Creative Streak

Some Problems in the World Are Not Bullet-izable

Some days I wake up to a marvelous gift (via e-mail). This morning, my friend Hertha sent me the New York Times article on the U.S. military and its use of PowerPoint, entitled We Have Met the Enemy and He Is PowerPoint.

I love this sentence in particular, "Commanders say that behind all the PowerPoint jokes are serious concerns that the program stifles discussion, critical thinking and thoughtful decision-making." To the end of that sentence, I'd add in "... and creativity."

Let me say now, I love PowerPoint. Use it constantly. It is infinitely flexible, easy to use, and when used properly, can add incredible impact to any project. The operative words in that sentence are: "when used properly."

Unfortunately, the vast - 99.99%, if you ask me - of people only use it merely to justify writing paragraphs in bullet points. Just last week I saw a colleague in a agency here in Sydney swipe and copy paragraphs from an Acrobat document and paste them into a bullet point. Just out of curiosity, I counted the final tally of words on the slide: 217, in 7 point Helvetica. When I asked her if the word size was a tad microscopic, she said, "Perhaps." She immediately bolded all of the text, then said, "There, done and dusted."

Indeed she was. I got a call a few days later saying their agency didn't win the pitch. "The client didn't think our ideas were very creative," she said, extremely disappointed because the ideas were in fact fantastic.

A few thoughts to consider.

• If you use PowerPoint frequently, learn how to use it. Find a local class or workshop. People, PowerPoint is not going away any time soon. Trust me, life's easier if you aren't trying to practice your fluency at the same time you're writing a document. I also don't buy the argument any longer "I don't have time to go to training." If you can negotiate two meetings which are scheduled at the same time, then you can negotiate planning a workshop into your diary. 

Help for the 'Left-Brainers'

Here are two related blog posts, both written by Mitch Ditkoff of Idea Champions in Woodstock, New York. The first article - 10 Ways To Help Left Brainers Tap Into The Best of Their Creativity - should give all types of facilitators some helpful recommendations to improve group brainstorms. I've added a few thoughts below from my experiences working with "left brainers."

• Meet with the ‘left brainers” in advance. Whether he/she is the client, a key brainstorming team member, or a key influencer, I find getting in front of them as quickly as possible to explain the brainstorm agenda helps to get questions answers before the meeting itself.
• Understand their opinion. Sometimes “left brainers” bring the organisation’s politics into the brainstorm – whether it’s previous brainstorm attempts, a question or concern about idea ownership or ‘selling-up’ in the organisation – even understandable questions about Six Sigma v. Creativity. Again, meeting with them in advance, or at least attempting to understand their POV often helps as the facilitator to diffuse any negative situation in a brainstorm.
• Let them come late. Sometimes the “left brainer” doesn’t want to come to creative part of the brainstorm anyway. I have an agreement with one frequent client of mine that she won’t come to the brainstorm until we’ve begun the organising and selecting stage. Here, she can be invaluable to help shape ideas to ‘sell’ into the organisation.

Bits & Bytes, April 26

Some slow posting lately, but lots to read on creativity elsewhere on the web. Here's a few of my recent favourites.

Creativity and Lawyers

Fay Vincent, the former commissioner of Major League Baseball in the US, and a lawyer by education, wrote a commentary on how he changed his own views about creativity as it relates to business.

“If a client came up with what we saw as a creative solution to a business problem, it was often our job as lawyers to explain why that route was illegal. In business, we saw creativity as the effort to do — often indirectly — what should have been done directly. In that world, a “creative” answer was not the admirable, straight answer.”

Creativity and Teams

From Edward Glassman’s book, Team Creativity At Work II: Creative Problem Solving At Its Best, some interesting thoughts in this article on teams and creativity. Specifically, that the single biggest factor to enable people to be more creativity: other people.

“The biggest factor that helps people to be more creative, according to about half of 450 people I have surveyed, is "other people." Items like time, challenge, and freedom occur at a much lower frequency. Rewards are hardly mentioned. Conspicuously absent are customers and vendors, who usually want to help. One person wrote: "The biggest help to my creativity is when my boss leaves town."

Creativity and Solving Problems

While I can’t exactly account for the background of its author on an online news database, I do agree with this commentary from a news syndicate in Hawaii on the power of problem-solving, and more so, I like the simple definition of creativity.

“The intelligent solution to a problem seems to involve more than trial and error. It often requires a fresh insight based upon a sudden shift in the way the problem is viewed. Creativity always is the answer to a problem.”

Creativity and Accounting

Here’s something I never thought I’d read: an article in favor (correctly!) of “creative accounting”!

"If you think about it, I bet many of you are positively creative every year, month, week and day. You have to find ways to track and get the accounting right on new business transactions. You are asked to find ways to change the old methods of doing things in order to track more transactions, more accurately with less labor. You are asked to find better, faster ways to report the results of the business so that management can make better decisions quicker. I could go on and on, but I think you get the point. CPAs need to be creatively accurate.”

Framing the Problem

The process of creating ideas begins with a specific objective: what do you want the idea to accomplish?

I was reminded (again) of its importance after conducting and/or participating in a number of brainstorms during the past week. At one meeting in particular, the person (facilitating their own brainstorm – eek!) announced with a sigh at the beginning of the brainstorm, “Well, here we go again. I’m sure we’ll get the same ideas as last time.”

Indeed. Despite the inappropriateness of launching a brainstorm with a broad slap of a negativity brush, 'Mr. Optimism' was right, going so far as to admit afterward that the reality was much his own doing. Why?

The majority of most brainstorms in public relations and communications begin with the same two hoary* objectives:

• Generate (traditional/social) media
• Generate awareness

There lies the problem. Why would you generate any new idea if you always start at the same place and take the same route? Worse, the client in this specific case fell into their weekly routine:

• The same meeting tactics (always at 10 am, the same horrifying conference room, no food, the same people)
• The same agenda (no ice-breaker, no creative warm-ups, no brief, Mr. Optimism virtually started with "Achtung!  Who has any ideas?)
• The same product background (men, aged 1 to 99 who live in Australia and breathe at least once a daily basis).

Becoming Less Creative?

Here we go again. The Globe and Mail in Canada reported last week that yet another university was trying to disprove the effectiveness of group brainstorming. The article's below, or you can read it here.

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Becoming Less Creative

“When people, groups or organizations are looking for a fresh perspective on a project, they often turn to a brainstorming exercise to get those juices flowing. An upcoming study from Applied Cognitive Psychology suggests that this may not be the best route to take to generate unique and varied ideas,” Science Daily reports. “The researchers from Texas A&M University show that group brainstorming exercises can lead to fixation on only one idea or possibility, blocking out other ideas and possibilities, and leading eventually to a conformity of ideas. Lead researcher Nicholas Kohn explains: ‘Fixation to other people’s ideas can occur unconsciously and lead to you suggesting ideas that mimic your brainstorming partners. Thus, you potentially become less creative.'”

When I read about these studies, I'm curious what they're ultimately trying to accomplish. That we should no longer brainstorm as a group? That brainstorming solo is better than brainstorming with other people? That there's a better way to generate ideas - and if so, what is it? (Or is it easier to simply be negative than constructive?)

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I hope the objective isn't merely to prove that group brainstorming is inefficient, because any tool is ineffective when it's not used correctly. You're wasting your time if you cut meat with an upside-down knife as much as you're wasting your time if you don't follow the basic principles of brainstorming.