BrainZooming

SEPTEMBER 17, 2018

At an Idea Magnets workshop, we shared a strategic thinking exercise we call Rock-Paper-Scissors. In the post-workshop evaluation, one attendee asked about extending this strategic thinking exercise to identify things you aren’t currently doing that you should be doing. Need Fresh Insights to Drive Your Strategy?

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Strategic Thinking Exercises eBook Analysis 71

BrainZooming

APRIL 15, 2016

Interestingly, the most challenging situation for Brainzooming strategic thinking workshop success is when it includes TOO MANY individuals viewing themselves as creative. Whenever you have too many “creatives” in the room, it can devolve into each one trying to outshine the others in extreme creativity.

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Strategic Thinking Creativity Creative Thinking eBook 40

BrainZooming

OCTOBER 4, 2016

I attended a presentation on cultivating a creative culture delivered by Michael Perman, formerly of Gap, at The Marketing Conference last week in San Francisco. During his keynote, Perman discussed twenty-plus three-day creativity sessions he organized while at Gap. What mix of creative diversity will drive implementation?

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Groups Creativity Conference eBook 91

BrainZooming

JANUARY 16, 2018

The article inspired a laundry list of strategic thinking exercise prompts to re-imagine a threatened business model when your service offering is under assault from online offerings, bots, or some other form of complete automation. A New Strategic Thinking Exercise. Extreme Creativity. Branding and Marketing.

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Strategic Thinking Exercises eBook Strategy 81

BrainZooming

JUNE 8, 2016

Last week, we presented a creative and strategic thinking workshop for a Brainzooming reader who leads the national sales division of a global industrial manufacturer. We integrated the Brainzooming strategic thinking workshop into their annual sales meeting. 13 Unexpected Benefits of a Strategic Thinking Workshop.

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Strategic Thinking Creative Thinking Creativity Exercises 40

BrainZooming

MAY 8, 2018

A participant at a Brainzooming creative leadership presentation stayed afterward. 5 Strategic Thinking Questions to Engage Employees in Reorganization. I offered him five strategic thinking questions: When is our organization at its best in performing the variety of activities we do? Mike Brown.

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Strategic Thinking Engagement eBook Exercises 56

BrainZooming

NOVEMBER 27, 2017

What strategic thinking skills are important in helping find agreement for action amid a big, unstructured conversation? The call was an opportunity for board members to react and share perspectives for the first time as a group about a critical business topic. 5 Strategic Thinking Skills to Lead Groups to Action.

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Strategic Thinking Groups eBook Creative Thinking 33

Leapfrogging

APRIL 4, 2024

Through a blend of strategic planning sessions, team-building activities, and reflective exercises, a well-designed offsite can unlock new perspectives, ignite creativity, and lay the groundwork for transformative growth. Preparing for Success The foundation of a productive executive team offsite lies in meticulous preparation.

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Strategy Strategy Technical Review Groups 130

BrainZooming

JULY 18, 2017

They are either overly or underly-inclined to point out data gaps to try to push the group to choose a certain outcome. 5 Strategic Thinking Questions to Answer Before Making a Decision. If you answer those strategic thinking questions early, your decision making will likely be more simple, clear, and streamlined.

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Strategic Thinking eBook Strategy Strategy 72

BrainZooming

MAY 19, 2016

But given our unwillingness to settle for that easy answer, we created a rapid fire strategic thinking exercise to push for ideas. Strategic Thinking Exercise – 17 Questions to Find Innovation Case Studies. Who are our strategic partners? Rapidly deploy effective strategic thinking exercises to spur innovation.

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Case Study Strategic Thinking Exercises Study 89

BrainZooming

MAY 18, 2016

During a strategic thinking skills workshop for a client, we shared ideas for taking information from varied sources and identifying strategic themes. The picture represents two approaches to strategic thinking skills that analysts I’ve met throughout my career display. You’ll enjoy it! – Mike Brown.

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Strategic Thinking Analysis eBook Data 65

BrainZooming

JANUARY 3, 2019

How about Creative Thinking Questions? To prepare for the in-person planning, Tara forwarded creative thinking questions that looked out from today to more than a decade into the future. While the document was daunting, working with a fresh set of questions forced me to think about completely new opportunities and issues.

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Creative Thinking Creativity Strategic Thinking Exercises 100

BrainZooming

OCTOBER 10, 2016

Here is a way you can turn a typical strategic thinking exercise into something new and fun that both adds variety to your strategy meeting AND could trigger some new ideas to get our strategy out of a rut! Use a New SWOT Strategic Thinking Exercise Nobody Expects. You have no doubt heard of a SWOT analysis.

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Strategic Thinking Exercises Underperforming Technical Team Analysis 40

BrainZooming

JUNE 20, 2018

An executive responsible for strategy planning who was downloading our eBook on 11 Fun Strategic Planning Ideas posed an important question: How can you successfully identify and try new ways to get internal groups working together on strategic planning? 7 Ways Groups Can Collaborate on Fun Strategic Planning.

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Groups Collaboration eBook Strategic Thinking 58

Leapfrogging

APRIL 4, 2024

Benefits of Facilitating Strategic Planning Offsites Facilitating strategic planning offsites offers a multitude of benefits, from enhancing team cohesion to driving organizational alignment. Improved Focus : With day-to-day distractions left behind, your team can concentrate fully on strategic issues and high-level thinking.

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Strategy Strategy Underperforming Technical Team Exercises 100

Leapfrogging

APRIL 4, 2024

These retreats are not merely a change of scenery but a strategic move to foster innovation and alignment among the top decision-makers of your company. The value of such gatherings lies in their capacity to refresh perspectives, encourage strategic thinking, and address complex challenges without the distractions of the office environment.

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Underperforming Technical Team Leadership Design Exercises 100

BrainZooming

DECEMBER 3, 2018

Stronger creative leadership to identify productive tactics, make better (and faster) decisions, and successfully implement with a major impact. The Answer to Boosting Creative Leadership within Your Team! This Brainzooming book demonstrates the value of stronger creativity.

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Leadership Creativity Creative Thinking Strategic Thinking 78

BrainZooming

JUNE 6, 2017

We turn to extreme creativity questions to help clients imagine big ideas. It is all part of not ASKING for big ideas ; we use big questions that enhance peoples’ natural creative thinking skills. Based on our experience using extreme creativity questions, they DO tend to yield bigger ideas. Here are five of them: 1.

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Creative Thinking Creativity Tips Exercises 87

BrainZooming

APRIL 4, 2016

That would definitely take extreme creativity ! A New Add to Our Extreme Creativity Strategic Thinking Exercises. Thinking about the statement further and the audacity of trying to do “the impossible with nothing” suggested this idea was the ultimate in extreme creativity.

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Strategic Thinking Exercises eBook Creativity 40

BrainZooming

FEBRUARY 22, 2016

During in-person and online strategic planning workshops , we regularly use a strategic thinking exercise that helps leadership groups quickly identify a shared future vision statement. Pushing Back on a Strategic Thinking Exercise. An Alternative Strategic Thinking Exercise to Develop a Vision Statement.

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Strategic Thinking Exercises Underperforming Technical Team Groups 40

BrainZooming

APRIL 20, 2016

I asked them to engage in some strategic thinking about innovation opportunities for the company. They used that as a justification for opting out of strategic thinking. I disabused them of the idea, however, that their narrow job descriptions were synonymous with narrow strategic thinking roles.

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BrainZooming

OCTOBER 16, 2018

For the closing song, the group played their version of Chuck Berry’s Roll Over, Beethoven. It’s like the secret to creative success for everyone ! Extreme Creativity. Creative Thinking – 7 Keys to How “Idea Magnets” Boost Creativity. I like the concept, a lot. Innovation.

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Creativity eBook Creative Thinking Strategic Thinking 79

BrainZooming

APRIL 5, 2016

It seems ridiculous to help a company become better at strategic thinking and marketing without being allowed to tell them how to do it. Strategic Thinking Exercises – 3 Responses to New Ideas. The answer could suggest their strategic thinking wasn’t effective in this situation.

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Strategic Thinking Exercises Underperforming Technical Team Brainstorming 40

BrainZooming

JANUARY 7, 2016

Yes, I’m serious about that strategic thinking question. If you struggle with those questions, take a time out right away and do the strategic thinking needed to get back in touch with the love in what you do. Boost Your Creativity with “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation”. What do you LOVE about your business?

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Strategic Thinking eBook Strategy Strategy 40

BrainZooming

SEPTEMBER 30, 2015

Late at night while reading the daily mass readings for the next day and thinking about how one can better understand oneself, I started writing. This list of strategic thinking questions emerged. Strategic thinking questions aren’t only for businesses and organizations.

