Ten top tips 'n tools for thinking differently

We are all seeing unprecedented levels of change driven by political, economical, social, technological, environmental and legislative factors.


To succeed in the new world, we need to change too. Sticking to the same approaches over and over again and expecting different results is simply insane, according to Albert Einstein.
Here are my top ten tips and tools to think differently:

1. Go Make a Difference Thinking framework developed by GoMAD Thinking©.  This approach is the result of researching how successful people think. It can be used to assist self-coaching, guide organisational programs and to support effective thinking.  
2. Mind Maps, are a creative, organic and two-dimensional approach to capture ideas proven to significantly improve information recall.
3. Exploratree by Futurelab contains a range of tools originally designed for education to expand the mind and draw out as many ideas as possible.  
4. Wall wisher is a virtual and collaborative post-it note wall without the constraints of space and time to easily capture the knowledge and thoughts of others.
5. Rich pictures are a visual presentation approach that use analogies to help explain the interrelationships and workings of complex systems. I particularly like the analogy of the water cycle to describe how the NHS interacts with the population.
6. 6 Thinking hats published by deBono are a tool to focus thinking of individuals and groups to aid fuller analysis and convergence of thinking
7. Benefit Dependency Networks are a visual tool to help describe the clear benefits and why a project or change is worth doing, key to bringing stakeholders on board and measuring the difference at the end.
8. Using Actors when considering a system is a great way to focus individual and group thinking to consider the opinions and needs of stakeholders to generate richer solutions. Section 3.2 of the The DH Infomatics Review Engineering Report is a great example of using Actors.
9. The 4MAT communication model provides an effective structure that will get your ideas across to all the learning styles in your audience
10. Daniel Pink’s video on motivation Ever wonder why your ideas and projects are not capturing hearts and minds? Daniel Pink provides some provoking, evidence-based insights.

If you are still sitting there thinking, I’m doing fine, I don’t need to change.  Ponder on some more words of wisdom from Albert Einstein who said “we can't solve problems using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.”

I trust these ideas will give you some different approaches to improve your thinking.