I’m not a natural born idea/creator. I’ve had to work hard to get decent at it. Andy Stanley has fueled my motivation for this when he said, “To reach people that no one is reaching, we have to do things that no one else is doing.”
Here are a few things that I’ve done to fuel new ideas:
- Personally I keep track of ideas in a journler file on my computer so they don’t get lost in my brains wasteland. I can tag ‘em and refer back to them.
- Before we planned our Fall Retreat I gave some context of what we’d like to accomplish and then gave everyone 5 minutes to come up with 10 brand new ideas to discuss. (There are no bad ideas in brainstorming) We used some of the ideas!
- I read things that spur my thinking — not just books, but blogs, tweets, facebook fanpages…anything that spurs new thoughts
- Anytime our team is brainstorming…I’m taking notes of ideas that we might want to come back to later.
- I try and let my mind rest. I make myself take a sabbath. A change of venue and perspective often spurs new thinking.
What do you do to spur new thinking? What does your team do to foster new ideas and get of ruts?
Photo Courtesy of Felipe
Other LTI posts kinda like this one:
The most helpful thing for me has been attacking brainstorming in a slightly more "controlled" way – through what Seth Godin calls "Edgecraft" (described in Free Prize Inside). Instead of just asking completely open-ended question, Edgecraft involves looking at each characteristic of an activity and asking questions about how that aspect could change.
So if, for example, I'm looking at a Fall Retreat, I might ask how the WHO could change (more people, less people, different people…), how the WHEN could change (longer, shorter, different time, multiple times, etc.), and on and on. I've applied it to college ministry several times over at my blog (usually calling it "exploring the edges" for simplicity's sake).
Surprisingly, adding some "controls" helps things get MORE innovative.