Hello HR masters
I am an engineer working at Kuwait also engaged in training of some fresh engineering students regarding HR management
I need some inputs for the topic Lateral Thinking
Some good stories or real life incidents or good quotes may prove a better help for me
Thanking You
KarunadasP @hotmail.com
From Oman, Muscat
3I am an engineer working at Kuwait also engaged in training of some fresh engineering students regarding HR management
I need some inputs for the topic Lateral Thinking
Some good stories or real life incidents or good quotes may prove a better help for me
Thanking You
KarunadasP @hotmail.com
From Oman, Muscat
Hi Karuna Das,
You just touched on my subject as am passionate about lateral thinking creativity..
So you are trying to engineer the fresh minds...great ..must congratulate you for taking efforts..or atleast thinking about the same..
Believe me its a long drawn exercise as creativity & lateral thinking has not inherently recieved its due or importance from society or educational institutional institutions..you are engineer ..for which you have been educated about differentt aspects of engineering...what about your mind?..has anyone taught you about lateral thinking? or Creativity as a subject?..chances are low..its your mind that would determine your success in corporate world as it is linked directly to problem solving ability..
Oops coming back to your query..am attaching three articles viz
Best Practices : Innovation/Creativity
Engineering Breakthroughs
Interesting Mathematical Quiz.
Suggest that you conduct structured training programs on this topic on a long term basis to ensure it's success.
Happy Engineering!!
Cheerio
Rajat
Best Practices: Innovation/Creativity
Don't have time to read the entire "TEC Best Practices: Innovation/Creativity" feature? Here are the key points in a brief executive summary.
Why Creativity is Crucial
Many CEOs and executives consider a focus on creativity to be an exercise in frivolity.
Others recognize that creativity is important, but they see it as unessential.
The most productive leaders incorporate creativity and innovation into their companies with the same predictability as they do profit-and-loss statements.
The four TEC experts interviewed for this series -- Jordan Ayan, Bryan W. Mattimore, Carl Robinson and Steven L. Snyder -- all work with Fortune 500 clients. They say that TEC-size companies often give short shrift to the creative part of themselves, of their companies and of the people who work with them.
"Traditional linear thinking will solve 90 to 95 percent of your problems," says Mattimore. Innovation-enhancing techniques are for the toughest five to 10 percent.
Often, innovation is seen only as a way to add to the top line with new products and services. "TEC members should know that these techniques can also be used to make the business more efficient, to cut costs and to do things quicker, better, smarter," Mattimore says.
Robinson identifies three foundations for organizational innovation. They are:
Leadership
Training
Organizational Openness
To be the "chief innovation officer," you need to:
Set a good example for innovation.
Encourage the "best thinking possible" from your staff.
Make room for crazy ideas.
Solicit 360-degree feedback.
Innovation and The Bottom Line
Can you really afford not to place a premium on innovation in your organization?
TEC experts gave us several examples of how encouraging creativity and innovation has had a major bottom-line impact in companies.
The Catholic Knights of Columbus Insurance Company -- a $100 million business -- used "problem redefinition" to boost sales 52 percent.
A leather Western wear manufacturer virtually saved its life by brainstorming a new market for their products.
A comparison of a Japanese- and U.S.-based suggestion program showed that the Japanese respect and encouragement for suggestions resulted in savings of $3,000 per employee.
By simply questioning the assumptions in its problem question, a Big Three U.S. automaker was able to come up with better sales forecasts for its organization.
Engineering Breakthroughs
Mattimore has identified four foundations of breakthrough thinking.
Questions -- Reframing problems to make sure you are solving the right one.
Metaphors -- Taking two different ideas, finding associations between them, and coming up with solutions or ideas from the exercise.
Visuals -- Looking at pictures that spark unexpected connections for the problem you're weighing.
Wishing -- Giving yourself license to wish for the impossible can sometimes create viable possibilities.
"Do-It-Yourself" Creativity Generating
There are many ways to jump-start your organization's creativity generator.
Alternative Perceptions -- Snyder recommends these approaches to get a new perspective on the problem you're trying to solve. Among the techniques:
Imagine that your problem actually belongs to someone else -- not you.
Imagine that you have the opposite problem.
Think that it is five years from now, and the problem is solved.
Enlist other people, in your imagination, as helpers in solving the problem.
"Brainwriting" -- Get your entire group to contribute their ideas by passing around a sheet of paper and asking each participant to weigh in with another idea.
