A little more creativity please

You can see I’m a fan of regularly applying the skills of creativity: in thinking, writing and idea generation. 

The World Economic Forum said the top 3 skills we’d need by 2020 would be
- Complex Problem Solving
- Critical Thinking
- Creativity.

In their updated skills list for 2025, creativity features in half of the top 10 skills, in one form or another. 

And here we are… in a world where we’ve been adapting to a global pandemic, working from home, leading remotely, changing business practices, generating new products, serving customers in new ways and ... keeping it together!

Sir Ken Robinson said “...we don't grow into creativity, we grow out of it. Or rather, we get educated out if it.”

It’s worth putting some of that creativity back in, and learning to be even just a little more creative! 

We need creativity now and for our future and it's worth asking for a little more creativity please, and being able to deliver a little more creativity. 

Could you morph that idea

When we’re problem solving, trying to find a solution to a situation, we usually brainstorm some ideas. 

Working alone or together with others, we throw ideas about, hoping to land on something that’s worthy of following through and implementing. 

So have you tried morphing those ideas? And could you if you had to?

Morphing happens in animation and films as one thing changes gradually, step by step into something else. 

What if one of the ideas on your list could work to solve the problem at hand, but it needed to change? And then change again?

Could you do it? Would you let go of it and let it morph?

Sometimes we hold on so tightly to a decision or idea that we won’t be swayed or moved no matter the potential or the evidence. 

Even when that idea may not be working. 
Even when it could work if it was changed or adapted - even a little. 

Our willingness to morph an idea is powerful given the world we’re living in. 

Look at the ideas you’ve got ready to go. Which of them would you be happy to morph or change? 

And are there any you’re holding on to a little too tightly? 

The need for ideas doesn’t end

Challenges still present themselves. 
Problems are still to be solved. 

Even when we are overloaded with life in general, we may still have to come up with some genius and share our thoughts and ideas. 

Oh but what if
- we don’t feel like it
- we’ve ‘got nothing’
- we can’t think of anything
- we aren’t ‘feeling it’?

We may expect genius to just show up magically when we require it. 

But the funny - or perhaps cruel - thing about ideas is they can arrive when we’re bored! 

As our brain begins to relax from the pressure we put it under, zoooomwhoosh, in comes an idea. 

‘Out of nowhere’, we’ll say. 

This week I worked with a team to help them get bored... and quickly. 

As boredom arrives from a mundane task, their genius fires up and their ingenuity helped solve the challenge they’d been working on. 

They’ve come up with so many resourceful solutions and surprised themselves about how useful boredom can be. 

We can become less frustrated about times or tasks that are ‘BORING!!!’ and instead use them as the space and place where your clever is bubbling away, working on the problem. 

Get bored and use boredom. It’s a valid, relevant and practical strategy. 

OMG so boring !! 😁😁🤣

Everything is an idea

Our opinions are ideas. 
Messages are ideas too. 
Statements and questions are. 

Movies are ideas. 
Products and services are as well. 
Blogs, posts and comments are. 

Our opinions and beliefs are ideas. 
Same with our impressions and perspectives. 

Ideas are everywhere. 

They’re how we understand what something is and how we communicate about it. 

Don’t be too upset if what you’re trying to communicate doesn’t change someone’s opinion immediately. It’s your idea, landing up against their ideas. 

We’re presented with so many ideas every day, it’s no wonder some of them don’t get through!

It may take a little while or some repeated attempts. 

Our world is a big mix of ideas, hitting up against one another, circling, collecting in groups, moving, swarming and changing shape. 

Get more of your ideas out into circulation and there’s more of a chance for happy collisions, random landings and repeated connections. 

It’s most certainly a numbers game. 

Strange times call for new ideas

When the Institute for the Future called out ‘novel and adaptive thinking’ as one of those skills we’d need right about now ... do ya think they knew just how much we’d need it?

The use of the word ‘novel’ may have become a little tainted (you know, the novel coronavirus and all).

So could we say unique? Or clever? 

The thing is, these strange times call for new and quite different ideas. 

We know the clichéd group brainstorming thing doesn’t work. 

We’re better off keeping an ideas book, capturing flashes of brilliance as they arrive. 

Or getting hands-on with an idea and prototyping it, to see how well it actually works. Although getting as practical as we can as soon as we can is a totally new concept for some people. 

- Part of a team? 
Know how to bring your clever. 

- Leading a team?
Know how to bring the clever out in others. 

- Running your own show? 
Look for opportunities to use your clever .... anywhere, any time. 

Almost anything goes!

These strange times need our unusual ideas and thinking. Be braver about that. 

Hold on the judgement that what you’re thinking isn’t ‘good enough’. 

We won’t know the value of an idea ... until it’s put into practice anyway.