Barefoot Brainstorming

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Marilyn Barefoot

Diversity = Strength !!

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I am certain you’ve heard it before — seek input, be inclusive, welcome perspectives, collaborate with others. But why? Why is this type of inclusion beneficial for individuals, teams, and organizations?

When individuals from different walks of life come together and share unique viewpoints, there is an increase in positive results.

Without diversity of thought, innovation is thwarted, and corporate initiatives may stall.

You need to approach issues with a number of perspectives to be able to see the big picture.

Leaders must leverage the strengths that vary from person to person as well as their unique contexts, preferences, and life experiences.

Many organizations that lack diversity face a common problem: There’s not enough dissent.

When homogenous teams engage in groupthink, they fail to consider outside perspectives, and therefore create blind spots that later get them in trouble.

By inviting people with different cultural experiences and perspectives to the table, organizations can eliminate those blind spots. How? By enhancing understanding of how messaging, products, and services are received by people with different points of view.

And that’s just one way diversity builds strength. Diversity also fosters innovation and creative problem solving by pushing everyone to look at things from different perspectives.

It leverages the different life experiences of team members to create products, services, and solutions that are much more unique than its competitors. This process also helps generate ideas that are more flexible and adaptable to the ever-changing market and customer demands.

And what about attracting that illusive top talent?

Organizations that rank higher in diversity are 25% more likely to attract and retain great talent.

Diversity broadens talent pools, and has been shown to make all employees more engaged and productive.

Inviting diverse perspectives means that on an individual level, we feel appreciated and heard.

Here are some don’ts to keep in mind!

Practice inclusion without delusion!!

Don’t just implement inclusion initiatives for the sake of best practices. Do so out of genuine curiosity and interest.

If you don’t believe someone’s input is worth hearing, believe me, they’ll feel that at their core!

And lastly for the contributors … bring your whole self to the conversation! Your unique experience of the world is both valid and valued!

Every perspective matters!

We’re all moving in a direction toward a common goal in our organizations.

When everyone contributes their perspective to the goal, we can get there more efficiently, more creatively, and more successfully.

Diversity equals strength!

Marilyn

Barefoot Brainstorming

If it’s time to ramp up your team’s innovation and collaboration abilities – we can help! Contact us today. 

For brainstorming tips, presentation and storytelling skills, or keynote speaking pointers be sure to follow Barefoot Brainstorming on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. OR see us in action on YouTube and Instagram!
We would love to hear from you! Leave us a comment down below or tag us on social media.

Storytelling For Inclusion!!

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There are few things more gripping than a great story.

Storytelling is part of our make-up, helping to entertain, educate and inspire us.

In business, storytelling is an intrinsic part of our working lives.

We like to hear stories and share them because they give us hope and motivate us.

They also influence our everyday workplace culture.

So why and how does storytelling have such an influence in inclusion?

An organisation’s culture is a culmination of all the stories we hear and share at work every day.

Imagine a story being told in the office about how a colleague who was so excited to be hired that they sent a thank you email to the CEO, and received a delightful email in response.

Storytelling is highly emotional creating either a positive or negative reaction.

The messages they communicate can make or break organisational culture.

There’s no magic formula when it comes to creating a truly diverse and inclusive organisation. It’s about doing a wide range of things in unison. But if there’s one theme that runs through everything we do, its storytelling.

True inclusion means encouraging, hearing and responding to everyone’s story. People want to feel included. They need a sense of acceptance and belonging because of who they are, rather than who the organisation thinks they should be.

Everybody has an inclusion story – even those you might not expect!

Marilyn

Barefoot Brainstorming

If it’s time to ramp up your team’s innovation and collaboration abilities – we can help! Contact us today. 

For brainstorming tips, presentation and storytelling skills, or keynote speaking pointers be sure to follow Barefoot Brainstorming on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. OR see us in action on YouTube and Instagram!
We would love to hear from you! Leave us a comment down below or tag us on social media.

How Diversity Makes Us More Creative!!

