Month: October 2020

According to Ken Robinson, creativity is the process of having original ideas that have value. It is a process; it’s not random.

Being creative isn’t always easy. It is often difficult to encourage creative thinking from a team.  One of the best ways to get better results from the team is by conducting brainstorming sessions and welcoming the bad ideas too.

Brainstorming sessions:

Brainstorming is an approach to problem-solving with lateral thinking in a relaxed and informal approach. During brainstorming sessions, people should avoid criticizing or rewarding ideas. We try to open up possibilities and break down incorrect assumptions about the problem’s limits. Judgment and analysis at this stage stop idea generation and limit creativity.

Once the ideas are copied, we try to evaluate the ideas and explore solutions further, using conventional approaches.

Example:

During my work experience as a Civil Engineer. I worked for a company called Ecoren energy India private limited, which is into the generation of electricity using wind turbines. As a civil engineer, my role was to erect the wind turbines. Usually, the turbines are installed at a higher altitude, where the speed of the wind is very high. To do the construction of wind turbine foundations, we need to construct the roads for transportation. Our project got struck with the construction of the road as the entire project area is hilly terrain.

To overcome this, we conducted a few brainstorming sessions and asked everyone to come up with ideas, irrespective of the judgment. We have generated at least 50 opinions in a day. Many of them were good. We did find it challenging to get the best idea. The other day we did grab all the opinions and tried to cluster similar ideas, made a Hitlist of them. While we were going through the list, we tried to decide on the approaches by conducting small voting on each hitlist. We finally got the three best ideas we can work on for our project.

Some of the best ideas are the use of explosives to blast the hilly terrains, the use of core driller machines, the use of excavators, outsourcing the work to an external contractor.

We have decided to use all the above ideas for different terrains. For example, out of 10 turbine locations, we have outsourced a subcontractor for three places, the use of explosives at 4 locations, use of core drilling machines for the other three points.

The above methodology has helped us in landing with three great ideas and finish the project within the estimated schedule.

References:

https://www.mindtools.com/brainstm.html

What is Creativity? (And why is it a crucial factor for business success?)

The Covid-19 pandemic has hit across all the countries. We fell prey to coronavirus not only in terms of health but also in terms of economy and finance. To prevent the spread of coronavirus country have imposed a lockdown. Likewise, Canada is one of those countries that announced its lockdown on March 18, 2020. With the lockdown of the aviation industry, students were in a state of turmoil as they have to cancel their plans to travel to Canada. I am one of those international students who was excited and making all the travel arrangements for my May 2020 classes. The pandemic has caused an uncertain situation in many ways to all of us.

Yes, no one prepared for such uncertainty. We all know that; periods of uncertainty are unavoidable. We should learn to look forward to them and love them. If not, we shall fear them when they come.

Tips to overcome uncertainty situations:

TIP 01 : Take control of the circumstances

 

When things do not support, there is a possibility that we get worried and allow the stress to control the situation. The aforementioned creates havoc and distress in life. It is encouraged to stay stable and reliable. Identify the aspects you can manage and build an objective and plan the goals accordingly. 

In the above Pandemic situation, student tobe advised to stay and calm and plan for the future by deferring their program or course to the next intake.

Tip 02: Create a plan:

Once you get the situation in control and objectify the goals. Create a plan to achieve the goals. Analyze different possibilities to achieve your goals. In our case, the goal is to defer the program to the next intake. The probability of a student to succeed is by approaching the International admissions department and requesting to defer for the next admission.  

Tip 04: Open to surprises

While planning to reach your goals in uncertain situations, be sure to be open to surprises. Not all ways lead you towards the goals. There will be a few hindrances too. When you overcome such shocks, be sure to prepare yourself. For instance, in this case, while you have requested to defer your intake, there are chances that the International admission department might reject your deferment as the admissions were packed.

Tip 04: Accepting the risks:

When there is uncertainty, there are risks. We must learn to minimize them and accept those you cannot eliminate. Since the deferment got rejected, we need to admit that you can not get your application for the next intake. While you can minimize the risk by opting for an online program provided by the college and continue with the current admission or try to defer your application for next year. The close option for you is to continue your current semester online so you can save time and money to achieve your goals.