Happy New and Creative Year!!!
Please send me any comments or suggestions that you have.
Pleasant reading,
Amir
In this issue:
(a) Special New Years offer
(b) Creative ideas for...
(c) Creative tool - "Opposite Extreme"
(d) New on Best100Ideas.com
(e) Recommendation of the month
(a) Ezine-Articles craze...
I have been working lately on getting more of my articles published on ezinearticles.com
Here are a couple of things I have achieved:
1) My article on Creative Presentation Ideas is the most viewed on
the Presentation articles Category (14531 times and counting) -
see it here.
2) I have set a goal for myself to be among the top 5 authors on the
Self-Improvement >> Creativity Section. Will let you know once I
reach it....
I would appreciate it if you would take a look at my articles and rate them on ezinearticles.com
Here is a link to the list of all my articles there.
Would love to read any comments you may have.
(b) Creative Ideas for Encouraging Teamwork
Teamwork is a fundamental issue in management and in organizational success. There are a lot of efforts being invested in order to foster and strengthen teamwork in business organizations, in sports team, among kids at school and more. An abundance of books and management models offer advice on the principles of effective teamwork.
In the following section, I contribute some interesting ideas that can be used in order to boost teamwork in various situations. These ideas do not require a special outdoors adventure or a complete restructuring of the team. They are simply several suggestions that you can develop and apply to your own needs as manager or team member.
Here are some creative ideas for making teamwork "work" better for you:
- Monthly Personal Spotlight: This idea suggests that you strengthen teamwork by letting the entire team highlight the positive characteristics of one team member at a time. Make a raffle to determine the order by which team members are going to win the spotlight, and make a suggested format for the spotlight. The spotlight may be published on the team's bulletin board, on a company website, on an email newsletter to team members, or on an internal printed newsletter. It may include a description of the team member's special achievements, their hobbies, a short interview with them and more. The important thing is that all team members have to work on the Spotlight made on the chosen team member. If it is important to make this a more intensive experience, you may turn it into a weekly event.
- Delegate the Responsibility for Teamwork to the Team: If only the manager or a small part of the team is concerned about teamwork, it will be harder to attain. Moreover, if the team members do no take an active role in establishing the teamwork, they might develop a pattern of dependency on others whenever there is a need to strengthen the teamwork again. Instead, return the responsibility for encouraging teamwork to the team itself. Start this by assembling the entire team together and declaring your intention. Let the team members discuss and decide on ways they can and wish to achieve this goal. Later, make sure you do not take over the responsibility and work smartly to support the ideas suggested by the team, rather than keep the final veto to yourself. I must stress that this idea does require a manager that can truly delegate responsibility and authority to the team, as well as a team that is sufficiently supportive and proactive.
- Demonstrate the Results of "Non-Teamwork": This idea utilizes the Opposite Extreme creativity tool described in the section below. If you want to drive your point through on the importance of teamwork, find ways to demonstrate it by limiting or disallowing teamwork for a limited time. Choose a task that the team is used to perform together and limit the members' ability to communicate and coordinate their effort as they normally would. You may choose to let the team know what you are doing beforehand, or use the element of surprise and only later share your true intentions. In any case - make sure you discuss and analyze the consequences of not being able to work as a team on the performance of the team, on the atmosphere in the team and on the feelings of individual members.
(c) Creative Tool: Opposite Extreme
The Opposite Extreme creativity tool is most suited for generating creative ideas in advertising, for writing a sales copy, or for creative writing in general. In that respect, it is similar to the Extreme Result creativity tool described in issue 9 of the Creative Ideas newsletter.
Here is how you should use it (as usual - along with an example):
- Choose A Major Positive Result of Your Product/Service:
List all of the positive results that you claim your product or service provides.
Choose one benefit which especially differentiates your product/service from the competition, and which you would like to emphasize.
Example: A major benefit of my "50 Creative Ideas Service" is that you get them tailor-made within 7 workdays.
- Think of an Extreme Exaggeration of NOT having the Product/Service:
Think of imaginary Catastrophic consequences of not using YOUR product.
You have to think of extreme "disasters" that would befall anyone choosing a different product, or choosing not to buy your product/service at all.
Example: If you buy someone else's creative ideas, you either get corny ideas that were especially made for you, or have to wait for a long time to get them.
- Convey Your Message clearly through text and/or images:
This part involves good copy-writing or ad planning.
Make your message short and understandable.
People should be able to read it or look at it and see the creative NEGATIVE exaggeration in a flash.
Example: "Looking for creative ideas somewhere else? By the time you get them their 20 year patent term is going to be over, you know" (I could add later - "Here you'll get them by next week!".
- Repeat with variations:
The best way to use this tool is by repeating variations of your message several times.
This would go a long way towards producing a campaign people relate to and talk about.
You should think of more ways to demonstrate the "opposite extreme" of not using your product/service and of other ways to convey the same message with a twist.
Example: A caricature of a high-school student looking for ideas, and by the time he gets them, he is graduated from college.
Some of you might have already seen the downloadable Pdf articles on my website .
I have added new articles that you may download for free, print out, and use as learning material, in your customers waiting rooms, or for any other personal purpose you may think of (respect my copyrights, of course...).
Here is a direct link to the free downloadable articles page.
I promise to add more articles in the upcoming weeks.
Doug Stevenson's website offers a refreshing approach to appearing before an audience.
You can find a variety of resources on this website - including short and practical articles for using the Doug's story-telling techniques, for making powerful presentations, great packages of audio CDs and workbooks to let you master the public-speaking Story Theater approach, as well as coaching packages and other stuff.
Together with my own 100 Creative Presentation Ideas E-book, Doug's story theater is sure to make your own presentations rock!
To unsubscribe - reply to this message and change the subject line to "Remove"