Purpose of Group Learning Task
The current study based on evaluating issues of an Australian Game development organization- Torus Games and offering solutions by employing applied innovation and creative thinking methods. Timeline crunch due to preponing of release or changes in the game design is found a common issue in TORUS games. Over scoping of employee work hours is an average practice. It has caused employee dissatisfaction, hampering their work-life balance and higher employee turnover in recent times. A major reason is a heavy competition from start-ups and hurried release of a game due to strategic management decision.
Considering the present situation, the present report aims to present a creative solution to mitigate such issues if a situation arises again. The recommendations are chosen based on the varied brainstorming methods implemented during the study. This report also presents the strengths and weakness of the chosen creative methods to resolve the issues of Torus Games. The study ends with mind mapping for the creative flow conducted by the work groups and finally the personal reflection of the researcher.
The late 20th century has changed the organisational model in an explicit way. The beginning of the ‘knowledge age’ has broken down the traditional role of the employees while working with an innovative firm (Torus.com.au, 2018). Considering the case of TORUS game, it has been identified that the high dissatisfaction level of employees hampers the productivity of the firm. Therefore, maintaining workplace flexibility and employee collaboration becomes a high challenge for the TORUS management (Torus.com.au, 2018). According to Kulinski (2018), the lack of focus in strategic hiring has already minimised the process of constructing a diverse functional group within the firm. Furthermore, the challenges of aligning the innovation strategy in this relevant workplace issue have become more significant for TORUS in terms of dropping the performance index. All in all, the management of the chosen firm is also failed to take advantage of this innovative ecosystem to reduce the employee turnover rate.
As per the view of career analyst Daniel Pink, leaders’ autonomy and mastery is the wrong way to motivate the innovative workers in this challenging work environment. Supporting the self-driven approach stated by Daniel Pink, Moulin et al (2016) mentioned that the fundamental principle of this chosen approach provides freedom to the employees for exploring innovative output while designing or developing a game. Additionally, the current model also highlights a specific purpose both for the team and management to enhance the productivity of the firm. Thus, the workforce would get motivated directly and incorporate the innovative ideas while designing a game for TORUS (Rosenzweig & Grinstein, 2015). Hence, the management must include the self-driven approach in the employee management model so that a scope of learning and creating innovative things can be offered to the employees.
Group Evaluation and Presentation
(Source: Royston & Reiter-Palmon, 2017, 50)
In case of solving the project preponing issue in TORUS, the employees need to be more deliberate to meet the project objectives by improving the innovative ideas and affirmative thinking. The decision makers must avoid the quick ruling attitude for the sake of measuring the project risk factors. Adding to this, Dewhurst et al (2011) asserted that the employees of TORUS must employ a deep analysis thinking regarding the situation so that a probable solution would become easy to find out. Therefore, the use of convergent tools would help the firm to make the process more synchronised and also eliminate the inaccuracies from the ongoing job flow.
However, the divergent tools allow both employers and employees of TORUS to discover a conceivable solution to an identified problem. This tool would be helpful to identify the best option while a spontaneous workflow is running within the firm. Therefore, in the case of preponing the TOURAS’s game launching program, the aim of divergent thinking would generate several ideas as a backup plan for solving the short time delivery issue (Sousa et al 2014). This kind of continuous process management program would organise the employee thinking level towards work and engage the workers to meet the predefined goal of the firm.
(Source: Dewhurst et al, 2011, 70)
In order to solve the identified problems in TOURAS, the method of brainstorming would offer an informal and comfortable approach with a perspective of lateral thinking. As per the view of Goldenberg & Wiley (2011), brainstorming is one of the powerful techniques that combine the group of employees and the random activities to make it more structured. As a consequence, creative solutions to the identified problems would come out and this could be implemented robustly to facilitate the managers and the subordinates (Moulin et al 2016). Furthermore, the conventional approach of brainstorming would influence the employee of TOURAS to avoid making incorrect criticism within the workplace, therefore, most of the assumption based issues between the management and workers would get resolved easily (Vass et al 2008). Hence, this kind of analytical process would offer an unrestricted and transparent work environment that encourages the workforce to participate in the decision-making process.
