Creativity and Politics

Are you fed up with the current state of British Politics? Do you have plenty of ideas about how things could be better but don't know which way to turn? Well now there is a new political party just for you.

The Emergent Party was founded by fellow PSA member Barry Mapp and is based on creative principles. For those who are fed-up with more of the same and who have ideas to contribute it is both a Think Tank and a political party.

The Emergent Party was officially registered in Great Britain and Northern Ireland with the Electoral Commission in August 2005. It welcomes members who wish to be active and help us to develop and also members who just want to be part of what they can see is going to be something very different.

The Emergent Party plans to be the "breath of fresh air" in British Politics. The Party is emerging from the frustration with "more-of-the-same" policies and politics (and the policies are clearly not leading to real overall improvement and very often are actually making matters worse).

At the last election no-one was able to register their vote for a Party that was thinking differently about all the issues of today. (As Einstein said "we cannot solve the problems of today by the same thinking that created these problems in the first place).

As a Party they are possibly unique, for in pre-launch phase they have no manifesto or policies (yet) and these too, with the help of members, will be "emergent".

If you feel that you can contribute and help build something different then visit the Emergent Party website to find out more about this exciting fusion of Creativity and Politics.

Innovation - who owns the apples?

“If you have an apple and I have an apple and if we exchange these apples then you and I will still each have one apple. But if you have an idea and I have an idea and we exchange these ideas, then each of us will have two ideas” George Bernard Shaw

What has this to do with Innovation you may ask? Well the crux of the matter is the word have. Does it mean 'own' or does it mean 'have access to' and who actually does the 'having'? George Bernard Shaw was correct about ideas, knowledge is the only resource that does not lose value when you share it. If you are the initial source of knowledge then you will gain kudos and perhaps receive some financial gain which the leads many people to becide to become gurus and ration their knowledge, using it as a source of power.

Because people are resourceful you will soon find that your guru status evaporates and what knowledge you have is worth little as those around you will create their own knowledge or find a new guru.

Back to apples and innovation. In a truly innovative organisation or society we need to create a culture which would prove George Bernard Shaw wrong. If each of us has an apple and exchanges it then we each must have two apples - it is our concept of sharing, building upon ideas and skills, and saying 'yes and' that needs to be addressed. It is our interpretation of 'have' that needs some work so that it refers not to ownership but to shared access and potential.

One thing that George did not say was that if we kept the seeds from the fruit then planted them and cared for them we could create many more apples in the future. This may be a cultural shift and a metaphor too far for many businesses.

For different ideas about taking organisations forward visit the Creative Business Solutions website.

Innovation and the challenge of growth

Constant innovation is a characteristic of many successful growing companies. Staying ahead of the competition requires inventiveness at individual, group, and company levels. As companies grow, market demands and competition can force them to maintain a culture of continuous innovation. Growth, however, also creates a need for structure and control, which can make a culture of innovation difficult to sustain.

Erosion of flexibility
Sustainable growth requires increased operational scale, but companies cannot scale their operations effectively without implementing formal structures and processes. Growth can strain the entrepreneurial philosophy that has fuelled a company’s success. More importantly, it can erode corporate flexibility. As management layers increase, they create islands of data, knowledge, and intelligence that can complicate a company’s decision-making processes.

Reduced tolerance of risk
Developing new ideas is a risk-intensive process that requires significant resources. As companies grow, their risk profile must become more conservative as shareholders expect them to stabilise operations and manage their business according to financial criteria.

Collision of cultures
As companies grow, they require people who can guide them through each stage of their organisational development. However, companies also have to evolve to meet changing internal and external priorities. As a result, a company’s corporate culture is pulled between two ways: established employees who are used to a stable and familiar environment, and newer employees who have a different mindset, a higher tolerance for risk, and place less value on organisational structure. Left unchecked, this dichotomy can cause a company’s culture to be dictated by employee self-interest rather than corporate objectives.

Taking on the challenge
Sustaining an innovative culture requires companies to create environments where creative thinking is central to corporate values, actions, and assumptions. Innovative companies require employees who seek new opportunities, accept risk, collaborate well with others, and commit themselves to the organisation. Innovative companies also require leaders that will work to create those kinds of environments and will guide and promote innovative behaviour.

1. Create the required foundation
   Companies need to assess the role of innovation within their organisations, make the necessary adjustments to their goals and their corporate culture, and redefine the responsibilities of their leaders.
   


2. Enhance operations to foster innovation
   By creating an environment that empowers employees, companies will promote the collaboration required to generate and implement new ideas.
   


3. Manage the ongoing change
   Companies must create teams to guide them through periods of change, manage their employees’ anxieties, and set small milestones to be used to gauge enthusiasm.
   

