Before & After : Creative thinking in business

I hear people say, “break the rules” all the time when talking about creativity. I agree breaking the rules is certainly one of the ways to be creative. You could almost argue, that if you don’t break some rule somewhere, can it really be creative?

But you must be willing to break the ruler as well.

Let me explain by walking you through what happens in a good many of the brainstorming sessions my fellow Before & After creative thinking coaches and I facilitate in the corporate world.

Typically we distill the best, freshest ideas throughout the session, building our consideration set, round by round. At the end of the day we have accumulated a “short” list, which, if we’ve done our job right, is actually rather long. Then we do a final distillation to get to the real short list, the list of take-away ideas.

The problem that too often happens is that when distilling to this final short list, people too frequently forget to break the ruler that measures these rule breaking ideas. So, the effect is that the real new ideas frequently get filtered out in the final screening process. So much for breaking the rules.

New ideas, by definition, are different. New ideas, at least the best ones, often redefine the playing field. But if we don’t redefine the criteria that measures whether an idea is “good” or not, then the final list really can only yield ideas that are acceptable to an old standard.

What we have to do before we disqualify a new idea, that otherwise feels pretty good, is ask ourselves, “by applying current criteria might we be losing ideas that are so new that they simply render the old criteria irrelevant?” Or maybe the better question, “Should we rework the ruler?”

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He was the greatest professional basketball coach of all time. Coached the Boston Celtics from 1950 to 1966, then became general manager. He won more championships than any other coach. He was a master innovator as a coach and as a GM - first to start five black players, invented the 6th man concept, drafted a phantom player who revived the franchise.

Basketball hasn’t just lost a great coach. The world has lost a creative genius.

Let’s look at this 6th man concept. Basketball teams have five starters, right? Well, Red figured out a way to use six starters. They just didn’t all start. Frank Ramsey. John Havlicek. Kevin McHale. All great players. All players who could start for any other team. (Actually, they all started for the Celtics, eventually.) So, when Red made his first substitution of the game, the Celts still had five starters on the court. Only one of them had fresh legs. That’s 20% of the team less fatigued than the other team. Brilliant.

Now on to the phantom player. In 1978, as GM of the Celtics, Red Auerbach used a 1st round draft pick to select a player who would not score a single point for the Celtics that season, and Red knew it going in. You see, this player was a college junior whom Red knew would not be available for another year. If you don’t know much about NBA basketball, this creative genius basically “wasted” a very high draft pick on a player he knew he would have to wait a year to get.

Yeah, he wasted a high draft pick, alright, but he assured the Celtics of the services of a player he knew would bring championships back to Boston. The player was the g-r-e-a-t Larry Bird. Again, brilliant.

Yes, the world lost a creative genius this week, not just a basketball coach. We’ll miss Red. However we won’t miss the plaid jackets.

For more on Red Auerbach’s creative genius see the Celtics’ official web site.

When it’s time to reinvent something, may I suggest you start with exploring its untributes? This is a very simple way to rethink anything. Just look at what it isn’t.

Let’s look at how this might work in new product development. Start off by listing the attributes of a product. Now, turn them into what I call untributes. Soft becomes not soft. Fast become not fast. Stop becomes don’t stop.

“Stop becomes don’t stop? “ you ask. Maybe I should, uh, stop here, and give an example.

Okay, let’s take brakes on a car. Brakes stop you, right? Brakes that don’t stop you are bad, righter? Well, how about anti-lock brakes. They stop, then they don’t stop, then they stop, then they don’t stop. Get it.

In their desire to make breaks stop better, some engineers likely figured, “well when stopping causes a skid, that’s not good.” (Engineers are really, smart people.) “So, how about if we employ that pumping action that drivers are told to do to prevent skids.” (Growing up with New England winters I learned the ol’ pumping action routine on my tricycle.)

By exploring untributes it opens up a whole wide range of possibilities. In The Do-it-yourself Lobotomy workshop and book we talk about 180° Thinking™ - going in the opposite direction of conventional thinking. 180° Thinking is great at helping people push away from preconceptions in a quick, easy manner.

Well, looking at untributes is a form of 180° Thinking, I suppose, but maybe it’s more of a 359° Thinking thing. Looking in all other directions but the conventional path.

