The key to creative thinking every day

I have always held the view that creative thinking was a state of mind and that anyone is capable of thinking creatively and this skill was not limited to artists, fashion designers and people with the word creative in their title. Whilst some people claim not to be creative, in their personal lives most people show a great aptitude for cooking, painting, drawing, home decorating or a myriad of other talents that would suggest that they are able to have creative thoughts. Why then do they struggle to apply that innovative streak they clearly possess at home when at work?

I believe that we are conditioned from an early age to conform to rules, obey laws and respect society's norms. Whilst I don't think that this is wrong, I do believe that it has the knock-on effect of discouraging us from being creative. I have a way of testing this theory which I do in my workshops and I have witnessed first-hand that close to 100% of the participants consistently prove my theory!

In my travels I have witnessed some of the most impressive innovative thinking in parts of the world where the social conventions and laws were far laxer and greyer. I found notable examples of this in the African and South American Continents where the environment encouraged high degrees of entrepreneurial thinking. In most of these cases this entrepreneurial ability was key to their survival. This led me to the conclusion that entrepreneurial behaviour and creativity was directly related to the lack of rules.

So why is it then that many people at work in the more developed parts of the world we struggle to be creative and that the usual brainstorms have a tendency to be a little lacklustre?

My sense is that the very structure and order that protects us in the developed part of the world also serves to stand in our way. A further contributing factor I believe is that when we are at work, we tend to be more task-orientated and have an overwhelming tendency to use the left side of our brain which makes us practical, organised and logical. These are great traits to have when performing tasks and managing projects. It makes us more reliable, predictable and in short safe.

The world of big business tends to avoid risks and discourages people from taking them, preferring the safe and steady. In fact, it is not uncommon for unusual ideas to be ridiculed or shot down and more logical linear thinking and ideas favoured as they tend to be less confronting when new ideas are hard to prove. It is true of course that it is very difficult to prove something will work if it has never been done before. This is compounded by processes, policies, rules, guidelines and policies that are all designed to limit risk, discourage people from deviating from the known and ‘acceptable’ and ensure conformance. It’s also easier to assess the known than get one’s head around the unknown.

This makes all those amazing innovations and great ideas that litter history all the more impressive when one considers the resistance they probably first encountered. From the early pioneers of the Wright Brothers, Benjamin Franklin and Marie Curie, to the celebrated Steve Jobs, Ruth Bader-Ginsburg and Sir Richard Branson to the powerhouses of JK Rowling, Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk. We celebrate and honour great thinkers like these and marvel at what they have achieved, but then stand in the way of our own ability to think entrepreneurially and creatively because of the systems and steps we employ to run and operate business. We forget quickly how much each of these champions of creativity had to break through to achieve what they did. JK Rowling’s first manuscript was rejected many times. Ruth Bader-Ginsburg faced ridicule and Sir Richard Branson for many years battled against the giants like British Airways.

I realise that within the civilised world there needs to be a compromise or midway ground to avoid chaos, but rather to channel the sometimes unpredictable nature of open creative thinking. I think that Chris Meredith who recently launched his ‘Be More Friday’ Campaign has pinpointed one such idea. His assertion is that by the end of the week when staff are tired that productivity and efficiency levels drop and that this provides an optimum environment for greater creativity. In business today Casual Friday is common and this has shown to help create a more relaxed environment which fosters greater innovation and creative thinking. Chris offered a statistic that 61% of employees were more productive when the dress code is relaxed. He pointed out that that ‘Be More Friday’ mindset taps into the space between Structured analytical thinking at work, Optimistic creative thinking at play and the practical collaborative thinking we experience at home. I think Chris is onto something and I am excited to see it develop.

Whilst I can see the merit of making the most of casual Fridays to spark creative thinking, I think the real trick is how you can unlock creative thinking every day in everyone. This should help overcome the failure of typical brainstorms where the expectation of delivering new ideas in one meeting within a limited time frame rarely delivers beyond the usual and expected.

This is something that I have strived to do for the best part of my career and I have seen a good number of success stories of this at play in the many advertising agencies I have worked for and with over the years. One of the best examples of this in my own experience that also proved to be one of the biggest surprises and learning moments in my career involved a young professional called Leon Jacobs. I was recruiting a new Creative Director at the Ad Agency that I was running and Leon was a candidate that was referred to me by one of the greats in the Advertising World called John Hunt. Whilst he impressed me greatly at the interview, he got the role more on the encouragement and recommendation of John who saw something special and great in him. I certainly could see that he was special but must admit that I hadn’t spotted the ‘great’ and was put off him because I thought he was too young and inexperienced for the role and wouldn’t gain the respect of our senior clients because of this. This is another example of my own limitations and fears standing in the way of seeing something unique. Well thanks to John we hired him and he quickly proved to us all that he was not only special but one of the greats. His appointment proved to be one of my most significant hires and a personal learning and growth moment for myself. I have since followed his career with interest and see his creative brilliance every day that I see one of his social media posts.

Leon went on to deliver some incredible creative thinking for the agency and in his career, but it was one of his first management recommendations to me that impressed me the most. He came to me early in his tenure with the suggestion that he wanted to give his creative teams time off during the working week. At a time where I was under intense pressure to deliver greater revenue, productivity and billable hours, the last thing I wanted to do was give his teams time off. I was looking for them to do more work not less! His belief was that they needed time to see the world around them, get out of the office and be inspired by life. It all seems so sensible now and logical in hindsight, but back then it seemed like a bad idea. I am so glad that I listened to Leon (and John!) and trusted their instinct. As a direct result of this initiative the standard of our Agency’s creative ideas and work improved and I attribute this to Leon’s leadership of his creative team and his big picture and forward thinking.

I am forever grateful for meeting and working with Leon and the valuable gift this learning gave me. Since then I have followed his example and lead in many ways and introduced a raft of new ideas and initiatives for the companies that I have worked with. I have gone on to author numerous processes, techniques and methodologies to help leadership teams that typically rely on the left side of their brains to use right brain thinking to deliver innovative, unexpected and sometimes industry first solutions. More recently my business partner and I have founded Liminal Solutions which is all about breaking through thresholds (‘Limen’ is Latin for threshold) and delivering breakthrough solutions for Business, be combining NLP within the creative ideation process to help breakdown cognitive biases.

Creative thinking can sound ominous and can often discourage people as it feels unfamiliar and event daunting, but I believe that by its very nature it should be simple and straightforward. In fact, the simpler it is the better the outcome may be as the less restraints and rules that we put on creative thinking the better. We only have to look at children and examine what they see through their eyes to realise that the more we keep it simple and unencumbered the better.

Here is one simple tip to start with. Trial this next time you are struggling to find a solution to your business problem. Instead of sitting at your desk and staring at your computer, go outside for a walk or hold your next meeting or brainstorm in the park. You may be surprised how nature can help you unlock your cognitive biases and access new streams of thought. Just like you access subconscious thinking when you are relaxed at home, in the shower or even driving somewhere, the trick is to find ways to disable your conscious brain from putting obstacles in the way of your ability to think differently. Don’t forget that our left brain has been trained since childhood and school to dominate the right.

As the phrase says you need to think out of the box, so to do this you need to get out of your own box. In this case, just leaving your office, workstation or cubicle behind for a little while you might just be able to give your mind the freedom to explore new fields of thought and for a moment you may find yourself thinking freely and creatively and in turn you may just surprise yourself with what you come up with!