As a facilitator, a big part of your role is to provide the resource group with inspiration to help them generate ideas that solve the client's marketing objective in new and different ways.
Detour techniques are a great way to help stimulate new thinking, especially when you facilitate for the same group a lot. It will also allow you and the resource group to have some fun along the way.
Try a little word play the next time you want a fresh approach to detours.
Bring a dictionary to the session and use some or all of these techniques:
- Open the dictionary and place your finger on a page. Find the word closest to your finger, then read the word and its definitions. Ask the group to offer ideas based on the word you read.
- Ask a participant to pick a number between 1 and 500. Find that page number in the dictionary and ask the participant to select a word. Make a side-list detour using that word and invite participants to use that side list to make connections and add ideas to the list.
- Invite a participant to flip the dictionary open to any page. Ask him or her to pick a word and read its definitions. Invite each participant to write down a couple of ideas on scratch paper based on the new connections they made from the word or its definitions. Have each participant share one of their ideas with the group and add it to the list.
Creative Resources is standing by with fresh detour techniques!