Malcolm Law - Thursday 27th May. Mal took us though his journey in the last twelve months when he raised over $85,000 for the Leukaemia and Blood Foundation of NZ.
Cyriel Kortleven - Wednesday 17th February. From Belgium and currently touring the world, Cyriel is one of the founding members of “new shoes today” – a growing network of professionals in the domain of creation, innovation and change. In his daily life, he facilitates brainstorms, and gives workshops and presentations in creative skills and attitude and the breaking of fixed thinking patterns.
Thank you to the MRS Committee for organising the function on Thursday 27 May, and a special thank you to Malcolm Law for his presentation. If you weren’t able to be there it really was your loss.
Mal took us though his journey in the last twelve months when he raised over $85,000 for the Leukaemia and Blood Foundation of NZ. When Mal was 9, his older brother died of leukaemia and he dedicated the last year to making a difference to other leukaemia sufferers, in memory of his brother.
And what an amazing journey it was from having the original dream through to completion of the goal. Mal was the first person ever to run NZ’s 7 Mainland Great Walks in 7 days – yes really! 7 days on end, which required some interesting logistics to get from place to place, in both the North and South Islands. We heard about all the problems getting sponsorship, and how difficult it is to raise funds particularly in last year’s economic climate, the training - all the practical details that had to be thought through – all the highs and the lows.
We went through a whole gamut of emotions he experienced from despair to elation. Mal had us laughing and yes, even crying. I thought the most moving moment in his video was when Mal made a final tribute to Alan, his brother. Most of us struggled to control our brimming eyes.
Mal is one of our industry’s leading lights – he is a great researcher, an excellent businessman and a man with passion. How often we all talk about what we will do, and yet, somehow, never quite get around to it. Mal is a do-er, and wouldn’t it be great if we, as an industry, got behind him in his next challenge.
Yes, he’s going to do it again this year, (seven more iconic trails in seven more gruelling days) to bring the total he has raised up to $250,000.
So, what can you do?
- First have a look at his website - www.7in7.org.nz - you'll find it a very interesting read.
- Follow the link on the website to - www.purefutures.co.nz - Steinlager are providing sponsorship of $100,000 to the person who gets the most votes. Mal is currently leading - let's keep him there!
- Maybe you've got a client who would become a sponsor.
- Spread the word.
I’m sure if we all get behind our colleague and give him our support he will achieve his lofty goal. Thanks Mal for inspiring my team and me to make an active contribution to a hugely worthwhile cause.
Cyriel Kortleven
International facilitator Cyriel Kortleven showed us the enormous possibilities of thinking in a creative way. And no, it wasn’t all just touchy, feely, qualitative, even the quantitative inclined amongst us took some great learnings from this interactive and entertaining presentation. One just had to keep an open mind.
Creativity and innovation are getting more and more important, in particular now when our clients look to us for innovative research and insights solutions.
But how often are we really creative and innovative? More often than not we are not able to break the mould either because we can’t see outside our own patterns or we are shut down with the good old “yes but….” attitude of others.
Patterns, patterns, … and the Curse of Knowledge
The human brain is a powerful pattern maker, a good pattern user, but a very poor pattern breaker. Our daily lives exist of 95% of logical thinking and often we are stuck on the tried and trusted highways of our thinking.
So just because someone had the idea to build a step over the banana skin, and everyone follows, doesn’t mean there isn’t another better solution to this problem.
Skills to give yourself a creative boost
Cyriel discussed and interactively explained a few simple steps:
- Y es and – postpone your judgement
Look out for the idea killers, eg. yes but, we’ve always done it this way, that will never work, we’ve tried this before etc. Go for the yes and attitude, keep it bouncing backwards and forwards for a while, go crazy in your ideas AND then look back and see whether you can actually utilise any of these.
- E xplore - discover the world with different eyes
Free your mind and be open to look outside your existing highway of thinking.
- S uppose ... – imagination + art of questions
Use your imagination and ask lots of questions.
“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.” Naguib Mahfouz
- A ssociate – create flexible connections
Use different associations to expand your solutions.
Flower associations have a starting point in the middle and connect all options to this, eg. sun – moon, sun – warmth, sun – beach, sun – sunglasses etc.
Chain associations have a continuous addition of options, eg. sun – moon – Armstrong – cycling – France – champagne etc.
- N ext idea – divergence
Don’t stop at the very first idea that makes sense – continue, you might find a better one, or another one, or another one.
- D o it NOW – action + you gotta have guts
Yes, you need to action your creativity. If it seems too hard, try the safe option first, and once successful it will be easier to implement the next step. But be warned, there will be many “nay” sayers along your way.
Don’t be a “yes, but” person yourself, and maybe next time when Cyriel is back in New Zealand in 2011 you’ll come and see him. Everyone present thought it was worth it.
MRSNZ Members can download a copy of Cyriel's presentation from the members area.
(Horst Feldhaeuser)
