Good Thinking — 6 — Illegal, immoral, unethical?

Many organizations use brainstorming to work on problems or to take advantage of opportunities. However, brainstorming sessions often stop after the group exhausts all of its initial ideas. 

When you sense the group has reach a dead end you might want to fire up the group by asking for illegal, immoral or unethical ideas.

People will stare at you, shake their heads, and then start to laugh. But once someone comes up with a “bad” idea the other ideas will flow. Why? because it’s “unusual” and, frankly, kind of fun.

Now, take some of these ideas and them “bring them back” into the legal, moral or ethical world.

In one of my workshops, for example, the concept of “kidnapping” customers to increase sales resulted in further discussion about making existing customers so happy that they would never leave.

Make a list; how could you cheat without cheating? Steal without stealing? Be bad without being bad? Go ahead — sometimes it’s fun to color outside the lines.

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