Picture this. You have set aside a few hours to plan what you want to achieve in the next quarter. You have everything at the ready – paper, different colored pens and pencils, hot coffee.
You sit down and open to a blank page, pen poised. Nothing. Blank mind.
Can’t think of anything to write. Can’t think of any ideas..
Don’t know where to start! Gotta think of something! I’ve set this time aside especially!
We have all been there. Sometimes the ideas flow easily. Other times they don’t. What to do…
Don’t worry, there are many different techniques you can use to get your mind working and spark the creativity fire. Here are a three you can try next time you have set aside some planning time to generate ideas of what you want to achieve in the next quarter.
1. Brainstorming
Meaning literally to create a storm in your brain by generating ideas quickly one after the other, this technique means you need to generate your ideas and then assess the ideas to see if you have come up with any good ones. You can use a couple of techniques to brainstorm individually.
One is to write down the topic and then spend five to ten minutes listing every single associated idea with that topic. Some ideas will be thrown away and others will be modified or used. The main concept of brainstorming is to generate as many ideas as possible in a short space of time.
2. Mindmapping
Mindmapping uses key terms and phrases and links them in a graphic way. If you tend to be a visual learner, you’ll find this technique extremely useful because you end up with a picture at the end of it. To successfully create a mindmap, you start with a clear piece of paper. YES – get away from the computer screen!
Draw a bubble, circle or box in the middle of the page and write your topic in it. Then draw several lines out from the bubble and create several smaller bubbles at the end of each line. In each secondary bubble, place a key term or phrase that relates to the topic. Then under each secondary bubble, write as many ideas as you can that relate to that key phrase.
Once you have completed the process for each secondary bubble, you can then get out some colored pens and draw interconnecting lines to ideas that relate to each other. This can be used to give you a structure for your plan or whatever you want some fresh ideas on on and can help you divide your ideas into weeks or months that go together. Using a mindmap can not only generate ideas, but helps you link them together so that the structure of your plan flows smoothly from one idea to the next.
3. Reframing
This is a great technique to use when you are particularly stuck for ideas. Not everything in our plans are within our comfort zone and familiar ways of thinking. Using the reframing technique can encourage you to generate ideas by reframing the question or topic you want to cover about and by helping you to see the topic from different perspectives.
You can create a simple grid, with a question or topic box in the middle of the page and four boxes around it. Then think of four people who might be related to the topic and would have a different perspective on it. If you are thinking about your marketing, for example, you might consider the perspectives of the clients, the suppliers, the competitors and alliance partners. All of these people would have a different perspective on the issues and problems relating to your marketing. Then you can make a list of what each group of people’s concerns are most likely to be.
Using the reframing technique can help you to generate many ideas on what to put in your plan. You may like to plan for different audiences, using each perspective as a starting point.
These three techniques are useful for thinking about and generating ideas on specific sections in your plan. Giving yourself time to think clearly and creatively about idea generation can also help you to think about the structure of your business and how ideas will be linked in your work. This makes you a better small business person too.
What do you do to keep the creative juices flowing? Do you set aside time each week, fortnight or month to think about and plan your business goals and achievements?
Photo credit: 
photo credit: HikingArtist.com
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