Hot doesn’t necessarily become cold, it simply becomes not hot, which can mean warm, hot only some of the time, hot in only one place, hot during certain times, or warm during those times, but cool, not cold, at other times,…. The possibilities are endless.

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Weird Al Yankovic has always been a tad different. Yeah, different - another word for creative, right?

Here’s a guy who has made a living recording songs that most people listen to over and over - like twice. Hey, what am I saying? The guy sells tons of records! And they’re funny.

Well, now Al’s become “different” in his marketing of a song as well. Like 180° from convention.

You see, pop artists make a living selling songs, right? Selling. Like you give me money, I give you a song. I mean, they gotta’ eat. Well, The Weird One got into what he calls a “political” battle with James Blunt’s record label when he parodied “You’re Beautiful” recently. The Weird version is “You’re pitiful” (180° Thinking again). But, after getting Blunt’s permission, Atlantic stepped in and told Al he can’t put the song on his new CD. Al’s solution? He’s giving it away. Giving. No money. Listen here, it’s free.

Free? That’s pitiful marketing. Or is that brilliant? (it got me to the Weird Al site).

Is that Dylan in an Apple commercial or Apple in a Dylan commercial?

Let me get this straight. Dylan is in an iPod commercial? Can you actually put the words Dylan and commercial in the same sentence? Is that allowed?

I was kind of young to appreciate how different Dylan was when I first realized who he was. For me, first he was a folkie. My older sister listened to folkies. Yuk! And this folkie sorta’ couldn’t really sing.

It wasn’t until he plugged in that I heard Dylan for the genius he is.

Most of his songs were defined by the lyrics (still are), not so much the melodies. In some cases it hasn’t always been particularly clear what the melodies are until you heard someone else sing them, i.e. The Byrds’ Mr. Tambourine Man, Hendrix’s All along the watchtower or, for that matter, the entire HBO Dylan Tribute at Madison Square Garden.

But when I first heard Positively 4th Street, then I got the genius of Dylan in a way that set asunder every preconception I’d ever brought to music or anything.

Verse 1:
You got a lotta nerve to say you are my friend
When I was down you just stood there grinning

You have to hear it. In this case it’s not the words. It’s the melody.

The “ing” on “you just stood there grinning” is supposed to go down, not up.

Supposed to according to whose rule book? The music rule book.

Every verse in this song - which also kinda broke a few other rules* by not ever having the title in the lyrics, by not having a bridge and by not having a chorus, you know a refrain, a thing that gets repeated, “the hook,” as record label A&R people preach to young artists, the part that defines the song - every verse in this song ended on an up note, not a down note. Every verse. Musical blasphemy.

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When you lead a group ideation session sometimes it’s good to anticipate the potentially difficult players in advance to head off the problems.There are many types of problem children who could mess up the process. Here I’m going to talk about a group who is not necessarily a problem because they can’t play well with others. But more their presence often presents a problem because of where they are on the org chart, not who they are as individuals.

I’m talking about the big cheeses. The bosses. The heavy hitters.

These are the people who, because of their positions, wield all kinds of influence on the brainstorming process, where they intend to or not. It’s best to handle that potential dysfunction in advance to head off any possible issues before they happen.

Here’s what I do. I call together all persons of rank a few minutes before the actual brainstorming begins and speak to them as a group. I don’t single out anyone. I don’t pull anyone aside individually. I remind them, if they’re not aware, that their very presence in a brainstorming session might put a damper on the process.

I mean, we’re looking for new ideas here, friends. By definition, new ideas are unproven. It’s not easy volunteering a truly new idea in front of the boss, no matter how open a corporate culture might be.

I work with a lot of top executives, and I have to tell you some of the most hollow words in business are “our people are allowed to fail.” Funny, but your people don’t seem to know that.

So in my little pre-brainstorming pep talk I tell these executives, “It’s not you, personally, It’s your position.” Could it be them personally? Sure. But it’s easier to speak to their positions, so it’s not a personal thing.

Here are my simple executive coaching tips:

1) Hold back early - don’t volunteer too many ideas too quickly

2) Don’t judge other’s ideas in the early going

3) When you volunteer an idea, make sure the first one is a little far out

Let’s look at all three little pieces of advice in detail. (more…)