Create, yourself: How to tap into your creativity to achieve business results - CC: You

Training & Development, Dec, 2001 by Bill Brooks

In the business world, I define creativity as the relating of normally unrelated elements. Lawyers who win multi-million dollar personal injury suits (and investment bankers acting as middlemen in corporate mergers or acquisitions) receive huge salaries because they make connections other people wouldn't see.

If you can solve the problems of your company creatively, your value to the firm will skyrocket. But just how can you tap into your creativity to achieve business results? First, make sure you have the following crucial ingredients that will help you think creatively and generate imaginative solutions to any business problem.

A clear calendar. It's hard to be creative when you're pressed for time. Set aside part of each day to concentrate on problems. If you feel rushed, you'll focus on what's urgent rather than what's important. Time is the best gift you can give yourself.

The ability to concentrate. Concentration is the ability to direct your attention to a specific activity for an extended period of time. That's done most easily when you think the activity is important and you're committed to working on it. Input. Creativity requires raw material to work with--stimuli of various types. In general, the greater the quantity of input, the greater the quantity of output. And the more ideas you have to choose from, the better decisions you'll make. If you only have one idea, it will be impossible to judge its relative merit.

Where do you get material to input? Try listening rather than talking, consult with people who hold views that are different from yours, and read as much as possible. Our minds ate conditioned to be in automatic-reject mode most of the time, but creative people are able to override that immediate reaction. If everyone said, "No, we can't do it that way," we would still be traveling by horse and buggy, reading handwritten books by candlelight, and using carbon paper in typewriters.

No either/or thinking. You thwart creativity with either/or thinking that refuses to recognize the complexity of problems. Rigid thinkers reduce everything to its lowest common denominator. Though they call it "getting to the bottom line," what they're actually doing is stereotyping ideas and possible solutions based on their beliefs about how the world works.

Open yourself to several options at a time. Recognize that no one answer may be perfect, but that an amalgam of several solutions may be ideal. View every idea as a maybe instead of judging it as tight or wrong. The more flexible your attitude is toward any problem, the more creative your solution will be.

An appetite for the unusual. Imagine what Christopher Columbus's contemporaries thought when he said the world was round. Think about how Marco Polo's contemporaries responded when he told them about his travels in China. It seems people have always limited their creativity by convening their own private, idea-killing inquisitions.

Although Christopher Columbus and Marco Polo probably didn't see themselves as innovative, they were. They allowed their imaginations to dictate their goals, and their behavior helped attain those goals. Those same options are available to you.

You can do it!

If you're not sure that you can be creative, these six creativity-building tips may help assure you that you can.

Combine work and play. Being creative involves viewing situations in a new context. One way to practice that is to play chess, Scrabble, or backgammon--activities that are pleasant diversions and great ways to sharpen your analytical thinking skills. Those games force you to choose among multiple alternatives, requiring strategy and clear analysis.

Or, set aside a few minutes every day to work on a puzzle. Keep a difficult jigsaw puzzle laid out on a corner table and add a few pieces when you want to clear your mind. Or, tuck a crossword puzzle in your briefcase for down times, such as when you're waiting to meet with someone. You'll soon notice an increase in your creativity.

Brainstorm. The objective of private or group brainstorming sessions is to generate as many ideas as possible about a particular object or problem within a defined period of time. Phase one of a brainstorming session should be nonjudgmental. The emphasis is entirely on quantity of ideas instead of quality. This is the time to be as outrageous as possible. No idea is out of bounds; no rules apply. In phase two, discuss the individual ideas and choose the best for further consideration.

Brain-write. Brain-writing is always a group activity, deriving its effectiveness from tapping into participants' collective brainpower. In its most basic form, brain-writing builds on the ideas generated in the brainstorming session with these three major differences:

* Each idea is written on a separate piece of paper.

* The paper is passed around, and each person adds comments anonymously.

* Collectively, the group makes additions or modifications to the now fully formed idea.

The anonymity allows a participant to agree or disagree with the idea without fear of reprisal, but this isn't the time to pour water on creative fires. Sometimes, the best solutions arise from modifying what seemed at first to be a silly suggestion.