Category: creativity

How to Become More Creative in our Professional Life

Valeria Maltoni in her blog ‘How can we Become More Creative at Work?‘ provides useful hints about how to improve creativity in situations which are supposedly quite constrained.

“Judgement is one of the biggest barriers to creativity while curiosity stokes the flames of imagination“, and the issue is clearly to be able to suspend judgment for a while to let creative ideas flourish. In addition being inspired by outsiders coming with a fresh viewpoint, and letting our own creativity express itself, appear to be essential aspects.

From my experience, the most important aspect I believe, is how the requirement for productivity removes the possibility to take time to look laterally. And it is true that I find myself sometimes much too busy, or too focused on achieving some intermediate milestone, to notice things that could be creative opportunities. Not even speaking of dreaming. I find that with smartphones and screens I have lost considerably my day-dreaming time.

Increasing creativity at work is a major issue in a world that is changing more and more frequently. This issue is not sufficiently addressed. Developing a framework to increase joint creativity is essential. What about taking more time to be creative at work?

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How We Should Learn to Produce Scrappy

I love this post by Seth Godin ‘‘Scrappy’ is not the same as ‘crappy’‘. Seth is an advocate of shipping fast, as soon as it is presentable (a ‘minimum viable product’ approach of sorts). We should still not ship crappy stuff, but his view is that scrappy is good enough.

scrappy

“The only choice is to launch before you’re ready. Before it’s perfect. Before it’s 100% proven to be no risk to you.”

Seth then introduces the concept of scrappy: “Scrappy means that while it’s unpolished, it’s better than good enough.”

It is always tough to know whether what we put in the spotlight of public interest is good enough or whether we are spending too much time trying to polish it. I love the scrappy approach. Another measure to show to the world what you are doing earlier than what you thought.

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How a Rich Vocabulary Is Essential to Creativity

In this interesting post ‘The Mind of a Creator‘ Valeria Maltoni explores what make the creative mind and focuses on the importance of a diverse and precise vocabulary. Unfortunately we observe that the average vocabulary in our society becomes quickly much poorer on average.

“Language becomes poorer progressively. With technology it becomes poorest, almost zero. Linguist Tullio de Mauro did some research and found that the average person had a vocabulary of 1,500 words in 1976. Twenty years later, in 1996, that vocabulary dropped down to 640 words. In 2016, the average person has 200 words, says Galimberti.”

The problem is that “You cannot think beyond the words you know. You can think within the words you know.” Creativity is nourished by the ability to express subtle, precise concepts and ideas. With a poor vocabulary, creativity dwindles.

If you want to be become more creative, seek to expand your vocabulary!

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How Brainstorming is Too Often Poorly Applied

This Quartz post on brainstorming reminds us of its history. In particular how the concept was formalized and “popularized in the 1940s by an American advertising executive, Alex Osborn, the “O” in the much lauded advertising agency BBDO“

Finding the right method for creativity and lateral thinking has always been an issue and a challenge. Many methods have been proposed, from using drugs to structured approaches. The Quartz post mentions a few used by famous people: Steve Jobs took walks, Google uses a 3-step approach (“1) Know the user 2) Think 10x 3) Prototype“), Amazon practices silence while studying memos, etc.

Brainstorming is obviously a classic but not always well applied. “People groan because brainstorming is well disseminated but poorly applied“.

I like the post-it version of it in a safe environment with enough time available, and a few iterations to go deeper into the less obvious outputs. What is really important, I find, is to be non judgmental. It is a tough position to have in particular in some cultures like France where ‘critical thinking’ is so much valued. It often requires a lot of effort from the facilitator to maintain such a spirit.

What is your brainstorming routine? How could it be improved?

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How to Design a Font to Better Remember What you Read

I love this initiative from an Australian University: Sans Forgetica, the font that is scientifically designed to help remember courses: see the Sans Forgetica page.

“Sans Forgetica is a font designed using the principles of cognitive psychology to help you to better remember study notes. It was created by a multidisciplinary team of designers and behavioural scientists.”

The interesting part I find is that “Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read than most typefaces – and that’s by design. The ‘desirable difficulty’ you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing.”

By making harder and longer to read and understand, it seems that we remember better. I find that is quite an interesting insight. It shows that it is important to spend sufficient time reading and processing what has been read to better remember.

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How Innovation is Actually Behavior Change

In her post ‘Innovation is About Behavior Change‘, Valeria Maltoni makes, I believe, and excellent point. Innovation or invention is not about the tangible product, it is about how it changes habits and behavior.

This explains why there are so many inventions which seem quite a breakthrough but that never spread: it is because the associated behavior change did not happen. Maybe because there was a force of inertia, maybe because something else happened at the same time that pulled behavior change in the opposite direction.

It is a lesson for all inventors and innovators: don’t just focus on how marvelous your product is. Spend most of your effort working on the behavior that needs to change for its adoption. Work on the habits, on the social aspect of behavior, and anything that will make your innovation unavoidable on a day-to-day basis.

Innovation that would not consider behavior change is doomed. And as a Business Angel I will recognize that as a major criteria when judging the adequacy of the development plan of startups.

