At CHIC Toastmasters Club of Beijing, not only do we bring humor, we also bring creativity.  And not just bring creativity to your speeches, but to your Toastmasters meetings, as well as your daily lives.

There is a popular creative tool called SCAMPER, developed by Bob Eberle.  It is used in business primarily to develop new product ideas and services.  The acronyms stands for:

• S - Substitute - components, materials, people
• C - Combine - mix, combine with other assemblies or services, integrate
• A - Adapt - alter, change function, use part of another element
• M - Modify - increase or reduce in scale, change shape, modifyattributes (e.g. colour)
• P - Put to another use
• E - Eliminate - remove elements, simplify, reduce to core functionality
• R - Reverse - turn inside out or upside down,

Like the other Creativity Tools on our website, SCAMPER facilitates and forces the user/group to think beyond their current experience of their current product and service offerings.   In truth, just like ay other tools, SCAMPER is merely a description of the cognitive process of the creative mind.  The concept is easy, it takes practice and discipline to brainstorm without prejudice, without subconsciously rejecting wild ideas or championing your own preferences.  In fact, it might be useful to combine this tool with the 6 Thinking Hats as a group brainstorming activity.

To illustrate how our mind can be creative in these seven aspects, I would use Toastmasters meetings as the product to be improved.  Go ahead and Google it, or listen to anecdotes from other club members, and you will come across many interesting ideas to make a meeting more interesting.  Granted, some of the ideas are not practical for our own club, but they provide a clue of the SCAMPERing creativity.

Substitute:  One of the most common substitutions is to bring in outside guests as speakers or role takers.  Or consider substituting the components of a meeting to make it fresh:  remove table topics (for only one meeting) and have a training session instead!  Can the meeting venue be substituted?  It has been done in other clubs for special occasions for celebration.

Combine:  Some clubs have conduct joint-meetings, though I haven’t experienced it, or heard of it being done in Beijing.   On a high-level, that can be seen as combination.  Within our meeting elements, what can be combined?  Smaller clubs are forced to ‘combine’ multiple roles into one person.  Toastmaster also does the greeting portion of the meeting;  Thought that’s not a creative combination.  However, Lance Miller, a TM International Champion, has talked of using the speaker/evaluator combination:  Because his level far exceeds other members of his club, he evaluated himself by looking at the video recording.  The real-time evaluation (during the prepared speech, the evaluator would interrupt and give feedback) combines the elements in a different way.

Adapt: I am hard pressed to think of any real examples of this at Toastmasters Meetings.  The idea is to adapt a functionality of an existing component onto another component.  However, using this tool, I have come up with 2 ideas that might be worth exploring at our club:  Adapt Greeting to Table Topics:  TT Participants will pull out the guest information (name, occupation, why they came to visit),  and do a 2 minute introduction on the guest—creatively adding on information to complete the speech.  What about adapting evaluation to Table Topics?  TT participants will be asked to comment on a particular aspect of a prepared speech.

Modify: I believe speechathons belong in this category:  increase from 4 to 8 or more prepared speeches.  Or schedule to have only advanced speeches that meeting;  Thoroughly use the meeting THEME throughout:  for example, if the theme is about ‘Pirates’, then may components throughout the meeting will be modified slightly around that theme.   I believe this is the best use of Modify for the meetings, as it can add fresh modifications every week.

Put to another use: By the nature of our Toastmasters Club, we are legally limited in the nature of ‘products’ that we can deliver in our meetings and activities.  We can’t blindly come up with activities that are not pursuant of the mission of TMI.  Some ideas within the boundaries might be plan the topics of the prepared speeches so they are also used for teaching the audience about a subject.  In the beginning of the financial crisis, CCTMC had a ‘training session’, in which the experienced members delivered their speeches about interviewing/job-hunting/career planning.

Eliminate:  The club meetings that I have attended and read about pretty much follow the basic format.  There aren’t redundant components to eliminate:  each role has its purpose. Beijing Advanced TM Club eliminated the Ah Counter, Grammarian Role for their specific objective.   Of course, along the way, clubs may create components or roles that better suit their culture, such as two Jokemasters in CHIC.  As long as the objectives of the club remain, then the purpose to ‘eliminate’ should be little.  One may look at Combine, or Substitute, or Modify, if a particular component isn’t working as well as it could.

Reverse:  One particularly crazy idea I read about is to reverse the order of the meeting.  That even includes, evaluations given before the speeches.  Then the speeches need to tailor to the points made in the evaluation.  Sounds quite difficult.  The idea surely would be fresh, and stimulate fun and thinking on your feet.

Can you also SCAMPER in your club and make your meetings more fun, engaging and creative?  Brainstorm with your Excom members.