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.

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.

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.

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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But there is more. If you use a playful approach, you may find more engagement, bonding, and relaxation in your team, as a side effect. This impacts in collaboration and performance, and I suspect in employee retention…

There are several ways to bring playfulness to the workplace, but I like to use board games because they are clear pieces of play and bring colorful material that I can use in many other playful ways. When people see them, they immediately make the ‘play’ connection.

In addition, I have curated a selection of boardgames that develop two or more of the Design Thinking skills, and a few of them are frequently used by Agile coaches and Scrum Masters in their team’s retrospectives.

But before I dive on the specific games, I want to share the rationale of playing at the workplace in the form of  some excerpts from my upcoming book Join The Playful Revolution:

The importance of play

“Part of maintaining a thriving creative culture is giving people time and permission to play.” Tim Brown

I use the word ‘play’ loosely. I see it as something fun, that you do alone or with others, and for the joy of it.

What most academic definitions seem to have in common is that play is voluntary, pleasurable, engaging and with an irrelevant outcome (Pino, 2007). That means that you get really into it, and seek nothing more than the fun of it.

As an added bonus, play provides a context in which you can try and practice new skills, without the dangerous consequences of failing. If you fail in a play situation, just try it again, no harm done.

However, I am using play as a general term that includes playfulness, which is “a particular positive mood state that may (or may not) be manifested in observable behavior”, (Bateson and Martin, 2013). Not all play is always playful (i.e some high-stakes sports competition) and not all playful behavior involves play. Bateson and Martin coined the term “playful play”, to describe play that is also playful. In this book, play refers to playful play.

Creativity and play

By now you may be wondering what has play got to do with creativity. A quick explanation is that creating is a form of play, at the same time that play fosters creativity in many ways.

A little expanded explanation comes from Jose Ochoa, innovation expert. He wears many hats (PHD in linguistics, project manager, trainer, facilitator, author), but I interviewed him to extract from him as much gamification and creativity juice as I could.

For Jose Ochoa, a fun project is one that weaves together creativity, play, and humor. But ‘fun’ has a bad reputation in the corporate setting, so he prefers to call it ‘passion-driven’. It is what motivates you to pursue it. For him, creativity is an attitude. It requires you to be curious and make connections, and it has a nemesis called perfectionism, and immediate usefulness. Creativity takes time, a long and slow period of incubation, that will lead to speedy growth and development later on.

Play at work, the need for it all

When you are stressed out, your brain gets into fight or flight mode. In that state, you are focusing solely on survival. If you remember the incubation process of creative ideas, you need to be doing some activity that is not ‘too taxing’ to favor idea generation. Survival takes everything you’ve got so it is the opposite state. Over the years, I’ve came to the conclusion that play is the antidote of stress, and an essential precursor for creativity. That is, play fosters innovation.

But there are more reasons why we need more play, especially in the workplace.

For many years I had been a therapeutic clown in a hospital.

I went once a month, every month, for nearly ten years. After some time, I noticed that my clown character was filtering through me. I was being more playful, more jokey, showing my clown face—minus the red nose—at work. It was like it was a persona outside work that sneaks through me every now and again. I realized that the healing powers of the smile and the humor are needed not only in hospitals, but also in the office.

Charlie Hoehn, author of the book Play it Away, explains how he recovered from work-burnout through play. In his writings, Hoehn refers to Dr. Peter Grays’ research on play. Grays points at the decline of play as the cause of much of the anxiety and depression we see in young adults these days. Getting back to play may also be essential for employees well-being.

How to use board games to develop Design Thinking skills

Now that you have had a sneak peek into my book, lets go down to the nitty gritty.

Most of the games, you can use off the shelf. Just follow the games rules, and you will be set. They have been chosen to develop several skills at once and be of limited play time, ideally, at least two.

As a rule of thumb, there are games I searched for to last 15′ or less, the time of a coffee break, whilst others I looked for them to last no more thank 45′ – the lunch break average time in Spain.

Another selection criteria was to be easily adaptable to six players or more. At the very least, 4 players.

And, of course, if they provided me with visual and tactile material I could use in other group dynamics, all the better. In that route, Dixit would be my set of choice. I have use the cards to develop a communication package, design futures, brainstorming brand names and more. I will write a single article on it at some point. It is a game that fascinates me. Here is a little advance:

Now, to help you pick and choose, I have created a list with the essential details, which includes a link to an unboxing video.

