There’s nothing wrong with your daughter, ma’m. She’s just a dancer.

Following is the entry I submitted to “No Right Brain Left Behind,” a contest for ideas on how to incorporate creativity in education.  There were lots of good ideas.  Many, however, focused on contests, commerce, ethics or pet social goals.

My personal philosophy is that when people must be creative “on command,” they begin to feel like puppets.  I know it destroys the fun of creativity for me. Nor do I need a contest in order to be creative.  In fact, the more I compare my ideas to others, for the sake of competition, the LESS likely I am to develop my own unique, creative ideas.  Instead, it becomes all about pleasing.  And the best creative endeavors, I feel, have to do with creating never-before-seen categories.  Take Apple and its products; was there ever an iPhone before there was an iPhone? And so many of their other products? If one is to focus on innovation, on newness, on creativity–one must give one’s wholehearted attention to the spectrum within. The one your competition hasn’t yet seen, nor can even conceive of.

If you are concerned about creativity, I urge you to visit the link below to a 2007 study by the American Academy of Pediatrics.  It is chilling.  Bottom line: kids today are years behind kids of the 1940s.  They have no need to solve problems, have less free time, or time to simply run around playing make-believe.  Hence, they are not developing the thought processes we used to take for granted; thought processes that help us solve problems.  This all leads to a documented increase in anxiety and depression in college students.  In contrast to generations before, coping skills seem to weak or missing.

THERE’S NOTHING WRONG WITH YOUR DAUGHTER, MA’M.  SHE’S JUST A DANCER.

Excerpt: If we’ve educated schools out of creativity, then let’s begin with teachers and parents. (The kids know what to do.)  This is about addressing fears, providing tools and measuring not what kids make, but how the freedom to be creative increases their confidence, well-being and overall attitude toward challenges.

Submission:

Solution: Address fears.

Empower: Flexible tools for everyday use.

Nurture: Measure well-being, not artwork.

1.  Solutions for schools/institutions/government

Number one obstacle: Most adults outside of advertising have no idea what creativity is.  It’s intimidating.  Think of a neighbor picking out paint colors for the living room.  It’s agonizing.  They put undue pressure on themselves.  They have no concept of the process that could help: defining priorities, brainstorming, and experimenting before execution.  They skip over define, brainstorm and experiment, believing they have to rush to the decision-making part.  They think it’s supposed to be easy.  But it’s not.  They compare themselves to artists, as if they should have the same artistic judgment as a person with a lifetime of experience with color.  Upon realizing that they have no idea what they’re doing, they panic.  Creativity, to the average Joe, is an intimidating, uncomfortable thing.  A cause for suspicion, as they wonder what the secret is to “getting it right.”

Solution: Start with teachers and parents.  Explain what creativity IS.

What IS creativity, anyway?

Creativity is not the outcome.  It’s the process. Creativity is a habit.  A practice.  If you train for a marathon, you set yourself up for success on race day.  If you practice habits of creativity, you set yourself up for success with any problem.

Creative habits:

• Stream-of-consciousness writing for one minute.
• Replacing an ingredient with something you’ve never tried before in your favorite sandwich.
• Improv acting warm-ups.
• Speaking in an accent for one minute.
• Filling a blank page each day, with words, sketches, or both.

Get the idea?

Obstacles to creativity:

• Perfection.
• Using the first idea that comes along.
• Criticism.

Empower:

1. Educate teachers and parents on what creativity is and isn’t.

2. Arm teachers and parents with a variety of activities they can offer kids that can be done short and  long-term.  Offer flexibility.  Encourage them to start with one-minute ideas once a week.  Work up to doing a one-minute idea everyday.  Then take on a bigger activity; something that lasts 30 minutes or an hour.  Offer bigger options for high achievers: day, week, or year-long activities.

