How can you develop creative thinking skills in a business context?

The key challenge is to maintain the regular procedure up and running, since it is the assurance of the business as usual environment, while creating discussing forums to review the status quo and to identify opportunities and its associated level of risk to change BAU in a secure manner. By doing so, creativity environment become an important tool to strengthen current process and to identify potential changes in a controlled manner. This will create a culture of creativity in the company without jeopardizing or creating disruptive issues to the BAU processes.

Our assumptions always create self-doubt. When we assume things without trying or experimenting with the things, we create self-limitation for ourselves. Instead, we should focus on finding different ways to challenge our beliefs and assumptions. One of the best ways is to get expert advice to gain clarity.

It's hard to be creative when your parameters are too broad. So the first step is to narrow your focus to give yourself a clear start point. Go back to your purpose or identify your clients’ biggest need right now, for example. Then ask yourself: "What if...?" or "Could this work if..?" or my favourite: "How could this be simpler?" Once you set yourself some limits, your creativity kicks in. I find it helpful to ask the question. Then brainstorm some ideas. Read a few random pages or paragraphs from my favourite business books. And then go for a walk and let the ideas percolate. It's amazing what happens when I come back to my desk!

Love this topic! After a few years got into the trap myself and was amazed at what I discovered when I asked myself: "What if everything you know is wrong? Who told you what you know? What facts is it based on?". Since then I've explored that the world and what we can learn is much larger and bright. It came with writing my first book, "66 Days Success Formula" which I started with the phrase one of my friends told me during that time: "If 2 people are agreeing in the room one is not needed". Meaning here, if we see the world in the same way, question yourself if there could be another angle that you both might miss.

as weird as it might sound my suggestion completely shifted in the last few months. I used to be that person who would deliver multiple training sessions and introduce more than 40 ways to brainstorm with the team. Now, my only answer to you is to use chat GPT. As bad as it sounds it's fast and good enough to save you 80% of initial time and will actually awaken creativity in you to let you bring it to the final stage much faster than ever before.

Diversity is a must! My best lesson was from my teacher 10 years ago when he made us complete a NASA survival test. First on our own, and after as a random team. I still think it was the worst team I had a chance to work with and I am still amazed that we finished with way higher chances to survive as a team as individually. It has been 10 years since I gave this activity during the teambuilding training and still amazed by the same result. And the more diverse the team, the better it is in the end. My best advice will be when you apply it in the real world just let it see the end despite how ridiculous it might sound at some stages and make sure constructive feedback is provided in a timely manner. Allow yourself to be surprised!

Creative thinking in business thrives on the 'experiment and iterate' approach. It's straightforward: test your ideas in the real world, learn from the outcomes, refine, and repeat. Each cycle enhances your strategy and deepens your insights. It's evolution in action—every iteration is a chance to tweak and advance, ensuring your business stays quick on its feet and ahead in the market. Adopting this mindset transforms challenges into a test bed for innovation. Encourage your teams to iterate without fear of failure, because each attempt is a step forward. It's not just about being creative; it's about being smart and responsive, learning quickly, and applying that knowledge to fuel progress and drive success.

The key to practice is to do it absolutely every day. Not heavily on some days and not at all on others but at least a little bit and absolutely every single day. I was blown away by the results I experienced by applying consistency instead of intensity last year and even wrote the entire book on that experience called "66 Days Success Formula". Just try it, and you will see yourself.

The time to reflect after each experiment/iteration is vital to ensure we get the right learnings. Companies often quickly move on from one experiment to another missing out on valuable insights that could lead to better outcomes next time. Achieve the expected results or not, there is always something to learn.