The Hindu Business Line : Blowing bubbles to solve corporate crises

IF blowing bubbles and messing around with Play-Doh in a beach resort could lead to solutions for an NGO that is desperately trying to enlist corporates as members, wouldn't you like to attend a workshop that teaches you how to dredge the insides of your mind and overcome blocks to strategy-making?

For this is what Mr R. Sridhar of Ideas-RS does to get his sessions on creative block-busting warmed up.

His clients are mainly corporates, but usually, as part of the sessions, an NGO is invited to set a challenge to the corporate as working on someone else's challenge frees the mind and this yields "amazing results" (and is also IDEAS-RS's way of doing pro bono work).

Mr Sridhar, who has over 30 years' experience in advertising, direct marketing and brand consulting, and is known as a DM guru, set up Ideas-RS in 2000.

During a workshop for travel company RCI and its DM agency, Direm, at Mamallapuram's Temple Bay resort, he exhorts the participants not to be `idea assassins'.

So much so, that all manner of wacky ideas are encouraged to be stated in the day's exercise.

At the outset, goals, immediate and long-term, are taken into account. The participants are taken through a series of exercises to understand the problem and arrive at a clearly articulated challenge (in this case, how to get a sizeable number of corporates to join CIOSA, an NGO which is actually a Confederation of Indian Organisations for Service and Advocacy).

Amid a non-stop welter of bubbles (participants are encouraged to do that), a questions session has the participants quizzing the NGO representative.

The kit provided supplies the questions that are chosen randomly; verbs, phrases and objects from the kit are used to generate ideas on Post-It notes. This way, some 275 ideas are generated within half-an-hour.

The NGO short-lists some suggestions. Now it's time for teamwork - one idea is taken up by each team which will have to devise a plan of action, present it with a mention of its strengths and concerns and rate itself against criteria set by the NGO.

While the session's first ideas ranged from the usual to the unusual to the zany, like getting shapely models to publicise the cause, final strategies that evolved included getting hotshot CEOs to spend a day with the underprivileged and using FM radio to publicise CIOSA.

Mr Sridhar says that presentation accounts for a large part of the victory.

"Sometimes the idea is presented in such a wimpy way (`I've an idea but I don't know how good it is' or `I'll tell you what it is, it's up to you'), the battle is lost there. And if you are not convinced about it, or are not willing to put your neck on the block for your own idea, why should the other person?" He also emphasises the need for a supportive and non-judgemental atmosphere.

The objective of these sessions is to use creativity in the context of business and employ these techniques in the daily routine - make ideas actionable. Meanwhile, if you feel some stress beginning to weigh on you, just go blow some bubbles.

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