WHO'S DRIVING YOUR BUSINESS?

Choosing your primary customer may be the most important management decision you ever make.

CREATIVE THINKING: IN THE BOX

“Let’s all try to think a little more out of the box.”
I am pretty sure many of us have heard this cliche in a meeting or two (or two hundred). But should we really be looking out of the box when we are looking for more creative ideas?

I think not. I think you should work within the box. Greater creative results can be achieved by thinking in the box. Your box. And here’s three steps to help you do this:

1. Stay in your box.

First answer this. Who do you think understands your business best?

A) You (and your colleagues)
B) Some external consultant

Popular myth has it that Albert Einstein was a mediocre student with a lousy job when he stumbled upon his general theory of relativety. True, he may have been somewhat of a misfit. And he couldn’t find a decent job either. He wasn’t some clueless nitwit though. His knowledge and expertise of the theoretical physics of his days were second to none.

Our brain doesn’t solve problems just by thinking really hard. It needs stuff to work with. Useful stuff: knowlegde, experience, insights, and a deeper understanding of underlying stuctures and mechanisms. Our brain needs relevant experience and knowledge.

Relevant experience and knowledge do not come cheaply. The best cars are designed by people who know a LOT about cars and design and spend a lot of time learning this stuff. The best recipes are created by people who spend a LOT of time cooking.

Back to our initial question. If you answered ‘B’ perhaps you should reconsider the business your in or consider a dedicated investment in expertise. I’m assuming that most of us answered ‘A’. And if you did. Why would you hire someone else to do your creative thinking for you?

2. Constrain your box.

Now consider these two questions:

A) What do I need to achieve?
B) What resources can I use?

It seems logical that greater creative results can be achieved by not limiting the scope of our creativity and the resources at its disposal. A bigger possibility space and more resources to play with lead to more (and better) possible ideas and solutions, right?

Not exactly. Experimental research has shown time and time again that constraining both the purpose and the resources of the creative process improves its output quantitively as well as qualitively.

In other words: you get more and better ideas if you have less to work on and work with.

There’s two reasons why. First, having a clearly defined goal or achievement helps motivate the brain and focus its attention. Our brain needs to be motivated. Creative thinking without meaningfulness quickly becomes an exercise in frivolity. Second, having only limited resources at our disposal forces our brains to rethink their use in new ways.

Here’s a thought experiment to underline both lines of reasoning.

Think of a kid with all the toys in the world including dozens of large boxes full of lego bricks. You simply ask the kid to play as much as he likes and do whatever he feels like. Now think of another kid that owns only one small box of lego bricks and no other toys. You tell her: ‘could you build me the most beautiful house you can imagine with it?’

Which of the two do you think will surprise you most with her creativity?

Prahalad named this constrained box the  'Innovation Sandbox'. His analogy is an interesting one: the constrains of a sandbox are inflexible (usually made of wood or concrete) but the resources within (usually sand and water) are malleable and can be creativy shaped into many wonderful shapes. Prahalad cites some wonderful examples of how extreme constraints have yielded extreme innovative leaps forward in – amongst other things – health care solutions.

Now go back to my initial two questions and with this in mind try to constrain your answers.

3. Shake your box.

Quickly answer this question:
It’s raining outside. What should you bring along to stay dry?

There’s a pretty good chance you just answered ‘Umbrella’. Most of do. Why do we tend to come up with similar solutions and the most obvious ideas most of the time? Because our brain is lazy. Our brain likes to give us the answer that requires the least amount of thinking. And that makes sense. Thinking is hard work and requires a lot of energy. Energy that could also be used for other purposes.

What makes matters worse, the first answer that pops up (the one that required the least amount of thinking) tends to be the ones our brain likes to stick to. The quicker this ‘obviously right solution’ popped up, the harder it becomes for our brain to evenconsider alternatives.

Hold on. It gets ever worse. Over time our brain develops mental pathways – thinking mechanisms – that it likes to use over and over again. These pathways become well worn tracks that run deeper and deeper each time our brain uses them. The more often our brains uses them, the less likely we are to be creative and change the way we think.

Our brain is an wonderful machine. It is capable of some of the most amazing feats of creativity. But it is also notoriously lazy. It is good to know that our brain can be trained and get a little less lazy.

