I don't remember the exact year, but our Marketing department hired Chuck Dymer to speak to our team during a quarterly meeting. At some point during the talk, Chuck pulled out a copy of that morning's USA Today and made a connection between an article and his pre-planned talk.
That moment influenced me tremendously.
I wanted my creative thinking skills to be strong enough to do the same thing. I wanted to be able to look at something random and make a valuable, intriguing connection to something already planned or underway.
My reaction that day led to exploring ideas for how to boost my creative thinking skills to make comparable intriguing connections.
In the strategic planning session Chuck and I co-facilitated last week for an organization’s future vision, he did it again. As he discussed a forward-looking analysis we prepared for our client, he pulled out the USA Today from that morning and connected it to what we were going to cover during the day.
I was so excited, because I didn't know he was going to do that.
Creative Thinking Skills Test - Bending the Random to the Planned
The experience prompted this idea for a creative thinking skills test: If you think you are very creative, how can you work your creative skills to intriguingly connect something you have planned for days/weeks/months with a random piece of information from that day's USA Today?
Via Shutterstock
When you can connect the pre-planned to the surprising or random, that's a fantastic indicator your creative skills are delivering! – Mike Brown
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