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.

When you’re working on a problem head on, so to speak, it’s your conscious mind that’s doing virtually all of the work. Your conscious mind is what you’re processing on the conscious level - mostly your observations, knowledge and recollections. Even when you’re trying to imagine new things, what’s the raw material for the new thoughts? Stuff you know. I mean, you can only think about what you know, right?

Well, the conscious mind is quite disciplined by nature. It likes order. It likes to make sense of everything. This is a good thing most of the time. It keeps you on he right side of the road when you’re driving. It helps you deliver your work on time. But when you’re using this orderly machine to find new ideas, yes it can serve you, but it’s like a car in perfect alignment, whether you’re steering or not, it tends to go where it’s pointed. So your thoughts tend to be linear, therefore predictable.

There’s another side of your mind that is a lot less disciplined, much less predictable. That’s your subconscious mind. Where we can only process a mere seven or eight thousand bits of data a minute on the conscious level, we are processing literally billions of bits of data on the subconscious level at any given moment. That’s an absolutely immense well of possibilities to tap into.

Instead of an orderly arrangements of thoughts that form ideas, where the default position is making sense; putting subject before predicate, matching shirt with pants, driving in your lane, etc., the subconscious mind is a demolition derby of data crunching. In subconscious processing our mind is free to “think” things that don’t necessarily make sense. Your dreams are a pretty good window into those kinds of thoughts.

Bringing this back to the main topic of this article - the on/of method of thinking - when you’re “not” thinking about something consciously your subconscious mind is free to toss around some ideas on the subject in that gigantic thought auger where anything goes. So when you’re not using the conscious linear method you’re simply more likely to have fresh combinations of data that materialize as new thoughts.

Then you need to be open minded enough to recognize a worthwhile idea among the LSD trip-type thoughts that are just randomly swimming through your mind.

Malcolm Gladwell spoke to this tuning in to flashed of inspiration in his bets selling business book Blink! The ideas come for all of us. But it’s only the truly inspired minds that seem to pick up the messages regularly and turn them into fresh business ideas.

Of course, we all have this “gift,” that of getting ideas seemingly out of nowhere. You know, the ideas you get in the shower, when you’re on the commute, or doing your daily exercise. These are the “off” times when your subconscious is “on.”

In this era of heavy workloads and pressure to deliver in less and less time, and all sorts of time crunches, doesn’t it just make sense to use that immense power of the subconscious mind to get more out of your thinking?

Tom Edison, the American who still holds the most patents for new ideas about a century after his active years, believed strongly in the power of this type of thinking, particularly in the space where conscious and subconscious almost exist at the same time - during nodding off or waking up times. He routinely tapped into this resource as he took many naps a day. But more than just “sleeping on it,” he actually held a heavy object in his had at his side as he dozed off, then when he lost “consciousness” and dropped the object to the floor, the noise would wake him and he’d write down the thoughts that he could collect during that moment.

You don’t have to be quite so fanatical with this process. All you have to do is work on a challenge, then leave it to work on another challenge, go look out the window or go grab a cup of coffee.

Oh, you already do this occasionally, do you? Even better, then do it more consistently and you’ll be giving yourself even more opportunities to
get fresher ideas in a more efficient manner.

For readers who have been through my Do-it-yourself Lobotomy creative thinking workshop this is similar to the tool we use called “Ask the question early” (see my article from last November Jump start the creative process).

A lot of this stuff is a long way from rocket science. All you have to do is do it.

Alt head: Turn your creativity off for greater performance.

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.

The binge eaters at the professional development food bar, by nature feed their minds only when they absolutely must. Fine. You’re an insatiable mind feeder, so if you want to help your company thrive and grow you need to know how to engage these more passive individuals and help them thrive and grow.

As I said before these middle of the growth-appetite-buffett types typically only progress when they have to. So what does “have to” mean. It means professional survival; when their industry is in deep you-know-what, when their company is clawing to stay vital, when their actual jobs are threatened. Again, these slow-to-grow (I’m getting sick of all these hyphenated-word phrases) types face a no-choice (sorry) situation.

Well, if you’re in management you can give them a no-choice situation. And you don’t have to give it to them when the industry or company’s back is up against the wall (although if that is the case then you have no choice).

This no-choice option is called lots of things when it’s levied in a proactive manner - it’s called raising the bar, elevating the expectations, demanding improvement. And the companies that operate this way as part of their DNA they actually have a good deal of success getting more out of their people than most companies.