3. Focus on PARTICIPATION, not on the outcome.  The outcome really doesn’t matter. Like in a marathon, at this point, we’re just thrilled they’re running.  Actual race time, whether they were faster than someone else; that’s beside the point.  Stay focused!  If they run the race, that’s huge!  If they practice a creative habit, that’s huge!  (Actually, it’s more that if adults LET kids practice creativity everyday; THAT’s the accomplishment.)

Nurture

The truth is that when kids have creative outlets, they feel better.  Confidence increases.  Well-being is an outcome of creative outlets.  Lack of creative outlets contributes to depression, stress and anxiety. So let’s do something radical.  Let’s drop the need for an “innovative” idea.  How about we just get out of kids’ way? Kids LOVE being creative!  They know they were born to make believe!  They know they were born to build stuff out of play-dough!  It’s adults who babysit kids with TV and video games.  It’s adults who hover over kids, not allowing them to play outdoors, unsupervised, the way kids used to play.  It’s adults who over-structure, demand, test and compare.

Creativity is NOT about comparisons.  Give kids the space to find their own ideas.  They don’t need toys.  They don’t need electronics.  They don’t need games.  Give a kid a tree in a yard, and he or she will make their own toys.  Actually, this is what kids USED to do.  The kids that grew up and started inventing all the new technology we have today.  Remember?

If schools, government or parents require measurement, measure how kids are feeling and performing right now.  Do they seem stressed? Happy? How about the so-called rise in Attention Deficit Disorder?  Ever thought they just needed time to explore? Hear their own thoughts?  Measure how kids are doing now, then measure how they’re doing after practicing simple creative habits (as above) for a few months or a year.  Measure confidence.  Measure well-being.  Measure reactions to a challenge. See what you get.

Sources (in addition to those provided by NLBLB):

1. “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron

2. “Old-Fashioned Play Builds Serious Skills” by Alix Spiegel for National Public Radio, Feb. 21, 2008

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=19212514

3. “The Importance of Play in Promoting Healthy Child Development and Maintaining Strong Parent-Child Bonds” by Kenneth R. Ginsburg, MD, MSEd, Jan. 2007

http://aappolicy.aappublications.org/cgi/content/full/pediatrics;119/1/182

How companies are creating team-oriented work environments

I was recently asked to put together a game plan for how a company could foster better team work between departments.  Here’s what I found out.

What Other Companies Do:

Time Warner – Share success stories at employee events.

Entrepreneur Mouli Cohen: Put aside political correctness and get at the real issues.

GE- Lengthened coffee breaks to encourage honest and casual conversation.

Zappos – All new hires spend two weeks taking customer calls in the call center.

Best Buy – Uses Marcus Buckingham’s “Now Discover Your Strengths”. The book and personality assessment gives  employees a language for personality quirks and why they’re important.

Imagination Ltd. – No idea is a bad idea.

Ideas/Execution

• Create a physical (not computer) bulletin board where people can post articles on teamwork.
• “Write a story” of how the team meets an outrageous goal – have each person contribute a line.  Make each line an expansive, creative idea. (No need to be practical.)
• Have a “talent” bucket, so people can exchange teaching/learning; golf, cooking, guitar, etc.
• Start team meetings with a 10-minute ice breaker.
• Go through an afternoon of Improv acting training: “Yes, and,” “Elevate, explore.” (Dudley Riggs)
• Go through 1-2 hours of “Art of Connection” training with Sage Presence.
• Have each department create a mixed music-track for the other departments. (Each can have a different theme.)
• Create a department “holiday” or “awards show” that showcases the year’s best accomplishments/challenges overcome.
• Create an “impossible” hypothetical departmental challenge  that will take a quarter to solve. Have people post their ideas, no matter how unpractical. Share the ideas at a team meeting.
• Talk about the creative process: define, design, develop, deliver.  Why is it important to go in sequence and which part does each department play?
• Review what team “morale killers” can be and identify them as “sludge.” Let people know it’s ok to say, “No sludge!” if you hear it.
• Have each department bring an insight into what teamwork is and how to foster it to a brainstorm session.
• Allow “toys” at the office, like a Nerf basketball hoop.
• Get a scooter.
• Have people interview each other with Vanity Fair interview questions. Have the interviewer introduce the other person at a meeting.
• Take a benchmark survey to find out whether employees think things are collaborative now.  Compare a year from now.
• Show how each quirky personality strength helps balances someone else’s. (Some people are good big picture thinkers, others are detail oriented.) (Gallup/Buckingham Strengths Finder)

