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This exercise will help you realise the power of effective communication! Through it, you'll have to map out some of your organisation's challenges, whether they take place at the corporate- or consumer-level, and together with your team, you should rapidly brainstorm creative methods of using communication techniques to overcome them. As usual, all of these perspectives should be considered from a sustainability perspective.

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Through this exercise, we'll also introduce you to a few techniques for getting creativity flowing!

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What are the benefits of effective communication?

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Effective communication skills are essential for successful relationships and for the timely achievement of goals. If you communicate effectively, people are often more inclined to work with you and help you reach them.

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Below you can see some of the benefits of communicating effectively:

• Leads to the right information being shared.
• Minimises conflict and confusion.
• Saves resources, such as time and money.
• Helps establish a bond with the audience.
• Leads to the intended results being achieved.
• Leads to appropriate feedback being given and received.
• Helps build stronger relationships.

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What are some techniques to get creativity flowing?

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Sometimes, finding the creativity you need can be hard, time-consuming and demotivating. That's why, together with the template above, we wanted to suggest to you a number of different techniques that can help you find the inspiration you need!

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1. Focus on quantity over quality. We are used to the idea that "less is more". Nonetheless, when working with creativity and design thinking, our mindset should always be "more is more". You should focus on writing down as many ideas as you can, including absurd ones, before pursuing any direction or project. By doing this, you will be able to generate more viable and creative ideas, as you move through the process of eliminating those that seem less relevant.
2. Step away from your environment. If you are always working at the same desk and same office every day, chances are this is affecting your creativity. Try switching up your surroundings for a whole morning or day, even if the possibilities you have are to change your desk's decorations. Being in different spaces helps our brains focus on the different sensory triggers, sparking new ideas.
3. Gather your team and sketch ideas. Sketching has been proven to activate areas within the brain that enhance creativity, strengthen focus, and strategic thinking. You don't need to be an artist to use this technique, as everyone is able to draw, even if it's with simple lines. This method proves useful as drawing generates discussions and helps arise conversations that might not arise through written ideas.
4. Storyboarding. This technique can help you and your team to see where your collective understanding of a problem supports or conflicts with a proposed solution. Furthermore, storyboarding also allows you to identify the areas of the project/idea that require more thought and development, as it allows you to visualise the idea's development from the beginning (e.g., creation of a campaign) to the end (e.g. launch of a campaign and results).
5. S.C.A.M.P.E.R. This process will help you improve your current ideas by testing and questioning them from different angles, allowing you to think outside of the box. With this technique, you should ask yourself a related question about your idea for each of the letters of the acronym.
6. Substitute: What would happen to your idea if you swapped X for Y?
7. Combine: What would happen to your idea if you combined X & Y?
8. Adapt: What changes would you need to be made to adapt this idea in a different context?
9. Modify: What could you change to create more value on this idea?
10. Put to another use: What other uses or applications might your idea have?
11. Eliminate:  What could you remove from your idea to simplify it?
12. Reverse: How could you reorganize your idea to make it more effective?

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Having these ideas in mind, let's have a look at the different parts that the template has:

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1. Mapping Out Your Challenges

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The idea in this first part of the template is for you and your team to collectively brainstorm on the different challenges that your DMO faces in regard to communication.

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To help you narrow and cluster the ideas, we have divided the area into corporate challenges and consumer challenges. You should dedicate between 5-10 minutes to allow everyone to write down their thoughts on these two challenging areas, after which the ideas should be grouped and discussed to identify those that seem more pressing and urgent to solve.

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You can use the following sets of questions to guide you in writing down challenges:

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Corporate Challenges:

• Does everyone within the organisation understand what our goals are?
• Can you identify any areas where communication seems to be failing?
• Is reporting transparent? What reporting areas need to be improved?

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Consumer Challenges:

• How are you ensuring visitors understand what your goals are and how they can contribute to them?
• What has been the impact of previous campaigns? Did something not work as expected?
• Are you using the right platforms to reach the desired audiences?

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2. Crazy Eights

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The Crazy Eights exercise is a rapid one that will make you and each of your team members brainstorm 8 solutions in 8 minutes. The idea behind it is that by all focusing on a chosen challenge, in eight minutes each of you will come up with eight solutions for it.

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Once everyone has come up with eight solutions and has sketched them, the drawings should be included on the template. The objective will then be to discuss the different proposed solutions, allowing to generate conversations that will help further the possibility of implementing them.

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Once they have been revised, the next step is for each member of the team to vote on the two ideas they consider to be best. This will allow focusing on a number of the proposed solutions and on their possible implementation within the DMO's strategy.

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3. Alternative Worlds

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Great ideas don't arise from nowhere. Often times, creative thinkers look at common things in uncommon ways. In fact, new concepts are rarely wholly original. So, with this exercise, the idea is to help you look at different yet analogous worlds for inspiration, by asking the question What would _____ do? This will allow your team to break from conventional thinking and jump-start your team's creativity.

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The activity challenges you to investigate how a successful organisation outside your domain would approach a given issue. For example, if your team were tasked with changing the visitors' behaviours you might ask: What would The Four Seasons do?

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Doing so requires a deep understanding of their culture, practices and procedures, in order to determine what aspects can be appropriated for your purposes. Adopting the perspective of a completely different domain is a novel way to shift perspective and uncover potentially breakthrough ideas.

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The first step will require you to settle on a challenge to explore. Once you have done this, you can have a look through the different proposed organisations and add new suggestions. Afterwards, use the right-side area to add notes and ideas regarding the actions of the organisations you have chosen to focus on. Write down those initiatives you could implement within your DMO to improve your communication in regard to sustainability.

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Are you ready to get started? You can complete this activity by downloading the template below.