The above-mentioned techniques and adopted methods would help TOURAS in reviewing the resource management process mainly. This specific approach would increase the process of innovation in TOURS while designing and developing a game within a stipulated period of time. In addition, Webb et al (2017) asserted that this type of specific strategies would support the needs of training and development initiatives that could further change the employee behaviours towards the firm. A compelling leadership style could be applied to develop the essential skills required for innovation. Furthermore, it would become easy to establish a ‘cross-functional team’ who will be always active in any kind of challenging situation (Zhou et al 2011). Consequently, TOURAS management would be able to promote a flexible and collaborative work culture by increasing more employee participation within the firm. Hence, more participation and contribution of the TOURAS employees within the workplace would help in developing an ironic array of innovative solutions.
Overview of Torus Gaming Organisation and its Issues
In the exploration and idea generation phase, the team has come up with a bunch of possible approaches that can tackle the focused problems. The used method for evaluating and recommending possible ideas into the solution is:
In order to boost up a specific type of thinking by all team players, ‘Six thinking Hat’ was used, as it helps to boost creative thinking among team members (Kivunja, 2015). This process has helped the team members exploring the creative thinking areas. Along with the scope of addressing employee motivation and workplace innovation, process development of the game designing with the imagination and priority has also been supported in this process. In the parallel thinking session, every team member used to wear the same colour hat to ensure that the group has focused on the same issue in a similar manner (Kaur, 2017). The usage of different colours portrayed different perspectives on the design making process. While choosing the best possible outcomes and recommendations, the team wore the yellow and black hat. Yellow hat motivated the team to be optimistic while judging the scenario and initiating possible solutions. On the other hand, the black hat has helped to be critical, cautious and careful while selecting the possible recommendations from the brainstorming sessions.
(Source: MacDonald et al, 2017, 55)
This technique was adopted to visualise all possible options and its strength to mitigate the existing employee turnover issue of Torus Games. The video conferencing linked all possible innovative solutions into a single space, which has enabled the decision makers choosing the best solutions. In this context, Kohn & Smith (2010) stated that solution generated from visual collaboration enabled the company to bring team creativity and timelines within the specific project. Considering the fact, the researcher has also used visual collaborative tool to socialise multiple ideas and choosing the best possible outcome.
|
Auditing Employee socialisation Automating using AI Back up with alternate game feature during the time crunch |
||
|
Auditing |
Agree |
Agree |
|
Employee Socialisation |
Agree |
Agree |
|
Remote working and flexible work hour |
Disagree |
Disagree |
|
Chill-out space at office |
Disagree |
Agree |
|
Automating the game-play and level testing using Artificial intelligence (AI) |
Agree |
Agree |
|
Back up with a reduced feature of game |
Agree |
Agree |
(Source: Created by author)
The outcome of parallel and collaborative thinking session has helped to find out the best solutions through active evaluation of each option. Among the list of possible solutions generated from brainstorming session, Auditing, Employee socialisation, Automating the game-play and level testing, and back up with the reduced feature set of the game has been considered as possible recommendations to mitigate the identified issues.
From both the sessions stated above, it has been assessed that a third party auditing can help the company assessing core employee issues and the reason behind the turnover. Kulinski (2018) stated that in-house audit process sometimes fail to identify the root causes behind an identified issue, which can be mitigated through a third party audit team. Thus, the selection of auditing can be considered justified enough to mitigate the existing employee management issue of Torus games.
Potential Solutions for Torus Games
Since the employees are stressed and lack work-life balance, socialisation among the peers and the families can provide some sort of mental peace and relief from the stress. Thus, the chosen recommendation from the above-mentioned approaches can be considered effective enough to mitigate the issues.
Since the employees are experiencing timeline crunch and over scoping on a daily basis, the part of game-play and level testing can be automated, which help employees managing the project timeline. This recommendation is chosen as the best option of the innovative solution, as the majority of contemporary organisations fail to provide innovative approaches and rather focused more on core HRM solutions to mitigate issues (Craft & Wegerif, 2006). The presently chosen solution can be considered more crucial as the employee management issues are raising from the lack of time availability and pushing methods implemented by the management of Torus Games.
A game with a set production time is designed with a fixed number of features. However, implementing the same features with a reduced time-line, causes stress to the employees and results in poor game-play. Hence, an alternative game design with a reduced set of features can be planned from the very beginning in case the time-line changes during the production of the game.