How do you know if you have the right foundation? A comprehensive assessment can be carried out using our Innovation Toolkit, however why not take this simple test to assess the state of your company?

Answer the following questions with a YES, NO or SORT OF.

Do you have the required foundation?
1. Does innovation continually contribute to revenue
generation and cost savings within your company?
2. Is innovation pervasive across the company, or is it isolated to specific groups?
3. Do your employees understand how innovation relates to the corporate vision and goals?
4. Have you created a set of core values, beliefs, and norms in order to guide the development of your corporate culture?
5. Have you redefined the roles of your company leaders to encourage and champion creative activities?

Do your operations foster innovation?
6. Does your workforce consist of people who have the ability to approach problems in an unconventional manner?
7. When hiring new employees, do you look for people who are willing to challenge the status quo and pursue new trends and directions?
8. Do you involve employees in the hiring process?
9. Do you have programs and activities that allow for meaningful interaction between new and existing employees?
10. Do you encourage your employees to be divergent thinkers and ensure that they have the right information and resources to follow through on their ideas?
11. Have you assessed your company’s organizational structure to identify and remove decision-making bottlenecks?
12. Is there a high degree of trust and open communication between various groups in your company?
13. Do you balance empowerment with accountability by creating a set of metrics for your employees to work toward?
14. Do your employees feel secure enough to believe that should their ideas fail to realize the desired result it will not affect their position within the company?
15. Does your company have a reward system that fosters behaviour that contributes to innovation?

How do you manage change?
16. Do you have a team of dedicated individuals, composed of representative employees, that lead and champion the changes required to sustain innovation?
17. Does this team monitor the activities of the company and ensure that there are no inconsistencies in the practices expected and performed?
18. Does this team use dialogue and consensus-building to garner support for the changes at the departmental level?
19. Do you manage the expectations and anxieties of your employees by communicating why change is important, involving employees in the implementation process, and providing the time and opportunity to disengage from the status quo?
20. Do you articulate clear short-term goals and objectives, measure progress, and communicate evidence of success to maintain the momentum and enthusiasm of your employees as changes are implemented?

Scoring:
If more than 75 percent of your answers (16 of 20) are “Yes,” then your company is likely to be adequately addressing the challenge of fostering an innovative culture.

If 50 to 75 percent of your answers (10 to 15) are “Yes” or “Sort Of,” there is more work to be done in order to foster an innovative culture.

If less than 50 percent of your answers are either “Yes” or “Sort Of,” your company seriously needs to re-evaluate its approach towards fostering an innovative culture.

To find out more about managing Innovation visit our website and sign up for our free Creativity and Innovation newsletter.

www.creative4business.co.uk

The Role of The Business Storyteller

A major role of senior management is to motivate people to reach certain goals. To do that, they must engage their emotions, and the key to their hearts is story. There are two ways to persuade people. The first is by using conventional rhetoric, which is what most executives are trained in. It’s an intellectual process, and in the business world it usually consists of a PowerPoint slide presentation in which you say, “Here is our company’s biggest challenge, and here is what we need to do to get ahead.” And you build your case by giving statistics, facts and quotes. But there are two major problems.

First, the people you’re talking to have their own set of rules, statistics, and life experiences. While you’re trying to persuade them, they are arguing with you in their heads. Second, if you do succeed in persuading them, you’ve done so only on an intellectual basis. That’s not good enough, because people are not inspired to act by reason alone.

The other way to persuade people – and ultimately a much more powerful way – is by uniting an idea with an emotion. The best way to do that is by telling a compelling story. In a story, you not only weave a lot of information into the telling but you also arouse your listener’s emotions and energy. Persuading with a story is hard. Any intelligent person can sit down and make lists.

It takes rationality but little creativity to design an argument using conventional rhetoric. But it demands vivid insight and storytelling skill to present an idea that packs enough emotional power to be memorable. If you can harness imagination and the principles of a well-told story, then you get people rising to their feet amid thunderous applause instead of yawning and ignoring you.

Read more on using Storytelling in a business context in future blogs and see the Creative Business Solutions' website for more creative ways to get ahead in business.

The Gods And Creativity

Below is one of my favourite tales from an old training book. Simple but effective. Read on ...

It was not long after the Gods had created humankind that they began to realise their mistake. The creatures that they had created were so adept, so skilful, so full of curiosity and the spirit of enquiry that it was only a matter of time before they would start to challenge the Gods themselves for supremacy.

To ensure their pre-eminence the Gods held a large conference to discuss the issue. Gods were summoned from all over the known and unknown worlds. The debates were long, detailed, and soul-searching.

All the Gods were very clear about one thing. The difference between them and mortals was the differences between the quality of the resources they had. While humans had their egos and were concerned with the external, material aspects of the world, the Gods had spirit, soul, and an understanding of the workings of the inner self.

