Before & After : Creative thinking in business

If you missed our enlightening 20-minute conference call on August 8th with creative organization expert Paul Deslauriers, click here for a complete recording of the call, edited for easy navigation. This call was primarily with ad agency principals, but it will be extremely valuable to any managers who look to maximize creativity in their organizations.

Paul Deslauriers is president of B&A sister company, NRG Consulting, an organizational development firm that specializes in creatively driven companies such as ad agencies and media outlets to help them maintain their edge, not just creatively, but also in overall performance, efficiency, productivity and profitability.

Some times the big creative ideas that improve companies are the results of years of R&D and millions in development cost. Some times the game changing ideas are simply a shift of perspective that has huge implications.

UPS’s new reduced left hand turn routing is just that kind of simple concept that will return millions in results.

Taking left turns often requires idling to wait for traffic to pass through an intersection; wasting time, fuel and therefore money.

By designating routes that minimize left hand turns the delivery giant is lowering their fuel costs and speeding up delivery, which can only serve customers in the end. And, oh yeah, it’s safer.

“A small improvement?” you might ask. Well, with 88,000 vehicles on the road each day, making 15,000,000 - yes, that’s 15-million - deliveries, I guess it adds up.

In this space the discussion is so often about how to make creative leaps. You wouldn’t be reading this if you didn’t see the importance of creative thinking in business. But it can feel daunting at times. “How and I going to come up with that huge idea?”

Well, examples like the UPS new left-turn policy show us that big ideas don’t have to be wildly involved nor cost tons of money to implement. Sure, the tracking system big brown implemented over the past few years cost millions to put in place - a system that tells them which parcels go in which trucks and in what order, etc. helps to make this new policy practical across their entire fleet. But it was the simple concept to avoid left turns - creative leverage, as we often call it - that is providing the ultimate return in this example.

It’s easy to think that your best bet for coming up with creative ideas is full bore, lobes-to-the-wall thinking. You’re right. And you’re wrong.

Throwing megawatts of creative energy at a problem or opportunity is certainly a great way of solving it, or at least making a lot of progress against. But to do this for long periods of time is hardly the most efficient way of finding huge ideas, and often not the most effective way either.

I believe the best method of coming up with fresh ideas is on again, off again thinking, where the off time is as important as the on time. And any of the things you think about when you’re away from the problem can actually help you solve it, as they act like bumper posts on a pinball machine, diverting the direction of your thoughts, setting up all kinds creative possibilities against the problem you’re, ahem, “not” working on at that moment.

Yeah, it sounds kind of wacky, but here’s how it works. (more…)

There are three types of appetites for professional growth in the business world; the forever hungry, the binge eaters and the starved.

The forever hungry are always growing. The binge eaters grow only when they absolutely have to. And the starved are emaciated, barely functional, if not already dead, professionally, that is.

Those in the latter group are not only professionally deceased, but they are dead weight to a company. It’s not even that they don’t pull their own load, they actually hold the entire organization back.

These starving masses have no thirst for professional growth, never nourishing their minds. They know what they know. They aren’t interested in improvement. They spend an inordinate amount of energy trying to keep an ever-changing world from evolving, so they can maintain some semblance of relevance. Their careers, of course, don’t go anywhere fast and they complain about everyone passing them by. I kinda find it hard to feel sorry for these people.

At the other end of the spectrum, the forever hungry group are the leaders. They don’t just survive, they thrive. Oh, they hit bumps in the professional road occasionally, but their perpetual momentum carries them through it.

From a creative vitality standpoint the ever-hungry peeps know what they don’t know and they are always looking to fill that void. They are the risk takers. They fail more than average people, but, hey, in business where does average get you?

So what about the middle group? The binge feeders. Those who grow only when it’s truly necessary? Where do they fit into this professional growth food chain, as it were? If you’re at this site you are likely in the leader group and are probably quite interested in how to move these middle-of-the-appetite-road types to the fast lane of the professional growth feast. (more…)

Simple word choice when we start our brainstorming can channel it toward a quick dead end or open up the process to a plethora of possibilities.

I love the word “might.”

When framing a brainstorming session for, say, customer service, you can ask, “How can we serve our customers better?” or you can ask “How might we serve our customers better.” The second phrasing is mighty better.

When we ask “How can” we do something that begs for certainty, a solution that can be done. Literally, that means it is proven; it has been done. Because a truly new idea is not proven, uncertain. This leads us to known solutions, which may be okay, but if we already knew them why are we brainstorming? Because they don’t work, or they may not be enough.

When we ask “How might” we do something it opens up all sorts of possibilities, and they don’t have to be proven or even likely of success - they just might be solutions. And there are other benefits. (more…)

You wouldn’t be one of the 62% of companies who don’t see their performance deficiencies, would you? BTW, the other 38% aren’t without dysfunction, they’re just oblivious to it. All companies have issues in how well they perform.

