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Mini-Session 3: Five Things about Creativity

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Guest Speaker: Mark McGuinness

Five Things about Creativity

1. Creativity happens inside the box as well as outside it – yes you need to free your mind and think laterally, but you also need rules, deadlines and constraints.

2. Creativity happens between people, not just between the ears – inspiration comes from conversation; if no-one ever hears about your idea, it may as well not exist.

3. What’s obvious to you is original to others – you’re often at your most creative when you stop trying to be original and say the first thing that comes into your mind.

4. Creativity is a mind-altering substance – when was the last time you were so absorbed in your imagination that time stood still, your surroundings disappeared and you were lost in another world?

5. Creativity can be managed – artists learn to manage their own creative process; the best managers do the same for others.

Thank you, Mark
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Visit Mark at his website and blog, Wishful Thinking, where he works with professionals on how creativity and business fit together. –ME “Liz” Strauss
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Let’s open the Q&A . . .

I’ll go first, Mark, how can I help businesses value creativity?

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Comments

  2. Hi Liz, good question! I think it’s important for businesses to think about whether they REALLY want to prioritise creativity, and in what context.

    It’s easy to talk about creativity as a nice-to-have quality, but you really need to think about what kind of creativity you’re looking to promote, and what the implications are for other aspects of the business – like risk management!

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  4. Mark – do you have any activity that triggers the “creativity state” for you? I noticed that if I consume a ton of information for a couple of days and then take a day off. Not thinking about anything important…just doing fun stuff…ideas start to come from “nowhere” and I can´t stop it. That way I learned to have always a notebook with me 😉

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  5. Hi Char, ‘activity’ is a key word here – I find that if I keep playing around with ideas, or even get on with some mundane tasks related to the project, that helps the inspiration to start flowing.

    Physical activity is another good way of jolting your system into a different gear – it feels good and often triggers a new idea or insight. A change of scene is another good one – either a quick break from sitting at your desk or a longer one with palm trees and sea… 🙂

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  6. Hi all

    Steli, you’re like me, notebooks everywhere!
    (Strang though, ‘best’ ideas I mostly get when I ‘retreat’ to the ‘wash-my-hands’ room)

    Mark, any ideas/thought on Eduardo de Bono? I ahve the big chance of going to a workshop of him next month

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  7. Hi Roger, funnily enough I’ve been writing a sestina this week so that’s the first one that comes to mind for me!

    FYI a sestina = ‘six rhymes’ in Italian. It’s a traditional form with 6 verses of 6 lines, and the same 6 words appear at the end of each line in a different order in each verse. If that sounds complicated it’s because it is! They can be fiendishly difficult but terrific fun to write! More about the sestina on wikipedia.

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  10. Hi Steli – yes taking a break is good, as long as you’ve done some work beforehand! 🙂

    I often say that the difference between procrastination and creative incubation is that procrastination happens BEFORE hard work and incubation happens AFTER it!

    There are lots of ways to change your state – taking a break, physical activity (as per my reply to Char) are common-sense solutions. Hypnosis is a not-so-common option that also works very well. I think most creative people are actually very good at self-hypnosis without realising it…

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  12. Mark, these are real keepers thanks. I especially liked… “What’s obvious to you is original to others – you’re often at your most creative when you stop trying to be original and say the first thing that comes into your mind.”

    Seems to me that also speaks to what I do behind the scenes of my life – so that when I need to dip and draw the idea – that pool is fast, fresh and free!

    My, leave it to Liz to get us all up and rolling with all this mental chemistry and electricity on a Monday morning.

    Thanks Mark for giving me a new reach today!

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  14. Hi Karin, de Bono has some excellent ideas. I particularly like his Six Thinking Hats – you’re probably familiar with this – where each one corresponds to a different type of thinking. For maximum creatvity you can experiment with several different hats to see what different perspectives they give you.

    Another excellent creative thinking model that uses similar prinicples has been devised by a certain Roger von Oech 😉 – he suggests that at different stages of the creative process you need to adopt the mindset of the Explorer, Judge, Warrior or Artist.

