Ignite Your Everyday Creativity: Week One

I just started a class on Coursera called Ignite Your Everyday Creativity.  Week one was a bunch of introduction stuff, but I wanted to share a quote that they shared that I really enjoyed:

"You can't use up creativity.  The more you use, the more you have."  Maya Angelou

On a side note, I was reading Oprah Magazine yesterday and there was a small picture of Oprah in Maya Angelou's library, which she left to Oprah when she passed away.  What an extraordinary gift to leave someone - the books you read, your notes in the margins, the words that shaped your life.  

It makes me think about my curated book collection and what it would say about me it I were to leave it to someone.  What does your book collection say about you?

Vacation and Increased Productivity

I love books on increasing personal productivity.  I have tried Bullet Journals, Outlook functions, one-note, extensive task lists, spreadsheets, etc.  If someone recommends it, I will try it.

One consistent feature in all of the business book reading on productivity, however, is that they all recommend the use of downtime to refocus and get your brain working again.  I am the WORST at this. 

I am currently on my first full week of vacation since I started my new job more than a year ago.  A year.  Trying to decompress has been hard, however.

I want to check my phone.  I want to take calls.  It may take the whole seven days of vacation to break the work habit and get into the vacation habit.

I am an e-mail addict.  I need to confess.

I am on vacation with my family, which in some ways still entails a good bit of work, but I am trying to take some time for me.  

To kick that off- I have been going on a relaxing morning walk.  I am still waking up at 6:30 every morning, but sleeping in is asking too much.  I am on Day 3 of vacation and I have also already read a whole book.  For pleasure.  That wasn't a business book.  We will see if I can maintain the gains on vacation relaxation.

I will keep you posted.

Quote of the Day: Carolin Ghosn

"The different between skill and talent: A skill is something you learn. Talent is what you can't help doing."  Carolin Ghosn, CEO and Founder, Levo

Wellness and Creativity

This summer, since I was taking a sabbatical from work, I decided to take two online classes.  One was on Leadership and Emotional Intelligence, offered through Coursera, and the other one was Thrive, an Oprah O Course.

These were, of course, two totally different classes, but had one common theme- to a certain degree, as a leader and a person, you need to be mentally well in order to have successful relationships- either at work or at home.

Corporate wellness is a huge topic right now.  Companies are sponsoring fun runs, buying Fitbits, taking blood pressure and cholesterol levels in the cafeteria, and charging you more for health insurance if you smoke.  The US Department of Labor released a study stating that 92 percent of companies with 200 employees or more have wellness programs.  Further, it is estimated that companies are spending between 3 and 8 billion dollars per year on wellness programs.

All is not sunshine and roses, however.  As part of the DoL report, it is revealed that only about 20 percent of the people who have access to wellness programs actually use them.  Further, Andre Spicer, of the Cass Business School in London, conducted a study that stated that the wellness programs not only provide a poor return, but they also make many employees less healthy and more anxious about their jobs.

Interestingly, he also suggests in his research that while most companies now embrace all forms of diversity, at least on paper, wellness programs are creating a situation where there is a less-healthy underclass, that is assumed to perform less well at their actual jobs.

But, some forms of wellness not only reduce health care costs for your company, but also increases your creativity, ability to innovate, and emotional intelligence.

Ariana Huffington, in her book Thrive, talks about how she got the idea for the Huffington Post while taking a walk.  She also has a daily meditation routine to help her mentally reset during stressful days so that she isn't letting the stress of the day accumulate on her overstimulated brain.  Al Sharpton starts every day with a morning run and recitation of two poems to put him in the right mindset for his day.

Last year Marily Oppezzo and Daniel Schwartz of Stanford released one of the first studies on creativity and walking.  On average students who were walking came up with 4-6 more creative ideas for uses of a common object and 95 percent were able to create equivalent metaphors after walking compared to 50 percent who never stood up. 

And now corporations are investing in treadmill desks as part of their wellness programs. (Although the research is still out on whether this works, there are marked differences in creativity based on where you are walking- i.e. green space vs. city vs. indoors).

As with most things, we will struggle to find the balance in corporate wellness programs at the institutional level.  No one likes Big Brother telling them they have to have 10,451 steps in a day to achieve a full paycheck/incentives.  But, at the end of the day, getting up and moving, achieving a healthy weight, and stopping smoking is good for you and it is good for your brain.

Quote of the Day: Yancey Strickler

"I don't have any social media on my phone.  The more time you spend in the stream of other people's thoughts, the more impossible it is for you to have your own. You need space for yourself."

Creativity Technique: Visual Explorer

Way, way back in the day, when I was a young research assistant, I helped set up focus groups.  I have mailed out hundreds of socks to focus group respondents, catagorized "day in the life" pictures, and helped get our moderator ready to do the Visual Explorer exercise.

A decade later, it is still one of my favorites.

Here are the basics:

The Visual Explorer card set is offered from the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, NC.  A typical set has about 200 images that are intended to leave themselves open to some degree of interpretation depending on the prompt that that facilitator gives.  Some of my favorites are an adult hand holding a baby hand, some particularly creepy doll faces, and some puzzle pieces.

The moderator/facilitator spreads out the pictures, or hangs them up depending on preference.  I like to hang them up because it is easier for a large group to see.  The participants are then given a prompt and asked to choose a picture that reflects their feelings/experiences.

The group then debriefs on their selections.   If you are doing several groups, you are then able to compare pictures/experiences across a larger sample size, although the primary usefulness of this exercise is to get qualitative feedback.

We did a series of groups in a company that I worked at formerly on innovation. Using the visual explorer deck of cards, we asked employees to choose a picture that showed what it was like to innovate at the company.  Here were some responses:

Picture of a Roadblock: "It is like a traffic jam.  You know you need to get somewhere, but there are so many things that get in your way."

Picture of Men in Suits with Boxes Over Heads:  "It's like we have so many meetings, and things to do that we are stumbling around blind with no direction."

The deck from CCL is highly affordable and there are a ton of different ways it can be used.  Here are some ideas:

1. Choose a picture that represents how Brand X makes you feel.

2. Choose three pictures that represent the problem Product X needs to solve.

3. Choose a picture that shows what it feels like to complete Service Experience X.

4. Choose a picture that represents the one problem we need to solve to achieve our company goals.

5.  Choose a picture that represents what it should feel like to work for Company X in five years.

The possibilities are endless.  For more info on Visual Explorer, visit the CCL website:

http://solutions.ccl.org/Visual_Explorer_Facilitator's_Letter-size_Set 

Creativity Technique: Twitter Brainstorming

In one of my previous posts, I reviewed the book The Tao of Twitter.  Inside the book, there was a brief description of a virtual brainstorming session that was quite clever.

The author has a "virtual" company.  He is a consultant with no employees.  He needed to fulfill a request for a client for some ideas, and he knew that to get the best ideas he needed to get some outside the box thinking, i.e. ideas from people other than him. 

As the author of a book on Tweeting, he has a pretty fleshed out Twitter Tribe, so he issued an invitation on Twitter to a web-meeting later that day.  He had several people who attended.  He outlined the problem.  He let the creative juices flow.

In less than 24 hours, he had a list of ideas to turn over to his client without spending a dollar on an agency.  Another advantage, he helped establish some personal relationships with people who prior to were just Twitter followers.

Social media allows you to reach out to a multitude of divergent thinkers with little cost and quick turnaround.  

How can you leverage your social media to stimulate innovation and creativity in your business?