Creative Streak

Presenting, Standing Up or Sitting Down

When I lead a Presentation Skills workshop, it's always funny to hear a participant say they'd prefer to be filmed sitting down.

"Why?" I ask.

"Because I never stand up to present."

"Why not?" I ask.

• "There's no need to."
• "Everybody else is sitting down.")
• "The room is too small." (Only a valid excuse if it is.)
• "I'm uncomfortable standing." (Only a valid excuse if you have a medical condition.)
• "It's un-Australian (to stand)."

No surprise, the vast majority of people prefer to sit down when making a presentation for three reasons: they're more comfortable, they feel less exposed, and it's more collegial.

While they're understandable reasons, they aren't accurate. Simply put, the vast majority of people are at least 50% less dynamic when sitting down, because their body movements are halved ... and perhaps as much as 75% because everything else is restricted too. It's more difficult to breath properly, which means it's harder to project your voice. Hand gestures diminish, if not disappear. Eye contact disappears too because the person tends to read what it's front of them. All of this adds up to what I call "a stable sameness."

Characteristics of the Creative Individual

The confluence of three events – the month-long summer holiday, a broken toe, and the imminent move to a new office – meant I had the opportunity of a lifetime. I could take my time packing boxes. (Why can’t all moves be this stress-less?)

While packing the bookcase last night, I found myself sitting back to re-read one of my favourite books on creativity – Creative Thinking in the Decision and Management Sciences, by James R. Evans. (Not an easy book to find, but see details below.) While much of the book focuses on the role of creativity in quality management, it's also an excellent 'textbooks' on creative thinking.

Here's an example: Evans' characteristics of the creative individual.

1. Awareness and sensitivity to problems. Notices things others do not. Knows that nothing is perfect and that everything can be improved upon. Recognises that a problem exists or can cut through details and misleading facts to find the real problem.

2. Memory. Has good memories, and displays remarkable powers of recall. Good retention and retrieval of information. The individual has a memory bank of life’s experiences to be able to recall them for creative’s sake.

3. Fluency. Can generate a large number of ideas easily. Can judge an excellent idea by seeing it in context with mediocre ideas.

Nothing is Original?

In her post last December, Nancy King published this piece of art "in defense of bloggers," but it's just as applicable to creativity.

The act of “combining” (which I jokingly refer to as “combinotics”) is an essential element of creative thought. To merge your need, problem or issue with another an unrelated idea, concept, notion. I love too the quote from Goddard: “It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to.”

Check out Nancy's great website - See Change Happen - focusing on design, advertising and social change.

Best Books on Creativity

There's nothing like a thriving conversation on LinkedIn to inspire you to research a topic further. Well, it also helps to break two toes over the holidays so your activities are curtailed to sitting much of your day in your home office.

Anyway, I'm a member of the Outside the Box Thinkers group on LinkedIn, and Francois Lavallee of Aliter Concept in Montreal, Canada, asked for suggestions to start a collection of books on creativity. With a couple of days, he had some excellent suggestions. It prompted to me to think about what books on creativity I like.

Of course, any list of "Best of ..." is contentious by its very nature. There are a lot of great books on creativity and innovation, both from an artistic/personal and a business perspective. However, of the 200+ books I've amassed in my career, I ultimately chose just a few books, based on just one criteria. Did I use the book again as a reference after the first reading?

I'd love to hear your thoughts on other books that you've considered, or even take a suggestion to re-read another book that you've particularly found helpful or insightful.

• 101 Activities for Teaching Creativity and Problem Solving, by Arthur (Andy) B,. VanGundy © 2005 – Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc. (ISBN 0-7879-7402-1)

• 101 Creative Problem Solving Techniques: The Handbook of New Ideas for Business, by James M. Higgins © 2005 – Published by New Management Publishing Company (ISBN 1-883629-00-4)

• The Artist’s Way: A Course in Discovering and Recovering Your Creative Self, by Julia Cameron © 1994 by Souvenir Press (ISBN 0-330-34358-0)

The Best Writing Tips for Business

When I taught a class in public relations at Columbia College in Chicago (circa 1987), a colleague shared with me Frank Visco’s original list of tips for good writing, entitled How to Write Good.

Over the years, I read additional points. Similar lists began to surface. I threw everything in a folder until last month, when I culled the list for a Business Writing workshop for a client in Melbourne.

I'm a clearly a word geek. This list always makes me chuckle.

• A writer should not shift your point of view.
• Alors!  Why use words from another language?
• Always avoid alliteration.
• Analogies in writing are like feathers on a snake.
• As you know, don’t repeat what the audience already understands.
• Avoid &s and abbrev., etc.
• Avoid clichés like the plague. They’re old hat.
• Be careful of commas, that, are not, necessary.
• Be more or less specific.
• Choose words correctly, irregardless of how others use them.
• Do not use hyperbole.  Only one in a million can do it effectively.

What If They Say It's Not Creative?

In the last post (here), I listed the five most common responses I get when presenting idea - but left out the most difficult client response to answer:  "That's not creative."

How do you refute a response based entirely on the abstract? Unlike flour, blood pressure, earthquakes, synesthesia and waist lines, there's no known measurement of creativity.