The danger was that sooner or later the humans would want some of that too.

The Gods decided to hide their precious resources. The question was: where? This was the reason for the length and passion of the debates at the Great Conference of the Gods.

Some suggested hiding these resources at the top of the highest mountain. But it was realised that sooner or later the humans would scale such a mountain.

And the deepest crater in the deepest ocean would be discovered.

And mines would be sunk into the earth.

And the most impenetrable jungles would give up their secrets.

And mechanical birds would explore the sky and space.

And the moon and the planets would become tourist attractions.

And even the wisest and most creative of the Gods fell silent as if every avenue had been explored and found wanting.

Until the Littlest God, who had been silent until now, spoke up. “Why don’t we hide these resources inside each human? They’ll never think to look for them there.”

For more snippets of information, hints and tips relating to creativity and innovation why not visit our website and sign up for our regular newsletter?

Working with aliens

Not an episode of Star Trek but one of my favourite techniques for a) generating results b) getting a reaction from colleagues.

This technique is one of a series in which random stimuli are used and alternative viewpoints are adopted. It works best with well defined problems or where new products or services are being considered.

To start, define the problem or situation as best you can and brief those who are taking part. A group of half a dozen or so is ideal.

Imagine that an alien spaceship has landed on earth and the aliens are looking at your problem or the object that you have described. Next try to imagine what sort of questions the aliens would be asking, what would they be curious about? Many of the checklist techniques can provide some guidance here. A possible list could be:

• What is the purpose of this?


• How does it work?


• Why does it have to be this way?


• Why do these earthlings use these materials?


• Is it useful to me?


• Why does this matter, and to whom?


• Is it worth any money?


• Is there any other value?


• Could it be used for …..?

These (and other questions) should be asked with childlike innocence i.e. assume no familiarity with earthly concepts.

The questions may throw up some ideas which indicate that the original starting point was flawed. If this is the case then revisit the problem definition stage of the creative problem solving process. If some common themes emerge then record these and use them as random stimuli for further excursions or use a form of association to group some of themes to see if they suggest further options, choices or ideas.

To find out more about Creative Problem Solving and to obtain another forty seven great techniques visit the Creative Business Solutions product store. You can also sign up for our regular electronic newsletter too.

Are you trying to develop ideas for a new product or service?

Are you stuck? Well here is a simple technique that might help you out. Take that idea and try to apply some of the items in the following 'List And Twist' checklist to it. They may seem strange but they just might jog your memory! For instance I showed the list to someone who was writing a children's book and they were taken by the suggestion of adding a smell! The net result - a scratch and sniff book. Try it for yourself and see.

Add a step, Find other uses, Slow down, Rearrange the steps, Improve the quality,
Add motion, Add an ingredient, Make it easier, Change packaging, Combine ingredients,
Align with other product, De-automate parts, Make it more extreme, Make it more expensive , Put some fun in it, Substitute materials, Find new distribution, Change the state,
Make it self service, Combine other processes, Change the shape , Add more service,
Make it a game, Put a story with it, Celebrity connection, Reverse the concept,
Turn it upside down, Purify it, Add nostalgia, Add smell

For more ideas visit http://www.creative4business.co.uk.

Humour and Creativity

Consider the following (depending on which country you are from you may miss the point in one or two):

"If you see someone doing the impossible, don't interrupt them"
Amar Bose (Bose Corporation

"Space is not remote, you can get there in an hour if you can make your car travel vertically"
Fred Hoyle (Astronomer)

"A sure cure for seasickness is to sit under a tree"
Spike Milligan (Comedian)

"I took a speed reading course and read War and Peace in twenty minutes. Its about Russia"
Woody Allen (Comedian)

"Those who say it can't be done are being passed by those who are doing it"
Anonymous

"I said 'nearest the bull starts'. He said 'baa', I said 'moo'. He said 'you start'"
Peter Kaye (Comedian)

"'Hallo Rabbit', he said, 'Is that you?'. 'Lets pretend it isn't' said Rabbit, 'and see what happens'"
Winnie-the-pooh (bear, philosopher and explorer)

Now you may chuckle at one or more of the above, but did you wonder why? It is the juxtaposition of (strange) ideas that does it. It is exactly this mode of thinking that we need in the business world to be able to see things from a new perspective, generate ideas and spot new opportunities.

For more ideas visit www.creative4business.co.uk and see what happens.

You can only manage what you can measure

There are many who say that you can only manage what you can measure. I tend to agree with that sentiment so how can I then suggest that Innovation can be managed successfully?

The answer is that Innovation can be measured. What's new I hear you ask? We have always been able to measure this using Key Performance Indicators. KPIs do not measure Innovation directly, they measure the result of Innovation. This is nit picking a little but imagine setting up an Innovation project, and the finding out from your KPIs that the number of widgets falling off your production line has doubled.