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Diversity is key to creativity. Not just diversity in your workplace, but also in your personal life.

It encourages the search for novel information and perspectives, leading to better decision making and problem solving. 

Diversity can improve the bottom line of organizations, and lead to incredible discoveries and breakthrough innovations.

In fact, many people consider diversity one of the most important ingredients for creative thinking!

When you are looking for solutions to a problem (virtually all creativity is the result of trying to solve some kind of problem), your brain will automatically work with information that is related to the problem. It defaults to the patterns that are known and comfortable.

So, if you want to get creative, you need to diversify your thinking and encourage your mind to look for information associated with completely unrelated concepts.

Tests have shown that the one way of improving your creativity is to move. Not travel, but move. Living in a new culture, learning new ways of doing things and diversifying your life, immediately makes you more creative.

There are quite a few examples of creative individuals who did their best work while they were living abroad. Picasso, Handel, Hemingway and Stravinsky all created their most well-regarded work while living in foreign countries.

In the workplace diverse teams produce more creative results than teams in which all members are from a similar background.

Hire people with diverse backgrounds, education, knowledge and experience.

Better yet, hire people from other countries and cultures. Not only do such people provide diversity within your workplace, but each of them will also have diverse networks whose knowledge they can tap in order to solve problems.

Deep-level diversity is critical.

Usually, diversity focuses on demographics (e.g., gender, age, and race).

But, the most interesting and influential aspects of diversity are psychological (e.g., personality, values, and abilities), known as deep-level diversity.

Focusing on deep-level diversity as opposed to demographic diversity will carry you further.

Demographic variables perpetuate stereotypical and prejudiced characterizations.

Deep-level diversity focuses on the individual, providing a much deeper understanding of human diversity.

The bottom line is being around people who are different from us makes us more creative and innovative!

Marilyn

Barefoot Brainstorming

If it’s time to ramp up your team’s innovation and collaboration abilities – we can help! Contact us today. 

For brainstorming tips, presentation and storytelling skills, or keynote speaking pointers be sure to follow Barefoot Brainstorming on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. OR see us in action on YouTube and Instagram!
We would love to hear from you! Leave us a comment down below or tag us on social media.

Crisis Crushes Conformity and Fuels Creativity

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I was so inspired when I read FourSight’s recent article Creativity Surge: How to Sustain Your Energy during a Global Crisis https://blogs.foursightonline.com/  that I was inspired to dig a little deeper!

The world is battling a deadly virus, the global economy is in a perilous state, and millions of people are closeted away in lockdown.

So why is this a good time to be thinking about creativity?

In every day, non-pandemic life, we tend to engage in more conforming behavior rather than creating behavior.

During a crisis, however, our survival instincts kick in, and we recognize that past patterns that evolved for one environment are no longer helpful in the face of change.

 A crisis often challenges established practices, think of physical distancing before and during the pandemic.

Given the fact that crisis crushes aspects of conformity, humans naturally shift focus and energy to their innate creating behavior.

Some of humankind’s greatest inventions have emerged from our most trying times.

Think of the philosopher Isaac Newton, who first began to reflect on the notion of gravity while he was quarantining from the Great Plague of London.

Or Archibald McIndoe, who pioneered the development of plastic surgery by treating burned airmen during the Second World War.

Here are 3 tips that I think are super helpful when we consider fueling creativity!

  1. Remember that avoiding failure quashes innovation

Fostering a truly innovative culture means letting go of certain old-fashioned corporate ideals.

Look at the way your business is structured. Does an innovative idea have to be turned into paperwork and signed off by a whole host of people before it can be implemented?

Generally, businesses put these cumbersome practices in place to avoid making mistakes. But, if you’re avoiding failure completely, you’re inevitably quashing innovation too.

That’s why it’s essential that you move to a new set-up where creative employees are able to voice their ideas without fear of reprehension. Your processes may be inhibiting its creativity.

  1. Understand that innovation isn’t a “project”

Innovation is an ongoing process, not a “one-and-done” activity.

Ideas need to have as direct a route as possible to the primary decision-maker.

