Creativity for Leaders of Volunteers

Have you ever been faced with a challenging and recurring problem? You know you need to “think outside the box” in order to solve it but the breakthrough just doesn’t seem to want to come.

Our brains are pattern-making machines.

They consume roughly 20% of our body's resting energy. To manage that, it constantly looks for shortcuts. Every time you solve a problem in a particular way, it files that approach away as a pattern. The more often you use one approach, the stronger the pattern, so when a similar situation arises, your brain reaches for that pattern automatically.

It’s like a path through a field of tall grass. The more you walk it, the more defined the path, and the harder it is to step off it and try a different way.

You've probably experienced something like this: you set off to drive to the store and find yourself instead pulling into the parking lot at work. Been there, done that! That's patterning in action. You always go to work by the same route, so once you start, your brain goes on autopilot. Great when you actually are going to work. Not so much when you’re going to a nearby store.

We do it in volunteer management all the time.

We recruit, onboard, and recognise volunteers the same way we always have; not because it's the only way, but because the path is well worn and your brain takes it without asking permission.

Ever wonder why kids are so creative? It’s because they haven't developed patterns yet. Give a five-year-old a cardboard box and she'll turn it into a spaceship, a kitchen, and a dragon's lair, all before lunch. Her brain still looks at everything consciously. Unlike us, no patterns exist yet to limit her.

1. Read about how completely different industries solve problems. What can baseball coaches teach us about motivation, for example? Or business executives about time management? Our creative thinking skills grow when we have a range of material to work with.
2. Ask "what if we did the opposite?" Take a practice in your volunteer program and flip it. I heard a good example of this recently. There is a lot of drought in our province these days, and municipalities are trying to get people to stop watering their lawns. Most do it by penalising those that they catch. One, though, is giving people a chance to win money by showing off their “golden” lawns in a photo contest!
3. Try the SCAMPER technique. Once a week pick one of your regular processes and

You don’t have to actually do any of the things you come up with, but the practice of thinking about it will make you more creative.

Sarah eventually broke her pattern.

She came up with a two-part approach. First, she changed her sign-up process. Instead of simply asking volunteers to select a shift, she added a single question: "In your own words, why does this event matter to you?" The act of stating a personal reason created a sense of commitment.

Second, she introduced a buddy system, pairing each event volunteer with another. Suddenly, not showing up didn't just mean missing a shift. It meant piling extra work on someone you know.

Sarah's no-show rate dropped by more than half. That's what can happen when you step off the worn path.