Dixit

• Skills: empathy, visual language (also creativity, collaboration and storytelling, when used differently)
• Players: 4-12 (depending on version)
• Duration: 30′
• Description: the essence of the game requires the game master to pick a card, state a sentence or concept that it could represent. Then the rest of players pick the card from the set they were given that best represents the concept. Next, all the selected cards, including the game master’s are placed facing down and shuffled. When they are turned over, players need to guess which one is the game master’s choice. The learning happens when trying to read the game master’s mind, the type of association that he or she would make.
• Material: board, player figures, voting marks, set of 84 visual figurative images with full color
• Alternative: any set of colorful conceptual images (i.e. postcards, or a diy selection of images in a free site like unsplash.com)
• Unboxing:

Rory Story Cubes

• Skills: empathy, collaboration, storytelling, creativity, visual language
• Players: any number, taking turns or making teams
• Duration: 5′ to any
• Description: there are several ways to play with the dice. From one dice to inspire a childhood memory to share with teammates, to a collective story built by using 9 dice and the beginning-middle-end basic structure. You can use them to reflect on a project or event both as, picking a random icon, and sharing the event inspired by the image, or browsing the dice to pick the icon that best represent the event/project. You can use any visual card set to do the same. The dice provide some playful and tactile experience a little different than the cards.
• Material: basic set of nine dice with general visual monochrome icons. Themes can vary according to sets
• Alternatives: any set of dice with icons (i.e. Tiger dice), you can even create your own
• Unboxing:

Ikonikus

• Skills: empathy, visual language
• Players: 4-8 or more, but much more than 6-8 can make the game longer
• Duration: 15′ for one round with 4-6 people
• Description: players get five cards each, and the game master prompts a question: “How would I feel if XXX?”. Players pick from their set the card that best reflects that feeling (the game master’s not the player’s in the situation described). They are shuffled facing down and the game master chooses the one that best represents the feeling. Of course, you may get impossible cards, but that is the fun of it. The interesting thing is to hear how the game master is interpreting each image before choosing, and how the players interpret their own choices.
• Material:  set of 110 visual black figurative icon cards and 150 sample questions
• Alternative: any set of iconic images (i.e. Eye-Sea (sp:Conecta2)) or figurative images (i.e. Dixit)
• Unboxing:

Eye-Sea (Spanish edition: Conecta2)

• Skills: creativity, visual language
• Players: 4-6 or more, but you need room around a shared table to reach the cards
• Duration: 15′
• Description: a set of nine cards are placed over the table to start. Everyone tries to find some logical association between any two. If everybody (or a game master) accepts an association, the player who proposed it keeps the cards, and two more cards are added to the table. You can be more permissive at the beginning, or add restrictions, or themes, as you go. It is a game that requires quick thinking and it is an ideal warmup for ideation, or concentration tasks.
• Material: set of 100 visual figurative images fully colored
• Alternatives: any set of more than 60 simple images (i.e. Ikonikus, Dixit)
• Unboxing:

The Extraordinaires Design Studio

• Skills: empathy, research, creativity, visual language
• Players: 1-6 or more, depending on the set, even 30
• Duration: 10′ -30′ (more if there is more people or you want to be more thorough with the process
• Description: If you want to introduce the essence of the Design Thinking process in a relaxed environment, without taking too much time (as little as 10′), you can use The Extraordinaires Design Studio. Quick and fun intro to Design Thinking with the funky characters of the Extraordinaires Design Studio. You empathize with a character, pick a card with a challenge and grab some direction from suggestion cards. I tested it with adults and younger children alike.  There are smaller kits available.
  • For a more thorough primer, I recommend the Wallet Project from dSchool at Stanford, which is a 90′ workshop. All the material is available for free.
  • I would also recommend this kit to design thinking pros looking to spice up a project. When you need more disruptive ideas, you can use the characters during the empathize stage to go full on in playful mode. Sometimes you just need to play a little to spark the craziest of ideas, that would lead to disruptive innovation.
• Material: board, player figures, voting marks, set of 84 visual figurative images
• Alternatives: The Wallet Project
• Unboxing:

Games summary

Other games

Other games I have not played by the rules but I like to develop visual storytelling with their material are Imagine and Secret Code Images.

I like Imagine as a set of visual elements you can combine (they are printed in transparent cards) to compose a more elaborate image.

Codenames Pictures provides another set of iconic pictures and of a number of characters that could be used to represent a user persona.

I hope you found these games useful.

Buy them here (some are affiliate links) and help support this site

Dixit (3-8 players) – https://amzn.to/3uiCHqR

Dixit Origins (expansion pack) – https://amzn.to/3ogOAdf

Rory Story Cubes – Classic set: https://amzn.to/3tfnGnI

Ikonikus – https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/148381/ikonikus

Eye-Sea (Sp ed.: Conecta2) – https://amzn.to/3sv2smH

The Extraordinaires – https://www.extraordinaires.com/

Imagine – https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/191894/imagine

CodeNames Pictures – https://amzn.to/35HTjxW

Now go and play!

References

Bateson, P., & Martin, P. (2013). Play, playfulness, creativity and innovation. Cambridge University Press. –  https://amzn.to/36MiZtX (Affiliate link)

Hoehn, Charlie (2014) Play it Away: A Workaholic’s Cure for Anxiety – https://amzn.to/3puIjuZ (Affiliate link)

Pino, B. (2007) – Chapter on Play, Phd Thesis “Computers as an environment for facilitating social interaction in children with autistic spectrum disorders” – https://era.ed.ac.uk/handle/1842/29324

Jose Ochoa.-  https://joseochoa.com/  email: jose.ochoa@gmail.com

2022@creativesensei

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