You, Creativity, and Business

Do you consider yourself to be "creative?"

Do you want to breed some creativity in your workplace?

Then we need to help people, including ourselves, get back to first grade. And be intentional about it.

I started my career as a teacher. If you ask first-graders how many of them are "creative," pretty much all of the hands in the class go up. They smile. They show their colorful drawings and finger painting and maybe even compose a song along the way.

What happens when the same question is asked of the same kids a few years later?

The responses drop to nearly zero. And the kids are still in elementary school.

Fast forward to your business meeting. Someone says, "Let's get creative about how to grow the market in Asia. We've got until 5 o'clock."

Are you and I seeing the same thing here?

We've got little kids who are convinced they are creative. Then we've got bigger little kids who begin to think not. Now we've got adults who are sure they aren't creative but are being asked to create--and with a deadline.

This post is a call for thought, not a rant. (Well, a little one). It seems to me that we have taken an entire population of creative youngsters, told them to color inside the box (or else!), and now tell them to "think outside the box"--(or else!).

Nine things to encourage creativity

Silvano Arieti  wrote a book in 1976 called Creativity: The Magic Synthesis (you can get a used copy through amazon.com). Here are his nine conditions and the reasons why:

1. Aloneness. Being alone allows the person to make contact with the self and be open to new kinds of inspiration.

2. Inactivity. Periods of time are needed to focus on inner resources and to be removed from the constraints of routine activities.

3. Daydreaming. Allows exploration of one's fantasy life and venturing into new avenues for growth.

4. Free thinking. Allows the mind to wander in any direction without restriction and permits the similarities among remote topics or concepts to emerge.

5. State of readiness to catch similarities. One must practice recognizing similarities and resemblances across to perceptual of cognitive domains.

6. Gullibility. A willingness to suspend judgment allows one to be open to possibilities without treating them as nonsense.

7. Remembering & replaying past traumatic conflicts. Conflict can be transformed into more stable creative products.

8. Alertness. A state of awareness that permits the person to grasp the relevance of seemingly insignificant similarities.

9. Discipline. A devotion to the techniques, logic, and repetition that permit creative ideas to be realized.

So now we go to our boss and say "I'd like to have some extended alone time for inactivity and daydreaming so I can come up with a creative idea for your strategy."

(Please let me know how that conversation goes).

You can act to create creativity

Then next time you're in charge of a meeting or idea session, how about using some of the above items to lay a foundation for creativity.

• Build in "alone time" by having people think about the task well in advance.

• Use something like a mind-mapping activity to address numbers 4 and 5.

• Suspend judgment and encourage the craziest ideas in the room, because

• Alertness (number 8) will connect the "crazy" dots

I hope you'll use these to start thinking about how you can recapture creativity. And be intentional about it. It sounds almost like an oxymoron--"intentional creativity"--but according to number 9 it isn't.

Intentional Creativity--that's a lot easier to sell to your boss than some alone time.

Comments

[MyOfficeBuzz]

Cynthia Stohl and George Cheney, two organizational communication professors, describe some of the hidden barriers to creativity as paradoxes. For example, "be creative and spontaneous in the ways in which we (mgmt) want you to be." "I order you to think independently." Perhaps one of the ways of enhancing creativity in your employees is giving them the freedom to think differently. Not just telling them to think creatively but rewarding people who are willing to take risks and do things differently than you would have done (while still benefiting the business).

Reference: Stohl, C., & Cheney, G. (2001). Participatory processes/paradoxical practices: Communication and the dilemmas of organizational democracy. Management Communication Quarterly, 14, 349-407.

[Steve Roesler]

Dear My, (I always try to stay on a first-name basis)

Hey, it's always about what gets rewarded. The whole risk/creativity arena is one where the paradox gets played out in the workplace.

When we're given a narrow set of boundaries in which to "be creative," the possibilities have already been reduced. It works like a funnel: When you turn the funnel upside down, there's more room for things to flow from the bottom.

Thanks for tossing in the reference; much appreciated.

[Jackie Cameron]

Wonderful!

I like to think of myself as creative - I create things in a craft way - and spend time - protected time - to be creative generally.

I agree that mindmapping is a great way to be creative. I have mindmapped now for several years and I can't tell you how much of a difference it made for me. If you don't already do it - you owe it to yourself to find out more!

The challenge for me is that my son and I are very creative. My husband is a linear accountant ( it does not make him a bad person). Daydreaming therefore is seen by him us a waste of time....but I have not given up on him yet :-)

[mae collins]

RECOMMENDED BOOK FOR YOUR REVIEW

WHAT THE CATERPILLAR CALLS THE END OF THE WORLD, GOD CALLS A BUTTERFLY
If you always think the way you’ve always thought, you’ll always get what you always got. The same old, same old ideas over and over again. The future belongs to those thinkers who embrace change, break new ground, forge new paths, and transform the way they think. Discover how to look at the same information as everyone else and see something different by using the creative thinking techniques and strategies that creative geniuses have used throughout history.
Internationally acclaimed creativity expert Michael Michalko’s Thinkertoys: A Handbook of Creative Thinking Techniques have inspired business thinkers around the world to create the innovative ideas and creative strategies they need to achieve unimaginable success in today's changing business environment of complexity and uncertainty. Change the way you look at things and the things you look at change.

[Available at www.amazon.com, Barnes & Noble, and most major bookstores. Visit www.creativethinking.net for more detailed information.]

[Steve Roesler]

Jackie,

I hope your hubby isn't a cost accountant; he may be calculating the alleged price of "time spent mind-mapping":-)

Here's a strategy that has worked for me in the past (in case you haven't already tried it):

Good mind-mapping software often has an output that leads to a linear read-out of the map. I've used mind-mapping with linear thinkers to give a visual method of connecting the dots and seeing the big picture. At the end, we take the info and return it to a tasky format that's more helpful to their thought process.

Good luck!

[Steve Roesler]

Mae,

Thank you for the relevant recommendation.

FYI: We use the comments here for real-life and real-time discussion of issues. If you have a book that you want reviewed, the process goes like this:

1.email me with the suggestion
2. I will send our mailing address
3. Forward a copy of the book

This allows the "comment" space to be used as an ongoing thread.

I appreciate your readership and will continue to leave the comment up for a few days. This isn't about being punitive at all. Just want to keep the conversation flow going and retain the integrity of the process that we've built here.

Steve