I work in all corners of the corporate world, with a great deal of experience in the ad agency sector and a ton more experience with companies in virtually all industries. It’s my estimation that roughly 1/4 of the working masses are in the “starving” category, roughly 1/2 are in the middle - “binge eaters” - zone and about 1/4 of people in business are the “forever-hungry” types.

That kinda weird brain thing I used for an illustration at the beginning of this article is actually a chocolate layer cake which was served at the break of a workshop I led at an ad agency at recently. The agency - Cline, Davis, Mann - is a company that is absolutely committed to continuous improvement. Yeah, words “continuous improvement,” words that lots of companies use quite casually. But, believe me, CDM lives by these words.

And in the context of this discussion that means providing an environment where everyone grows professionally. Now, do you think they have a staff made up of 100% hungry growth people? No company is that fortunate. But I will tell you that, since companies like CDM make continuous improvement and professional growth a priority, those who don’t embrace the new - the “what’s possible”, the future - well, they simply don’t last long in this perpetually hungry environment. They either gain the appetite or,…

I use CDM as an example because they are the ones who baked the brain cake. And this company has brought my firm, Before & After, into a number of their offices, some on more than one occasion. So they have certainly demonstrated a true commitment to professional growth for all. But, actually, most B&A clients fall into this category - companies trying to make all of their people hungry. Trying to help all their people grow professionally.

I solute this commitment. It’s walking the talk. It’s not just waiting for improvement to happen, it’s making it happen.

Any company can do it. All they have to do is,…ahem,… just do it.

And when B&A gets the honor to serve such a company, well, it’s just frosting on the cake.

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.

Besides begging for fresh ideas the expression “how might” also leaves room for “might not.” If we aim for certainty we go to a safe place, we don’t think outside the proverbial box, we actually go directly to the center of the box. That’s brainstorming?

In Do-it-yourself Lobotomy parlance this is one of the ways we “ask a better question.” One word making a question work harder. One minor shift setting the trajectory of thinking on a much grander course.

And it’s not just word choice. It’s an entire mind set - “I will consider what has been done.” or “I will explore what might be possible.” More breakthrough ideas come from this kind of thinking. And not just in concerted brainstorming, but in one’s everyday manner and attitude.

The irony here, of course, is that the less certain word is a more certain way to explore new territory and find huge ideas. … a more certain way to be creative and live creativity.

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.

South America in May
Southeast Asia in June
Europe in August
Europe in November
Plus numerous trips planned across the US most every month.

If you’d like to schedule a Do-it-yourself Lobotomy workshop or any of our other professional development programs for your company or trade organization while we’re in your area please contact us.

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.

Some people are actually able to accumulate experience within a category and yet still be able to see things objectively in order to bring new thinking when necessary. These people, however, are extremely rare.

Familiarity breed staleness.

For most people in business their degree of experience tracks with their attachment to old concepts, so they have great difficulty coming up with new ideas or even entertaining new ideas brought to them by other people or new realities.

As a creative thinking coach I have a unique perspective into the various companies I serve. These companies usually bring me and my associates in for a simple reason. Their people need to be better at maintaining a fresh perspective. I must tell you that most people in the corporate environment, whether large companies or small, whether so-called traditional industries or so-called progressive fields, once they gain experience in a category it becomes almost impossible to detach themselves from what they know to be in a position to find truly fresh ideas.

In a stagnant category attachment is not so much of a handicap. In a dynamically changing category (sound familiar?) attachment is a huge anchor that holds even the brightest and most experienced people back. In fact, that experience is often the reason for the attachment.

Did someone say Lobotomy?

The way Before & After helps experienced people maintain fresh perspective is with our creative thinking workshop The Do-it-yourself Lobotomy. This program, proven with over a quarter of a million people globally, in some of the most successful companies in the world, helps people let go of what they know - Lobotomize, as we say - long enough to entertain a new idea. Basically, when we “know,” well, we know, but when we don’t know, we wonder. And that’s when wonderful ideas emerge.

So this Valentines Day you can give your organization the gift of fresh blood by firing everyone (a gift?), by putting experienced people in new jobs (gulp!), or by helping your people maintain fresh perspectives with a nice quick Lobotomy.

The Do-it-yourself Lobotomy. The gift you give your people so they can keep giving your company the gift of fresh thinking.

