Creating a Creative Impact

Our second trimester started with a lot of new and exciting subjects, where three days have been set aside for general management courses and three days for our varsity classes. Every one of us was really looking forward to our varsity classes to start. One of the most exciting classes that we were eagerly awaiting was the class on Creativity & Cross Cultural Skills, taken by Ms Mrinali, an ex TCSer and an MBA graduate from INSEAD Singapore and presently running a firm known as “Paperclip”.

The intent of ‘Coaching for Creativity’ module was to help us build confidence about our own creative skills and to inspire people around us with creativity. It was to reinforce that each one of us are creative in our own way. The course started off by the introduction of the ‘Six Thinking Hats’ which really made us think! A small example of something as trivial as going for a picnic requires a great deal of planning. Each one of us eventually planned the picnic- around the principles of the thinking hats.

Another tool that we used was called ‘Po’. This tool taught us to drop what you take for granted for a particular thing, like for example a classroom will have teacher, which is taken for granted. We were told to drop the idea of a classroom having the teacher and then think of new innovative ways of teaching students. Concept of using ‘Random Word’ for helping in decision making, use of alternatives for a particular object were also very captivating. Another new concept introduced was, ‘Mindmap’, making a tree structure describing a person which was all so exciting and really made our creative cells tick.

The Coaching for ‘Cross –cultural Skills’ was another module intended to help us become global managers. This program was essentially a ‘change of mindset’ programme helping us understand the different cultures of the world. The knowledge of different cultures will help us take up assignments in any part of the world and get along with other cultures.

These classes were really very enjoyable and made us think that creativity can be helpful in every small thing that we do, in every stage of our life.

Contributed by Neha Sharan- HR Varsity (V Batch 2010-11)