At first this seems good but ask yourself how many widgets could you actually produce? How will you know when your Innovation project really is producing the goods? Would it be nice to actually look at that process itself?

The Innovation Toolkit from Creative Business Solutions does just that. At a top level it provides some graphical output that gives you a feel for how you are doing and then provides some more concrete results so that you can a) see what you are currently doing well b) create an action plan to fix the things that are not doing so well.

All of this looks at 'soft factors' such as culture, leadership and management, desire to win, grasp of external factors etc.

To find out more about managing Innovation visit http://www.creative4business.co.uk/innovation.html now.

So you think you're not creative?

This article is about valuing the creative potential in all of us, and trying to create room for it to flourish. A reasonable degree of creativity is a natural output of mentally and socially healthy people. As in any other human activity, practice and training can develop it. It is, however, quite a fragile state, and many things can, and often do, disrupt it, so that in many cases we are not operating to our full potential.

This implies that if you want to produce a modest increase in creativity, it is usually much more cost-effective to develop people and to remove some of the obstacles, than to try to find Leonardos and Einsteins to build your team from! If you can discover how to release it, creativity will find its own ways to blossom.

One of the most basic requirements is that creativity needs 'space' (in a metaphorical rather than literal sense). New responses to a problem require more mental processing than standard ones. So if you are under severe time pressure and/ or you are endlessly being interrupted and/ or your brain is caught up with obsessive routines, or preoccupied with panic or rage (or even passion!), creativity is going to be difficult! Some of the ways of creating mental space when you are working on your own include the following.

• Schedule real 'quality time' for imaginative thinking. If at all possible, give yourself regular 'down-time' from your main role to allow time for thinking. With good forward thinking and preparation, you can often make space, e.g. by scheduling thinking time in quiet periods before the storm. For millennia, most religious traditions have built into their lifestyles regular periods of receptive contemplation and reflection. There were, and are, good reasons for this! It does not have to be anything very elaborate - perhaps just a regular walk, a round of golf, or whatever.
  
  
• Time-share your brain. Another alternative is to dedicate thinking capacity instead of time. Leave the problem ticking over at the back of your mind and carry a notebook everywhere to record ideas as they occur to you. This can merge into 'guerilla' creativity (see below).
  
  
• Make psychological space. Use psychological development, assertiveness training, stress management and related approaches to develop the ability to remain calm, relaxed and fully attentive even under high pressure. In this way you can bring your whole mental resource to bear even under very difficult conditions. In effect you develop an 'inner space' on which you can draw when you need to.

Methods you can use when working with others include the following.

• Set up a formal creativity session. This, of course, is the classic solution. Notice that as well as providing a physical place where classic creativity methods can be used, it also provides a symbolic space (see the earlier discussion of play). One of the benefits of holding a problem-solving workshop or training course is that it 'gives permission' for participants to set aside their normal responsibilities for a while, to concentrate on a particular issue. This 'permissiongiving' aspect may not be so clear in techniques where the participants do not physically come together (e.g. postal methods such as Delphi, or where people collaborate over computer networks).
  
  
• Develop skills in 'guerilla' creativity. As many organizations become leaner, the opportunity cost of a formal creativity session increases and such sessions become harder to set up. One solution is to interleave a kind of 'distributed creativity' into other activities. For instance, if you cannot manage a formal brainstorming afternoon with a few colleagues, perhaps you can incorporate an element of brainstorming into your next few corridor conversations, pub lunches or train journeys. You will not be able to use the more elaborate formal methods, so you will have to introduce creative practices discreetly into your conversation in ways that are almost invisible. By getting creativity to ride on the back of other activities, the additional time-cost attributable specifically to creativity can be minimal.
  
  
• Delegate creativity. Even when you are at your wits' end with pressure, anxiety, exhaustion, etc., there will be others who are not. If you have a good network of trustworthy friends, colleagues, family or even consultants (!) you may sometimes be able to 'borrow' some surrogate creative time from them by asking them to have a go at solving your problem for you.

Here is just one idea for finding something creative in what could otherwise be a very ordinary situation. Find some more in the YES you can ebook series here.

'In-and-out' listening - a basic method for guerilla creativity

When you next have a problem you want ideas for, practise listening in one-to-one settings, adopting 'in-and-out' thinking.

First of all, listen closely and attentively so your partner begins to open up, following their own train of thought. Then, as you listen, try also letting your imagination roam around what your partner says, both hearing them and letting yourself make connections between their words and your problem. If it works well, you may be able to get quite good ideas from very ordinary conversations.

This is a very good method when sitting in bars and pavement cafes where there are plenty of distractions. Happy experimenting!

Find out more about using creativity as a business tool at http://www.creative4business.co.uk/creativity.html