An Ideas Person?

I have published, edited or written four volumes of books to help churches with their youth ministry in a practical way. The 'Know Ideas' series was written in response to the regular requests from youth leaders for help. I took the best of some older stuff called 'Mines of Information' and then added some new things.

How did we generate ideas? We responded to the researched truth that only one person in twenty ever has an original idea. So when someone asks the question 'Anyone got any ideas?' if there are fewer than twenty people in the room the odds are stacked against. They should rephrase the question: 'Which of the things we have done before should we do again in this situation?

I am one of the twenty. I have loads of ideas. I need to be surrounded by checks, balances and vetting procedures. That is good and appropriate. But I also put myself in a position where I am able to be creative. I need space. Input. The occasional company of other creatives. The social media will often do. Spending time sitting in bars or coffee shops and calling it work is because it is work. It is what gets the results.

When we reached volume four of Know Ideas I invited a bunch of fellow creatives round to my office for the day. I gave them food and drink and some things to play with. I gave them some headings - ice-breakers, games needing no equipment, discussion starters. Then I watched and recorded the good stuff. Everyone loved taking part and got a writing credit in the book.

Fast forward a few years and a colleague and I wondered if we might be able to run a training tour helping people to tap into their own creativity. We took the 'Know Good Ideas' roadshow out on tour. We did our idea-generating workshop, charging people to attend, and stole the best ideas (which was a bit brazen). We encouraged some people not to need our books any more (not brazen at all).

Last night a woman I live with (chosen career - retail) came home after a twelve hour day preparing to do a few more hours after a quick supper. She was filling in some new forms because changes at her workplace now mean she must do the work of the HR department which has been made redundant. (If I have understood right.)

About 11 p.m. I was going to bed and was asked if I had any ideas to improve sales tomorrow. I said no. Mainly because my ideas involved a lot of people breathing no more.

Today, after a little contemplation, I have offered to reprise my seminar day (at a charity rate of £300 a day) for any people in the company that still feel it appropriate to ask employees doing twice as much as their contacted hours (yes, Mr Farage, European work-time regulations have no effect here so save your breath) to come up with ideas. Late at night request for something BY TOMORROW.

She was rebuked in a conference call this morning for a lack of ideas.

Remember when Michael Caine's character said 'Hang on a minute lads; I've just had an idea.' The film ended there right? We started our training tour evenings by showing the clip and then asking people, working in groups, to tell us what the idea was.

Well maybe saving your life from a teetering, cliff-edge coach crash will give you a bit of adrenalin. But for most people you need to change the stimuli. If you have things to do all day you will not have ideas about those things.

We are on holiday for a week tomorrow. I bet we come up with some good ideas. That's how it works.

No charge for this.

Quote of the Day

856. ...all the really good ideas were thought up by men idling about at home, sitting in the bath or watching the kettle boil.
(Richard Ingrams, the Observer, 11/5/03)

Quote of the Day

About the turn of the millennium I began to discover the writings of Anthony Grayling. His little collections of philosophical essays on various subjects were, by and large, wonderful and occasionally a great challenge to think. How dare I feel a doctor of philosophy at the University of London might be wrong and the followers of a once-dead Galilean carpenter and his fishermen friends right.

But some of the sentences are a joy:

839. ...there is more danger to one's hopes, one's mettle, one's pride, in venturing into the battle of ideas, than in murdering a man who disagrees with you - and that doing so therefore takes proportionally more courage.

The Meaning of Things (Phoenix 2001)

Quote Book Index 621-630

Just trawled through a whole set of quotes from Timothy R.V. Foster's 101 Ways to Generate Great Ideas which was seminal to my learning the skill of facilitating small groups about ten years after I started doing it. i.e. ten years too late. I went to the shelf to get it down but it has gone. So good I lent it out. I must have a, 'So good I never lend it out' category. Anyway:

Learn to abandon negative reactions.

622.  A good way to deal with an idea that is clearly negative to all is to say something like, 'Hmm. How can we make this work? Does this lead to any other way of solving the problem?'

Great Questions 4

How would you explain this problem to a six year old?
(101 Ways to Generate Great Ideas - Timothy Foster)

Post-its

The guy who invented post-its, so the story goes, used a batch of defective glue to stick bits of paper to his wall and take them down again. The batch lasted for years until someone realised the application of this brilliant invention.

At this point I imagine he kicked himself, then, having slowly peeled his own sticky foot off his backside, accepted that invention is useless without application.

This is a shout out to all the geniuses who have invented new ways of doing things but have no idea that their methodology is of wider use. Tell others. If you have found something that is good, that works and that makes a difference, dare to allow a further supply of humanity to have the opportunity to see if it works for them.

And if you can't see the application of that metaphor to a church's evangelism you'd better go kick yourself. Your foot will not need peeling off.