Additional Resources for Creating a Team-Oriented Work Environment:

Dudley Riggs – Teaching the Improv acting art of “yes, and” and “elevate, explore” to enhance dialogue, team interaction and thinking on your feet. http://www.bravenewworkshop.com/creativeoutreach/home.aspx

Sage Presence – Teaching the art of connection to enhance sales, public speaking, and relationships. http://www.sagepresence.com/

TED series – 20 minute videos by inspiring experts on creativity, innovation, collaboration and more.

• John Wooden on “True Success”
• Sir Ken Robinson; our quirks are our gifts.
• Dave Eggers; how he accidentally harnessed talent to create a collaborative environment.
• Richard St. John’s “Eight Secret’s to Success” (4 min)

Marcus Buckingham, “Now Discover Your Strengths” (book)

Benjamin Zander: On “Giving an A” Books and videos.

Culture questions

From: About.com

• What would you tell a friend about your organization if he or she was about to start working here?
• What is the one thing you would most like to change about this organization?
• Who is a hero around here? Why?
• What is your favorite characteristic that is present in your company?
• What kinds of people fail in your organization?
• What is your favorite question to ask a candidate for a job in your company?
• Are there any current barriers to collaboration? What?

Know Thyself

I am reading Andre Agassi’s biography, “Open.” I love this quote from Agassi’s trainer:

“To know what your body wants, to understand what it needs and what it doesn’t, you need to be part engineer, part mathematician, part artist, part mystic.”

In reference to years of misguided training efforts before meeting Gil, the trainer quoted above, Gil says,” There’s a difference between a plow horse and a race horse.  You don’t treat them the same.  You hear all this talk about treating people equally, and I’m not sure equal means the same.”

I think what he’s getting at is that each person has unique gifts that deserve to be developed.  It serves no one to treat a plow horse like a race horse and vice versa.  So as you take in information about how you want to grow and develop, whether for an athletic or professional goal, keep this in mind.  Try new things, then take note of what works for you.  In fact, this is exactly what Gil the trainer does for Agassi, helping him break-through in his performance to finally win the Wimbledon tournament.

How to Manage Any Project

Got a brainstorm session coming up? Before you start, define your parameters; deadline, cost, quality and desired outcome.  Then, and only then, will you be ready to brainstorm.

This post originally ran in May 2009.  What with the beginning of the school year, and perhaps business planning for next year, I am running it again for anyone looking ahead, pondering possibilities.

Four basic steps will help you wrap your brain around any project, whether you’re an expert, or venturing into unknown territory.

1. Define.

2.  Design

3.  Develop

4.  Deliver

Define

Every project has parameters.  Before you jump into brainstorming or negotiations, stop and capture the key info that will impact the rest of the project.  What’s the budget?  When are the key due dates?  What’s the true purpose of the project?  What would ideal results look like?  Is everyone on the same page, with the same vision?  Also, is there anything that can’t be changed?  If you’re renovating a house, are you tied to roof color?  If you’re planning an event, are you tied to a specific date or time?

Design

Now that you’ve defined the most critical parameters of the project, you are clear to brainstorm.  And you should!  Entertain options.  Ask for ideas.  Compare notes.  Sketch your designs, mock up your colors.  Compare them side by side.  Get feedback.  This stage is also known as concepting.