Yet, people understand that every idea has some level of creativity, but it's difficult – perhaps impossible – to quantify how much or how little.

A different solution to presenting ideas is to show several ideas together, putting them in context from one another with a tool I call the Creative Speedometer.

Ideas are placed on a spectrum from simple and safe on the left side, to wild and heart-stopping and on the right side.

Before you unveil any specific idea, show your client the Speedometer and explain the creative continuum from mild to wild. Then, ask the client to select any idea among all positioned in the Speedometer. It not only suggests a range of creativity, it's a great psychological tool, because you learn a lot about your client by which idea they select first.

The tool's also is infinitely adaptable. For a pitch to a global restaurant chain, we changed the Speedometer to an oven dial. When he presented publicity ideas to launch a new hair dye for women, it became the broadness of her husband's smile. For a government tender, we used the size of a crowd - their constituents - who turned up to vote.

What are some other ideas you've used to address someone's response that "It's not creative"?

Responding to Negativity (They Say, You Say)

Although negativity most often affects the brainstorming part of the creative process, it’s equally destructive in the last stage – the merchandising phase – when you’re packaging and selling the idea to someone else, like a supervisor or a client.

As a creative director, I’ve had more than my share of debates with clients about the quality of an idea, and in my experience, their objections fall into five basic groups.

For each "They say" objection, here are my best "You say" responses.

They say: "That idea isn't us."

• Link the ideas to the values or principles of the corporation or organisation.
• Incorporate testimonials from the target audience into your presentation. Show why they like the idea or campaign, how they’ve helped adjust the ideas into their final form, and how the idea changed their perceptions about the organisation.
• Have you/Can you ask internal influencers to help create or adjust the idea? How can you add their endorsement to the presentation? In the past, I’ve used photographs/quotes and video clips in the presentation - once, we invited one of the key influencers to the presentation for “live” endorsement.

Can You Switch Off Your Negativity?

I recently gained certification to facilitate Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), and one of the most fascinating parts of the accreditation workshop was analysing how different ‘types’ were creative or approached creativity.

In particular, we debated how individuals exercised their creativity in the dichotomies of Sensing v. Intuitive (S-N) and Perceiving v. Judging (P-J). If you know nothing about MBTI, here’s enough information to be dangerous. People with “S” tendencies prefer specifics, details, measures, practicality and repetition, and people with “J” characteristics prefer order, structure, control, limits and categories. Once we reviewed all of the categories, we debated how people with either S or J preferences were able to balance their negativity - and more so, could they "turn it off”?

To suggest that you can switch off the natural and understandable urge to be negative is a bit like telling someone to stop smoking cigarettes. It's an easy comment for a non-smoker to make, but a very difficult step for the smoker - even if the smoker knows it's not good for their health.

Why Are We Negative? (Part 2 of Negativity v Creativity)

This isn't a scientific answer, but when it comes to brainstorming and creativity, our negativity falls into four groups.

1. We’re impatient for the ideas.

In the immortal words of 'Chris,' a former colleague who was arguing with me about the validity of brainstorming: “Where’s the intelligence in wasting time coming up with ideas which don’t or won’t work? Give me the Big Idea now.” Chris never saw the double standard at work here. It was fine if we spent a considerable amount of time on discussing, debating and massaging the right strategy, but it was unacceptable if the Big Idea didn't emerge in an hour's brainstorm.

It's not acceptable, but it's understandable at the same time. Creative thinking is largely an invisible task. It probably doesn't look like real work to many people. After all, isn't it a common myth or fantasy that an idea appears in perform from after a blinding flash of inspiration?

2. We’re conditioned to be negative.

Perhaps you've heard the famous statistical piece of news that the average human being has 60,000 thoughts a day, and that 90% are the same thoughts you had yesterday, and worse, 80% are negative.

Negativity v. Creativity (Part 1)

Outside of house plants, is there anything easier to kill than creativity?

Many exceptionally fragile things come to mind: an egg, flowers, the ego of a Hollywood celebrity. But none have less resiliency than creativity. How sad because creativity allows us to create or do something new and different in our lives, to prevent it from falling into a mundane pattern, even for the most routine among us.

Its frailty is even more acute for business because creativity is as vital to corporate health and success as accounting, operations and manufacturing. At the same time, negativity robs the organisation of its most valuable asset: new and original thinking.

Selling the Idea of the Idea

Convincing someone that an idea – perhaps your idea – is the best one can sometimes be more difficult than actually developing the idea itself.

From my experience, there’s five rules to follow (more or less in order) to make sure your ideas are given the proper attention they deserve as you move from brainstorming to implementation.

1. Link the idea to its purpose.

Show or demonstrate why this specific idea will help to achieve the goal and/or address or eliminate the problem. This rule grows in exponential importance to the ‘unusualness’ of the idea. In other words, the more bizarre the idea, the more you need to anchor it in reality.

2. Make influential friends.

Involve key internal/external people throughout the creative process, if possible, sooner than later. Get a clear agreement on the goal or purpose of the idea. What do they expect? What criteria will they use to the judge the best ideas? Do they have any initial ideas (even if bad) which might suggest a tone or style? Can they help contribute to the creative brief? Can they join the brainstorm, or stop by after it’s finished? Can they help select or judge the ideas?