How do you train your brain? How can you force your brain to take different thinking routes? How do you open up new pathways that lead to awesome no-yet-invented solutions and creative business ideas?

• Innovate the way you think: change your thinking routines by changing some of your daily routines (hard)
• Consciously reject the first thing that comes to mind at your next brain storm. (harder)
• Question your most basic assumptions. (hardest)

I’m sure many of you would like some more detailed exercises and tools to help you do this. To get you started. Here’s a quick exercise you can try for yourself (I got this assignment myself as a student 15 years ago.)

Design a train tricket from Amsterdam to Paris without using writing (letters and numbers). The ticket should tell you if it’s first class or second class, if it is smoking or non-smoking, the date and time of both departure and arrival and if the train ticket is a one-way or a two-way ticket.

I will write a little more about in-the-box creativity in the coming weeks. Don’t hesitate to remind me if I forget. Just like my brains, I am notoriously lazy too.

5 WAYS TO BOOST CREATIVE THINKING

Creative thinking is the act of creating new ideas that are meaningful (have value). I think most of us agree that creative thinking is essential for the continued success of any business or organization. Here are five way that will help you become a better creative thinker.

State your problem differentlyYou problem statement may be your problem. The first barrier to greater creative output may be the way you phrase your problem. If we had simply asked how to print cheaper or better books we would have never have had the iPad as a reading divide. Before your next brainstorm exercise try to write down the creative challenge you’re tackling using the following formulation: “How can we …..” ? Next rephrase that question many times over, always using that some formulation “How can we….?”

Examples:
How can we print better books?

How can we print cheaper books?

How can we make more exiting books?

How can we make books without paper?

How can we make a paperless book?

How can we create a superior paperless book-experience?

How can we ….

Swap ownership
Our brain is extremely efficient in providing us with the most obvious answer to any question. We’re knee-jerkers. It is also incredibly hard to convince our brain to try a different approach or an alternative perspective to any creative challenge. Here’s what you can do to force your brain to think differently. Swap ownership. Pretend for a minute it is Superman or Microsoft who is solving your problem. Step in their sheds and try to tackle your creative challenge using their particular approach. There’s really no wrong virtual owners: be ambitious with whom you assign virtual ownership of your creative challenge.

Examples:
What would Microsoft do?

What would the Piratebay do?

What would Disney do?

What would Nintendo do?

What would my little cousin do?

What would superman do?

Swipe from someone else
Theft is the fastest way to creative success. There simply is no faster short cut to gaining creative insights than stealing them from other people. Of course I am not advocating you spy on or copy the competition. Ideas you steal from the competition will put you on equal footing with them at best. Instead I advocate stealing ideas from places you shouldn’t be looking. You can steal from nature (animals, plants et cetera) or even from perfect strangers (ride a subway and try to overhear conversations.) You can also steal from a mosque, a farmer’s market or a gay bar. Even your neighbor’s kids are fair game.

Share freely
Creativity in business is sometimes veiled in secrecy. Some very successful companies (Apple comes to mind) make a good habit of keeping their creative goings on top secret until they have a finished product – ready for shipping. For most mere mortals like myself sharing an idea is the fastest route to test it’s merits and have it improved upon by friends, colleagues and family members. Once you start sharing your ideas freely people will tend to start sharing theirs with you too (see my point about swiping). I don’t think I need to explain why the return on this investment is immense.

Ship today 
If you have a concept or an idea ship it. Don’t wait until it’s perfect. Ship it. Even if you feel deep down that your product isn’t 100% finished or that you haven’t thought out every possible detail. Let your market help you improve your idea. If you feel your product (or service or whatever it is you’ve created) isn’t ready for the full onslaught of head to head competition; share it with a limited number of people and tell them they’re getting a special preview. Not only will these first trusted fans help you improve your product or service, they are very likely to become your most loyal customers and evangelists!

Some of these tips can be used routinely on an almost daily basis, whilst others are more easily used within the context of a brainstorm. All of them will help you get more ideas AND get better ideas. Hopefully they were useful to you! Please let me know if they were. Perhaps you have one or two tips of your own to share (so I can swipe them).

THE UNUSUAL SECRET TO CREATE WHAT MATTERS

Synopsis

I’m more interested in what factors help us shape a meaningful, coherent, creative life over four, five, six, seven decades. Not years. In what helps us craft a life that includes both revenue and purpose and captivating creativity

 – the kind of creativity that holds you captive plus holds your tribes spellbound.

