Before & After : Creative thinking in business

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…)

Did you ever get an idea seemingly out of nowhere? Of course you have. It happens to us all the time. Usually when we least expect it.

You’re riding in the car or on a plane or train. You’re playing with your dog. You’re out for a morning jog. Bam! A great idea strikes you for that project you’re working on. You write it down on a scrap of paper. Or, if you’re a flake like me, you don’t have a pen, so you call your own voice mail.

Of course, the idea didn’t come totally out of the blue. You can’t come up with a solution to a problem you are unaware of. You must have planted a seed at some point; five days ago, this morning, 30 minutes ago,… In Do-it-yourself Lobotomy workshop* terms we call it “ask the question early.” Everyone does it. But do you do it consciously? Do you do it consistently? It’s an amazing way to jump start the creative process and a great means of time management, too.

(* The Do-it-yourself Lobotomy is a professional development workshop we’ve conducted for over a quarter of a million people. “Ask the question early” is one of many “creative thinking “tools” covered in the workshop.)

(more…)

Important for all of us. Critical for managers.

When we speak of creativity we usually refer to it as an active thing. “Coming up with new ideas.” “Having fresh ideas.” “Conjuring up something different.” All descriptions of how we actively use the imagination to entertain something that has never been considered before.

Well, how about using your imagination in a less concerted manner? How about just being open to new ideas that might present themselves? Doesn’t that take just as much open-mindedness? Maybe more.

And for people in management, which usually means senior people, with more experience to leverage, and often more attachment to how things “should” be, this openness to ideas you didn’t expect is usually the difference between being a great leader and a, well, less-than-great leader. ( I’ll speak to more on this later.) (more…)

There’s a cat written up in a recent edition of The New England Journal of Medicine that can foreshadow death. The feline, Oscar, hangs around the halls of the advanced dementia unit in a nursing home in Rhode Island. If Oscar camps outside a patient’s door, well, that patient isn’t long for this world.

How accurate is this cat at predicting death? According to the nursing home’s staff, he’s never wrong. Never.

When I first read this, not to make light of the fate of these patients, nor this animal’s gift, but I thought, “wouldn’t it serve many of us if we got a strong signal that one of our ideas were doomed before we proceeded to put a lot of effort or money into it?”

That was my first thought. My second thoughts were, “don’t we already have too many death cats?” and, “aren’t they wrong a lot.” (more…)

My little brother Michael was born with a large hole in his head.

It was his mouth.

When brother Mike, 13 months my junior, was drawing at the kitchen table as a kid, you never had to guess what he was drawing. You could always hear what he was putting down to paper.

If Michael was drawing a farm, the rest of the family could tell from two rooms away. “Oink! Oink!” we’d all hear. Or, “Moooo!” Or, “Cluck, cluck, cluck.”

If we heard “Pow!!! Boom!!! Pow!!!” or “bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.” We knew Michael was drawing a war scene.

Then there were the times we’d hear “Oink, oink, POW!” Oh no, Michael’s blowing up pigs.

What was the lesson I got from this innocent (?) little exercise my little brother did daily with his crayons? You have to let it out. You can’t keep it inside you. When you’re creating, you have to risk looking or sounding a little foolish, and you have to let it out.

So often when leading brainstorming sessions or when conducting some in-room exercise at my training programs I can see it in people’s eyes that they’re holding back. I can see the excitement for having a wild idea battling with the self-consciousness of exposing one’s inner whims.

Every great thinker of every great idea has faced the moment when they had to make the decision to go public with their concept or not. (Or they didn’t think at all,..) We should all be grateful that so many people had the guts to let those wonderful ideas out. We can only imagine how many great ideas have been lost on the tip of someone’s mind, pen, paintbrush or keyboard.

Fortunately, I had my brother and his 80 decibel Crayolas® to help me get that important lesson early in life, that if you don’t let ideas out, no one will ever know what’s on your mind.

What do you do all day long?

You’re in meetings. You’re at the computer. You’re traveling. You’re in more meetings. You’re doing your job. You’re executing stuff.

Now, what exactly is it that you are executing?

Ideas.

We all do, do, do. But it starts with an idea.

We come up with ideas. We are handed other’s ideas. We sell ideas. We execute ideas. Too, often we clean up after ideas gone wrong.

How long does it take to come up with that idea? A nano second, right?

Then we put in the hours, weeks, often months, sometimes years executing that idea. It better be a good idea. Because that’s a lot of time, energy and money going into that idea. It better be a very good one. Heck, it better be great. (more…)

There was a time the Speedo logo that you see at the bottom of these swim trunks couldn’t fit on a “Speedo.” For decades a Speedo was the briefest of swim briefs. The very concept of Speedo stood for skimpy, tight, dare I say, “daring.” Its brand essence, its DNA could be rolled up in the palm of your hand.

Well, so much for slavishly adhering to strict DNA. Speedo has changed the fabric of its brand. Or is it that they’ve added to it significantly?

Militantly strict discipline around brand definition has long been one of the foundational principles of brand marketing.

At Speedo USA’s web site, of the 30 best sellers in swim wear only 1, count ‘em 1, item fits snugly to the classic definition of the swim brief that put this brand on the map. Only three products could be called “briefs.”

Today Speedo is the top selling swimsuit marketer in the world. Did they do it by standing still? By resting on their Olympic gold medal-winning laurels, as tight (so to speak) as they were? No, they did it by having the insight, wisdom and, yes, probably swimming pools full of courage to paddle away from what too many companies would call their undeniable essence, their untouchable DNA. (more…)

Welcome to the era of the in-house communications agency.

For those toiling in the trenches of corporate communications departments for years your day has finally come.

Oh, with few exceptions, you still don’t have all the glam and budgets that the outside ad agency gets, but there has been a significant shift. Your stock has risen sharply as the changes in media habits have made your arena more important to your corporation’s marketing success.

Some companies have recognized the importance of world-class communications teams for years; Target and Apple come to mind. I talk to more and more communications pros who have given up the outside to go inside. This is certainly where the growth is. Security, too?

The value of in-house communications has gained in direct proportion to the redistribution of communications vehicles, as articulated by the long tail theory. Below the line is the new above the line, baby!

Here at Before & After we’ve seen the increased investments corporations are making in their in-house pros with heightened activity in training and development. Heck, if companies are putting more faith in their in-house capabilities, they better make sure that team is operating on all cylinders. And nothing revitalizes the in-house machine like tuning up creative thinking.

Creative thinking is behind all aspects of in-house communications; strategy, media, concepting the “creative” work, as well as executing all of the above.

Want further proof? When The In-House Agency Forum (INAF) put together their first professional development conference with a focus on creativity they contact me to keynote the meeting. (Shameless plug, noted.)

Find out more about the INAF event, to be held June 8th outside of Boston, or check out Creative reCharge, Before & After’s custom tailored professional development program for in-house communications agencies.

With the business world game board being reset (see my post The world is not just flat, it’s upside down) there’s a great deal of opportunity for organizations that take the initiative to make serious gains in marketing communications. Go get ‘em!