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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What does creativity really give you?

Posted on April 20, 2016 by Natalia

Creativity is within all of us.

It’s in how we express ourselves, our ideas and how we do things. We use our creativity when we pick out what to wear in the morning, what we use our lunch break, how we talk with our colleagues or friends, and solve any issues that arise.

The problem is not that we don’t have creativity. It’s that we mightn’t be used to tapping into it, and if we do we mightn’t have the confidence to truly express ourselves or our ideas.

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Discover the magic formula to creativity

Posted on March 15, 2016 by Natalia

People often ask me for the secret to being more creative, whether it’s for their life or in business. Unfortunately, there’s no one magic formula for creativity that’s going to work for everyone. However, there is a key we can use to filter out which creativity techniques are going to bring us each success.

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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 →

Planning Tool – Stop, Start, Continue. Part 2.

Posted on January 15, 2015 by Natalia

Creating a vision for the year ahead (or for a new project) is always fun. But before you can start to work out what you want, it’s good to think about where you came from.

In the previous blog (Part 1), we introduced the Stop, Start, Continue tool (the 3 questions):

What do I want to stop?
What do I want to start?
What do I want to continue?

We also covered how to pick the topic to focus your questions on. You can use this tool in any personal, work or business context, from creating your vision for the year ahead to reviewing your business plan. This tool is useful for anything that you would like to change, or a problem that needs exploring.

In this blog, we’ll be unpicking those 3 questions a little more, and expanding on them so you can work out what you need to do to make and support your changes. Continue reading →