"Whiteboarding" -- Mattimore suggests writing your issue on a centrally located whiteboard, then counting down 10 or 15 days for contributions of ideas to the issue. The whiteboard becomes a central location for mini-brainstorming sessions, and is a symbol of your organization's interest in collaborative problem-solving.
Using Creativity Sessions to Cut Costs
Mattimore was asked to facilitate brainstorming sessions at a billion-dollar personal products company.
He conducted 25 all-day sessions with 12 people per session. Yield: $50 million in cost reductions and quality improvements.
Mind-Mapping for Cost-Cutting: Have employees diagram the details of their jobs, then ask a facilitator to help them compare notes and see where savings are hidden.
To get the most impact from cost-cutting sessions, Mattimore recommends that you:
Assign monetary values to the ideas.
Encourage people to share the nitty-gritty of their jobs.
See if you can generalize once you find a detail worth evaluating.
Ask people to "feel the pain" of their day-to-day work. Wherever they are frustrated about a task they do, there are opportunities to make changes.
Best Practices of Innovative Organizations
Innovative organizations have built into their structures several practices that serve to perpetuate innovation, says Robinson.
He identifies these practices as:
Celebrating successes
Inviting "20-20 hindsight"
Encouraging playfulness and "blue-sky" thinking
Training for the "competence of creativity"
Challenging traditional business activities
Sharing best practices
Increasing Personal Creativity
We all have the gift of creativity. Some of us take out and use this gift more frequently than others.
"When we're in our normal, high-task, divided attention state -- which is, by definition, high stress -- we can only see things the way we normally do. It's like the great line from the Talmud, ‘We don't see things as they are; we see things as we are'," says Snyder.
"The key is to access the part of the mind that dreams at night -- the ‘heart mind' -- versus ‘the brain mind' that you use when you're awake," says Snyder. To relax the mind, Snyder says you need to go into an alpha brain wave state, which is a state of heightened relaxation. In other words, you need to learn to daydream.
Ayan says that if we want to improve our personal creativity, we must increase our creative "C.O.R.E." The acronym stands for:
C -- Curiosity
O -- Openness to new ideas and ways of doing things
R -- Risk-taking ability
E -- Energy level for carrying through on new ideas
If you want to increase your creativity, you can do so by working on any one of the four pillars. Faster growth is available to people who are willing to work harder in the one or two areas where they feel the most deficient.
"I have seen remarkable progress in people who have chosen to concentrate on their creative C.O.R.E.," says Ayan. "I've also used these techniques personally, and I know they work."
Here is a Nice Mathametical Story enjoy. Can you mathematicians explain ?
Long ago, a clever mathematician used to cheat people. Once he
borrowed Rs.4000/- from a rich man. After a few days, he borrowed
Rs.2000/- from the same man. Many days passed, the mathematician did not
return the money to the rich man. The rich man went to the mathematician
and asked to return the money. But to his great surprise, the mathematician
replied that there is no need to pay the debt.
"See here, friend" said the mathematician " the sum of 4000 and 2000 is
equal to zero, so I do not have any balance to pay".
The rich man took the matter to the court. When the judge came to know
this, he was astonished. He asked the mathematician to prove that sum
of 4000 and 2000 is zero, and not 6000.
The Clever mathematician agreed. He said:
let a == 4000, b == 2000 and c == 6000
a + b == c
Multiply both sides by a + b
(a + b) (a + b) == c (a + b)
a*a + ab + ba + b*b == ca + cb
a*a + ab - ca == cb - b*b - ba
a( a + b -c) == -b(b + a - c)
so a == - b
a + b == 0
Hence by putting the values of "a" and "b" as 4000 and 2000
respectively, their sum is zero, so the mathematician saw no need to pay
any money to the rich man.
The above calculation has no doubt, surprised you as it did the Judge
Can you mathematicians explain ?
From India, Pune
You just touched on my subject as am passionate about lateral thinking creativity..
So you are trying to engineer the fresh minds...great ..must congratulate you for taking efforts..or atleast thinking about the same..
Believe me its a long drawn exercise as creativity & lateral thinking has not inherently recieved its due or importance from society or educational institutional institutions..you are engineer ..for which you have been educated about differentt aspects of engineering...what about your mind?..has anyone taught you about lateral thinking? or Creativity as a subject?..chances are low..its your mind that would determine your success in corporate world as it is linked directly to problem solving ability..
Oops coming back to your query..am attaching three articles viz
Best Practices : Innovation/Creativity
Engineering Breakthroughs
Interesting Mathematical Quiz.
Suggest that you conduct structured training programs on this topic on a long term basis to ensure it's success.
Happy Engineering!!
