In a previous post Building Innovation Part 1I asserted that everyone at one time was creative and innovative and that creativity was actually unlearned. So what can you do to regain your creativity? What can you do to rebuild the creativity of those in your organization and thereby the creativity of your organization? Here are 6 processes you can implement.
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1. Develop a Learning Environment – Creativity is more easily achieved with a broad range of knowledge. Learn as much as you can about as many things as you can. Ideas are like dots. Creativity is not a collection of dots. Creativity and innovation is creating new connection between the dots. Before you can make the connections you must first have the dots. As Steve Jobs once said, “Creativity is just having enough dots to connect.â€Â You get the dots by experiencing and learning many different things.
2. Encourage Challenges to Conventional Wisdom and Assumptions – First the bad news, challenges to conventional wisdom will usually fail. Conventional wisdom became conventional wisdom because it usually works. But because it works does not mean it is the best way to achieve a result. Now the good news, when you find a piece of conventional wisdom that is incorrect you will be ahead or everyone else because they are still following conventional wisdom. Conventional wisdom should be challenged to see if it still holds true. Ric Merrifield in his book, Re-Think, points out we should understand the “what†of a task rather than examining the “how.†This allows us to better understand the assumptions we are making about the tasks we are doing. He gives an example of sending a fax. What are you really doing? What you are doing is communicating status or confirming an order. Once you understand the “what†then you can question its value and optimize the “how†of what you are doing. 3. Expect and Allow for Failure – Challenging conventional wisdom and established assumptions will often lead to failure so an organization needs to allow for failure if it is going to encouraged innovation. Dr. Robert Goddard, the father of modern space flight said, “Failures are valuable negative information.†Since the vast majority of your innovation projects will fail you need an organization that can run multiple projects at the same time. Then move the talent off of the failed projects to those that show promise. If the success rate is low then simple probability would state that the more innovation projects you start the greater the chance of having one that will be a winner. The odds of success of having 1 success out of 200 are much greater than having 1 success out of 10. So the question is how can you increase your chance of success without diluting your effort. The key is constant evaluation. If a project is not adding value to the organization or your customer then the project is terminated and resources are realigned. Once the ideas are gathered they need to be evaluated. In order to control costs you have to be able to make decisions quickly this means being able to make go/no go decision without a lot of bureaucracy. Organizations need a lean decision making process to identify and cut loose the looser and invest in those ideas that will bring value. Projects or ideas are terminated rather than jettisoned because the project may contain value data or information to solve tomorrow’s problem. 4. Provide a Fun Playful Environment – There are two types of play. There is the playfulness that is simply practicing being creative. Then there is the type of play that is directed and has a purpose. The type of playing I am referring to is not the same as leisure. This is work. You are not going to golf course to relax and get some exercise. But it should be fun. The play needs to use your creative skills too, to allow you to re-learn the creativity you unlearned. When you are practicing playfulness you are not trying to solve a problem it is simply developing the skills needed to be creative. It may be doodling, composing music, sculpting with clay or Lego’s. Several years ago I saw how Cisco did a good job of this. In the lunch and break room they have a dish of Lego’s on every table. In order to develop and maintain highly creative engineers they encouraged their engineers to be playful and be creative all the time. They provided Lego’s for their engineers to play with during breaks and lunch. Playing with a purpose is playing with the tools and materials you use in your trade to solve problems. It allows experimentation of different materials and tools to solve a specific problem. It is like a programmer getting a new piece of software and asking what happens if I do this? It is not the same as reading the manual. What you may discover may not be contained in the manual. It is not the analytical experimentation. It is playful, and fun. But it is directed at solving a problem the organization needs solved. 5. Encourage Innovation Teams – Innovation teams are teams of dissimilar individuals. You will remember creativity is combining ideas that have not been combined previously. Also remember one way to allow ideas to be combined is to challenge assumptions. Since it is difficult to recognize your own assumptions putting together innovation team of dissimilar people allows problems to be viewed from different points of view. The accountant, engineer, and sales person all have different interests and capabilities and therefore see the problem differently. None of these view points are necessarily wrong. They are just different. It is all the same problem just viewed from different vantage points. Having a team of dissimilar people all working on a project also allows input from different departments early on and thus problems later on in the process can be over come earlier or, an idea can be terminated early on because does not solve a key part of the problem. 6. Evaluate for Value Added – We are all aware of projects made it all the way to the market place only to see them fail and either sink or nearly sink an organization. The organization violated a key principle. It forgot it is the customer that determines rather or not value has been added. It does not matters if all the company executives believe this is a great project or how novel the technology is. It is the market place that is the ultimate test. At every step along the way the customer needs to be consulted and if the idea is not providing value the idea needs to be changed or terminated Run cheap, quick tests to make sure you are on the right track. The first step could be running the idea back by a few customers to gauge their feedback. But don’t over think these tests. Get enough feedback to hone the idea and mitigate risk/exposure of taking it to the next step. |
9 ways to be more creative
1. Read more stuff
Magazines, books, blogs, food labels… it doesn’t really matter — just read. The more you know the more you have to be creative with.
2. Listen to Music
The type of music you listen to can help you generate different types of ideas. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that the IQ level jumps while listening to classical music. If you don’t like classical music, (which I did not for along time) get over it. It actually increases your brain power.