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Strategic Thinking eBook Tips Creativity 40

BrainZooming

MARCH 31, 2016

We (and by “we” I mean “I”) would like to believe we’re strong at strategic thinking in business. And an appreciation of strategic thinking from a business perspective SHOULD extend over into ALL the decisions we make. It’s easy, when it comes to strategic thinking, to KNOW better. See what I mean.

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Strategic Thinking eBook Exercises Creative Thinking 40

BrainZooming

OCTOBER 6, 2015

People ask me frequently about why we give away so much of what The Brainzooming Group does on our website. We, however, routinely share how we do things via our methodology, tools, and learnings from Brainzooming strategic thinking workshops. Why Do We Give Away So Many Strategic Thinking Exercises?

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Strategic Thinking Exercises Creative Thinking eBook 40

BrainZooming

DECEMBER 9, 2015

In each of the five mini-innovation strategy workshops, we had a group of core team members, plus people familiar with each perspective. The overall group sizes for each innovation strategy workshop varied from fourteen to more than twenty-five people, depending on the topic. 11 Things Running through a Facilitator’s Head.

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Strategic Thinking Exercises Groups Strategy 40

BrainZooming

NOVEMBER 18, 2015

7 Strategic Thinking Questions When Things Aren’t Working. When things took an unexpected turn the other day, I mentally flew through various strategic thinking questions trying to comes up with ideas to adjust what we were doing. Strategic Thinking Questions – 21 Tips for Reading Someone Else.

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Strategic Thinking Engagement Tips Strategy 40

BrainZooming

NOVEMBER 11, 2015

We have been working with a client that had done a lot of strategic thinking about a new initiative. Taking a look at the list, we started trying different approaches to arrange the big list of ideas into sensible groups to help stimulate progress. In Groups of Items Doing Similar Things. 6 Ideas to Put a List in Order.

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Strategic Thinking Groups Engagement Tools 40

BrainZooming

JUNE 19, 2017

3 Conditions for Explosive Creative Thinking Skills. Reflecting on grain elevators led me to consider explosive creative thinking skills , and the parallels between the two. Achieve intensity by constraining time and creating high expectations for the number of ideas a creative group should imagine.

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Creative Thinking Creativity eBook Exercises 81

BrainZooming

MARCH 22, 2017

Short story: If you want big ideas, ask the big questions, which is what extreme creativity is all about ! Keeping with the eight theme, here are eight new questions from the Brainzooming R&D Lab to boost your creative thinking skills. Creative Thinking Skills and Breakthrough Ideas. Aspirations.

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Creative Thinking Creativity Strategic Thinking Exercises 67

BrainZooming

MARCH 21, 2017

Short Story: Look for specifics and things that people can actually do or perform to move creative thinking into action. How do you move from creative thinking into action? Two of the client’s senior staff members said this was a question they expected us to answer during the strategic thinking workshop.

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Creative Thinking Creativity Strategic Thinking eBook 61

BrainZooming

AUGUST 27, 2015

The Long Answer – Strategy, Creativity, and Innovation. The reason is that working from the incredible resource of strategic thinking exercises, creative thinking tools, and collaborative models The Brainzooming Group has created, what Brainzooming does can vary dramatically for each client engagement.

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BrainZooming

MARCH 22, 2016

Delivering a creative thinking workshop , I was eavesdropping on conversations at five tables full of attendees. One group was starting to use one of our creative thinking exercises. They should inspire, not limit thinking. They should inspire, not limit thinking.

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Creative Thinking Exercises Creativity Strategic Thinking 40

BrainZooming

NOVEMBER 22, 2019

In business, you’re usually equal parts discovering problems AND using creative problem solving to address the issues. They wanted to leave the creative problem solving for later. Trying Painstorming Before Creative Problem Solving. We split the group in two. Each group performed the same prioritization exercise.

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Creativity Exercises Survey Groups 52

BrainZooming

MARCH 6, 2017

From a day-to-day perspective in the corporate world, we didn’t necessarily use objective metrics about creative ideas. After talking with a friend, I think the percent of time you are told to pull back your creative ideas because they are too big and bold may be a good way to assess how your creativity is faring in an organization.

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Creativity Underperforming Technical Team Creative Thinking eBook 75