A large pharma R&D team, of 8 Managers, had been thinking about how to tackle their resourcing challenges but had not had time to consider really creative solutions. There were two issues:
- they had more work than they could resource
- how could they quickly fill resource gaps
They had agreed to dedicate a day to exploring creative solutions and invited TIGCRU to design and facilitate the day.
TIGCRU designed the meeting to kick off with agreeing objectives, setting ‘creative mindset’ and capturing any ideas the team already had in mind.
Then the team were briefed into each of a series of 3 creative sessions:
- Break the Rules
- Parallel Worlds
- Forcing Connections with Random Stimulus
From which flowed many, many more ideas.
The gear was then changed from divergent thinking to convergent thinking, as the team were facilitated to review and then theme across all of the ideas, look for fit to strategy and prioritize.
For each of the prioritized ideas, the teams were briefed and set to work on ‘Making them Real’, to work up and agree necessary actions and next steps.
The meeting closed with sharing of plans and agreeing actions.
Feedback
“Many thanks for the fantastic day you led on Wednesday. We came away with over 100 ideas on how we could start to address our challenges and a clear way of how to go about deciding which ones were worth progressing, and how to make these ones into reality.
Your style was just what we needed - straightforward but energetic and fun. The participants were all really enthusiastic and there has been much positive corridor chat about the day. We needed the day because our thoughts were confused and we did not know what direction we should head, or what other ideas there were - you helped address all of this so certainly met the objective of why we needed you! We also learnt a lot of useful techniques we can take back to our daily work.
I have no hesitation in recommending you for other such events.”
Group Manager, AstraZeneca