Let me tell you about NRG, the premier organizational development consultant for creative organizations.

Before & After has formed a partnership with NRG (New Resources for Growth) a company that helps creative organizations like ad agencies, TV stations and others achieve peak performance. NRG achieves this level of high functionality the way a master mechanic tunes an engine for greater power and efficiency. B&A has been recommending NRG to help our clients since we were formed 15 years ago. We now have a more formal relationship.

NRG’s founder, Paul Deslauriers and his team are expert at helping their clients identify whatever is impeding performance and growth, both quantitatively and qualitatively. Then they dig in and help effect real change. I find what NRG does absolutely amazing. The shifts that occur include surges in new business, sales, teamwork, process flow, all kinds of improvements.

If you’d like to know more about how NRG helps companies reach peak performance check out the NRG site or email Lisa DiMonte or call 401 861-6489, Ex. * 3.

Or assess for yourself if your group needs the kind of help NRG provides.

New blood means new energy, new ideas. And what company couldn’t benefit from fresh ideas? Fresh ideas for your company and maybe more importantly, fresh ideas for your clients.

New blood has historically meant new people. But new people means discontinuity, inexperience, unproven factors and, well, losing older blood to make room for the new.

If you’re on the old blood side of this equation, that’s not a very exciting prospect. If you’re on the management side of the equation there are alternatives to bringing fresh thinking to the party that don’t involve discontinuity and other disruption.

Give your people a transfusion.

One way is with musical office chairs. Switch experienced people around to give them new scenery while giving their old positions new blood, all without a major corporate blood letting.

There’s this old school point of view that clients want continuity. Yeah, I suppose, some do. But how does that explain why you’re so scared of getting fired? More than continuity, clients want fresh thinking. New blood can’t help but think fresh. And, beyond keeping clients happy, it reenergizes people (even if some do grumble a little at first). And energized, motivated people are the best way to keep clients happy long term.

New ideas are at the heart of most all companies’ undertakings these days. According to a recently conducted B&A poll, with business experience comes attachment to old ways of doing things and therefore more stale thinking and less openness to new ideas.

So, beyond musical office chairs, it’s easier than you might think for experienced people to separate themselves from how things have been done in order to maintain a fresh perspective and bring genuinely new ideas to the group’s efforts. (more…)

One of the biggest mistakes most people make in creative pursuits is to go with the first good idea they come up with, or worse yet, they go with the first idea, period.

Years ago when I was an advertising creative director and used to look at dozens of portfolios a month, I could tell four pages into a book if that person was shooting from the hip or really thinking through a marketing problem and finding fresh solutions. When you do something for a living, you can spot this type of lazy thinking a mile away — ideas that are tired clichés, not surprising, differentiating concepts

Today as a creative thinking coach serving many industries, I continue to see this rush to creativeness. There have always been two subsets of the population who tend to fall into this trap. But, more and more, I find this inclination across the board. (more…)

Have you heard about the School Sisters of Notre Dame? This order of Catholic nuns is dedicated to education and firmly believe that the idle mind is the devil’s workshop. So they have vowed to keep their minds active. When not doing their educational work and worship, many of the good sisters play games, do puzzles, follow current events and such.

A number of years ago, this group came to the attention of the medical science world as they were outliving the general population and showing fewer signs of Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. A study was begun to monitor their living habits and where upon their deaths many have been donating their brains to science.

The main question being explored in the study is “What factors in early, mid, and late life increase the risk of Alzheimer’s disease and other brain diseases such as stroke?” Other research questions relate to the determinants of longevity and the quality of life in the elderly. Some very interesting discoveries have been made, particularly fascinating for people interested in improving their creative thinking. (more…)

The best golfers use the most advanced clubs. Sure, anyone can still play golf with a 40-year old club, but you won’t find many serious players doing it.

The best carpenters use the most high tech drills and stud finders and table saws. When time is money quick setup tools that help you do it right the first time make the work better and the job more profitable.

My dentist scans the inside of my mouth with leading edge imaging technology, builds a computer model and then carves out a new tooth cap with an automated shaper in the back room of his office, all this before I can finish the cover article in Men’s Health. Remember when you used to wait two weeks as they sent this type of work out to some lab?

Before & After is in the creative training business. Sometimes even I think that sounds strange - “creative training? Oh, really?” But, hey, all we’re really doing is helping people improve their creative tools. And we do it with some pretty savvy companies; industry leaders in many fields, companies with some very bright, extremely creative people. The creatively rich working to get richer. Could this explain some of the success of the clients we serve?

So, what are the creative thinking tools we teach? (more…)