Where will your creativity be 1 year from now?
Derek Robertson , CEO
(Chartered FCIPD, MCMI, MInstLM, NLP Practitioner and Coach)
Author of The Great Cape Escapade (A Fable about effective meetings)
6 min read
Introduction
“I’m not creative.” How many times have you heard this, or said it yourself? Yet it’s self-evidently bogus, otherwise we’d still be bashing one another over the head in our caves.
Creativity’s essential to all our businesses if they’re to thrive. We sure have enough problems to solve. Regardless of sector, it’s in our interests to have the means to help ourselves, and the people around us, be creative.
In this blog we’ll address the creativity ghosts that get in the way, offer a simple process and give away a free creative thinking helper for you to use straightaway.
Creativity
The male world high jump record was stagnant at seven feet five (2.28m) before Dick Fosbury’s ‘Fosbury Flop’ appeared in the 1968 Olympics. It's now eight feet (2.45m). Who cares how he came up with it. What we know is that before him there simply wasn’t a way to improve.
Our businesses need to tap into creative solutions to solve the everyday challenges and the existential threats to our organisations. And for now, the biggest resource in turning on that tap is us . . . humans . . . our people.
Releasing their creativity in business is in four easy steps:
- Exorcising people’s ghosts
- Getting people in the zone to contribute fully
- Having a logical process
- Using straightforward techniques to help
Exorcising people’s ghosts
Just like you can’t help someone learn if their internal blockers are too powerful (“I can’t do art” for example), it's the same with creative thinking.
- “I’m [insert job role] so not creative.”
- “Our work is heavily regulated so can’t be creative.”
- “I’m not paid to be creative.”
It’s all phooey, but still a real blocker within those you need to enlist in making improvements and solving problems.
I find it best to address this head on with an everyday example. Usually, it’s a trades person who faced a seemingly impossible problem when working in my house yet came up with an ingenious solution. Interestingly never referred to it as ‘creative’.
Getting people in the zone
One thing exorcising ghosts. The next is making it totally comfortable to voice suggestions. Two main things to address here:
#1 Breaking internal thinking blocks
Most of us are paid to follow process: A to B to C to D. You’ll want to help them break that to contribute their thoughts and possibilities. That’s best achieved with a warm up activity, not related to the subject at hand but one to break process thinking. I do a 3-minute alternative uses of an everyday item like a plastic water cup. Ideas at speed. No assessing. Just lots and lots of ideas.
#2 No judgements
People will not contribute if they’ll get shot down. Why on earth should they take a risk. That means every contribution gets welcomed not judged. Plenty time later for judging.
Having a logical process
Inspiration in the shower does happen. There are sound reasons why but not for this blog. Creative solutions are part of a logical process. Which is why roles like engineers, scientists and accountants are creative by nature (not the illegal creative accounting of course). I share this process with our clients:
- Defining the problem
- Unleasing creativity
- Assessing ideas
- Deciding
Then moving to testing, reviewing and implementing.
Using straightforward techniques
Imagine a team of experienced scaffolders suddenly asked to come up with a creative solution to the comapny's stuff getting stolen from construction sites. A lead balloon of a session is predicted.
More likely to work is:
- Not calling it ‘creative’
- Warming them up as above
- Using a straightforward technique to help.
There are lots and lots of them out there. How about these:
- Random word technique
- Morphological forced connections
- The lotus blossom technique
I agree they sound strange. Their names are less important than how truly fab they are at generating ideas on the way to assessment and decisions.
Your takeaways
- Creativity is an essential capability for a thriving business.
- Your people are your biggest creative resource
- It’s a logical simple process with a few key ingredients that guarantees success
Final thought
Give it a go, click below to download a free helper for the Random word technique.
Use it with some colleagues to generate ideas to solve a problem then bask in the glory of your collective creativity. It’ll work. Promise
Your next action
Check out the following free resources and downloads to help you: