Creative Problem Solving

“There is no such thing as creative and non-creative people, only people who use creativity and people who don’t” – Brene Brown. Creativity is innate in all of us; but too many people and organizations unknowingly hinder it from flourishing. Without creativity, it is impossible to develop an innovative organization that can deliver improved services and products and maintain sustainable competitive advantage. And the stakes have never been higher. The world is in the early stages of a new era of disruptive innovation that promises to transform every workplace and sector of society. Adaption is the new normal, and creativity is the new literacy. Explore how using creativity strategically can help you provide powerful solutions to problems and increase motivation, job satisfaction and engagement. Learn how creativity can be harnessed at an organizational level, and, with the right process in place, serve as an engine of innovation.

Mastering critical thinking and problem-solving skills can help you make better decisions or recommendations- an essential competency in today’s knowledge workplaces. Critical thinking helps you to examine and improve thought processes, ask the right questions, challenge assumptions and consider varying viewpoints. Effective problem-solving helps you to properly identify and systematically work through a problem in a comprehensive manner, ensuring clarity when it comes time to make decisions or recommendations. This course will demonstrate how critical thinking, problem-solving and decision-making work optimally together, and will provide hands-on practice with tools that you can apply to your everyday workday tasks, big or small.

Do you love those moments of exception, when everything seems to have come together and things are working beautifully? Would you like to create an environment where those rare extraordinary moments become the norm? Then you may just be ready to learn the value of Appreciative Inquiry, also known as AI. AI is a method for implementing change that is rooted in being positive, sharing stories of things that work well, and leveraging people’s strengths and the power of co-creation to initiate lasting, powerful changes that can make an organization the best it has ever been, because of people who care and are committed.

This two-day course will provide you with a practical experience of the Business Planning process from a Design Thinking perspective, to reflect current business changes and resource constraints. Business Planning is a way to “design” and manage work within changing constraints. This interactive workshop will develop your knowledge, confidence and practical skills to plan your work activities as a “design thinker” in times of change.

Our lives are becoming ever more complex. We seem to have more to do and never enough time to do it all. We have practically unlimited real time connectivity, and an expectation that we are contactable 24/7. Much of what is put in place to make our work environment better actually has the opposite effect and adds even more complexity to our workday: Endless initiatives to help us do more with less IT systems that we need to spend time learning how to use, before they will help us Policies, procedures, regulations and legislation to keep us safe, secure and consistent We find ourselves making more decisions, about more things, with not a lack of information, but with too much information. Emails, news feeds, updates, phone calls, interruptions, the need to search for files, facts and information, and meetings, all contribute to the complexity of our work life. With all of this, how much of our day is truly productive? What can we do? The answer, while it may seem counter-intuitive, is simplification. Do less to achieve more, slow down to go faster. This workshop will be highly practical. It will involve drawing on experiences, issues and positive examples from your place of work. You will build your own personal 8-point action plan that you take away and start to work with immediately. The techniques we will cover in this workshop are equally applicable in your home and work environments.