Before & After : Creative thinking in business

Do you know a good creative idea when you see one?

Sure.  Kinda.  Maybe.  Sometimes.

Can you distinguish between a great idea and a lesser one when evaluating your own ideas?  Now, that’s where it gets really sticky, right?

Being objective about your own ideas is very difficult.  Whether it’s judging them one by one, when you initially have them, or after you’ve generated a lot of ideas and you’re trying to decide which one to pursue?

This objective judgment thing makes the not-so-easy creative process even trickier.  You can have many great creative ideas and still fail in your effort if you choose the wrong one.  I believe achieving objectivity is the key.  Yet it’s almost impossible to be objective about your own ideas.

Richard Wilde, head of advertising and design at the School of Visual Arts says no one can smell their own sweat.

As a creative thinking coach, as much as I want people to have conviction in their creative judgment, I really don’t always trust it.  I mean, these ideas are their babies.  And as we all know, everyone’s baby is beautiful (even if they all look like Winston Churchill to me).

Here are some simple ways to gain objectivity on your ideas.

Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve been coming across the term “current truth” more and more lately. I started hearing it a few years back in the scientific world. Now I hear it more tongue in cheek on topics from politics to cats and dogs.

In its serious connotation this expression simply came about because the scientific community got tired of being wrong, as more powerful microscopes, telescopes and other advances in exploration found evidence that challenged accepted fact.

In other areas the term has become code to acknowledge similar advancement of understanding, and to give us a status for what is accepted at the present but fully expected to change.

I’m surprised the marketing world has not adopted current truth as its mantra. Heck, I’m aghast that no marketing group has yet hijacked the concept outright. As I write this article currenttruth.com is available for the taking.

Read the rest of this entry »

Yes, we live in a disposable society. That hasn’t been news since Huntley and Brinkley reported it in living black & white.

Yes, my father drove a car for a decade and wore a suit for twice that long. I drive a car until the oil needs changing and it’s certainly not my father’s Oldsmobile. Do they even make Olds anymore?

Yes, today’s era of continuous improvement will yield particularly disposable disposable goods and, I suppose, a lot of disposable non-disposables, or durable goods as we called them in business class. (Don’t hear the term durable goods as much anymore, do we?)

But don’t get disposable products confused with disposable ideas. There’s a huge difference between goods and services and the ideas behind them. And I see too many people in business bringing the disposable mentality to the creative thinking process, which is leading to some pretty lousy ideas. Ideas with short, unprofitable shelf lives, not because they are part of the planned obsolescence that is fundamental to our greed-driven,…er… excuse me, free enterprise disposable operating model, but because they are simply bad ideas, hastily conceived to put out the fire of the day, with virtually no chance of enduring.

Here’s where I see evidence of this destructive trend. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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.

Plans are currently in place for a number of international trips this year for Before & After creative thinking coaches.

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.