Cheerio
Rajat
Best Practices: Innovation/Creativity
Don't have time to read the entire "TEC Best Practices: Innovation/Creativity" feature? Here are the key points in a brief executive summary.
Why Creativity is Crucial
Many CEOs and executives consider a focus on creativity to be an exercise in frivolity.
Others recognize that creativity is important, but they see it as unessential.
The most productive leaders incorporate creativity and innovation into their companies with the same predictability as they do profit-and-loss statements.
The four TEC experts interviewed for this series -- Jordan Ayan, Bryan W. Mattimore, Carl Robinson and Steven L. Snyder -- all work with Fortune 500 clients. They say that TEC-size companies often give short shrift to the creative part of themselves, of their companies and of the people who work with them.
"Traditional linear thinking will solve 90 to 95 percent of your problems," says Mattimore. Innovation-enhancing techniques are for the toughest five to 10 percent.
Often, innovation is seen only as a way to add to the top line with new products and services. "TEC members should know that these techniques can also be used to make the business more efficient, to cut costs and to do things quicker, better, smarter," Mattimore says.
Robinson identifies three foundations for organizational innovation. They are:
Leadership
Training
Organizational Openness
To be the "chief innovation officer," you need to:
Set a good example for innovation.
Encourage the "best thinking possible" from your staff.
Make room for crazy ideas.
Solicit 360-degree feedback.
Innovation and The Bottom Line
Can you really afford not to place a premium on innovation in your organization?
TEC experts gave us several examples of how encouraging creativity and innovation has had a major bottom-line impact in companies.
The Catholic Knights of Columbus Insurance Company -- a $100 million business -- used "problem redefinition" to boost sales 52 percent.
A leather Western wear manufacturer virtually saved its life by brainstorming a new market for their products.
A comparison of a Japanese- and U.S.-based suggestion program showed that the Japanese respect and encouragement for suggestions resulted in savings of $3,000 per employee.
By simply questioning the assumptions in its problem question, a Big Three U.S. automaker was able to come up with better sales forecasts for its organization.
Engineering Breakthroughs
Mattimore has identified four foundations of breakthrough thinking.
Questions -- Reframing problems to make sure you are solving the right one.
Metaphors -- Taking two different ideas, finding associations between them, and coming up with solutions or ideas from the exercise.
Visuals -- Looking at pictures that spark unexpected connections for the problem you're weighing.
Wishing -- Giving yourself license to wish for the impossible can sometimes create viable possibilities.
"Do-It-Yourself" Creativity Generating
There are many ways to jump-start your organization's creativity generator.
Alternative Perceptions -- Snyder recommends these approaches to get a new perspective on the problem you're trying to solve. Among the techniques:
Imagine that your problem actually belongs to someone else -- not you.
Imagine that you have the opposite problem.
Think that it is five years from now, and the problem is solved.
Enlist other people, in your imagination, as helpers in solving the problem.
"Brainwriting" -- Get your entire group to contribute their ideas by passing around a sheet of paper and asking each participant to weigh in with another idea.
"Whiteboarding" -- Mattimore suggests writing your issue on a centrally located whiteboard, then counting down 10 or 15 days for contributions of ideas to the issue. The whiteboard becomes a central location for mini-brainstorming sessions, and is a symbol of your organization's interest in collaborative problem-solving.
Using Creativity Sessions to Cut Costs
Mattimore was asked to facilitate brainstorming sessions at a billion-dollar personal products company.
He conducted 25 all-day sessions with 12 people per session. Yield: $50 million in cost reductions and quality improvements.
Mind-Mapping for Cost-Cutting: Have employees diagram the details of their jobs, then ask a facilitator to help them compare notes and see where savings are hidden.
To get the most impact from cost-cutting sessions, Mattimore recommends that you:
Assign monetary values to the ideas.
Encourage people to share the nitty-gritty of their jobs.
See if you can generalize once you find a detail worth evaluating.
Ask people to "feel the pain" of their day-to-day work. Wherever they are frustrated about a task they do, there are opportunities to make changes.
Best Practices of Innovative Organizations
Innovative organizations have built into their structures several practices that serve to perpetuate innovation, says Robinson.
He identifies these practices as:
Celebrating successes
Inviting "20-20 hindsight"
Encouraging playfulness and "blue-sky" thinking
Training for the "competence of creativity"
Challenging traditional business activities
Sharing best practices
Increasing Personal Creativity
We all have the gift of creativity. Some of us take out and use this gift more frequently than others.
"When we're in our normal, high-task, divided attention state -- which is, by definition, high stress -- we can only see things the way we normally do. It's like the great line from the Talmud, ‘We don't see things as they are; we see things as we are'," says Snyder.
