A Creative Thinking Exercise to Boost Team Energy Levels

A creative thinking exercise that boosts a team's energy levels?

Yes, it's true. And very often needed, because it's pretty typical to see energy levels wane during a strategic planning session. One of the best approaches to deal with this phenomenon is a creative thinking exercise that you can use to get everyone thumbing their noses at an authority figure they answer to on a regular basis.

We were working with a client on a collaborative blogging strategy. The Brainzooming creative thinking exercise called Shrimp came in handy to generate new ideas and revive the group's energy.

Here were the steps:

• We took a blog topic idea with the potential to create concern among one of the company's clients.
• We exaggerated the idea into eight possibilities which would go beyond triggering mild outrage into nearly guaranteeing our client's client would sue them if they ever blogged on these topics. During this stage, there was a lot of enthusiasm for what might annoy clients, one of the most critical authority figures for the group.
• From this list, we selected several of these outrageous ideas and then snapped them back to more realistic ideas suggested by the outrageous ideas.

The result was a stronger energy level and some great new blog series ideas.

If you're in a brainstorming session where the energy is low and you want to get brains zooming, try the Shrimp creative thinking exercise for yourself. - Mike Brown