“With proper training people can develop skills in questioning, brainstorming, adapting, combining, analyzing and selecting ideas. They can become the innovative engine your organization needs.”

Paul Sloane

Develop Your People to Think Flexibly

People require Flexible Thinking to flex between logical, structured thinking and creative thinking, both essential requirements if we are to achieve sustainable solutions for challenges.

The “Flexible Thinking ” course provides the ability to identify a challenging situation or opportunity and  tackle it using a methodical approach with appropriate skills and a variety of tools and techniques. We have run the course in Russia, Dubai and South Africa as well as the UK, with great results.

Our Flexible Thinking Approach

We show the “Flexible Thinking Approach” here:

1. Seek situations to tackle and make choice Many organizations fight fires. If you want to innovate you will find it more effective to be proactive about seeking situations to tackle. Once you have found a number of situations to tackle you have to choose.


2. Explore situation and reocrd key information Here you find out as much as you can about the situation and record all of the critical information that you need.


3. Generate and define key challenges You generate a number of challenge statements in the format “How To” and then define your specific challenge.


4. Generate and sift ideas You generate a number of ideas / solutions and then reduce these down to a manageable number using a number of questions to “sift” your ideas.


5. Evaluate and select solutions Here you generate criteria to make your choice and then select your preferred idea / solution.


6. Identify and refine assistance and resistance You now identify as many factors that will assist you and resist you when implementing your solution and develop tactics to take advantage of them or overcome them.


7. Generate actions and create plan Generate as many actions that you can think of, sort them and create a plan.


8. Take actions and review success Your work so far is pointless unless you take the actions. Having taken the actions, you will review the success and perhaps start again on the approach

This approach is simple to grasp and it works well. People can use it rapidly or in a more leisurely way, depending on the time available to them. In the course, we teach people the fundamentals, the skills, methodology, techniques and principles of flexible thinking. In addition, we explain some of the personal and organisational obstacles to its use and how to overcome them.

“If you’re trying to achieve, there will be roadblocks. I’ve had them; everybody has had them. But obstacles don’t have to stop you. If you run into a wall, don’t turn around and give up. Figure out how to climb it, go through it, or work around it.”

Michael Jordan 

Ideally a group has an organisational issue to work on when working through the process and as a project for after the course. Solutions developed in the course have included ways to drive more revenue, through to improving the car parking facilities!


We also provide shorter courses on particular aspects of Flexible Thinking, for example Problem Mapping, Idea Generation, Evaluating ideas and Facilitating the FT Method.


Read more Case Studies for examples or contact John or Kate Brooker to book for your company.