Creative Streak

Warm-Up with an Ice-Breaker

It’s 6 a.m. in Chicago.  It’s 6º Fahrenheit (that’s a balmy -14º for those in Celsius).  I’m looking at every car on our street under 8 inches of snow, even more now that the city snow plow has gone through upending even more white powder onto the cars.

The first two people out for the morning have different plans of action.  The first man – blue coat, blue car – comes out, pushes just enough snow off the windshield/windscreen to see, starts the car and drives off.  I can hear the car groaning as it drives down the street.  I can’t tell if the trail behind the car is exhaust in the frigid air or snow blowing off the car.   The interior must have been as cold as the exterior because he'd already fogged up his car.

The second man – red coat, red car – clears enough snow off the car to get in and start it.  Next, he works his way around the car to wipe off more snow on all four sides.  By the time he gets in a few minutes later, the car is warm, he can see in all directions, and his car easily glides out and down the street.

Excuse the pun, but that’s pretty much the point of an ice-breaker. In short: get your brain warmed up before it brainstorms.

How Do You Handle An Ogre?

At some point in your career, you meet a person who stands in the way of your idea. They are menace defined. The 'ogre' comes in many forms. I remember one man who was easy to spot. He made sure of it. I've met other people who hide behind smiles and pleasantries, but they ultimately are no less destructive to the creative process.

Yes, ogres may exist but they aren't insurmountable. In fact, being insurmountable is part of their purpose, defence or weakness, and often rolled into one. The way to deal with people like this – almost always, a person senior to you – is to understand them. You may not like or agree with their behaviour, attitude or reasoning – but that’s not the point. The point is to look at the situation through their eyes, as uncomfortable or as difficult as that may be. Once you do, you can decide the best course of action.

It’s their responsibility. They’re in charge. It's their reputation and credibility on the line. Shareholders, board of directors, influential colleagues, their boss – all look to this senior person for the success of the organization, not to you. It may seem egomaniacal to you, but to others it’s the sign of a leader. It once killed me to watch a senior person take 101% credit for an idea of mine, but it's their prerogative. And in the end, did it really matter as long as the idea was implemented?  This leads me to ...

How Not To Be Creative

Some days, it just doesn’t pay to get out of bed. The work on the desk is uninteresting and uninspiring. Every word from your colleagues is a red-hot knitting needle poking against your eardrums. Friday is as far off as that promotion. The last thing you want to do is be creative.

This post is a tribute to all those people who’ve had that momentary (or lifelong!) desire to strangle the creative process to its lethal end. It's understandable, really. Good ideas do nothing but ruffle up the status quo. Change means disruption which means not going home at 5.01 pm. Territories are necessary to keep people in their place. In the end, a culture of ideas just sets people up for failure.

So for Pete’s sake, it's time to nip all that ugliness in the bud. Trust me, try any or all of the tactics below, and I’ll guarantee that you’ll never have another good idea in your organisation every again. Andiamo!

1. Tell people exactly how to do their jobs. In person, by e-mail. Preferably by shouting.

2. Pretend to listen to people. Frankly, the only opinions which count are yours.

3. Keep your circle of contacts small. Relationships are exhausting. Outside perspectives can’t be as relevant to what you already know.

How to Tap Employee Ideas

A great article from Inc.com entitled "How To Tap Employee Ideas."

"Encouraging your employees' creativity can not only create an engaging work environment, but create new business. Seven experts share their tips on getting employees to share their ideas."

 

29 Ways To Stay Creative

 

A good use of 1.51 minutes: 29 simple ways to keep the creativity flowing, thanks to MrNotFamous and YouTube. (Thanks for the discovery too, from Denny McCorkle (aka @TweetRightBrain), a good source of daily tweets on creativity.)

Is It Better to Be Decisive or Flexible When Presenting Ideas?

This is a group of responses based on one of the most popular posts I've written in the three years since Creative Streak began. How To Make A Creative Director Cry outlines the ten most common responses I've heard as a creative director, with links to each subsequent post giving more thoughts and suggestions to address each statement. This is statement #9: "That's an interesting idea. What else do you have?"

Statement #9 is a distillation of many debates in my creative director career about the best way to present ideas to a client or project manager.

There are two schools of thought. Present the client with several ideas from which to choose. Or, present the client with one definitive idea.

Several ideas?

From the presenter’s point of view, a selection of ideas demonstrates the breadth of their creativity, and by extension, a range of alternatives for implementation for the client. But from the client’s point of view, a selection of ideas can look overwhelming, if not unfocused.

The problem typically lies in how the ideas are presented. In what order are the ideas presented? In what context or reasoning? Like a comedian, do you start with your funniest joke? Or like a storyteller, do you take the client on a journey with the most compelling idea coming at the end? Or, are the ideas presented without preference, neither highlighting nor elevating one idea about the others?

Give Up Trying To Find Your Idea

At the beach today, I overheard two friends talking about love, or specifically, the lack of. At one point, I heard the familiar advice: “You know, the moment you stop looking for love, you’ll find it.” How strange, the same thing is true with the elusive idea. Got a problem to solve? Go do something else.

The intentional separation of your brain from the problem is a form of cognitive disengagement, a turn of phrase meaning “mental activity not associated with the problem itself.” I’ve found several psychological text books which give it a more colloquial definition: “spacing out.” It’s been more or less a part of creative philosophy since the first specific process was articulated by Graham Wallas in his book Art of Thought, published in 1926. He developed a four step process where Incubation (“where the problem is internalized into the unconscious mind and nothing appears externally to be happening”) was a necessary part of ideation. Almost every creativity expert outlining their own thought process has included a similar element ever since, from Osborn to von Oech to others.

Many times, the incubation step of “daydreaming” accompanies a creative block. More often than not, the block is self-imposed – usually by assumptions the brainstormer places on the topic or issue. The most common remedy for creative blocks – found in creative writing courses to acting workshops to engineering analysis – is to get away from the problem.

How To Make A Creative Director Cry

I can trace most of my career path back to one person: Darrin Stephens, the harried husband from the American TV sitcom Bewitched. Take away the attractive Elizabeth Montgomery as the witch who gives up her magical powers to marry a mere mortal, and the shenanigans doled out by the meddling mother-in-law Endora, even the glistening 1960s production values ... and you're left with a man who had the world's greatest job. He was a Creative Director.