10 Strategies For Boosting Creativity

Not just Creativity, Innovation too! Here are my top ten strategies for boosting creativity. This will help your business get along in challenging times.

Knowledge is a key Innovation component. Use what you already have and try to learn from as many different sources as you can. Read things you might not normally read or do things that you might not normally do.
Many of the rules of creativity touch on judging. Build up rather than say ‘yes but’ and try to see things through the eyes of others.
Many business people only ‘see’ things that are written in documents. To get different views why not model in some way (play doh, Lego, rich pictures) or perform some sort of visualisation for which many scripts are available.
Allow time for things to grow. When experimenting, keep going around the loop if no final decisions need to be made. Try also to take some time out to reflect on what you are doing or to let your creative ‘right brain’ continue to work.
Use all of the methods at your disposal to see what is going on around you. This means your physical senses as well as any ‘information gatherers’ that you employ.
Doing is better than thinking so do lots! If you are managing an innovation project get your hands dirty. Don’t be afraid to go off a a tangent if you feel like it. Innovation only fails if you do nothing.
Save yourself time. Don’t wander all over your marketplace looking for niches, simply look at your competitors and look in the places that they are not.
If you work in a company that deals with one or more strands of continuous innovation then ignore this suggestion! If you are involved in an innovation programme then beware of creating too many ideas! Once you have got as many as you need, stop generating ideas and get on with evaluating them and put them into action.
Be careful of ‘givens’, the rules that everyone accepts as true for no good reason. Patterns are good though as they help us deal with lots of thoughts at once, stopping our heads from exploding.
If you are stuck, try redefining or reframing your issue in some way. You might like to just look from a different perspective or maybe use metaphor

The Fiscal Cliff – a rock anthem about economics

Not so long ago ‘Fiscal Cliff’ was a phrase that featured prominently on many news bulletins. Now you can listen to The Fiscal Cliff.

Creativity colleague Peter Cook, creator of Rock ‘n’ Roll Management and founder of the Academy of Rock has penned a little ditty entitled The Fiscal Cliff. Peter says ” ”Fiscal Cliff is a rock anthem about economics, banking, fake suicide, false Gods, false hopes, repentance, renewal, environmentalism, sustainability sex, drugs and rock’n’roll”. He claims it to be the first song ever to feature the words Quantitative Easing, John Maynard Keynes, Northern Rock etc. in the lyrics.

Click on the image to find out more about the making of the song and buy it from iTunes.

A Major Breakthrough In Management Science

A major research institution, specialising in the subject of Management Science, has today announced the discovery of the heaviest element yet known. This new element has been tentatively named “Administratium.”

Administratium has 1 neutron and 12 assistant neutrons. There are also 75 deputy neutrons and 111 assistant deputy neutrons. This gives an atomic mass of 312. These 312 particles are held together by forces called morons. These are surrounded by vast quantities of lepton-like particles called peons.

Since Administratium has no electrons, it is inert. However, it can be detected as it impedes every reaction with which it comes into contact. A minute amount of Administratium causes one reaction to take over 4 days to complete. Normally this would take less than a second.

Administratium has a normal half-life of 3 years; it does not decay but instead undergoes a reorganisation. A portion of the assistant neutrons and deputy neutrons exchange places. In fact, Administratium’s mass will actually increase over time, since each reorganisation causes some morons to become neutrons, forming isodopes.

This characteristic of moron-promotion leads some scientists to speculate that Administratium is formed whenever morons reach a certain quantity in concentration. This hypothetical quantity is referred to as “Critical Morass”.

How (not) To Formulate Company Policy

Is This You?

Do you recognise this style of management within your own organisation? Is this how you create company policy?

Start with a cage containing five monkeys. Inside the cage, hang a banana on a string and place a set of stairs under it. Before long, a monkey will go to the stairs and start to climb towards the banana.

As soon as he touches the stairs, spray all of the other monkeys with cold water.

After a while, another monkey makes an attempt with the same result -all the other monkeys are sprayed with cold water. Pretty soon, when another monkey tries to climb the stairs, the other monkeys will try to prevent it.

Learned behaviour exists everywhere!

Now, put away the cold water. Remove one monkey from the cage and replace it with a new one. The new monkey sees the banana and wants to climb the stairs. To his surprise and horror, all of the other monkeys attack him. After another attempt and attack, he knows that if he tries to climb the stairs, he will be assaulted.

Next, remove another of the original five monkeys and replace it with a new one. The newcomer goes to the stairs and is attacked. The previous newcomer takes part in the punishment with enthusiasm!

Likewise, replace a third original monkey with a new one, then a fourth,then the fifth. Every time the newest monkey takes to the stairs, he is attacked. Most of the monkeys that are beating him have no idea why they were not permitted to climb the stairs or why they are participating in the beating of the newest monkey.

After replacing all the original monkeys, none of the remaining monkeys have ever been sprayed with cold water. Nevertheless, no monkey ever again approaches the stairs to try for the banana. Why not? Because as far as they know that’s the way it’s always been done around here.

And that, my friends, is how company policy begins.

Learning To Manage Creativity

Embracing Creativity or running a creative thinking session is not unlike running a theatrical performance. It needs both stage management and direction to manage creativity.

Such activities can of course vary widely in scale. You may be working on your own or be chatting informally with one or two others. It is possible that you are running a classic small-group brainstorming session. In all cases you must pay attention to the following components.

People – the ‘cast’ of the drama. If you have the luxury of choosing people to work with then this may present a dilemma. On the one hand, you want as much diversity as possible. This is where new insights and connections will come from.

On the other hand, they must work well together. Creative work requires a high level of personal openness and risk taking, and a lot of interaction.

If possible you should:

Choose people who have the skills to manage high levels of difference comfortably.
Design sessions/meetings so that they are less sensitive to the adverse effects of large interpersonal differences.
Facilitate the session in such a way that you ‘manage’ adverse effects as (or before) they emerge.
Choose people who can tolerate wide levels of difference
Choose people who are compatible temperamentally, but differ widely in their area of expertise

People are less likely to be ‘thrown’ by minor interpersonal clashes if they have a reasonably solid personality, a degree of self-awareness, and a good sense of humour. Avoid big status differences, unless it is very clear that there are excellent, pre-existing, levels of trust between the people involved.

Have fun! Laughter and a light touch can defuse many tensions and manage the expectations of participants so that they know this will be a somewhat ‘special’ event, with unusual people. Remember, it is usually easier for people to feel uninhibited and take risks with a group they will not see again.