Creative Streak

Creativity Hacks

Chuck Frey is the founder and publisher of the InnovationTools website - the world's largest site that is focused on innovation and creativity - and the Mind Mapping Software Blog, the leading blog focused on this type of productivity software.

He's also just published an e-book entitled "Creativity Hacks: Shortcuts to Help You to Crush Your Challenges & Live a Kick-A** Life." You can read more about it here.

According to Chuck: "My goal is to energize people to use their latent creative energies to solve the challenges in their lives. This book not only crushes the myth that creativity is inborn, but also shows specific techniques anyone can use for generating ideas, solving problems and, above all, for cultivating the richness that only a creative life can provide. It contains a significant amount of content about visual thinking, and how to do it effectively."

I've had a preview of the book, and it would be an invaluable addition to your library or a great gift.

From Ideas to Reality

The brainstorm is the easy and fun part. The difficult part is keeping the excitement you felt at the end of the brainstorm alive as you put pen to paper, fingers to keyboard.

Like food pulled from the oven, ideas quickly loose their heat outside of the brainstorm, and you and your team will lose your interest. Turning your ideas into bullet points, paragraphs or summaries only compounds the problem more.

Although it’s the last step, this sixth and final step is as important as the others - if not more so - simply because the idea needs to be sold to the client and 'implemented' to generate its full value. If it’s poorly packaged, doesn’t connect to certain attributes, or beautifully developed but merchandised in a vacuum, then it’s as good as creating no ideas at all. In short, this step requires buy-in from the key decision makers and the people who are influential to them.

Stoking Your Creative Streak

Here are two articles I've written for the Public Relations Institute of Australia.

The first is entitled Stoking Your Creative Streak.

The second is entitled Inspiring Better Brainstorms.

First, thanks goes to Lloyd Grosse, PRIA's national information officer for both the invite to write for them as well as the link.

Second, if you're not a member of PRIA, you should be. It's good for networking and it's good for the industry overall. Go here and give yourself an early Christmas present.

Verifying Ideas

The final phase to finish a brainstorm - Verify - means ensuring the ideas do what you need them to do. Like most things in communications, there are three messages:

1. Re-review the central problem or critical issues.

• Do your best ideas help address, eliminate, minimise or neutralize the problem or issue?
• Can you cluster like ideas together around each problem?
• Do you see cohesiveness among those ideas which might solve or address a problem?

If your best ideas don’t address the issues, continue brainstorming – either now or soon. You don’t want to lose momentum. Remember too, it's not a "good idea" unless it does something specific.

Amplifying Ideas

One of the important phases of bringing a brainstorm to an efficient close is "amplifying" the average, medicre and half-ideas together, to create a better idea.

First, clean-up the flipchart pages.

• Ask the group to help bring order to the flipchart pages.
• Quickly review and fill in any words left out when writing the ideas down on flipcharts.
• Remove unneeded flipchart pages.
• Go through all pages, and circle or highlight the 3-5 words which encapsulate the concept behind the core ideas, good or bad. I prefer to use an entirely separate colour or a bright highlighter to visually separate the core ideas from the messy notes.

Wrapping Up a Brainstorm

There’s more to finishing a brainstorm than simply calling the meeting to an end.

The last 15-20 minutes should be devoted to three parallel steps which collectively examines and analyses the initial ideas on the flipcharts, and finds ways to transition them into something useful and tangible.

Using a bit of helpful spelling, the three phases all end in “-fy” – Clarify, Amplify and Verify.

1. Clarify means using explicit and agreed-upon criteria to quickly sort the 10% good ideas from the 90% not-so-good ideas. The post here - from 12 November 2009 explains creative criteria in more detail. The post here from 23 February 2009 explains the 90-10 Rule in more detail.

2. Amplify means to combine and merge the average, mediocre and half-ideas together, creative better ideas. (Click here for the post on this topic.)

3. Verify means to check to ensure the ideas will do what you need them to do. (Click here for the post on this topic.)

50 Phrases That Kill Creativity

Love this: the 50 phrases that kill creativity, by Dave Dufour.  (His original post was taken down from his website, so here's the 50 items.)

Says Dave:  "This is an interesting list I picked up someplace and modified for use in some presentations I do on creativity. These are typical phrases you’ll hear in committee, staff and other supposed “brainstorming” sessions that end up going awry. These phrases eventually stifle any creative thinking in a group, because they destroy the part of brainstorming that allows good ideas to sprout from the offbeat or “bad” idea. People end up thinking alike, and/or stop contributing to the group because they can’t be free to come up with idea that don’t get shot down. I encourage people to take this list with them into meetings, so they can be the creativity cops, so to speak."

