Bite-sized courses

Time for training is increasingly tight. It takes real dedication to take a whole day off work. These sessions, lasting one to two hours, are designed to fit around the working day as breakfast or lunchtime events, or to take up a manageably small chunk of working time. We have been running these bite size events since 1995 and they continue to be amongst our most popular (and cost effective) sessions. Most can run with any size audience.

Bite size sessions cost £800 each, or are available for small groups at our individual rate of £125/head (minimum 3 attendees). Like all our sessions, pricing assumes you will provide the facilities and excludes VAT, books and travel expenses.

This 1.5 hour seminar introduces the basics of creativity in an informal, interactive session. The participants get the chance to try out two powerful techniques and there is significant audience participation throughout. Suitable for groups of any size (maximum so far 800), the session is the ideal introduction to practical business creativity.

Creativity and innovation are not optional extras. In a challenging environment, creativity is a survival skill. It’s not enough to do what you’ve always done because the world is changing around you. The Creativity Kickstart event gives a powerful introduction to the nature of creativity, the need for it and the mechanisms available to enhance creativity in a practical, day-to-day manner. Experience has shown that the requirement to do something about creativity is only really understood once individuals have some experience of the approach and techniques available – the Kickstart is designed to give that initial boost.

Outline

• Introduction – who the speaker is, why we are here, warm-up exercise exploring assumptions
• Why bother? – A brief exploration of why there is a need for creativity, driven by the participants own ideas.
• Can anything be done? – Moving from random brainstorming to systematic approaches. The five key features: culture, techniques, environment, personal development and fun.
• Blocking creativity – We are all very good at blocking creativity, suppressing our own ideas and putting down other people’s. By getting an understanding of the techniques we use to block creativity, we can prevent this happening in the future.
• Working in a framework – All too often ideas can be generated that either aren’t a good match to the requirement, or that aren’t then carried through to implementation. We look briefly at a four stage framework to ensure that thinking doesn’t stay blue sky.
• Sample technique 1 – We use a very reliable idea generation technique (Random Picture) on a generic problem to gain some experience of creativity techniques. It is important this first sample doesn’t use a real problem from the organization, as that can lead to focus on the problem, not the approach.
• Sample technique 2 – We use a very different technique (The Takeover) to see how varying techniques can be used and produced differing solutions. This example can be used on a real business problem or a generic.
• Doing something – we finish by encouraging attendees to take this further. Creativity requires practical experience. The more it’s practised, the easier it becomes.

We have a range of workshops available:

• Kickstart Phase II - A second stage session that builds on the Creativity Kickstart to reinforce its value in your organization
• Creative Design - Whatever the application, creativity can makes use of the principles of good design to enhance ideas.
• Creative Teams - Exploring ways to improve team working and to enhance problem solving and idea generation in groups.
• The Creative Agenda - It’s no use giving staff the tools to be creative if your organization doesn’t support creativity.
• Creative Customer Service - There are few aspects of an organization that can benefit more from creativity than customer service.