What Is Creativity?

When you think about Creativity, what springs into your head? What is Creativity exactly? Does my question encourage you to think of names of great artists, engineers, philosophers or technologists?

The more down to earth amongst you might like to tell me about your father whose home-brewed beer was ‘extraordinary’ or your grandmother who filled her house with culinary delights whenever you visited.

Are both of these groups of people creative, or neither?

Stay with me as I delve a little into some of the theories regarding creativity.

Theories in this area tend to differentiate Creativity (creativity with a capital “C”) from creativity (creativity with a lowercase “c”).

And what is the difference? The former is basically to do with the ‘big stuff’, the scientists and well-known creative thinkers. The latter is actually much more interesting.

This creativity can take many forms and may even involve nothing more than making a few tweaks to a recipe, directions, or set of instructions. Even though it’s appreciated or experienced only by your circle of friends and family, you feel good about having an impact.

Some common features of creativity include originality, effectiveness, surprise, divergent thinking, and discovery.

You don’t have to be an artist, then, to be creative by standard definitions because you can be an inventor or original thinker in fields such as science and technology. In fact, an artist might not be creative if they simply paint the same things using the same paints and subject matter.

The other question which only popped into my head the other day is ‘for whom is this creative’? To what does this creativity refer?

If I have created an exciting new gadget in my shed, I have been creative. Do I need to show this to people and get their feedback? Is it essential for our creative efforts to be appreciated or commented on to make them creative?

What then happens when others perceive creativity in our efforts? This is beginning to get deep I know but please bear with me.

Let us consider one more idea about creativity. Children are very creative. They turn everyday items into suits of armour and swords and create the most detailed and multicoloured drawings. Is this just childish naivety or do these expressions of creativity have a real meaning?

Creativity research has often detailed primary (self-expressed) and secondary (recognised by others) creativity. Is it actually possible to split creativity like this?

More recent research has brought new ideas to the table. “Primary” creativity that is unique to the individual and “secondary,” which begins when an audience is “in dialogue with” the creator.

So primary creativity contains things like subject matter, medium, and significant outcomes (works of art or inventions).

For secondary creativity, the outcome reaches an audience which, in turn, produces the secondary outcomes. This could be an interpretation or perhaps an experience.

At this point, I shall leave the theory behind but you can see that there are a number of dialogues going on here that can continue for some time.

This has an impact on how we as speakers, trainers, consultants (and even my engineering and accounting friends too) deliver to the world. It is not good enough to dream up an exciting new concept, we have to think about the interactions that will take place as our idea is shown to the world.

Be cautious also, the interactions are not always started by ourselves! Our audiences can be very creative in their responses.

Examining Business Boundaries

Many business owners think of their business in terms of what they do on a daily basis e.g. farmers milk cows, printers print brochures and jewellers make jewellery. A better way of thinking about your business is to ask the question ‘what is it (of value) that I create and who helps me to do this?’ We should be examining business boundaries. Any other person or business that helps you in terms of creating value, and hence money for your pocket, is in fact an extension of your business.

Podcast: Download (6.6MB)

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music | RSS

A Christmas Gift For 2020

At this time of year, I like to ponder the things that happen at Christmas and then find humorous ways of saying why they could not possibly happen.

For example:

Jingle Bells (and other assorted tunes) – too loud, causing environmental noise pollution and hearing damage

Christmas dinner – responsible for the obesity epidemic, only healthy eating lunches allowed

Christmas presents – in order to hit recycling targets no wrapping paper is to be used

Three wise men – how wise are they, set up league tables for comparison

Santa’s Outfit – not suitable for visually impaired/colour blind people

Gifts for baby Jesus – select alternative gifts as current ones are choking hazards

Sleigh delivery – restrictions placed by RSPCA on reindeer speed due to potholes caused by government cutbacks

Dining table – workstation assessments required due to incompatible dining chairs/table combinations

But this year we have COVID so add the following also:

Sleigh delivery – no signing for presents. An Elf will leave it on the doorstep (not down the chimney) and take a photo

Christmas Dinner – keeping the required distance away from relatives means that the more resilient members of your family will need to sit in the garden

Drinking – this will be severely curtailed as a great deal of alcohol from distilleries has been converted into hand sanitiser (please do not drink this)

Christmas Crackers – please do not laugh at the jokes. This can cause the dispersal of water droplets into the air

The point is that it is possible to raise objections, cancel events or avoid taking actions altogether by hiding behind ‘the givens’. Normally these are rules and regulations but sometimes these are just personal or organisational barriers that can be demolished if we have the will to.

So let’s turn this on its head. If we can find lots of reasons not to do something as big and fun as Christmas, just think what we could all do next year if we demolished all of the silly barriers or objections that stand in the way (or which we put in the way). I like to call this Boundary Relaxation and it can be a very useful technique indeed.

If you would like to know more about how you can use alternative thinking techniques in your organisation please visit my ReThinking page.

For a no obligation chat please book a Zoom call (in your own timezone).

Make Sure Your Different Is Different

March was BC (before coronavirus) and we are now in the era AD (after disease). The virus is not totally gone but businesses and other organisations are already trying to determine how to move forward. Some will try to carry on as before and will either a) fail or b) evolve slowly. Others will realise that the world will be different and will, therefore, try to be different.

The problem with this way of thinking is that everyone else is trying to be different too. You must ensure that your ‘Different’ is not the same as everyone else’s ‘Different’. How?

First of all, let me introduce you to precept number two of my twelve precepts of Creativity. It simply states ‘Explore the givens’. When we are trying to work out what to do, we usually do not go back to basics every time. There are some things that we just assume will be constant.

For example, we might have priced up a project last year and decided it was too expensive because of the IT costs. This year, even though costs might have fallen we have not revisited a potentially beneficial project because we have made assumptions about IT costs.

