How creative thinkers are making millions

When meeting your team, how would you encourage them to think creatively?

- REY ELBO

There's one option. Show them a piece of rock, approximately the size of five-by-six inches in diameter. Aside from a rock, you can use almost anything, like a common item to help people become creative thinkers.

Do it through a visual presentation or much better with an actual sample.

You have to do this within a proper context, such as when you want your teams to increase sales, eliminate operational waste, improve brand image and more.

In my seminar on creative thinking, I would ask the participants to come up with many different ways to tweak a rock into something more valuable than its original state. To avoid copying from one another, I asked them to write their ideas on a piece of paper the size of a calling card for tabulation later by a training assistant.

When I posed this activity to 25 managers, some were not bothered by exposing their different personalities with absurd examples like a gross booger bank, a used chewing gum depository and a callus remover for sadists.

Other examples include – a defense weapon, paper holder, knife sharpener, aquarium décor, car tire wedge, paper weight, candle holder, bookmarker, wishing rock, secret door key marker, sanctuary for aquarium tropical fish, bug hotel, desk display, incense holder, door stopper, photo holder, church symbol and the "first stone."

Not bad. These are ordinary suggestions that could be made into something extraordinary depending on where you're seated. I was enamored by the last two ideas – one as a church symbol for Peter, the Rock, and two as "the first stone" as described in John 8:7.