Want to know what your options are? Try asking some of these questions:
Good questions have magical powers! Our brains are obsessed with answering them. You can use this to your advantage when faced with any situation that you want to improve. Ask good questions and get your brain going to work to come up with good answers.
The best brainstorming happens without censure or conditionality. The key is to generate a long list of things that you could potentially do to improve a situation. Your objective during brainstorming should not be to find the right answer, but to identify as many different ideas and solutions as possible.
You don’t want any obstacles like preferences, feasibility or need for completeness blocking the brainstorming process, it’s the creative part that provides the real value.
So, as strange as it may seem, focus on quantity rather than quality and feasibility. It’s from this long inventory of creative possibilities that next steps will be chosen.
Have a go at asking some of these questions to yourself or others. Write each unique idea down on a post-it or in a notebook and see how many different options you can come up with.
● What are some options for achieving this goal?
What else?
What else?
What else?
● What things could be put in place for this to happen?
● What advice would I/you give someone else who was in a similar position?
● What alternatives are there to that approach?
● What approaches have you used yourself, or seen others use, in similar circumstances?
And just for good measure, have another go at asking:
What else?
What else?
What else?
Once all of the options are out of your head and onto paper the fun really ramps
up! Next you get to choose which one you’ll tackle first!
Oxox
Kate
