Creativity tool – Go random to do your problem solving

Posted on September 23, 2016 by Natalia

Are you stuck for ideas at work? Or have a problem you need to solve?

The easiest way to get inspiration for new ideas is to give our brain some new inputs and stimulation.*

So go out and expose yourself to different places, people and things. And remember that you can take in this new information through any of your five senses: sight, hearing, taste, touch and smell.

You can also create new ideas by combining old ideas in a new or random way.

One of my common approaches is to use metaphors and analogies to see a problem or situation from a different perspective.

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The Creative Life of Jacinta Cubis – Qbis

Posted on August 24, 2016 by Natalia

Welcome to another instalment of The Creative Life interview series!
Each month shines a spotlight on how business owners incorporate their creativity across all aspects of their life, and give some ‘behind the scenes’ insight into how they started and plan for their business.

This month I’d like to introduce you to The Creative Life of Jacinta Cubis of Qbis: engagement & partnership specialists.

Jacinta Cubis connects people and facilitates partnerships for social impact. When not facilitating a workshop or drawing out the story of a partnership, she’ll be on her yoga mat, in her art studio or on the tango dance floor.

Jacinta Cubis facilitating a conversation with her favourite tools – open ears, a smile, coloured pens and a canvas. Image credit: sophie read, concrete cloud photography

I really enjoyed talking to Jacinta. She is truly a Renaissance woman! She has so many creative interests in addition to her partnership brokering business. I love the enthusiasm that she brings to everything that she does.

In this interview you’ll learn about:

Having a creative outlet helps with problem solving
The importance of being yourself to connect with and get new clients
Using creativity to become more grounded and escape anxiety and being in one’s headspace
Breaking patterns to get out of a rut and working out what to do next
Ideas for scheduling your diary to make time for creativity
Making sure you have a call to action in your marketing and communications.

So read on to learn more about Jacinta and her Creative Life… Continue reading →

How it all started – and the power of a picture

Posted on July 21, 2016 by Natalia

Yesterday I received an email from a friend who had been to a personal development course where they did some collage. Nicely enough it made her think of me :-). She was so blown away by the experience. Collage gave her the opportunity to work on some tricky issues in a pictorial way and be able to express something that language couldn’t.

And this is why I love what I do.

It might be fun and different – but the real reason that I love collage, drawing, and LEGO is that it bypasses your language and logical brain to tap into your subconscious and more expansive, intuitive thinking to answer whatever issue or question you need to solve.

It helps you see something from a totally different point of view, and opens up so many more possible solutions and approaches than if you took a ‘1 + 1 =’ linear approach.

The passion that I heard from my friend reverberated through my mind. It took me down memory lane back to my first experience in using drawing as a thinking tool.

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Are you using the right thinking tool for your job or business?

Posted on May 31, 2016 by Natalia

Do you find it hard sometimes to come up with lots of ideas?

The issue might not be about your ability to be creative or develop new ideas, but with the approach that you’re using to get these ideas. Picking the right thinking tool is so important to getting the best result.

Imagine you have a nail that you want to knock into the wall. Continue reading →

Getting something extraordinary OR “How to avoid only finding the obvious solution by using conventional problem solving techniques”

Posted on November 12, 2015 by Natalia

Has there been a time when you know you want something different, but you don’t know exactly what it is?

Or you want to solve a problem, but you know you won’t get a different result if you use the same approach you’ve always taken?

Basically, instead of boring and ordinary – you want different.
You want something extraordinary.

These are the same expectations that I bring to my own work.
For instance, as an entrepreneur, I grapple with how I define success for myself (there’s no performance review checklist that’s already been created for me by ‘the powers that be’).

So using a conventional, logical way of creating my definition of success, I’d sit down with my beverage of choice and list all the ways that I measure success and answer “How do I know that I’m successful?” But instead I decided to do this…  Continue reading →