While organising my Creative Thinking training, I ask participants to provide me with real 
life examples of their problems to work on during the workshop.
In order to make the workshop as relevant for them as possible, it is best to work on real problems.
I ask them to send me two kinds of problems:
- HOME:
2-3 problems they have at home
Examples:
- I keep loosing matching socks during the washing
- How do I get my kids to clean up their room? - WORK:
2-3 problems they have at work
- How do we get more new customers?
- How do we best promote out company/brand?
Problems should be realistic, precise and relevant to participant’s life (i.e. ‘How to make a million dollars in a month’ might be useful, but it’s not very realistic and precise. You might as well play the lottery instead of attending the workshop 
Funny enough, this little exercise seems to represent the first creative hurdle.
We all have problems. Small and big. But when we’re asked to voice them, put them in writing so that they can be used in a workshop, we freeze.
It means we really have to think twice about how we formulate the problem. Because it will be read and heard by others. It will be worked on during a workshop. It will be dissected, turned upside down, analyzed and judged.
We want to make sure that our problems are airtight before that happens. We want them to be ‘good’ problems, important and relevant.
This exercise already makes participants judge, in this case themselves. And judging is a killer of creativity.
I am not saying that their questions won’t be good or creative. They will be tinted.
And the goal of the training is to get to the bottom of the real problem.
By asking the right questions. By drilling down to the root of the problem.
Because solving problems creatively is a waste of time if you’re working on the wrongly formulated question.
So if you are interested in getting to the root of your problems and finding creative solutions for them, don’t hesitate to contact us for a training.