Unthink¿™


I know one when I see one. The human brain is very good at recognising patterns, or making sense of things it has encountered before. Just as well, because imagine how time consuming it would be if you had to work out from first principles what something was every time you came across it. But such is the power of this ability that we often find it difficult to break away from what we know, to unthink, so that we can discover new combinations of thoughts or ideas.

In short, it's often tricky to find different ways of looking at problems.

Unthink¿™ is a 1-Day workshop that looks at the nuts and bolts of creativity and what it means for project managers and middle & senior managers, indeed anyone who needs to develop new and flexible ways of looking at old problems, or deeper and innovative ways of looking at new problems.

Creative self. Time is spent considering the role of personality in creativity, and how, whatever your personality type, there are creative methods that are likely to suit your particular style. We use the Jungian model (popularised by the MBTI® and TDI), widely employed in management development, and consider what this tells us about creative motivation & potential.

There is also input on the different types of problems that we encounter, whether they be 'open' or 'closed', convergent or divergent; and the basics of creative brain functioning, especially the separate contributions of the Left and Right hemispheres.

Creative thinking. There are well over 200 documented creative techniques and so it is impossible to explore all of them. However they conveniently fall into 2 main groups: vertical (or programmed) and lateral thinking techniques. We take a critical tour of some of the well known vertical techniques such as Morphological Analysis, Attribute Listing, SCAMPER, Gap Analysis, Reframing Matrices and Fishbone Diagrams.

Also a plunge into a number of the more open-ended, lateral techniques, in particular Synectics, Brainstorming, Provocation, Lateral Thinking itself, Random Input & 6-3-5 Brainwriting; and combination approaches such as Six Thinking Hats®.

Good idea! Finally we consider ways of validating and selling the benefits of new ideas, in businesses and elsewhere. And ways of fostering and priming the process of creativity in the workplace... plus a review of how some well known organisations flex their creative muscles.


For more information, just e-mail Unthink¿.


:: There are a number of websites that cover the main creative techniques, by far the best is the Mycoted site.

® MBTI is a registered trademark of the Myers-Briggs Indicator Trust. Six Thinking Hats is a registered trademark of Edward de Bono.