The six hat thinking approach has helped to focus on the creativity, based on the situational demand of Torus Games. The lateral thinking and innovation is found in core strengths, which have also come from the implementation of visual collaborative thinking methods. The concept development and evaluation through the implementation of six hat thinking approach was found robust to come up with different innovative ideas and problem-solving mechanism. Caniëls & Rietzschel (2015) stated that in order to bring creativity, the team members need to have an entrepreneurial skill set to lead the creative decision-making process beyond the existing issues (McCarthy et al 2010). The adoption of these two approaches together brought entrepreneurial strengths on each of the participants, resulted in successful framing of innovative solutions. Thus, the selection of two approaches found potential enough to identify the root causes and the best possible solutions to mitigate employee de-motivation and turn over within the workplace of Torus Games.
Despite having core strengths, one of the major limitations found was lack of practical implementation of the creative idea in a robust way. The chosen models were found effective enough to bring innovativeness and acted as the source of creative element accumulation. However, these approaches failed to implement the creative idea in the best possible ways, which can be done by implementing ‘Imagineering’ method. Although the idea harvesting and development method was found as the core strength of different brainstorming methods applied by the present work-groups, it has limited the researchers to continuous improvement of the innovative solutions (Minkel, 2008). The present company is lacking innovative approach as it is a complex task and it requires continuous improvement in the creative problem-solving area to mitigate employee management issues with due changes in the organisational complexity. Thus, in the long run, allocation of only critical thinking and visual collaboration method might not be potent enough. Lack of alternative view- point was found another limitation of the chosen two methods.
Impact of Different Approaches on Torus Games
(Source: Created by author)
The above mind map visually organises the main information used in a specific study (Malycha & Maier, 2017). The core of the diagram is presented in the central theme of employee dissatisfaction at TORUS Games. The root causes have been identified and associated with the theme. Each root cause is then further mapped with some solutions that is harvested by brainstorming among the team members. Each branched out solution is associated with the root causes that can solve the issue in particular. The individual solutions are again connected with the outcomes that represent how the issue are addressed by them. Many factors are quite interdependent, however too much connections are not included to avoid confusion. The following link redirects to the published mind map diagram on the Mind Mup online tool:
https://atlas.mindmup.com/2018/09/37283cd0bcb011e8ab361dd499b37049/employee_dissatisfaction_at_torus_games/index.html
Conclusion:
At the end of the study, it is seen that innovative and creative thinking approaches can be successfully applied to solve some critical and persisting issues in a company. As in the case of TORUS games, the main issue of employee dissatisfaction is due to the frequent shift in timelines for the completion of a game production. It results in an overstressed condition of the employees. However, innovative ideas were harvested using brainstorming that can tackle the pressing issue. Several creative thinking mechanisms were successfully used to finally deduce some solid approaches that can be applied by the management team of TORUS games to face the main issue.
This study has allowed me to gain much insight on the methodologies of the applied creativity and innovation and how these can be used to solve existing real-life problems. To start the process, we first required to create a case for creativity by clearly stating and establishing the problem. This has allowed us to understand the probable reasons that cause the employee dissatisfaction. Once the problem is stated, brainstorming can be used to come up with a lot of ideas. As the given case is relatively abstract, divergent thinking method is also useful to generate ideas to explore several possible solutions for the stated issue. A major take away in the idea harvesting phase is that deliberate creative thinking is a forced practice that will allow solving a given problem with a comparatively easy path which is otherwise overlooked.
Once several ideas have been generated, the focus was to select the best possible solution which is innovative and sustainable in the long run to reduce the human efforts and to continue with the production. The evaluation of the generated idea using parallel thinking was useful in this regards. The team used 6 thinking hat and collaborative thinking approaches to discuss in details the effectiveness of each solution and cohesively decide on the most viable solutions. The process demanded much focus on the team’s creative energy to analyse each solution.
Brainstorming and Six Thinking Hat Technique
The whole study was really enlightening towards the utility and set practices of creative thinking. With limited time of completion, the team has put in as much effort required summing up the work. Given more time, some other methods could have been employed to judge the situation better and assess the outcomes in realistic terms. I would definitely use similar approaches to resolve any fundamental issue, which I am going to face in the future.