 If you have to convince the finance heads to release money for an unproven idea, you’ve got a hard battle ahead of you. It’s easier for interesting ideas to happen when there’s a budget for them.

 If your people has the skills to spot opportunities, generate ideas, develop the ideas and do some prototyping – you’ll get far better thinking from them.

  1. Recognize that creativity problems can run deep

Creating the right environment to foster creativity, idea generation and bottom-up improvement requires employees to be engaged and feel safe to fail.

I think we are all seeing evidence of this very real fact – ‘those most likely to survive and thrive economically through, and immediately after, the pandemic, are those ready to embrace their creativity surge’.

Marilyn

Barefoot Brainstorming

If it’s time to ramp up your team’s innovation and collaboration abilities – we can help! Contact us today. 

For brainstorming tips, presentation and storytelling skills, or keynote speaking pointers be sure to follow Barefoot Brainstorming on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. OR see us in action on YouTube and Instagram!
We would love to hear from you! Leave us a comment down below or tag us on social media.

STORMZ … The Best Tool for Virtual Brainstorming

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Before COVID-19 my entire business was in-person! Speaking and training remotely was something I had never done.

As it became clear that virtual was the only way forward, I started looking around for software that looked and felt like it would fit my in-person style.

I not only discovered, but have fallen completely in love with STORMZ

www. https://stormz.me/en

I knew I wouldn’t have the discipline to learn it properly on my own, so I hired a certified STORMZ trainer … hands down the best decision I have ever made!

STORMZ allows you to design and facilitate any kind of collaborative workshop either in person or remotely with small or large groups.

I am still learning, but my coach told me this morning that I may now be ready to facilitate a few practice brainstorming sessions on my own.

I can’t wait!!!

Since this is completely new to me, the more practice I get the better.

Please let me know if you have a problem you would like to brainstorm. We can jump into a STORMZ session and give it a try … and of course this is completely free of charge!

Marilyn

Barefoot Brainstorming

If it’s time to ramp up your team’s innovation and collaboration abilities – we can help! Contact us today. 

For brainstorming tips, presentation and storytelling skills, or keynote speaking pointers be sure to follow Barefoot Brainstorming on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. OR see us in action on YouTube and Instagram!
We would love to hear from you! Leave us a comment down below or tag us on social media.

Creative Problem Solving Step 4

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Implement

At this point, you have some great ideas. However, a lot of people have trouble motivating themselves to take the next step.

Creative ideas may mean big changes or taking risks. Some of us love change and risk. Others are scared by it.

Formulate an action plan with the simple steps you need to take in order to implement your ideas.

Start by identifying resources and actions that will allow you to implement your chosen solution.

Next, communicate your plan and make sure that everyone involved understands and accepts it.

Ideas that involve a lot work to implement can be particularly intimidating. Breaking their implementation down into a series of readily accomplished tasks makes these ideas easier to cope with and implement.

And now … take your action plan … and … DO IT!!!  If the situation veers away from your action plan steps, don’t worry. Rewrite the plan!

Like life, the implementation of plans (no matter how well laid out) is never linear … particularly now!

Here is an example of an idea that did not go as planned.

When bacteriologist Alexander Fleming returned from a holiday in 1928 to find mold growing on one of his Petri dishes, he probably thought his experiment was destined for the bin.

But when closer inspection revealed that the mold had inhibited the growth of bacteria around it, the most famous accidental discovery in history was born.

Penicillin was the first true antibiotic, heralding the start of a new age in medicine, but at first glance the circumstances surrounding its development were a complete failure!!

No matter what is going on around you, always implement your action plan!!!  JUST DO IT!!!

Marilyn

Barefoot Brainstorming

If it’s time to ramp up your team’s innovation and collaboration abilities – we can help! Contact us today. 

For brainstorming tips, presentation and storytelling skills, or keynote speaking pointers be sure to follow Barefoot Brainstorming on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. OR see us in action on YouTube and Instagram!
We would love to hear from you! Leave us a comment down below or tag us on social media.

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