This is a trivial example but we can encounter hundreds of these in a week in our workplace. We might do things in a certain way because the Health and Safety manual says so. In fact, the manual might say what has to be done rather than how!

There are other ‘rules’ such as how a document should look or what format a proposal should be in. There are ‘givens’ everywhere and sometimes challenging these might give us the edge we are looking for.

I also teach people a couple of techniques that relate to the boundaries of problem issues. We ask the questions ‘what if’ regarding the boundaries and this allows us to unpick the problem and make it look different (and solvable).

So far, I have made it sound like we just do not conform. Well yes and no. Let us consider an actual example.

I am currently revising my book Creativity In Action and targeting at larger companies not small businesses. It goes without saying that some of the content will be different but that is not what sells books. Books are sold on looks. A book has to grab your attention when you walk up to the Business Books section of your local book store.

If you search for information on what makes a good book cover you will find a lot! The results will include the following:

Must include title, author, subtitle
Convey the tone of the book
Include a hint of the plot or sub plot
Include a photo or graphics
Choose the right font (how?)
Choose the right colour (how?)

And the list goes on. There appears to be a whole heap of collective wisdom about the best way to create a book cover.

My question is do we need it all? The main criterion is the book must say to people ‘you are curious, pick me up’. The book will then sell itself (or not).

On the flip side, everyone who is writing a book that will compete with mine could be using the same criteria. Apart from the unlikely event of coming up with the same title, they could choose a similar, font, colour or just layout.

So, which of the criteria are mandatory? Well in the case of a Business book this is probably not necessary. If someone picks it up, they can look at the foreword or introduction.

How about the author or title? Well, the title might be a good idea but the author is not really necessary either. Other decorations such as graphics or pictures are the type of thing that publishers might try and compete with. We don’t really care, the book just has to stand out.

I don’t know what the cover really will look like but I have included some standout book covers below (not business books though) alongside a mock up of (a possibility for mine). As you can see, I have settled on a bold colour with a small title. Will this stick out? Let’s wait and see.

Whatever happens, I would like you, the reader, to try determine whether the rules that you follow without question, the ‘givens’, really do have to be obeyed or would breaking the rules provide an advantage for you?

Soft Infrastructure Post Coronavirus

What is soft infrastructure? We all understand the term ‘infrastructure’. It is a collective term for roads, railways, airports, ports, telecommunications networks, supply pipelines, etc. It is all to do with movement and these networks are all ‘hard’ i.e. they are made out of steel, concrete, and copper and they can all be touched.

Infrastructure is not quite the same as structure in an organisational context. Structure implies rigidity, a silo mentality and in many cases adherence to the past (especially in terms of behaviour). The new Organisational structures of the future will be more like infrastructures, offering support and guidance rather than controlling. Unlike the past, future (infra) structures will be wildly different, varying according to culture, market niche, company size, etc. They will, of course, all have one common theme – people.

Let us just take a break there. We could wander off into the future with some great ideas about what organisational structures could look like based on the opinions of experts and our own experiences.

There is just one tiny problem, something that is happening right now. We have a global pandemic and the measures that we are all taking are forcing us to work in very different ways compared to just a few weeks ago.

As a result, organisations might prefer to adopt some of these ways of working and as employees, we might prefer some of them too!

People need to be connected together in all sorts of ways. They are the valuable assets of the organisation and must be looked after by Human Resources, connected by IT and rewarded by the boss. But there is more, due to our dependence on intangible assets such as creativity, know-how, and culture as well as social interaction to create and exploit ideas.

For our businesses to function successfully, these things too must move around. Attempts have often been made in the past to codify these ideas, transmit them to another place and then try and extract both the message and the meaning of what has been received. Try having an email exchange with an angry colleague and you will understand the problems.

In order to have some sort of remote working, hierarchies will need to be flattened. Human nature means that those who imagine themselves with power like to be able to survey their empire and are not always comfortable viewing it remotely.

With many people away from work ill it will become apparent that a lack of employees at the coalface might reduce the capacity of an organisation to deliver a service of produce widgets. Capacity will not be reduced quite so much when those calling themselves ‘managers’ are taken out of the workforce or reallocated to other duties.

We need things to travel in ways that are not constrained by boundaries and which certainly do not travel in straight lines. Just like the ripples on a pond we might wish some things to be broadcast, such as company culture. And like a networked computer system we will need some sort of storage and perhaps some form of maintenance function to ensure that everything runs smoothly.

When thinking of communicating within a corporate environment we often think of sending things out (pushing) or receiving from others (pulling). What about when things just sort of slosh about, and proceed at their own pace or when disruptive events occur and we need a system that repairs or heals itself? We need a new type of infrastructure, one that is invisible and which connects everybody to everyone else. It must allow meaning, intuition, creativity and emotion to flow with no bottlenecks and no burst pipes. What we need therefore is the right sort of ‘network’ – a soft infrastructure rather than a hard structure .

So what does this soft infrastructure actually look like? The best metaphor I have come up with is a bowl of soup with croutons!

The soup represents the entire organisation and its culture. It is organic and simply ‘exists’. The soup contains other ingredients and most importantly – croutons. The croutons are important but are not on a higher level, they are the leaders and managers of tomorrow.

Within this organisation, pay and rewards will depend more on what you know and who you connect with rather than your job title and position in the hierarchy.

So managers and leaders will be ‘expert’ i.e. good at their job, not just promoted for long service. Other employees will also be experts in manufacturing, finance and logistics. Yes employees can move around and change functional areas but only if they are good. No more ‘Peter Principle’.

If you are thinking about change right now you might like to read When The Threat Is Here, It Is Too Late To Change! For other recent articles visit Latest Blog Posts.

« Previous