Want to encourage creative thinking around your business?
Try passing out Play-Doh at your next brainstorming session, and ask employees to make a shape representing your company.
“It’s not about the Play-Doh or the toy itself, it’s about what you do when you engage people in that kind of playful behavior,” says Grace McGartland, president of Thunderbolt Thinking Inc., a consulting, coaching and research firm based in Pennsylvania.
Making shapes with clay, drawing with crayons, and dressing like the Lone Ranger are all exercises McGartland uses to shake up traditional ways of thinking. Companies hire creativity consultants like McGartland when they are ready for big changes.
“We needed a new company mission statement, and we needed to break down some barriers so top executives and lower-level employees could be on the same platform,” said Howison Schroeder, vice president of Schroeder Industries, a holding company with 160 employees based in Pittsburgh.
McGartland made some employees wear zany hats with yellow lightning bolts sticking out as a way of removing the distance between management and employees.
“Everybody is going to do something stupid or say something silly when you’re trying to generate creativity,” said Schroeder. “The funny hats put us all on a common level.”
McGartland, who conducted an intensive one-and-a-half day seminar for the firm, had employees participate in a contest to help draft the company’s mission statement.
“By the time Grace came in to work with us, we already had the creative responses ready it was just a matter of distilling our ideas and figuring out what our company values really are,” said Schroeder.
According to McGartland, creativity is often blocked because we’ve been trained to come up with one right answer. “Bosses want the ‘answer’ by Monday,” said McGartland, adding that most people spend their time at work in a mindless state. She calls her company “Thunderbolt Thinking Inc.” (registered trademark) to get people thinking about how they think.
To stimulate “thunderbolt” thinking, McGartland asks her clients to draw a picture of how they see the company’s future. Then, she posts the drawings, and asks the group to look for similarities among the pictures before having the artists explain their vision.
“I don’t talk about the differences, because what I’m trying to create is a shared vision,” said McGartland. “I try to instigate conversation about what the company’s values look like as images.”
Part of unblocking creative thinking requires eliminating any negative attitudes, said McGartland, who recommends tossing Styrofoam fish at negative individuals during a meeting.
“It works really well now each of our general managers have adopted fish for our own meetings,” said John Bitzer, president of ABARTA Inc., a holding company based in Pittsburgh.
McGartland and her team charge about $15,000 to $20,000 for a two-day workshop. Here are some of her tips for enhancing creativity at your business:
– Change the location of your next meeting. Choose a new location or change the meeting room setup. Stack plastic chairs outside the room, and ask employees to carry in their own chairs so they can create their own discussion space.
– Read something outside your area of expertise. Read off-the-wall magazines, go to conferences that have nothing to do with your industry, or read your kids’ magazines.
– Seek outside opinions by building a board of advisers. Find people who are going to challenge your thinking but also be supportive. Ask former employees to come back for a brief alumni meeting.
– Allow time for unstructured nothingness. Go for a walk around the community, park or even the parking lot during lunch.
Jane Applegate is the author of “201 Great Ideas for Your Small Business,” and is founder of ApplegateWay.com, a multimedia Web site for busy entrepreneurs. She can be reached via e-mail at [email protected].
Women Reach Out To Investment Firms
More and more women entrepreneurs are contacting venture capital firms and private investors in search of financing for their businesses, according to a new study by the National Foundation for Women Business Owners (NFWBO) and Wells Fargo & Co.
“Forty-four percent of equity investors said that over the past year, they have seen an increase in proposals for women-owned firms,” said Nina McLemore, NFWBO chair and president of Regent Capital, a Manhattan-based investment firm. “The movement of women-owned firms into the equity capital market is a new phenomenon.”
According to McLemore, two-thirds of the women interviewed received their first equity investment within the past four years. However, women-owned firms are still a minority, representing only 9 percent of institutional investment deals and receiving only 2.3 percent of the total investment dollars, according to the firms polled.
Here are some keys to success in finding investors:
– Be willing to give up control. Almost three-quarters of women who obtained equity capital were prepared to give up day-to-day operational control, compared to 58 percent of women still seeking financing.
– Have a strong management team that shows your knowledge of the market. Make sure your business concept is clear and realistic.
– Perseverance is important. Women entrepreneurs who have financing contacted an average of more than 15 investors, while women still searching for money contacted fewer than 11 potential funders.
Jane Applegate