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How We Increasingly Use Avatars on Social Internet

In this excellent Quartz obsession piece ‘Avatars‘, the issue of the increasing usage of multiple avatars for ourselves in the cyberworld is explored at length. This is something we had identified early (think about how many email addresses you possess!) but it has now spread to full contextual persona and avatars.

“People love to see themselves rendered in many forms. Tech companies know this, and they’re not afraid to invest millions of dollars in the hope that this strange quirk of human narcissism can translate into serious cash.” Specific functionalities, and even start-ups, are created around this: proposing the best avatar options, allowing full personalization and allow us to explore various aspects of our personalities.

And it would seem that the rhythm of avatar creation is rather accelerating rather than slowing down, as well as the associated business value, showing that it really corresponds to a need profoundly linked with our identity.

I feel this trend is rather enriching, allowing people to test other parts of themselves in possibly a semi-social online context. In any case I can’t wait to read psychological research associated with this trend!

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How to Respond When You Feel Unworthy

I found a lot of personal resonance in this excellent post by Leo Babauta ‘The Universal Narrative: When You Feel Unworthy‘. I recommend the full read. How can we respond when in a certain situation (or more generally), we feel unworthy, we feel that we are not good enough?

The feeling of unworthiness has significant consequences on our life: from procrastination to lack of participation in a group to the quality and genuineness of our relationships.

Of course Leo Babauta reminds us that it is just a story we are telling ourselves. So he proposes two approaches to this issue:

  • write down a mantra that we can use whenever we feel unworthy, to make us believe otherwise over time (his mantra is “The world craves you and your gift“
  • ensure this narrative dissolves by wondering how it would feel if it would not be present

Next time you will feel unworthy, consider speaking out the mantra and dissolve this idea. We should not feel unworthy because we are not.

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Why It is Better to Use ‘Disruption’ Rather than ‘Innovation’

I like this short video of Charlene Li ‘Truth Drop: Disruption vs Innovation‘. She explains why ‘innovation’ is not the right word because it looks like it is going to be easy. So she recommends to systematically use ‘disruption’ instead.

Basically, she states that “innovation is a false promise. It says that it’s going to be easy, we’re going to find the answer in a certain timeline with an investment.

On the other hand, “Disruption though is honest. It says, “If we’re going to create growth, create change, it’s going to be hard, it’s going to be painful and the journey ahead is going to be filled with obstacles and boulders that we have to climb over.”

I will listen to the advice, and use disruption rather than innovation the next time I will talk about digital transformation!

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How To Apply Prioritization Properly

Robin Sharma writes “The real key to getting great things done is to stop doing so many good things“. Easy said, not so easy done! He complements this statement with “Success has less to do with hard work and more to do with massive focus on your few best opportunities“

While I concur with these statements overall, and do struggle to prioritize like most of us do, I still have some reservations on some aspects.

The first one is that I believe it is important, while focusing on our current projet, to keep one’s mind open on other things and the general environment. They might well transform into even better and more exciting opportunities! Therefore, it is essential to reserve time for personal education and meeting new people, and identifying new opportunities, even if that’s only for limited time. It’s what I call a diversification strategy (it might even allow you to identify ways of doing your current project more effectively).

The second is that even if you focus on your best opportunity (or opportunities), lots of hard work is still required to get where you want to be, because it is probably something nobody has ever done before, at least in the specific situation you try to apply it. So don’t believe focus does not mean hard work!

Still at the end, it is true that prioritization and focus is a key to success, even if it remains important to be aware of one’s environment and how it shifts.

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How to Apply the Accordion Principle to Your Projects

I love this post by Pamela Slim ‘The Accordion Principle‘ because it resonates with my facilitating and consulting practice, and brings a systematic approach to a practice I often use.

The idea is to have a cycle between taking the high-level view on the challenge or problem to solve, and to focus on some detailed work. It is to make a systematic ‘health-check’ of what we are focusing on by looking at the big picture regularly. “The key is not to avoid looking at the big picture, it is to consistently move between the big picture and the small picture. I have termed this practice The Accordion Principle.“

In Pamela’s view it gets even further: “The new client will say something like “I don’t even know where to start. There are so many things going on right now, and they are all kind of swimming in my head.”. “Just start anywhere,” I say.” The point here, is that we need to start somewhere, and we need to start small. And then when we take the big-picture view, we’ll figure out how things have changed and how to progress with the rest.

Are you ready to apply the ‘accordion principle’ more systematically to your endeavors? Work on the details, then go wide to check the full picture, then go detailed again, and repeat… until you get there!

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How Arthur C Clarke’s Three Laws Continue to Apply

Arthur C Clarke, famous science-fiction writer, produced three statements about technology development. They are quite applicable and profound, in particular with the perspective on the Fourth Revolution. I find it useful to share them here.

  1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
  2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
  3. Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The first statement is about the role of the change of generation in our institutions: too often, such a change is needed for our paradigms to evolve officially – experts and professors remain stuck in their worldview.

The next statements are about going beyond what we believe is possible. There are not enough visionaries doing that nowadays: in spite of the start-up trend, too many start-ups remain within the established possible.

I love the mention of magic, because the last statement tells us that irrespective of the progress of technology, there will always be magic: beyond the currently possible, and we will always be amazed. Let’s look for the next magical stuff!

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