Developing a creative mindset

As problems and challenges persist for our customers, clients (and ourselves), a more creative mindset might help us and them out. 

How do you solve a challenge?

Do you go with what you’ve done before? Or seek out the possibility of a new solution and idea? 

Existing or well known solutions are safer; someone’s already done them, we can copy or replicate, change a few things and we’re good to go. 

Or are we?

The more we all keep replicating what’s already out there, thinking it’s working, the more limited our thinking becomes. 

Having the confidence to adopt a more creative mindset is risky yes, but with the risk can come incredible gains and rewards. 

The links to commercial success are clear. 

A more creative mindset helps us design and deliver better services, solutions and success for our clients and customers. 

How to work a little more creatively

Storyboards are powerful thinking and communication tools in films and advertising ... and we can use them too. 

Just as film creatives map out the proposed scenes of a movie, we can be story boarders too!  

A creative tool I use often with teams to think and work more creatively is storyboarding. 

Six cells or scenes are a starting point or a summary of a bigger and deeper story. 

🔲 Capture one point or theme per cell. 
🔲 Use a storyboard to take notes. 
🔲 Deliver your presentation or pitch with a storyboard. 

Boring notes? Nope. 
Boring meeting? Nope. 
Boring presentation? Also nope. 

We love stories! They hook us in and keep us engaged, curious to what’s coming next. 

Our colleagues and clients need us to be a little more creative - not just to hold their engagement and attention but to get to the most creative and effective outcomes we can. 

For something more memorable, practical and sensible... storyboard it.

Thinking we’re not creative enough

Many of us think we're not creative. 

At all. 

Perhaps it's more that we don't feel 'creative enough' to respond in the ways we need to today. 

We all have creative potential in us, but the cry of doubt, ‘I’m not creative’ is enough to make an idea run and hide! 

If we could be a little more creative than we are... if we could achieve a lift in our creative capability, we could tap into the clever solutions we’re truly capable of.

There’s little evidence that brainstorming produces more or better ideas. Group brainstorming in particular is a waste of time. 

So what do we do instead?


Focus on shifting your thinking to be:

🔶 CONFIDENT - From ‘I’m not creative’ to ‘I can be creative’

🔶CLEVER - ‘I can generate creative options’

🔶COMMERCIAL - ‘I can put these ideas into practice’

We have ongoing needs to generate ideas. solve problems and make decisions in more creative ways. 

And being confident, clever and commercial is a great path to take. 

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. 

Time and space for a laugh

Have a favourite comedian? One you know you can watch or listen to, loving their style of humour ... and you’ll always get a laugh?

Brian Regan cracks me up 🤣! His physical humour and his stories, I love them. (‘Man on the Moon’ and ‘Me Monsters’ are highlights).

It’s a personal choice though, isn’t it... about what makes us laugh. 

As we continue through tough times the world over, it’s good to know what gives you a laugh when you need it. 

...To know what you can do for yourself to lift or change your mood; and laughter can do that for us. 

We’re less stressed and more productive when we laugh and there are plenty more glorious benefits, so says Betty-Anne Heggie in Harvard Business Review’s ‘The benefits of laughing at the office.’

Even when the office is at home, it’s worth inviting and welcoming laughter at work. 

In meetings, workshops and when groups and teams come together online or face to face, it’s absolutely worth bringing a laugh to the work environment when you can. 

Work out what makes you laugh. And then enjoy more of it. 

😃So... how do you get a laugh? Comedy? Something else?