"The key is to access the part of the mind that dreams at night -- the ‘heart mind' -- versus ‘the brain mind' that you use when you're awake," says Snyder. To relax the mind, Snyder says you need to go into an alpha brain wave state, which is a state of heightened relaxation. In other words, you need to learn to daydream.
Ayan says that if we want to improve our personal creativity, we must increase our creative "C.O.R.E." The acronym stands for:
C -- Curiosity
O -- Openness to new ideas and ways of doing things
R -- Risk-taking ability
E -- Energy level for carrying through on new ideas
If you want to increase your creativity, you can do so by working on any one of the four pillars. Faster growth is available to people who are willing to work harder in the one or two areas where they feel the most deficient.
"I have seen remarkable progress in people who have chosen to concentrate on their creative C.O.R.E.," says Ayan. "I've also used these techniques personally, and I know they work."
Here is a Nice Mathametical Story enjoy. Can you mathematicians explain ?
Long ago, a clever mathematician used to cheat people. Once he
borrowed Rs.4000/- from a rich man. After a few days, he borrowed
Rs.2000/- from the same man. Many days passed, the mathematician did not
return the money to the rich man. The rich man went to the mathematician
and asked to return the money. But to his great surprise, the mathematician
replied that there is no need to pay the debt.
"See here, friend" said the mathematician " the sum of 4000 and 2000 is
equal to zero, so I do not have any balance to pay".
The rich man took the matter to the court. When the judge came to know
this, he was astonished. He asked the mathematician to prove that sum
of 4000 and 2000 is zero, and not 6000.
The Clever mathematician agreed. He said:
let a == 4000, b == 2000 and c == 6000
a + b == c
Multiply both sides by a + b
(a + b) (a + b) == c (a + b)
a*a + ab + ba + b*b == ca + cb
a*a + ab - ca == cb - b*b - ba
a( a + b -c) == -b(b + a - c)
so a == - b
a + b == 0
Hence by putting the values of "a" and "b" as 4000 and 2000
respectively, their sum is zero, so the mathematician saw no need to pay
any money to the rich man.
The above calculation has no doubt, surprised you as it did the Judge
Can you mathematicians explain ?
From India, Pune
Hi Karunadasp Thankx for the question :D and many thanks to Mr.Rajat :D :D :D its a beautiful explanation.... hope to see more of new n interesting topics .. :) :) :) Regards
From India, Madras
From India, Madras
Thanks Atomleaf!! am gald you liked it.. Also due thanks to Karuna for engineering my Brain on this matter...surely would share more articles & ideas on this topic.. Cheerio Rajat Joshi
From India, Pune
From India, Pune
Hello Rajat
Thank You very much for the speedy response
The inputs are really a spanner to my efforts, it is also pertinent to mention that these subjects were welcomed by the Kuwaity students in a highly positive way,means the gulf also changing rapidly
I am also taking their engineering studies but many times my class was intrepted by the serious doubts of management class subjects
Thank you once again also looking forward to hear more inputs on these subjects
Regards
Karunadasp
From Oman, Muscat
Thank You very much for the speedy response
The inputs are really a spanner to my efforts, it is also pertinent to mention that these subjects were welcomed by the Kuwaity students in a highly positive way,means the gulf also changing rapidly
I am also taking their engineering studies but many times my class was intrepted by the serious doubts of management class subjects
Thank you once again also looking forward to hear more inputs on these subjects
Regards
Karunadasp
From Oman, Muscat
Hi Mr.Rajat,
Thanks for the artilce. Could you please advise me where I should look for "TEC Best Practices: Innovation/Creativity"?
The riddle is great. Hope somebody comes up with an explanation!
Thanks once again
bala
From India, Madras
Thanks for the artilce. Could you please advise me where I should look for "TEC Best Practices: Innovation/Creativity"?
The riddle is great. Hope somebody comes up with an explanation!
Thanks once again
bala
From India, Madras
hello psyched thnak u very much for the response but regret to inform you that attachment doesn’t appear kindly look into it thank you karunadas
From Oman, Muscat
From Oman, Muscat
Hi Bala,
Please refer the link
http://www.teconline.com/www/bestpra...creativity.asp
You bet..it's really good riddle..hey is there anyone here who has a answer?..
Cheerio
Rajat
From India, Pune
Please refer the link
http://www.teconline.com/www/bestpra...creativity.asp
You bet..it's really good riddle..hey is there anyone here who has a answer?..
Cheerio
Rajat
From India, Pune
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