Leveraging the “Pamplemousse Precept” In Creativity Coaching
For greater than a dozen years my innovation company has taught personalized inventive problem-solving workshops (what we now name “Un-Assume” applications), to senior managers in medium and enormous organizations. Evaluations from the actually 1000’s of executives who’ve taken the workshop common 4.8 out of 5. Why such excessive rankings? I believe it’s partly as a result of we’ve questioned most of the most simple assumptions of studying and improvement workshops.
To encourage better participant engagement, as an example, we don’t use any PowerPoint slides. We additionally solely inform authentic tales from our personal innovation consulting work so we will communicate authoritatively about how enterprise creativity and innovation successes actually occur. (No cliché Put up It Notes, Apple, or Swiffer tales from us!) And we by no means, ever ask contributors to generate a dozen makes use of for a brick… or a paper clip, or a straw. Until you’re within the development, workplace provide, or mushy drink enterprise that is, to our mind-set, an absurd train. Worker time is just too priceless to waste on overly theoretical inventive pondering workouts that don’t have “actual world” relevance for the group.
As an alternative, we use an “action-learning” methodology. We require contributors to submit real-world enterprise challenges for which they want new pondering and new concepts. Then we use these challenges to assist contributors apply the inventive pondering methods we wish them to be taught. So, the workshop feels extra like an ideation session than “coaching.”
Among the many dozens of workforce ideation methods we train are triggered brainwalking, patent prompts, worst/foolish concept, enterprise mannequin mash-ups, TRIZ triggers, concept hooks, questioning assumptions, target-market wishing, development triggers, semantic instinct, twenty questions, nice thinkers, drawback redefinition, journal rip n’ rap, whiteboarding, strategic continuums, billboarding, and most lately, AI Concept Prompts.
So…. how may we “stroll our personal discuss,” “query our assumptions,” and “want” for tactics to enhance our “Un-Assume” workshop rankings from a 4.8 to a 4.9… or perhaps a 5.0?
I believe we will agree that generative AI applications as they’re now recognized (i.e., Chat GPT, DALL-E, and many others.), have the potential to be enterprise and organizational sport changers. A lot of the latest press about these applications, nonetheless, has centered on their draw back: selling an absence of authentic thought, “plagiarism,” content material inaccuracies, and many others.
An vital distinction I make within the Introduction to my new e-book Quirks… Provocative Tales, Songs, Essays, Poems Adverts, and Jokes in regards to the Persona Quirks and Loopy Concepts of Nice Individuals in Historical past… Created with Synthetic Intelligence is that these AI applications may also probably be great tutorial aids… serving to studying and improvement professionals current data and concepts in quite a lot of inventive/completely different codecs to accommodate completely different scholar studying types and preferences. Or, to place it extra merely… they’ll make educating and studying extra inventive, efficient, and FUN!
Take into account this AI generated limerick to assist clarify – hopefully in an entertaining approach — the Worst Concept inventive method:
“There as soon as was a thinker fairly sensible,
Whose concepts would oft’ materialize,
However the “worst concept” methodology he’d strive,
To create and let fly,
And odd brilliance would then come up.”
Or the Foolish Concept method:
“A thinker who sought the absurd,
With foolish concepts, they most popular,
In jest they’d create,
Unlikely to equate,
But brilliance from nonsense occurred.”
And even Patent Prompts.
“In a workshop the place minds would join,
Patent prompts would encourage and direct.
From innovations of previous,
New concepts would unfold,
As a wellspring of thought to excellent.
Would possibly having contributors generate these inventive executions of the workshop content material make for an much more inspirational and memorable expertise? I believe so! However should you’re not satisfied, see if these two quick tales don’t assist make the case.
What would Sandy Alderson Say?
At a Dartmouth School alumni occasion a number of years in the past, I had the prospect to speak with fellow Dartmouth alum, the then Basic Supervisor of the Mets, Sandy Alderson. My son James, then solely 14, was a fairly good baseball participant, going to the Babe Ruth World Collection as a member of the Stamford, CT All-Star workforce. And so, realizing I’d see Sandy Alderson on the occasion, I requested James if there was something he needed me to ask the Met’s Basic Supervisor.
“I’d wish to know the way they’ll inform which minor leaguers they assume will make it to the majors,” stated James. Fascinating query, proper?
Sandy Alderson’s reply stunned me. “One of the vital issues we search for is their potential to be taught. As a result of we’ve a lot to show them.” Spectacular.
The story doesn’t finish right here, although. I’ve a great good friend, Sean Brawley, former touring tennis skilled and the one licensed instructor of Timothy Gallwey’s Internal Recreation of Tennis educating philosophy. After I instructed Sean this story he adopted up with a profound query. “Sure, the power to be taught is vital,” he stated, “however what in regards to the coach’s potential to show?” Wow!
Once more, we should acknowledge that completely different folks be taught otherwise – and that AI content material creation applications may also help accommodate these studying variations and preferences by presenting the fabric to be discovered in radically completely different codecs. In addition to a limerick, how about an AI generated music, joke, story, and even an advert?
Say Hiya to The Pamplemousse Precept
Story quantity two entails one in every of my studying experiences from over 50 years in the past. Nonetheless in elementary college, I used to be compelled to take French lessons after college with a dozen equally sad college students. For some cause, presumably out of sheer boredom, however extra doubtless because of the cadence of the French phrase for grapefruit, Pamplemousse, at one level the category spontaneously began chanting the phrase “Pamplemousse, Pamplemousse, Pamplemousse.” The instructor couldn’t assist however take part.
After which, all of us bought up from our chairs and in a form of inventive pondering conga line, we danced and sang to the rhythm of our Pamplemousse chant. A lot enjoyable, and clearly a memorable studying expertise that I carry with me even all these years later.
May AI creativity applications make what I’ve now dubbed the Pamplemousse Precept – educating inventive pondering extra creatively to accommodate completely different pondering types – a more-easily-achieved actuality by producing enjoyable and humorous, entertaining and provocative, authentic songs, tales, poems, advertisements, and jokes to strengthen – and make extra memorable – the content material being taught? My 50+ 12 months experiment with a “French grapefruit” tells me the reply must be, “Oui!”
Bryan Mattimore is the Cofounder and Chief Concept Man at Development Engine, a 23-year-old innovation company based mostly in Stamford, CT. He’s the writer of 5 books on ideation and innovation processes together with Concept Stormers, 21 Days to a Huge Concept, and the brand new AI-generated e-book, Quirks. He could be reached at: bmattimore@growth-engine.com .
