock”
• “and, the window was open”
• “and, the clock fell through”
• “and, nobody died”
• Retell the story to foreigners, or five-year-old children (which may require you to double up on expressivity). Do you want to try it?

Apart from the benefits of fostering collaboration, by active listening and communicating, this technique develops storytelling and creativity on the spot. To me it is one of the most complete of all.

If you do this periodically, you may find that you interiorize the principles and it will transfer to how you receive everyone else’s idea in a day-to-day context. This is the very essence of a safe environment to innovate. It is also cheap, easy and fun.

Activity 2: Story dice for everything

You can use improv as an icebreaker on its own, and in combination with story dice, using the dice images as a story prompt.

I first came across story dice when looking at games and agile retrospectives. Many people were using Rory Story Cubes, a set of nine dice with different icons in them, representing basic concepts (foot, face, light bulb, etc). There are alternatives of different brands, and you can make your own with permanent markers over blank dice, or DIY paper dice too. Dave Birss has created a free beautifully designed online set for remote sessions, that lets you choose between five or nine dice.

Teams are using story dice in retrospectives, when talking about the past project or sprint, but also for planning the next stage or the future of the team. You can draw some inspiration from Sumit Sethi’s approach that he shared in a Linkedin post:

• People take turns rolling four normal dice. If they get a six, they get to roll the story dice.
• The storyteller throws all nine dice from the set and has to use at least five to tell their story. They will share their life during the project or sprint, and it can be positive or about something that needs improvement, or both.
• They play until everyone has told a story.

Although it worked for Sumit’s team, many people may be caught by surprise the first time. Using them playfully first, as an icebreaker, makes everyone familiar with the mechanics of the dice and storytelling. Later they can then focus on the project stories when using them in a retrospective.

Some dice based icebreakers could be:

• Throw the dice and pick one to share some anecdote from your childhood. This allows teams to get familiar with visual metaphors and stories, as well as getting to know each other.
• In groups of three, throw three dice and each person will tell a story based on the image. Person One, will tell the beginning, Person Two, will continue it, and Person Three will finish it. The challenge is linking the image to the overall story. This is also performed using the “Yes, and” approach. It builds listening and creativity, and makes for fun stories without fear.
• The whole team tells a story with one dice each. You need to divide the group in three sections, so section one tells the beginning, section two, the middle, and section three, the end. In this case, you are creating a collective story, with a very diverse pool of storytellers. This exercise is basically the improv exercise mentioned earlier, but using the randomness of the dice to make it even more challenging (and fun).

This is a combined exercise that develops creativity, story-telling, empathy, collaboration and visual language skills. If you were to use only one practical activity from this book, this should be it.

Activity 3: Provocation

Provocation is a technique very well documented by Edward de Bono, with several variations. My favorite one is to take a regular and true statement, and transform it into something radical, exaggerated, inverted or impossible: i.e., regular statement “companies have employees” → provocation “a company without employees” (I know, there are several types, it is just an example).

Anouk Suñer-Rabaud, in the course material of Creative Thinking at Universidad Oberta de Cataluña, suggests other examples: “Skates are hammered on the floor”, “students teach the teacher.” You then get these statements to generate ideas that will make the statement true. What can we create/do for that statement to be true? i.e. following the example “a company without employees” –> “a company that hires freelancers”.

Instead of having to generate hundred of ideas in order to get the obvious ones out of the way, these provocations open more original paths, short-cutting the process a little.

You can use this technique for your individual thinking, but it can be introduced right before any ideation session to get people in disruptive mode. It is a good primer to take people out of their standard way of thinking.

Activity 4: Brainwriting

Let’s assume that you know the essence of brainstorming (that is: a group of people calling out ideas, while someone is taking notes, and yes, you are expected to suspend judgement…). The technique is credited to Alex Osborn. This format tends to favor the most vocal types during the idea generation phase. Also, when it is time to vote, if done on sight, there might be some pressure to vote for the idea of the boss or the dominant voices.

To save the hassle, and have everyone be engaged and contributing, you can run a quick brain-writing session instead:

• Your participants should be equipped with sticky notes and thick, black permanent markers.
• They need to be instructed to write one idea per sticky note and in capital letters.
• You set the timer up (three to five minutes), get everyone ready, and go.
• They collect their sticky notes after time is up, and put them up on the wall.
• Now you give them time to organize, take away duplicates, categorize.
• And finally, you give them a few dots to vote for their favorite ideas. For 3-6 participants, 3 dots per person would be enough, maybe 4-5 if they are 8-10 participants.

And all can be done in silence.

This technique evens up the participation. You get lots of ideas in a very short period of time, and there is no time wasted arguing about meaningless points. You also obtain a rough evaluation /selection of ideas. There are more sophisticated techniques to evaluate ideas, like an impact/viability matrix (or more like return/costs in the business world) but, depending on context, you get a quick and dirty first set of promising ideas.

Now, this technique works at any level of the hierarchy. I know it is a speedy process and some ideas or concepts might benefit from a little further discussion. Your participants may need that time, so you may consider planning your session with a little ‘free time’ for that spontaneous discussion to take place. Alternatively, just as you voted on preferred ideas, you may let people vote on ideas they would like to discuss further, and give them time to do just that.

