The Human Touch

13 CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING

INTRODUCTION

In business we often hear that people need to ‘be creative’ and ‘innovate’ as if this was (a) completely obvious, and (b) simple to achieve. In practice, this is not the case; creativity rarely appears on demand and sometimes ‘creative’ solutions may distract from a more straightforward course of action. However, there are many situations when pausing to think and identify less obvious ideas can be extremely beneficial. These may be when we are:

• addressing a problem with a project;
• identifying solutions to a business issue;
• improving a business process;
• finding a resolution to a conflict;
• creating a presentation.

In all of these situations, creative ideas can provide major leaps forward rather than ...