References:
Caniëls, M., & Rietzschel, E. (2015). Organizing Creativity: Creativity and Innovation under Constraints. Creativity And Innovation Management, 24(2), 184-196. doi: 10.1111/caim.12123
Craft, A., & Wegerif, R. (2006). Thinking Skills and Creativity. Thinking Skills And Creativity, 1(1), 1-2. doi: 10.1016/j.tsc.2005.12.001
Dewhurst, S., Thorley, C., Hammond, E., & Ormerod, T. (2011). Convergent, but not divergent, thinking predicts susceptibility to associative memory illusions. Personality And Individual Differences, 51(1), 73-76. doi: 10.1016/j.paid.2011.03.018
Goldenberg, O., & Wiley, J. (2011). Quality, Conformity, and Conflict: Questioning the Assumptions of Osborn’s Brainstorming Technique. The Journal Of Problem Solving, 3(2). doi: 10.7771/1932-6246.1093
Kaur, M. (2017). Six Thinking Hats (STH): An Instructional Strategy to Develop Creative Thinking. Asian Man (The) – An International Journal, 11(2), 221. doi: 10.5958/0975-6884.2017.00038.x
Kivunja, C. (2015). Using De Bono’s Six Thinking Hats Model to Teach Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills Essential for Success in the 21st Century Economy. Creative Education, 06(03), 380-391. doi: 10.4236/ce.2015.63037
Kohn, N., & Smith, S. (2010). Collaborative fixation: Effects of others’ ideas on brainstorming. Applied Cognitive Psychology, 25(3), 359-371. doi: 10.1002/acp.1699
Kulinski, A. (2018). Awakening the Creative Problem Solver. Art Education, 71(5), 42-47. doi: 10.1080/00043125.2018.1482165
MacDonald, K., Oberski, I., Christie, K., & Stears, A. (2017). Innovative co-evaluation and co-creation of an online learning programme with de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats. The Journal Of Educational Innovation, Partnership And Change, 3(2), 45-66. doi: 10.21100/jeipc.v3i2.534
Malycha, C., & Maier, G. (2017). The Random-Map Technique: Enhancing Mind-Mapping with a Conceptual Combination Technique to Foster Creative Potential. Creativity Research Journal, 29(2), 114-124. doi: 10.1080/10400419.2017.1302763
McCarthy, D., Reeves, E., & Turner, T. (2010). Can employee share?ownership improve employee attitudes and behaviour?. Employee Relations, 32(4), 382-395. doi: 10.1108/01425451011051604
Minkel, J. (2008). The Roots of Creativity. Scientific American Mind, 19(3), 8-8. doi: 10.1038/scientificamericanmind0608-8b
Moulin, C., Kaeri, Y., Sugawara, K., & Abel, M. (2016). Capitalization of remote collaborative brainstorming activities. Computer Standards & Interfaces, 48, 217-224. doi: 10.1016/j.csi.2015.11.006
Rosenzweig, S., & Grinstein, A. (2015). How Resource Challenges Can Improve Firm Innovation Performance: Identifying Coping Strategies. Creativity And Innovation Management, 25(1), 110-128. doi: 10.1111/caim.12122
Royston, R., & Reiter-Palmon, R. (2017). Creative self-efficacy as mediator between creative mindsets and creative problem-solving. The Journal Of Creative Behavior, 4(7), 32-55. doi: 10.1002/jocb.226
Sousa, F., Monteiro, I., Walton, A., & Pissarra, J. (2014). Adapting Creative Problem Solving to an Organizational Context: A Study of its Effectiveness with a Student Population. Creativity And Innovation Management, 23(2), 111-120. doi: 10.1111/caim.12070
Torus.com.au, T. (2018). Torus Games. Retrieved from https://www.torus.com.au/
Vass, E., Littleton, K., Miell, D., & Jones, A. (2008). The discourse of collaborative creative writing: Peer collaboration as a context for mutual inspiration. Thinking Skills And Creativity, 3(3), 192-202. doi: 10.1016/j.tsc.2008.09.001
Webb, M., Little, D., Cropper, S., & Roze, K. (2017). The contributions of convergent thinking, divergent thinking, and schizotypy to solving insight and non-insight problems. Thinking & Reasoning, 23(3), 235-258. doi: 10.1080/13546783.2017.1295105
Zhou, Q., Hirst, G., & Shipton, H. (2011). Promoting Creativity at Work: The Role of Problem-Solving Demand. Applied Psychology, 61(1), 56-80. doi: 10.1111/j.1464-0597.2011.00455.x
Order an Essay Now & Get These Features For Free:
Turnitin Report
Formatting
Title Page
Citation
Outline