3. Listen to great speakers
Listen to great speakers speak. Don’t just listen watch as well. How did they deliver the message? How did they capture the audience’s attention? What kind of stories did they use and why?
4. Read quotes
Quotes from people generally capture a spark of an idea in a sentence or two. Here is a link to a site containing a lot of different kinds of quotes. Brainy Quotes
5. Turn Off the Television
I have never heard anyone yell, “I got it” while watching a sitcom. Television dulls the imagination rather than sharpening it.
6. Play games
Word games such as crossword puzzles or Scrabble, or strategy games like risk, chess or checkers are great ways to get the mental gears lubricated.
7. Study History
What have problems have people faced in the past? How did they solve them? They did not have the resources you have. Even kings could not dream of doing the things you are capable of doing. They way they solved a problem may help you identify a unique solution for a problem you are facing.
8. Express yourself — journal, sketch, paint
It does not have to be an artistic master pieces just do it. Express both your thoughts and your feelings. The spark of an ideas you capture today may become a bonfire of an idea tomorrow. They say a person has over 60,000 thoughts per day. Don’t let them get away.
9. Pay attention
Most of your creativity will be the result of being aware of what is happening around you.
Are You an Extremist?
Do you want to make a difference? You can’t do that by being one of the masses. If you are in the middle, main stream, or moderate the one thing you cannot do is make a difference. The reason is simple your ideas, are just like every one else’s . If you are trying to think outside the box you are trying to think like everyone else. How is there a box? What is the purpose of a box? Think like a magician! What would be the most unexpected turn from where your product is right now? Or what your company is doing right now. It is the unexpected that is delights your customers and confounds your competitors.
The people in the middle of any issue or idea, i.e. the moderates, will never be the one responsible for changing a company, a product, or a culture. It is the extremist the ones with the radical ideas that move us in one direction or another. Extremism serves a purpose to move the boundaries of what is acceptable and what is not. Seth Godin in a recent blog recognized and commented on this very idea. An op-ed peice in the New York times by David Brooks comments on how similar the tea party and the new left from the 60 appear and behave. They are both extremist but they have/will make a difference. Those who voted for Perot in the 80’s did not throw their vote away. They changed the course of american politics for 20 years. If you are to make a change real in your the market place you need to be different. As Godin noted you will probably will not be able to move the masses all the way. Instead, what you will do is make them feel safe to change the boundaries. Over time, successful extremist don’t argue to win. “They argue to move the goalposts and to make it appear sane to do so.”
Make a difference, think like a magician and do something radical.
Why are you here?
I was listening to a gentleman yesterday talk about goal setting. He was big into goal setting and set big goals for himself. And he almost always achieves them. He was not always like that. He use to set goals and then may or may not achieve them. He response to missing the goal was, “Oh well.”What made the difference was the fact that he started looking at the reason behind the goal. He wanted to understand why achieving a particular goal was important to him. As he understood why he wanted to achieve that goal, he was better able to motivate himself into achieving the goal. It kept him focused and allowed him to make mid course corrections.
Understanding why we want to accomplish something gives us guidance as to how to accomplish it. Additionally it constantly reminds us why a particular goal is important. So before you set up your daily tasks, or set out next quarter’s goals or milestones. Ask yourself this question. So what? So what if you make the goal? So what if you do not make the goal? What difference will it make? Ask yourself, what is really important to you. Why are you here? What is your purpose?
I know a man who says the most important thing in his life is his family. But he spends all of his time on other things. He bemoans the fact his oldest set of grandchildren are grown and they do not even know him. Yet he does not spend time with his youngest grandchildren in spite of pleas from his children. He simply “does not have the time.” Other things get in the way. Here is the rub. I believe him. I believe he values his family, but he does not know how to set priorities. As a result other things get in the way of accomplishing what his true goal is, his family.
So take some time and reflect. Only once you understand your purpose will you be able to properly set your goals. Once you understand what your goal is, work backwards setting yearly, quarterly, monthly, weekly, and daily goals that will allow you to fulfill your purpose. It all starts with asking, “Why am I here?”
Right now I am going to have lunch with my wife. She is a priority in my life.
Innovation and Compliance Its Both And, Not Either Or
There has been a lot written lately about the poor job schools are doing in teaching innovation. What they teach is compliance and conformity. I agree that school can and should do a better job of teaching student to think and not just mechanically follow a set of rules. However, the unstated assumption of these writers is, conformity to rules inhibits creativity and innovation. That is, conformity to rules is bad and breaking the rules is good. I must say I disagree.
Rules can provide a framework to communicate, keep us safe and to create. They provide an understanding of the world around us. The English language has certain rules. These rules allow us to communicate and understand that communication. Understanding rules in this case does not inhibit creativity or innovation it provides a framework to express it. Think of the beautiful poetry or the wonderful stories you have either hear or read. Without rules of grammar and spelling nothing would have been communicated. It is understanding the laws of physics that keep me from stepping off a cliff. Following these rules keep us safe. These same laws of physics that provide us the framework to invent. The rules of etiquette allow us to have a civil discourse. So conformity to rules does not necessarily inhibit creativity. Rather it can make creativity possible.
It is not compliance to rules that inhibit creativity it is the assumption of invalid assumptions. So what is required is critical thinking skills. Thinking and challenging assumptions with the rules of logic is to source of creativity. The choice is not between innovation and compliance. Rather the challenge is to think.