FROG BLOG

kin-dling

–noun

1. material that can be readily ignited, used in starting a fire.

2. the act of one who kindles.

( Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2006.)

If you have ever built a fire — indoors or out — you know that you can’t just lay match to log. The preparation that has to occur (the kindling) builds the foundation so that when a spark does occur there is something for it to ignite.

The same is true for creativity and innovation. Without a receptive foundation, the spark will just languish and die.

The question that I believe is the most important is the hardest to answer; How do you create a creative culture in an organization that is productive and consistent?

Our starting point for this series is a quote attributed to Socrates — ” If you always do what you’ve always done, you will always get what you always got.”

Kindling Pieces

Everyone in your business needs to understand and buy into the idea of building an organization that allows new ideas to spark in the hope that each spark will ignite but with the knowledge that most sparks burn-out before they flame.

This means building a creative culture that at times will seem “anti-productivity.” Here are the 5 pieces of kindling we will explore over the next few weeks:

1. Expose your team to the world! Find interesting opportunities to expose your team to ideas that are outside your office. Teach them how to look for new thoughts and how to apply them to your business. Creativity is not just for artists, designers, writers or marketers.
2. Encourage thinking time. We are too connected to the world and it is too easy to fill all our time. Turn off access to your company’s e-mail system and the internet for one day a month. Declare one afternoon a week meeting-free zone. Take all electronic devices hostage before brainstorms. Make thinking a priority for every staff member. (Including yourself.)
3. Excel at failure. Thomas Edison once said “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” Accept it. Learn from it. Celebrate it. Grow from it!
4. Expect rigorous development, evaluation, and implementation. A creative environment without a way to take the right ideas to market is a waste. No creative visionary wants their ideas to languish only on paper. But, to make sure you are promoting a strong creative culture, it is imperative to know the when and the how. Make sure your culture implements a great development and evaluation program as well as a sturdy structure for implementation in the marketplace.
5. Elevate the priority of creative thinking in your company’s goals and objectives. Hold it out for everyone to see you believe in the creative process. “Talk the talk. Walk the walk.” You have to do both to convince your team that it is safe to go outside of the corporate comfort zone.

One last thing — Creativity is a journey not a destination.

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My partner has been writing an awesome series on “Creativity Killers.” Each and every one dead on as to their effects on an organization’s ability to be creative. Fred and I both agree that most organization’s wield these “weapons” too often with much success — even when they profess to be an organization that embraces innovation and change.

For many years we have worked with clients on the need to create a strong creative culture — one that embraces those who go outside the status quo. Last night I picked up a book (Orbiting the Giant Hairball) from the man who taught me much about creative thinking and how to not get caught up in the “hairball” — Gordon McKenzie.

As the creative guru and and professed burr-under-the-saddle at Hallmark Cards while I was there in the late 80’s/early 90’s, he provided me with great insights on stretching “paradigms” to include things that are uncomfortable but good. (I highly recommend the book for yourself, your team and, most importantly, your boss!)

So, in honor of Mr. Gordon McKenzie, with a little bit of Talking Heads thrown in for good measure….I thought a parallel series on “Creative Kindling or Burning Down the House!” was in order.

And, if you have creative kindling you would like to share, let me know. I am always open to new ideas!

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There is no greater enemy to uncommon opportunity than common knowledge.

Years ago as head Easter Bunny for spring specialty products at Hallmark I was asked to redefine the business in a way that would start it growing again.

As I put together what we knew about consumer behavior at Easter I came across an interesting tidbit that had been foundational to our thinking in the past and, to be honest, was a roadblock to what I wanted to do in the future.

Everybody knew about this interesting tidbit. In their minds it was a fact. The tidbit appeared in business and marketing plans for as far back as my files went - without providing a source. I asked our librarian (oh, the benefits of big companies!) to see if he could dig up where it might have come from.

He searched quite a bit and finally found a reference to the tidbit in a Hallmark research summary. It referenced as a source an industry magazine ages old. The magazine article had been based on, keep your hats on, information provided by the Hallmark PR department. The Hallmark PR Department didn’t have a record of where the tidbit may have come from, but it sure made a lot of sense….

So in the end we had years of business plans that had in various ways relied on this tidbit presented as fact. It was accepted as fact because it had been referred to in many legitimate documents. It wasn’t questioned because it seemed to make logical sense. How true was the tidbit really? It didn’t matter. For me the lack of underpinnings allowed my team to move past its limitations.

So, beware of what everybody knows. Often you’ll discover that few people know why they know what everybody knows. And that makes what everybody doesn’t know an opportunity!

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Every improvement in productivity seems to carry with it the risk of waisted time. In today’s world, interruptions have become enemy number one to effectively letting your creative juices flow.

Our desk used to have two primary sources of interruption. The visit and the phone. And really only one source of outside distraction, the magazine. Often we had to physically remove ourselves from our desk and head to the coffee machine to really avoid work.

Now the machine that many of us depend on to get things done also provides multiple sources of distraction that one could argue are job related (IM, email, surfing, feeds…) and not job related (games, shopping, music, video…) not to mention the interesting distractions of viruses and breakdowns. Since many of these items can be set up to be intrusive, the ability to get a half-hour of uninterrupted think time becomes next to impossible. And yet justified because so many of the interruptions involve moving work along.

So now I’ve set you up on a teeter-totter - CFE #6 is being too productive and CFE #7 is wasting time. Where’s the balance? It is in that uninterrupted thought time. Maybe half-an-hour, maybe half-a-day. It’s the time to let your brain get ahead of all the problems being thrown at it and find a better way of catching and handling them.

Wrapping up - a great way to kill creative fire is to distract yourself every minute of the day with things that can wait till later.

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In the name of efficiency we are slowly driving fuzzy time out of our day. Fuzzy time is difficult to value because it is hard to attach creative end-product to such ‘unproductive’ time. As corporate managers have become better at measuring the time it takes to do a job, the more fuzzy time gets diverted to the employee’s supposedly personal time.

So you want to kill creativity? Maximize measured productivity.

How can we protect fuzzy time? How can we make sure it doesn’t get swallowed up by other chores pulling at employees?

Through a combination of rewarding creativity and allowing more individualized control over scheduling you can actually empower an employee to lighten up and think more about what they are doing.

Of course, CFE #6 automatically puts you on the teeter totter with CFE #7, Waisting Time. (Ahh… encouraging creativity. It’s not easy, but at least it’s fun!)

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