
ARE YOU USING ALL YOUR CREATIVE CAPABILITY TO FIND THE GROWTH YOU WANT?
we are all creative
We are all creative. We are human. It is in our DNA and we cannot help ourselves but use it.
We even use it subconsciously all the time to solve small, everyday problems but when we shift to trying to solve bigger, more complex ones – like how to grow a business – we seem to stall and find it harder.
That is because we can see more risk but it’s also because we don’t really understand trust, tap or harness our creative capability.
Let’s unpick that response a bit. Because to my mind it is an irrational, and potentially unfortunate one.
When you hear the word creative what do you think of?
Artists? Writers? Designers?
Technically brilliant scientists that make breakthrough innovations that change the world – like AI, or the telephone or train or car?
But do you ever think of you and your teams?
Creativity is something we usually ascribe to others and admire from afar.
It is why we instinctively look outside of our organisation for solutions, briefing others about the problems we face and tapping their expertise, experience and wider view to get us over them.
Creativity is typically something we deny in ourselves and fail to recognise in others.
But it’s just not true. Among our earliest impulses – the need to eat, seek comfort and communicate - there were also creative ones.
We all ‘drew’ as children. We all loved doing it.
We did it not to be great artists, but to express ourselves and discover. To articulate and communicate our curiosity.
WE LEARNED NOT TO BE CREATIVE
We all loved discovery and we all loved learning about what fascinated us – and we left it behind, or had it beaten out of us following the rules of passing exams and conforming to an established way of thinking.
We learnt to use these playful skills less, to attach less value to them, to scoff at the silliness of participating in them, or at the outcomes they seem to generate.
We learnt to label creativity as an artistic pursuit of some kind. Something that was not for us and certainly not for serious work – like business.
And so we learn to stick to what we know. We were – we are still - rewarded for being sensible, seemingly rational, respecting convention and do things in accepted way.
Conformity kills
Those same patterns of conformity exist in any organisation.
They are particularly strong when we emphasise efficiency, when we crave predictability, and when we dislike disruption or change.
It means that it is often easier to ‘play it safe’.
Over time all of this becomes stifling. Ideas and initiative only occur in the narrowest of context – the one that is immediately applicable to our immediate problems and perhaps the little things we can solve without impacting others too much.
But we fundamentally all have a brain wired for discovery and self expression – a constant loop of learning. We are trained, and we allow, it to be hijacked by convention.
As a business succeeds these pressures become greater; a kind of gravity that pulls everything in, to a functioning, self-referencing centre.
That is often why, after a good start-up phase, growth slows. The centripetal force of that gravity pulls the pace of everything back.
That’s a problem because the external pace of change is often hotting up; and there is nothing conventional about it either.
It is just that it becomes incredibly hard to shift from ‘safe predictable convention’ to ‘what if, maybe and perhaps’; even if we have the core capacity to do the latter in built in us since we were kids.
But imagine what can be achieved if you could make that switch, to work in both modes, getting the best from both when you need it.
Safe predictability for managing today.
Exciting, inspiring, transformative tomorrows.
the myth of rationality
How ridiculous though.
Tomorrow is not predictable. To achieve we must work now and accumulate progress in small steps.
Yes, that is how most progress is made. Little by little.
But if you have no higher goal, or end point, or vision or dream to pursue then how do you know if you have ideas that will get you where you want to go? And how do you make choices about the options you face today?
You will always default to safe and predictable.
That will keep your results small.
Taking a risk, small or large, is indeed an irrational act.
Does that mean every business, as organisations that manage and balance risk for profit, is basically irrational?
As we grow up we realise there are so many facts that we cannot change and to which we must conform, or we might risk failure.
This is why rationality wins. But what is rationality exactly?
Conventional thinking tells us we are rational beings with feelings. Thus we try and manage the latter with explanations and reason.
To an extent it works. It would be pretty chaotic otherwise; and I am not in favour of chaos.
But the reality is we are emotional beings with a capability for reasoned thinking. 80 to 90% of our decisions are emotionally based – there is plenty of research to prove that
How Your Emotions Influence Your Decisions (forbes.com)
So why do we not recognise that and work with it – yes rationally and openly. Why not?
Because the emotional reactions to external stimuli in each of us are subtly different. They are our unique distinctiveness. They are based on our experience and outlook, values and beliefs.
nuance = opportunity
What I think best expresses what we do have is - nuance.
Nuance is the essence of variety and is key to us and our identity. It encompasses what makes us alike; what we share across cultures and experience as human beings, but also recognises the diversity and difference of the individual.
And in nuance lies hidden opportunity.
It lies in differences of opinion. In different views and values. In different ways of seeing and being in the world.
We need to access and harness these to get their benefits, without triggering the disagreement and even conflict that will destabilise you today.
leaving convention behind
To get at nuance and the opportunities it presents, we need to embrace irrationality for a short while and we need to have permission to explore without judgement.
And the good news is you can trick your brain into doing it.
In fact you can over-ride your natural, safety-first, organised, conventional mode of thinking and switch to something more free, non-judgemental and playful.
You can even do this with other people – without the risk of seeming foolish – and find energy and inspiration in doing so.
Working collaboratively on a problem whilst ditching convention brings out the best in all of us.
Why bother?
Because there should be nothing conventional about your business. Apart from the need to meet the legal – including financial and reporting - obligations you have.
All the rest of your activity should celebrate your uniqueness and be used to position your brand to the target audience who most value what you do.
It should leverage the different capabilities you hold within your teams, their individual expertise and experience, and use it to create something unique and distinctive.
Why? Because in competitive and crowded markets it is the ones who stand out that win.
If the key to potential, opportunity and competitive advantage lies in your ability to get at nuance and ditch convention why not give it a go?
Summary
Everything you have to grow better could be available in your business now. All you need to do is turn it on.
These resources and capabilities – creativity, emotion and nuance, are sitting there, available to you already in your business. You can harness them and direct them to intended effect.
They will uncover everything from quick wins to transformative opportunities and you can work out how you will respond to and prioritise each one to keep you competitive and distinctive well into the future.
They will give you the tools and the capability to remain agile and pivot if and when you need to.
Understood and harnessed well they will not pull you back. They will propel your forward.
GET STARTED
Tips on how to engage your creative and collective brains – and trick your habitual, rational one into being quiet.
Just as you might find it hard to run 10k if you had never run much before thinking creatively takes a bit of practice. But it is like riding a bike. You quickly remember how when you do it again.
Creative thinking is especially tough in groups. No-one wants to be the one who gets laughed out of the room for a daft suggestion.
However using an exercise whose very essence is implausibility by-passes that problem.
The Exercise : Jump start your thinking with a creative challenge.
Answer this question. Come up with as many ideas as you can in 5 minutes.
Do not judge your output. Just go for volume of ideas.
Question : How many ways can you think of getting to Sydney from London without using taking a plane?
This one is actually tougher than it looks. You really need to work fast. Scribble down any thoughts and stop yourself from second guessing (eg no that’s silly, or impossible or….).
You need to simply aim for as many ideas as you can in the 5 minutes.
Benefits of this exercise
It forces you to think quickly and without constraint.
It encourages you to turn off judgement.
In a group setting it will engage both the competitive impulse (who wants to get the most ideas) and the collaborative.
Ask people to share their ideas afterwards. It’s a great ice breaker and builds easy, relaxed conversations; exactly what you want when you are using groups to work on finding and using ideas.
For more information or to book a session please contact simon@seongrowth.com