DennisDemori.com

I try to avoid reposting or writing “me too” posts on this blog, but I really liked this campaign I found out about from PSFK:

“Infiltrating the places where people often like to reflect, i.e. – the bathroom, diner, coffee shop, etc, KNARF replaced toilet paper, napkins, sugar packets and tray liners with lined notebook paper in an attempt to foster new ideas.  Those who discover the branded adverts are encouraged to think and jot down their ideas on the college-ruled loose leaf style paper.”

I think this campaign is great for supporting creativity and especially for those times when you have an idea and can’t think of anywhere to write it down.

via ffffound!

I recently read a Fast Company article from a couple years ago titled “The 6 Myths of Creativity.” Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, has been studying creativity for nearly 30 years. Her research found 6 “myths” that help us understand the thought processes that lead to creative breakthroughs.

1) Creativity comes from creative types

“The fact is, almost all of the research in this field shows that anyone with normal intelligence is capable of doing some degree of creative work. Creativity depends on a number of things: experience, including knowledge and technical skills; talent; an ability to think in new ways; and the capacity to push through uncreative dry spells. Intrinsic motivation — people who are turned on by their work often work creatively — is especially critical.”

One of the things we’ve been told at MAS is that everyone can contribute creative ideas. It’s not just Creative teams that come up with ideas – Planners should be unafraid to make suggestions. In my experience with creative teams, they appreciate ideas from their Planners. It makes for a more collaborative effort where everyone contributes and participates.

2) Money is a creativity motivator

“Bonuses and pay-for-performance plans can even be problematic when people believe that every move they make is going to affect their compensation. In those situations, people tend to get risk averse. Of course, people need to feel that they’re being compensated fairly. But our research shows that people put far more value on a work environment where creativity is supported, valued, and recognized. People want the opportunity to deeply engage in their work and make real progress. So it’s critical for leaders to match people to projects not only on the basis of their experience but also in terms of where their interests lie.“

3) Time pressure fuels creativity

“Time pressure stifles creativity because people can’t deeply engage with the problem. Creativity requires an incubation period; people need time to soak in a problem and let the ideas bubble up.”

In my MAS experience, one of the biggest challenges we have on a weekly basis is ongoing multiple projects. Although getting things done is a whole other subject in and of itself, it mainly comes down to focusing on what’s most important. From that thought you can develop priorities, agendas, task lists, etc.

4) Fear forces breakthroughs

“…creativity is positively associated with joy and love and negatively associated with anger, fear, and anxiety…One day’s happiness often predicts the next day’s creativity.”

5) Competition beats collaboration

“In our surveys, we found that creativity takes a hit when people in a work group compete instead of collaborate. The most creative teams are those that have the confidence to share and debate ideas. But when people compete for recognition, they stop sharing information. And that’s destructive because nobody in an organization has all of the information required to put all the pieces of the puzzle together.”

I find the environment at MAS the perfect example. Although I wouldn’t share my actual strategy with another team, I don’t see anything wrong with sharing my ideas or information.

Why? Because everyone interprets information differently; whether it’s a client brief, a quote you found online, or an Annual Report, people will make different observations.

As Thomas Edison said,

“Your idea needs to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are currently working on.”

As Planners, especially with the ubiquitous nature of the web, we really do have access to a lot of the same information. It’s in how we interpret that information – our insights – that we are able to come up with unique recipes even though they’re based on a lot of the same ingredients.

6) A streamlined organization is a creative organization

“Of course, the opposite is true: Creativity suffers greatly during a downsizing…Anticipation of the downsizing was even worse than the downsizing itself — people’s fear of the unknown led them to basically disengage from the work. More troubling was the fact that even five months after the downsizing, creativity was still down significantly.”

Shout out to my Planner buddy Jody Taylor on this post!