Jo Miller on beleaderly.com’s Don't Think Outside the Box Think Like There is No Box challenges us with the following techniques to not limit our innovation and creativity
- Look for random inspiration
- Do a quick search on Pinterest, Twitter or Google of what’s hot/trending
- You want to trigger your brain to make connections it wouldn't normally make
- Search areas entirely unrelated to your challenge
- Chat with successful people you know about what they are thinking about and/or working on
- Listen to Podcasts
- View Ted Talks
- Probably have similar leadership challenges and may have developed quite different ways of dealing with them
- Might find new linkages
- May seem counterintuitive but the more creative thought can be scheduled the more likely it is to happen
- Frequently give your staff permission to challenge the status quo and talk about the ideal pharmacy services
- Pull out items at random and ask yourself and your staff how they might apply to pharmacy and health care
- Study other industries
- Read publications such as
- Computer magazines
- Popular magazines and newspapers (what is going on in society)
- Global challenges
- Science News for new knowledge
- People living to 90-100
- Schedule a brainstorming session
- Given busy schedules if you don't carve out time to think and brainstorm you probably won’t ever get to it
- May need to get out of your office and go to a coffee shop, bagel place, library, etc.
- Come in late one morning a week
- Create a curiosity box
- A box filled with a weird assortment of interesting things such as
- New technology pictures of
- 3D printers
- Crisper (DNA) cutting technology
- Drones
- Wearable health trackers
- UberEats
- Artificial Intelligence
- Virtual reality
- Deny the existence of the box
- Refuse to believe the box even exists because once you say think outside the box you have established there is a box
- Believe you and your staff can figure anything out if minds are put to it
Please share what works for you