Above, you are looking at the image that accompanies the article “Technology And Fresh Thinking Will Help Us Reinvent Teamwork[1]” by ANN (Author Not Named, 22 October 2020, Wired.co.uk). ANN says the article was written “in partnership with Dell Technologies and Intel.” Now I say Dell and Intel understand little creative team thinking!
(Teamwork image[2] from CanStockPhoto)
Today, workers in the office have become workers scattered here and there, with interactions now virtual. Given the individual isolation of team members, ANN asks how can the team be more cohesive and effective:
“Can teamwork and team culture be preserved, and even reinvented, in the midst of the coronavirus emergency?”
Good question!
“Fresh thinking” in the title refers mainly to brainstorming.
“Red tape and paperwork are being slashed to the minimum and year-long problems solved swiftly out of sheer necessity,” ANN says. Now, Rana el Kaliouby, CEO of AI company Affective, asks, “How can some emerging AI-powered tools… improve the cohesiveness and harmony of a team working from home?” Her answer:
While on a video conference call, these tools can monitor each participant’s engagement and response throughout the conversation, helping to gauge how well the team is working together. “Our technology is able to track every person's expression [while on a call].
AI technology tracking expressions of each person on video, I am sure it can do that, and more. But:
The point of brainstorming is not whether everyone is paying serious attention, but whether the team as a whole is thinking creatively!
And creativity can only be measured by verbal or visual output, not “how many members of the team are paying attention” or how many talking, reacting.
Brainstorming is an art that is yet to be cultivated by digital nomads, and I don’t know anyone from Apple, Dell, Google, Intel.
Not even Tony Buzan with his Mind Mapping – there should be no map until the very end of brainstorming!
For excellent, cohesive, enjoyable and productive brainstormings, the best mentor is Edward De Bono with his Po Technique. I came across Po in 1975 in De Bono’s book Mechanism Of Mind, published 1968, which showed me how a fruitful brainstorming can result from a group or individual act – no idea is rejected, no matter that it sounds absurd or insane! Each idea is to be innocently examined, explored, investigated like crazy.
How good has the Po technique been to me, a creative blogger since 2005? My digital output should convince you:
In 100+ blogs, I have uploaded at least 4,000 long essays of 1,000 plus words each in the last 15 years!
A single blog, A Magazine Called Love, has at least 2,200 essays published.
https://amagazinecalledlove.blogspot.com
You are reading this essay in my latest blog, BraveNewWorld@PH, https://bravenewworldph.blogspot.com
If you check, this year alone, I have been blogging every single day since January 2020 – now 80 years old, not running out of ideas?
Po brainstorming, what else? There is no brainstorming technique that can rival De Bono’s brainchild!@517
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