Unleash the Purr-fection: Harness the Power of CAT (Creative Actionable Thinking) to Increase Innovation for Teams!
Read Time: 7 Minutes
Introduction
This blog will help you FIND solutions for your problems
Transform your problem-solving skills and unleash the full potential of your team with this blog. Embrace the innovative Creative Actionable Thinking (CAT) technique and master its two essential steps. Let me guide you towards finding concrete solutions to your pressing issues. Join me and embark on a journey towards success and satisfaction.
What is the Creative Actionable Thinking (CAT) Technique?
The CAT technique is a two-step process that combines both divergent and convergent thinking.
- Divergent thinking is a cognitive process that involves generating a wide range of possible solutions, ideas, or responses to a particular problem or question. For example, when thinking about types of transportation, you brainstorm a variety of options, such as cars, buses, bikes, planes, and more.
- Convergent thinking, on the other hand, focuses on finding a single, correct solution to a problem or question. For instance, when considering car manufacturers, you aim to identify the specific ones like Ford, Dodge, Toyota, and so on.
The CAT technique, therefore, involves combining these two thought processes to find solutions to problems, generate ideas, or tackle tasks. In the first step, you unleash your imagination and record every possible idea that comes to mind, igniting your creative thinking. In the second step, you switch to a logical mindset, where you analyze and select the best ideas that can effectively address the issue at hand. So, allow your ideas to flow freely in the first step and then refine them through a critical evaluation to arrive at practical solutions.
Why should you use the Creative Actionable Thinking (CAT) Technique for your Team?
The Creative Actionable Thinking (CAT) Technique is a transformative asset for your team’s problem-solving toolkit. CAT merges divergent thinking, which ignites creativity by exploring numerous ideas without constraints, with convergent thinking, which discerns and selects the best solutions. This balanced approach not only encourages team collaboration but also sparks innovation. CAT allows your team to brainstorm freely, free from feasibility worries, ultimately leading to creative and actionable solutions. With this technique, you can enhance productivity, improve communication, and drive your team toward more successful outcomes, all within a structured, proven framework for critical thinking and innovation.
Five Benefits of Implementing The CAT Technique in Your Team
By implementing CAT Technique in your team, you can reap several benefits, such as:
- Increased creativity: By using convergent and divergent thinking, CAT Technique enables you to generate creative and innovative solutions to business problems.
- Inclusive decision-making: CAT Technique promotes inclusive decision-making, giving everyone an opportunity to contribute ideas and perspectives.
- Better collaboration: CAT Technique encourages collaboration among team members, helping to build a cohesive team that works together effectively.
- Streamlined processes: CAT Technique streamlines the decision-making process, enabling you to make quick and informed decisions.
- Improved results: By using CAT Technique, you can identify and implement impactful ideas that align with your business goals, leading to improved results.
How to Effectively use the CAT Technique
Are you grappling with a challenging issue, a perplexing problem, or seeking fresh perspectives for a mind-mapping exercise? Whether it’s boosting blog engagement or revving up sales across the states, the CAT Technique is your answer. It’s a collaborative journey, spanning the spectrum of your team, from front-line staff to seasoned experts. This diverse input cultivates broader insights.
- In Step 1, known as divergent thinking(Creative thinking), we nurture creativity by generating a wealth of unique ideas.
- Step 2, convergent thinking(Actionable thinking), reserved for decision-makers, transforms these ideas into actionable, budget-friendly strategies.
The CAT Technique unlocks innovation, turning your challenges into fresh opportunities that may have been overlooked until now.
Implement The CAT Technique in your Team
Step 1: Set the Agenda and Rules
Prior to commencing the CAT session, it is vital to establish a clear agenda and goal for the meeting.
This step involves articulating the session’s purpose, desired outcomes, and the guidelines that should be adhered to. By doing so, you ensure that all participants, ranging from junior team members to senior staff across sales, marketing, and front-line roles, share a common understanding and are aligned with the process. This diversity of perspectives enhances creative insights and problem-solving capabilities, contributing to a more effective session.
Step 2: Brain Dump
Start with divergent thinking to generate as many ideas as possible Use prompts to guide the team’s thinking process and encourage them to think creatively. Set a time limit for this phase to avoid getting stuck
on a single idea.
Note: Remember, this step isn’t about focusing on the validity of the idea but to create as many as possible. No idea is a bad idea
Step 3: Categorize
Once the team has generated enough ideas, group them into similar categories. This will help you identify patterns and themes that emerge from the ideas.
Step 4: Evaluate
Plan a follow-up meeting a few days, weeks, or even a month after the initial discussion to assess the ideas generated during the convergent thinking process.
Invite decision-makers, planners, and strategists to this evaluation phase. Their involvement is essential for gauging the potential impact of the ideas, determining their feasibility, cost-effectiveness, and alignment with your business objectives.
Step 5: Prioritize
Rank the ideas based on their impact and feasibility. Identify the ones that can be implemented with the available resources, and establish deadlines and assign staff members for each task to ensure ownership of task.
Step 6: Action Planning
Develop a comprehensive action plan for all selected ideas and ensure they are aligned with the business objective. Determine the necessary steps for implementing each idea, establish sub-task milestones, delegate responsibilities accordingly, and establish realistic and achievable deadlines. By doing so, you can effectively monitor progress and maintain project momentum.
Step 7: Follow-up
Following the conclusion of the action planning phase, it becomes imperative to regularly monitor progress by scheduling check-ins on milestone dates in order to obtain progress reports. This practice facilitates the identification of any potential obstacles, enables necessary modifications, and guarantees that the project is advancing effectively.
Key Takeaways
- CAT encourages both convergent and divergent thinking to help businesses come up with creative and actionable solutions to problems.
- By combining the perspectives and knowledge of everyone in the team, CAT enables businesses to tap into a wealth of resources to reveal possible solutions.
- CAT helps create aspirational solutions and ideas for businesses through convergent thinking, while divergent thinking helps create actionable items tailored to their needs.
- By setting deadlines and creating milestones for selected ideas, businesses can use CAT to turn their solutions into tangible results that align with their goals and marketing objectives.
- CAT empowers individuals to have a voice in the decision-making process, which can lead to new perspectives and solutions that ultimately benefit the entire business.
Summary
The CAT Technique has proven to be a highly effective tool for fostering creativity, facilitating inclusive decision-making, and promoting collaboration within a team. By adhering to the prescribed steps, this technique can be readily incorporated into your team, resulting in enhanced outcomes. To ensure favorable results, it is essential to maintain an open-minded and creative approach, and to be willing to explore novel ideas. With the CAT Technique, the potential benefits are limitless.
Some of the best solution ideas often go unspoken. That’s why I developed the CAT Technique—to empower everyone at the table and provide decision-makers with a range of options to turn these ideas into reality.