If there are a lot of decisions to be made, or a lot of people to please, give people a chance to start broad, then narrow down.  Your client, your team, your co-workers, what have you, will be more confident in the final choice if they’ve had a chance to see that final decisions were made via a process of elimination.

Have a semi-finals, then a quarter-finals.  Just like on American Idol, it’s hard to know who your favorite is until you’ve seen all the choices.  The better the options, the more time you need to compare.  As in, the best options are the ones that have stuck with you from the beginning.  You’ve developed a sense of familiarity with them.  You’ve realized their pros and cons, and whether you’re willing to live with them.

Hopefully, the final decision is between two excellent options.  But you want your client, friends, whomever this is for, to LOVE the end result.  They will, if they’ve had a chance to participate along the way.

Develop

At this stage, you’ve committed to a specific vision.  Now it’s time to get practical.  Check availability, negotiate.  Problem solve.  You may have to make last minute changes.  If you’ve done a good job of concepting, you’ll be able to make quick, yet informed decisions about what can and can’t be changed.  Nothing ever goes as planned, but if you’ve got a SPECIFIC, WELL DEFINED VISION, and BUY-IN, WITH COMMITMENT, then you are well on your way to making your vision a reality.  This stage is also known as pre-production.

Deliver

You’re in the kitchen now.  You’ve got the groceries, and if anything’s been forgotten or gone stale, it’s too late to send for more.  The moment is do or die, and you will DO.  If it’s party time, you’re pouring the drinks.  If it’s a building renovation, your paint brush is in the paint.  Put on the best show you can.  If you’ve done your prep work, it will be great.  This stage is also known as production.  If you’re in film, it includes post-production.

Liberate Your Creativity

Smart strategies liberate creative thinking. The more certain you are about your strategy, the bolder you can be in your creativity.

I Pitched an Idea

for a chapter in this book: Age of Conversation 3.  Lo and behold, they put me in along with 170 other authors.   – on sale now http://www.ageofconversation.com/ or http://amzn.com/0982473974 #AOC3

Age of Conversation 3 captures the distinct shift from social media as a hypothetical consumer loyalty tool, as it was considered only a little more than a year ago, to its current state as a staple in the modern marketing toolbox.  Although the book covers more than just social media, the topic is ubiquitous among the book’s 10 sections:

1. At the Coalface

2. Identities, Friends and Trusted Strangers

3.  Conversational Branding

4.  Measurement

5.  Corporate Conversations

6.  In the Boardroom

7.  Innovation and Execution

8.  Influence

9.  Getting to Work

10.  Pitching Social Media

Research & Decision Making: 3 Steps to Cut Info Clutter

Whether you’re a marketer with a new client, or working on a home improvement project, facing the unknown can be daunting.  Here’s what I do when I have big decisions to make about things that are new to me.  I break down information into three categories:

1. Personal experience.

2.  Word on the street.

3. Data/statistics

If one of those buckets is empty, I get to work on putting something in it.  By comparing each category to the others, I can quickly determine where there are discrepancies.  If there ARE discrepancies, that tells me where I need to look further.  Like using a metal detector, it helps narrow the focus.

THE CASE OF THE HATCHBACKS

I had a new marketing project involving a brand of hatchback cars.  It was my first time on a car account. The client had provided over 60 pages of research, with little context or interpretation.

First, I went through the research.  It was at my finger tips.  A convenient place to begin.  Then I thought about my own experience with hatchback cars.  Did I enjoy having a hatchback? Why or why not? Did my experience seem to be in sync with the research provided? Why or why not?

Second, I hit the street.  I looked at who was driving the brand.  I look at who was driving hatchbacks.  Did what I saw match the data?

This is a great way to discover a gem of an insight that may have been overlooked by other teams.  If a team is doing surveys only, they might not be focused on what the data means in practical terms.  As a person who is a bit shorter than average, I’ve learned that the first thing someone’s going to suggest for me, whether it’s a car, bike or suit, is not going to be right for ME. Why? They’re basing their recommendations on average responses.  But I’m not average-sized.  I always have to dig deeper, and make a choice that few others would consider, in order to find a size that’s right for me.  Because I am constantly dealing with ‘info for average-sized people,” that doesn’t fit ME, I’ve had to learn how to quickly spot incongruent information.

