Unleash Your Creative Capacity
We’re all creative and when we unleash our creative potential we can express ourselves in new ways, find new solutions to old problems, create new opportunities, breakdown barriers and unveil hidden options. We can use our creativity to help make our world a better place and our place a little better.
By Marci Segal
The World Economic Forum embraced the “Creative Imperative” at their January 2006 meeting in Davos, Switzerland. The Forum called for business, political, and civil society leaders to harness creativity to provide new answers to the world’s nagging problems.
At this conference, top executives from multinational corporations and politicians from around the world engaged in a series of workshops to sharpen their creative thinking skills. Two important concepts were reinforced:
1. Creativity is critical to an organization’s success and to solving the world’s problems.
2. There is a race to find, develop and keep top creative talent.
From world business leaders, political pundits and corporate gurus, the news is this… “In the years to come, every organization will be looking for ways to capitalize on its creative capacity.” And, it’s good to know some companies in Markham have already begun.
Creative capacity involves seeing things in new ways, making suggestions for improvements and initiating new actions to alleviate restlessness - to improve the status quo. Creativity lives within us all – from the grounds keeper to the company president. And it’s time to unleash this potential.
Wouldn’t It Be Nice
Imagine a day, not too far in the future, when your employees:
1. are fully engaged and committed to doing their best work and achieving their goals. They recognize their contribution to the success of the organization as a whole.
2. feel significant, competent and worthy; they treat each other with mutual respect and trust. They reinforce each other and are open to receiving meaningful feedback on their work activities.
3. have some free time that is not consumed with assigned work to think of and develop new ideas.
4. feel responsible for their work and have autonomy of choice in how they do their work once “the what” and “the why” are revealed. Approach their work and ideas with open-ended optimism and eagerness.
5. are flexible and able to adapt to different people and situations. They recognize that undo formality is restrictive when they are designing or doing something that requires creative thinking.
When companies tap into existing creative talent they create an environment for creativity and profits to flourish. It’s very possible for companies and organizations to develop unique, innovative applications using creative problem solving tools and applied imagination techniques.
Maybe you haven’t done an assessment of your company’s inherent creative talent yet but when you do, you’ll soon realize there is a cache of potential ready to develop breakthrough approaches to profit and growth. Try asking your colleagues down the hall or on the loading dock for suggestions to make their work easier, more efficient or more satisfying. You’ll see and hear many new and varied recommendations, some of them will be good – and some of them will be great.
Once you realize that the potential is there, you’ll need to make creative thinking and problem solving a cultural norm and an operational discipline. One of the ways to foster such creative thinking and “big-picture” vision is through celebrating your achievements.
Join the workplace “Creativity Challenge” to celebrate Creativity and Innovation Day/Week, from April 15th through April 21st.
1. The “Zany Dilemma” (Z.D. - the “Zeddy”) Challenge
Provoke and challenge new thinking around a bizarre or zany problem your organization faces. Challenge your company or your department to come up with the WORST solution to the dilemma. For example, people leave their computers on at night and they really need to be turned off to conserve energy. Or maybe the candy machine continues to refuse to give change for a loonie. Watch how the “Worst” ideas spawn great ideas.
2. Born Free – Just “lion” around
Promote workplace freedom. Everyone is creative and we each do it differently. Some prefer to come up with a variety of ideas and share them all while others prefer to share a few select ideas. Some prefer to work in chaos, others prefer order. Celebrate the differences and allow each preference to thrive.
Ask each person to identify their favourite way to work, post it on their door/wall and then encourage them to work that way all week long. One might work without their shoes. Another person might chew gum while they work. Your colleague might have an afternoon nap and stay late into the evening.
3. I didn’t know you did that…
Host a special event that celebrates the creativity in everyone you work with. Have a “You Do That?” creativity showcase of things your colleagues do outside the office. It could be painting, models, music, art, photography, acting, etc. You’ll be amazed at how creative your co-workers can be.
4. Enter the Great Hall of Trust
Do what the Emergency Task Force does after every project (which often includes shootings, bombings, hostages and generally things that can really go wrong). The entire team enters a “no rank room” to debrief. In the Great Hall, no one has a title, rank, or seniority position. Both positive and negative concerns and ideas flow and once the debrief is over, they exit the room and resume their rank.
5. Brain Breaks – Without broken brains
The brain is a wonderful machine yet, if one does the same thing and thinks the same way day in and day out, big ruts form and it becomes tough to pull out of the rut when change occurs. The goal of a “brain break” is to develop mental flexibility – generating new pathways in the brain.
To do this, encourage people to:
• do things that are new and different. Commute to work along a different path or drink their morning coffee using only their left hand.
• use their hands. 80% of the brains neurons are connected to the hands. So, engage your hands when thinking creatively. Try playing with paper clips or lumps of clay during brainstorming sessions.
• “Ways to Celebrate Creativity and Innovation” information supplied by Megan Mitchell and Elizabeth Huggins.
Marci Segal is the president of CreativityLand Inc. and co-founder of the Creativity and Innovation Day.
2600 John Street, Unit 207, Markham, ON L3R 3W3 T: 905.475.5222 F: 905.475.6369