 

1. To Stand & Stare

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare?
– W. H. Davies

That’s one question I’m living in these days.   It’s a stance to take these digit-dazed days, to stand and stare. This is a non-action action vital to optimal productivity over the long haul. And it’s crucial to the numerous thriving creatives and scholars with whom I work and talk. I’m less interested in quick creative spurts or in serial creative entrepreneurship for profit’s sake. I’m more interested in what factors help us shape a meaningful, coherent, creative life over four, five, six, seven decades. Not years. In what helps us craft a life that includes both revenue and purpose and captivating creativity
– the kind of creativity that holds you captive plus holds your tribes spellbound.

 Case in point: One of my client’s first books came out with Ann Godoff and Penguin Press. The book, Where the Heart Beats: John Cage, Zen Buddhism, and the Inner Life of Artists, traces the spiritual life of John Cage, arguably the mid-twentieth century’s most controversial and most influential thinker and artist. “This is the result of 15 years of work,” the art critic-cum practitioner-cum author Kay Larson recently told me. 15 years! And she worked with one of publishing’s star editors and launched an extraordinary tour of talks and events. That’s stamina that captivates me. I’m interested in what factors help us sustain our creative momentum and make of this one wild life a creative quest. One of those factors is space.  A Mind Break is a shaped space between create-and-work flows. The capacity to take Mind Breaks and shape space inside and outside.
– that’s crucial. Why?

2. Space to Persist

Poet W.H. Davies understood the question’s full implications. His early days spent as a recalcitrant teen and hobo, a train accident severed one of his legs and most of his adventures. But with a British vagabond’s determination, he self-published his first collection of poetry in 1907,The Soul's Destroyer, and mailed copies to wealthy and influential people, asking them for payment in return. Of 200 copies, he sold 60, including to a journalist who later helped Davies become among the most popular poets of his day.

 

(When someone complains to me about the nature of publishing today, I think of Davies.)

 

A wooden leg and literary life later that included the likes of W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound, Davies held onto what mattered – namely the spaces between work and doing that make life livable.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

And that stance to stand and stare must contribute to persistence.

3.  Space for What Matters

Being indolent can even be democratic. Mark Slouka makes that case in his seminal essay “Quitting the Paint Factory: on the virtues of idleness.” His reasoning? It’s when we’re not hustling and bustling that we can stand and stare at the big questions about not only our own lives but also about government, justice, and truth.

We know best rest practices for optimal creativity and productivity. We know now that most of us human beings can go in create-and-work flows for 75, 90, 120 minutes.   We know that musicians who rest every 90 minutes during practice are more likely to excel in performance  – and more likely to endure for the long course of being a professional musician. After that, we’re starting to operate on “generator energy.

” We also know that 20 minute breaks of doing nothing and 20 minute naps can refresh the creative mind.

Mind Breaks make space for acting on what matters.

Let me put it this way: Every day is a series of decisions, some small, some monumental. Yet when a thousand thoughts compete for attention at any given moment, the mind’s debris clouds our ability to decide, invent, innovate, and create with any real wherewithal.

When our mind is crowded, we default to the safest route that requires the least resistance and least energy. And we likely cannot make gut decisions aligned with our intuition because mental debris blocks the signals. Gut? What gut?

But taking Mind Breaks clears mental debris that often makes us immune to change and the unknown. And we know the province where things change in unknown ways is the territory of true wonder and of captivating and enchanting creativity.

Slouka is right: Stopping the personal production line can toss the worker into serious reflection. At the very least, three or four times a day during your “Mind Breaks,” you can check in with the big personal questions.

What question am I living in today?

What am I writing this article for?

What am I making this product for?

How is this activity part of my larger vision?

How is my larger vision part of something that matters to me and the world?

  Imagine your day like a piece of clay. How will you shape it? And where, among the clay, will you make spaces? First thing in the morning? Lunch break? Mid-afternoon? Evening time? Before bed?



Oh, the spaces a day makes if we stand and stare.





When we live in such questions every day, this one wild life – regardless of the occupational suit and habit we wear – becomes a creative quest.

Is there a real correlation between taking regular Mind Breaks and acting on what matters most? How is it possible to counter the Cult of the Busy?
Am I a fool for championing idleness? These are questions I live.