1. Our place is different
2. We tried that before.
3. It costs too much.
4. That's not my job.
5. They're too busy to do that.
6. We don't have the time.
7. Not enough help.
8. It's too radical a change.
9. The staff will never buy it.
10. It's against company policy.
11. The union will scream.
12. That will run up our overhead.
13. We don't have the authority.
14. Let's get back to reality
15. That's not our problem.
16. I don't like the idea.
17. I'm not saying you're wrong but...
18. You're two years ahead of your time.
19. Now's not the right time.
20. It isn't in the budget.
21. Can't teach an old dog new tricks.
22. Good thought, but impractical.
23. Let's give it more thought.
24. We'll be the laughingstock of the industry.
25. Not that again.
26. Where'd you dig that one up?
27. We did alright without it before.
28. It's never been tried.
29. Let's put that one on the back burner for now.
30. Let's form a committee.
31. It won't work in our place.
32. The executive committee will never go for it.
33. I don't see the connection.
34. Let's all sleep on it.
35. It can't be done.
36. It's too much trouble to change.
37. It won't pay for itself.
38. It's impossible.
39. I know a person who tried it and got fired.
40. We've always done it this way.
41. We'd lose money in the long run.
42. Don't rock the boat.
43. That's what we can expect from the staff.
44. Has anyone else ever tried it?
45. Let's look into it further.
46. We'll have to answer to the stockholders.
47. Quit dreaming.
48. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.
49. That's too much ivory tower.
50. It's too much work.
    
    

Go here to read Dave Dufour's all-to-familiar list.

Clarifying Ideas / Creative Criteria

Following on yesterday's post ...

Here are some examples of suggested criteria to use when selecting the best ideas at the end of a brainstorm session. By no means a definitive list, use the points below as thought starters to create a specific list for your organisation, industry, environment or situation. If you have other examples, please share them with me, and I’ll publish additional notes later on.

The idea must ...

• Help to achieve the business result or (marketing/PR/communciations) objective
• Address / impact / diffuse / combat the (communications) issue
• Demonstrate a return on investment (which also means you need to have evaluation measures agreed-upon in advance of the campaign’s launch)
• Educate the target audience(s) by effectively delivering your messages
• Stimulate trial or loyalty, to ask for a product by name
• Gather demographic information from the target audience (e.g., sign-up booths, kiosks, write-in offers)
• Be moveable (e.g., the idea can be moved from market to market, between shopping centers, can be set up at town meetings, the lobby of Parliament)

More ...

Measuring Ideas

Unlike any other scientific measurement (a barometer, Richter Scale, yard stick, speedometer, glucose monitor or density index), creativity and its output – ideas – have no accurate basis of measurement.

Since there’s no universal constant or benchmark to measure creativity or ideas, everyone evaluates them differently, based on their individual perceptions and perspectives. The problem becomes more acute when agreement between different parties is necessary. How can two people determine the best idea? What system do they use? Democracy? Seniority? Fists? It’s similar to judges in a beauty contest using different standards to select the prettiest girl. There’s no way to crown a deserving winner.

I once had a client who deliberately avoided any responsibility on the matter, saying: “Oh, I’ll know a good idea when I see it.” The honest truth is this: he didn't, and you won't either. You can't know whether the idea in front of you is good or bad or anywhere in-between because you haven't given proper consideration about what you’re looking for.  Trust me, you do not want to make a decision based solely on your emotional state at the end of the brainstorm. You need 'creative criteria.'

Brainstorming: To Have or Not To Have

As much as I espouse the virtues of a brainstorm – one properly conducted, of course – there certainly are times when you should NOT have one.

First of all, a brainstorm should never be a universal answer to “How do we generate creative ideas?” Some people simply think and work better creatively when alone. Sometimes the team doesn’t have enough appropriate information to brainstorm.

I can even think of a few instances when I’ve conducting a brainstorm – against my better judgment, alas – because I felt the client's internal culture meant that we were running a brainstorm simply to satisfy a political agenda instead creating good ideas. In the end, it wasn’t the waste of time and ideas I bemoaned, it was the effect on the people who knew their supervisor was protecting himself – and not the team.

In short, brainstorms have positive and negative aspects, and the person leading or hosting one should consider the merits of both sides before deciding to schedule one.

Positive Aspects v. Negative Aspects

A good brainstorm can generate better solutions, and thus, better decisions.