Activity 5: SCAMPER

When you do a quick brain-writing or brainstorming session, you first go after the low hanging fruit. Since there is some time pressure, you suggest the first things that come to mind. Invariably, those tend to be the ideas that are most obvious. The more you dig, the more variety you find. That is why originality is a numbers game: the more ideas, the most likelihood of original thinking.

SCAMPER is an acronym created by Bob Eberle that summarizes certain actions used in the technique: substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to another use, eliminate, reverse.

This technique starts with a product or idea and explores it systematically, by going over every action, with several questions, and coming up with several answers. For example, if we start with a frying pan:

• Substitute. What can I substitute? The handle, the frying side, the screw that keeps them together… What do I substitute if for? The handle, with a clamp (something to hold it with), the frying side, with a metallic lid.
• Combine. What can I combine it with? Maybe an attached stove or oil dispenser.
• Adapt. How can I adapt it? Vertical handle for very small kitchens.
• Modify. What can I modify or magnify? Changing the shape to make star-shaped fried eggs…or make it extensible.
• Put to another use. Use it to add some weight on top of a sandwich that is on another pan.
• Eliminate. What can you remove? The handle. By making sure the exterior always remains cold, you can pick it up by hand.
• Reverse. What can you invert or reorder? First thought: using the handle to heat things up… that is, making a handle that can contain liquid and is fire resistant, so you can heat the handle up.

With this systematic approach, we are generating ideas on demand (deliberate creativity), regardless of our own perceived sense of creative skill. It is a creative confidence builder, and a good training exercise. But if we start from an initial provocation round, people may loosen up a bit and become more adventurous in their propositions. Of course, being a tool, it is not compulsory to use all the verbs (all the steps described by the acronym), but a little full practice may be helpful at the beginning.

This technique is both suited to individuals and teams, and mixes very well with provocation.

BONUS 1 : Teamstorming

Juan Prego, author of the book “Teamstorming”, gives his own touch to systematic group-storming. In the book he provides a unique blueprint with up to six rounds, generating ideas individually, using sticky notes and the rule “one idea in one sticky note”. In every round, each participant moves to another section of the wall and starts from the sticky notes that the earlier participant left there. It follows some of the actions of SCAMPER, but the book gives you the blueprint of the whole session, which also includes a few idea evaluation steps.

I have facilitated a session like this with a small group of 4 business development people, who generated more than 100 ideas in 15 minutes. You need at least 3 people to make it work, but it is a format that can be easily scaled up. I have run a session with more than 30 people and it went smoothly.

In his book, Juan moves from ideation to an evaluation stage. The first step involves voting for the favorite ideas, if there are too many. Then, the selected ones are placed on a matrix according to their level of originality and applicability. Aiming to be disruptive, he adds a step where the most original ideas that are least applicable get a little think through to make them applicable. You ask “How can we make this possible?”. Finally, depending on the goal, you select an area of the matrix to take action on, more evolutive or disruptive.

BONUS 2: Six thinking hats

The technique Six Thinking Hats was developed by Edward de Bono in a book by the same name and it has been applied to corporate meetings all over the world. Although it can also be used for generating ideas, I find it specially useful to enhance the winning propositions. I would use it after the core of the ideation has taken place and you have selected a small set of winning ideas. Then you apply this technique to each and everyone of the finalists to enrich the information and challenge potential caveats.

The technique involves the team sequentially discussing the idea focusing in different aspects, according to a given hat color they are wearing (figuratively, or literally):

• White: is the hat of the facts, data and information. You may want to add factual information you have about the idea, or voice concerns about the data you don´t yet have. It refers to what you know.
• Red: is the hat of feelings and emotions. You empathize with the possible recipient of the idea, or how it will make you feel executing it. It refers to what you/or the user feel.
• Green: is the hat of the new ideas. With this hat, you may propose or enumerate the most disruptive ideas of the ideation phase. If you are using the technique as ‘standalone’, then this is brainstorming time.
• Black: this is the negative hat. You find everything that is wrong with the idea. However, instead of dwelling in it, you have to tweak the idea to overcome the cons. This is a critical hat to make a better case for the idea, so I perceive it as a positive contribution in the process.
• Yellow: this is the positive hat. You find all the benefits of the idea, assuming everything will go well. With this hat, you find the core value proposition for the idea.
• Blue: is a big picture and organizational hat. On one hand, it means to manage the session, make sure you go through all points, everyone contributes, but also, that it makes sense, that the final ‘proposal’ includes all parts.

You can use it individually, as a systematic evaluation tool or in teams. When in teams, you can either assign everyone a different hat, and have a turn to express their views, or you can get the whole team visit each hat and contributing to that perspective. The latter will have a lot of educational value, since we know who are the always optimistic and the eternal critic.

Books & resources

Thinkertoys by Michael Michalko

Gamestorming, by Sunny Gray

Lateral Thinking Edward de Bono

The Improvisation Edge: Secrets to Building Trust and Radical Collaboration at Work by Karen Houghes (2011)

Teamstorming by Juan Prego – 2018 –

Six Thinking Hats by Edward de Bono

Online Story Dice by Dave Birss

Rory Story Cubes –

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