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.

The easiest group to peg with this tendency to stop at the first good idea are juniors. In spite of often being eager to create, this group simply hasn’t been around enough to know the obvious, been-done solutions from the truly breakthrough ideas. To this group I say use your boundless energy to look at lots of concepts in raw form, then bring a short list (maybe six or eight solutions) to your supervisor for final judgment. Of course, for your short list to be six or eight solutions your long list needs to be dozens of possibilities. For an expansion of sheer quantity’s role in the creative process check out my post on the “law of large numbers” to see how high achievers tend to be prolific thinkers.

Another group that too frequently falls into the go-with-the-first-idea” pattern are very senior people. They’ve seen a lot of problems in their careers and have a stockpile of pat solutions, so when a new problem looks familiar, they simply plug in a “tried and true” idea. “Heck, it worked before, can’t it work again?” they say, “Besides, I’m busy.”

And therein lies the element that is too frequently turning the masses these days into lazy creative thinkers: the busy factor. People in business are simply so pressed, so jammed, they are willing to sacrifice quality thinking to get the work out. A short-term mentality if I ever saw one. The real winners in business know that you can’t always solve new problems with old ideas. I mean if the old solution existed when the problem arose then that, by definition, means the old solution is not going to do the job. Busy people rationalize this, they go with their first good idea and it too often comes back to haunt them.

People visiting this site probably don’t need an explanation of why we need fresh ideas in business. But I will state that the success of thriving companies, brands and products most frequently comes from clear differentiation, and isn’t that alone an outcome of fresh thinking?

As for advice on how to go beyond your first good idea, I could say just do it. But you knew that didn’t you? And that still hasn’t always been enough motivation to follow through when time is short and the pressure is on. One thing I will say is that a common denominator to most of the thinking methods used in Before & After’s creativity workshops involve generating lots of ideas in rough form in a short amount of time. Our 100MPH Thinking™ tool uses the law of large numbers to propel a thinker beyond the obvious. Our Intergalactic Thinking™ and Ask a Better Question tools immediately put people in a place where fresh ideas are more likely to arise. (Read lots more about these methods at their respective links.) And, again, since all of these processes are shortcuts to fresh ideas, then we can’t use the “being too busy” excuse, as these methods are actually time savers and therefore workload diminishers.

Are these methods the only ways to avoid stopping at your first idea? I’m sure they’re not. But they are proven practices used by great thinkers since the beginning of time and are cornerstone concepts in a professional development program me and my other creative thinking coaches have used with over a quarter of a million people, so they just might be worth a shot. That is, until you come up with a better idea. And, that, I surely encourage.

* For the record, this image was my first idea for this article. Kinda shows, doesn’t it? Actually I was inspired to write this article after seeing this logo on one of this company’s weather stripping products. Often when I see an idea that’s not well developed I simply chalk it off to another individual or company shooting from the hip creatively. This time, it inspired an article. So I went with it for the article, not because I thought it was a great idea, but because I felt it was a good illustration for my purposes.

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.

One such revelation is that upon examining their brains after death, many of the sisters do in fact have Alzheimer’s even if they don’t exactly show it. Because of their diverse and dynamic mental activity, it is believed they have greater healthy resources in other areas of the brain to often take over some of the performance when other portions lose functionality with age.

“The Nun Study” funded by The National Institute on Aging represents the largest brain donor population in the world, although this phenomena is not unique to this group. This religious community’s closed population and unique commitment to education makes for interesting study. Nearly 700 Sisters are participating, as of this writing.

Many close to this phenomena agree that an active mind throughout one’s life puts an individual in a better position to “manage” the onset of mental aging, where, when certain neurological “pathways” begin to “dry up” (neurons, dendrites, synapses, etc.), other healthier “pathways” can often do their work.

The conclusion for the context of this blog is that diverse mental activity is not just a way to keep the mind open and nimble, to come up with fresh ideas and solve problems, but it is also a good strategy to insure that your brain maintains peak performance in general for a good long time. In an era when our life expectancy is increasing greatly thanks mostly to advances in drugs and medical procedures, extended mental abilities might be a pretty good hedge against a life of daily b-i-n-g-o, for those looking for greater adventure and continued intellectual growth.

If you’d like to know more on this fascinating topic I suggest that you enter “Nun Study” into a search engine and find a comfortable chair. There is a great deal to be learned for all of us in this study.