In the case of the hatchback cars, the client had taken the suburban shopping mall approach; placing display models of the car in the center of shopping malls.  But as I drove around, scanning the streets for hatchbacks, I came to realize that something was wrong.

NO HATCHBACKS IN SIGHT!

I went to suburban park-and-ride lots, where people leave their cars in order to bus to work.  There weren’t any hatchbacks. I went to the malls where the cars were on display.  In the parking lots, it was plain to see that shoppers were not driving hatchbacks.  Finally, I went to an urban neighborhood on the edge of a popular recreational area known for wind surfing, bike paths, roller blading and more.  Hatchbacks lined the streets.

Since it was the middle of a weekday, I gathered that residents had parked their hatchbacks on the street, then bused to work.  On weekends at the rec area, the parking lot was filled with people loading or unloading bikes, etc., from hatchback cars.  On a hunch, I went by the city’s largest farmers market.  Yes, more hatchbacks.

So, was the client connecting with it’s key consumer by placing it’s cars in suburban shopping malls? Even they conceded that it wasn’t working.  But if they’d displayed their cars in urban settings and rec areas, they’d have found an enthusiastic audience.

Just to be sure, I reviewed my three categories: personal experience, word on the street, and data.  It all fit together.  When do I most appreciate a hatchback? When I have a lot of equipment to haul around with me.  Where was I finding hatchbacks? In urban areas. What did the data say? That females with college degrees were the main buyers of this lower-priced model. The data was pretty bland.  But if you think about the fact that recent college grads tend to like living in urban settings, close to friends, work and entertainment, it starts to make sense.  In today’s more fitness-conscious world, it’s not surprising that these drivers would want to use their cars for bikes or surfboards.  In an urban area where street parking is the norm, it’s a lot easier to find parking for a smaller car.  An SUV might mean parking several blocks away, or tedious circling until a large enough spot is found.

Altogether, the theory of promoting the cars in urban settings with a high density of college grads makes sense.

You can use this approach (personal experience + word on the street + data) to tackle any problem.  I use it when I’m learning something new, and when I’m working on a new marketing task.  It’s helped me catch a lot of snags that could have become bigger issues, before it was too late.

Practicing for the Unpredictable

We’re taught that art is only valuable if an “expert” says so.  We’re taught that a person’s worth is enhanced by awards.  What’s overlooked is the time and attention within the journey that got them there.  Sure, we’ve heard the cliche’ that there is no such thing as an overnight success.  But let’s take that one step further.

The more you honor your fledgling ideas, the better you’ll be with big ideas.  What’s more, it doesn’t matter what your form of expression is.  One day, it might be drawing.  The next, cooking.

Don’t undermine the importance of these small creative outlets.  What do they do?  They help you explore.  They help you get better acquainted with yourself.  You gain more confidence in your instincts.  All this adds up to being able to process the unpredictable more quickly.  And in this ever changing world, in which technology redefines our comfort zones every few months, being prepared for the unpredictable is not bad at all.

Getting Started on Social Media

Someone asked, “What do you do to get started on a new social media project?”  Within the question was an assumption: that social media is yet a mystery.

It used to be that in order to sell something, it was important to be a destination.  Customers would go and see you in person.  Then mass media was invented and suddenly, communication became one-way.  Potential customers would see your message from the safe distance of TV, or a newspaper.  Marketers almost never had to go and speak to them in person.  Now, we have social media.  We’re talking to each other again.  We’ve come full circle.

But the tools can be intimidating if you’re not used to using them.  Here are three ways to jump start your ability to get to work.

