When creativity and inventiveness work to move your MESSAGE
#creativity #play #invention #fresh #new #presentation #culture #diversity #thought #impact #effective #communication
Break the Mould
Is your message getting through? Are you changing the world? No! Why not step up your communication and presenting game and, next week, add in some inventiveness, playfulness or wild future scenario creation?
Yes, the regular repeating meeting on project progress is indescribably boring and repetitive, and the room is filled with squares who are being far too serious. And, to add to your burden, remember, the spirit of the place is dying, the competition are eating your lunch, and your sector needs to change this year or say goodbye and be obediently swallowed up by AI.
OR
Now may be the time to imagine and test a new reality, fresh ways of doing things or radically different ways of SEEING things with some playful investigation.
Your REAL Audience
Right now as you read this blog you are resisting me! “Ha – My colleague, Roger Square-Trousers III is not going to play, image or be excited by a newly offered reality.” Maybe not. And that is why you are not going to target Mr Yesterday. A % of the people sat in front of you, represent the future. They are agile and imaginative enough to get it. They are the ones you are playing with and speaking to. They are the ones that will come and join in, get it, enjoy it, and feel released from all that out of date quotidian sh*t. “We are doing today what worked yesterday.” “We have always done it this way.” “There is no other way.” Know your real audience. They are dynamic not dinosaurs.
Childlike learning state
Children learn differently, and with more commitment and success than adults. They do not give up when learning English or after falling off a bike and scraping their knee. This is what we must tap into with our speeches, suggestions and interactions.
Engagement through the roof
You know the difference between an engaging trainer, chair, facilitator, speaker or colleague, and the run of the mill, by the book ones – yawn inducing talky talkers.
The latter go into too much detail about housekeeping, grind through the basics for too long, and super believe in the orthodoxy of yesteryear.
Raising the bar
The great, and effective ones, set up a Now ->Future dynamic that excites. They play with our believes, tease us about our habits, and shine a light, exposing repeated and suboptimal behaviours. They show us that the normal inputs have absurd outcomes, and have us imagine new ways of being and doing that have different outcomes, ones that are exciting, fresh, different and, maybe, even better.
Release the Prisoners
We are always hearing about the different generations. What is true is that we, all of us, are being programmed by our own tribe and have become ideologically captured and unadventurous about considering anything outside our narrow polar purview. And that is how businesses, sectors and industries die, disappear and go on to fail.
Safe innovation + Permission to speak
If you push a high-risk, high-rewards agenda in the normal way, the majority of the room will reject you, slap you down, and think less of you. It will be a brand diminisher that teaches everybody else to keep their wilder ideas to the themselves. Status quo = pay check. That is the learning.
With playfulness, creativity, and imagined future thinking, you will be encouraging people to break out of conservative risk minimisation, and move up to trying on an alternative parallel reality for size. Again, the agile winners will go with this, and the superannuated deadwoods will start creaking, moaning, and showing us that they are not what is needed to survive and prosper.
Complexity tackled.
We all have so little time these days, and we lack the habit of regularly thinking about change, revolutionary ideas or in considering changing the root and branches of our processes, communication or delivery channels.
Much of this is because the world is now so complicated. A great story – like a film with an enormous budget, can break through this inertia and scarcity. We can create a compelling new reality that starts to dissolves our certainty in the efficacy of the way we are doing things today.
Brand You
Is playful invention good for you? When lobbing an out of the box idea into the crowd, playfulness can protect you. If the good people laugh at you and not with you, and shrug your ideas off, then you had a go and your invention did not pass the sniff test. But you are still safe. Great. AND you had a go. You will become known as the boundary pusher, the free thinker, and the ideas generator. That is threatening to the RIPs – Retired in Post technocrats. And…when things get tight, inspired leaders and colleagues will come to you, include you, trust you and ask for your help.
Culture shift
Playful presenting, storytelling with re-imagined futures and “What if?” scenarios, engage the good ‘uns, allow development to be considered, and this protects the organisation from same-think, group-think, group change avoidance, and sorts out the future wheat from the hiding in plain sight non-thinking chaff in the team, department or organisation.
Conclusion
Introduce an alternative story next week that tells of a newly created future world for your product, service or process, and note who plays along, who adds to the story, and who sees you in a new light. These exciting souls will become part of your new mastermind group. They are your new champions and advocates and they are the winners, team mates and owners of the future.
About the Author
Matthew Hill is a presentation skills coach, and creativity trainer, helping keep companies in growth, change and development.
Happy to chat.
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