1. Always be experimenting
2. Honor your creative ideas everyday
3. Listen

ALWAYS BE EXPERIMENTING

If you are in the habit of exploring new mediums, you will find them easier to use when pressured to try something new.

Make it a goal to adopt new communications tools as they come up.  There are so many that no one can do them all.  But if you’re constantly exploring, you’ll be closer to your audiences.  You’ll have a better idea of what will stick when you need to reach them.

HONOR YOUR CREATIVE IDEAS

Don’t just think them.  Let them out.  Take ten minutes to empty your brain with free-flow writing.  Doodle.  Cook something new.  It doesn’t have to be big.  It doesn’t have to be for anything important.  But DOING it is important because you need to get your ideas OUT.

Think about it.  All day long we’re hit with media.  We’re on the Internet, we’re catching the news, we’re briefed on new clients.  Experts on creativity say if you don’t take time to get your ideas out, then you WILL be blocked when you need an idea fast.

Think of it as energy.  It has to keep moving.  It has to keep flowing.  If not, it will become stale and stagnant.

LISTEN

The third and final way to jumpstart your ability to get to work is to listen.  Listen for what your audience needs.  Listen for how your audience can be reached.  Are they on Twitter?  Would it be better to go with mobile phone messaging?  Are they blogging?  Are they talking about your company?  What are they saying?  Do they need help?  Do they have complaints?

Listening helps define your project.  The more clearly defined you are, the better you know how to maximize your resources.  Listening is critical to setting yourself up for success.

Testing the Waters – How do you know when it’s time to make the next move?

“Classical” horsemanship adheres to a formal a training scale.  Pointless (possibly harmful) to work on [G] when [A, B, C] aren’t solid.”  @KathySierra on Twitter 6/17/09

Social media and innovation are hot topics.  As the bottom falls out beneath traditional media models, ad agencies are racing to find solutions.  Where should they put their resources?  How do they stay ahead of change?

In the words of author Anne Lamott: “Bird by bird.”

That is to say, take things one step at a time.  Define where you want to go.  Then take stock of where you’re at.  What do you need to fill that gap?  Lamott was talking about a grade school student essay with a looming deadline.  The topic was birds.  The student? Hit with an acute case of writer’s block.

A parent suggested that the student simply start.  “Bird by bird” refers to scaling things down.  An essay, to a grade school student, seems like a daunting task.  But if you break it down into nuts and bolts, and go step by step, it becomes manageable.

I’ve seen the exact same thing lead to break-through innovation inside a Fortune 100 company.  Sometimes it’s as simple as wanting to solve an irritating problem.  Said another way, it’s the time and attention paid to what once was merely a wish.

“I wish our 125,000 employees had a faster, yet authentic way to share information with each other.  I wish it didn’t have to be filtered or approved by a third party.  I wish I could speak freely, and that everyone else could, too.”

The above wish turned into a basement experiment, that turned into something tangible that could be shown to one or two friends at work.  The next thing that happened was that a tiny flame grew to a comfortable fire.  Little by little, the idea won supporters.  Each time, funding grew a little more, and a little more, until sure enough, the entire company was using it.

It turned into the very solution that had once seemed impossible: 125,000 employees were free to exchange thoughts, questions and information with each other, securely within the company, and speak freely with each other.  Essentially, it became a social network, using marketing/communications principles, that allowed the company to be nimble and responsive in its marketing externally.

People often want to leap to the finish with a grand gesture.  Innovation is often much smaller than that.

It’s okay to work through the bugs, one at a time.  Indeed, it can often be harmful to leap to step G when steps A, B and C are not yet in place.

Give yourself a solid platform from which to reach to each next step.  Test it out. Make a prototype.  What do you like?  What would you change?  Don’t get bogged down in perfection.  Just make it stable.  The next step will reveal itself.

And if you see that steps A, B, and C do NOT seem stable, give yourself another week, or some sort of extension.  Get your footing.  Then reach out and leap.