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  17. Thanks Ellen – re the obvious quote I should acknowledge Deborah Frances-White, who’s an excellent improvisation teacher here in London. I was getting stuck on an improvised scene and she told me to ‘just say the obvious, your obvious is your talent’ – I think that applies to so many situations. Her website is: http://www.the-spontaneity-shop.com

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  18. ha ha Roger maybe I should have a go at the ‘comments sestina’, it’s a busy week though so may not manage it very quickly… thanks for the kind words re Wishful Thinking

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  19. Thanks Mark – I was linking it more to intrapersonal intelligence – which is part of each of us and is the knowing that occurs and is developed inside us. Thanks to amazing new studies – they now see in MRIs that we develop and grow this intelligence well past senior years. Cool! It also affirms your words:-)

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  20. Hi Robyn, sure that’s a bit of a hobby horse of mine – I think managers don’t always get the credit they deserve for facilitating creativity in others. We tend to glamorize the ‘artist’ and often don’t notice the role a manager (or director, or producer) has played in the creative process.

    I’ve been doing a research project around this, interviewing managers in creative businesses (advertising, film, computer games etc.) about how they get the best out of their creative teams – the podcasts are here: http://www.wishfulthinking.co.uk/research

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  21. These are the word endings for the same-used six words in different stanzas (from Wikipedia)

    stanza 1: 1 2 3 4 5 6
    stanza 2: 6 1 5 2 4 3
    stanza 3: 3 6 4 1 2 5
    stanza 4: 5 3 2 6 1 4
    stanza 5: 4 5 1 3 6 2
    stanza 6: 2 4 6 5 3 1

    Mark, this is like a magic number square. Amazing!

    I know you’re a big advocate of using constraints to stimulate the creative process. This is almost like creative wrestling while wearing a straight-jacket. If you can do this (write sestinas), you can probably handle almost any constraint. Indeed, ordinary problem-problem solving must seem like a cake walk after a 2-hour sestina writing session! (How many metaphors was that?)

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  24. Ellen – very interesting stuff! Both the ‘intrapersonal intelligence’ and HBR piece about ungrateful creatives.

    By the way I discovered your blog last week, it looks fascinating, I need to have a good look around. You’re doing a great job of making neuroscience accessible to people in business.

    Re my findings – I’ll be publishing the research paper as a free download on my blog soon. But one of the things several of the interviewees said was that they had never really talked about the issues I was raising – management tends to be ‘in the background’ while the creatives hog the limelight.

    I think a good manager can have a tremendous influence on employees’ creativity through their day-to-day interactions. E.g. helping them focus on goals, setting meaningful challenges and deadlines (see Roger’s comment about constraints), asking probing questions, listening attentively and giving feedback. I’ve just started a blog series introducing business coaching, where I’ll go into this in more detail.

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  25. Roger – yes the sestina is magical isn’t it? A lot of the magic of poetry comes from the formal patterns made by the words – one reason I love sonnets, sestinas, villanelles, ghazals etc.

    It can be a bit of a straight-jacket – or (to mix in another metaphor) it can be a bit like a dance. I sometimes think of the sestina as a folk dance, in which the words line up and dance around each other.

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  26. This is intriguing.

    Do you think you can manage what time of day creativity happens? I tend to be creative at night… which doesn’t always work well for scheduling.:-(

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  27. Sandy – I think daily rhythms can have a big influence on creativity, although I find it easier to notice when I’m naturally at my most creative and schedule round that rather than try to change the pattern.

    I’m most creative in the morning, so I tend to get up early to write and schedule meetings for late morning or afternoons. I’m full of admiration for anyone who can come up with an original thought after 6pm!

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  31. Karin – thanks for the link, Kent writes some excellent posts on management.

    Ellen – just looked at your post re ‘not thanking’. I think there’s some truth in that, although I wouldn’t say it applies to everyone. If you’re going to be an outstanding performer I think you need a certain independence of mind.

    On the other hand I think there are lots of ways a manager can help a high achiever and have a good working relationship with them. High achievers love to be challenged and stimulated, they also love attention and being made to feel special – so there’s plenty of opportunity for setting inspiring goals (challenge), using questions and feedback (stimulation) and active listening (attention) to get the best out of them.

    Personally I love working with high achievers – they’re stimulating to work with, and usually have an interesting angle on things.

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  34. Yes of course!
    Hypnosis is a great way to tap into untouched resources within us! As far as I can tell – no musician is in a conscious state while writing AND playing music!

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  36. i have found that creativity is created for me, when I’m doing a physical activity, getting away from it… riding the horse running; even sometimes just getting up away from the computer and doing some inn-cleaning.
    Lots of ahas!

    Off to ride the Thoroughbred for some more unprecedented opportunities for creativity
    GP in Montana

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  38. Hi all,

    My 2c about managers not getting thanked by creative people:

    If you are a good manager than you understand that the biggest “thank you” can get from creative people is that they continue to work with you. Creative people have many options if you are not a good manager that they appreciate they will go to work with someone else.

    As my chairman always says – “I made millions by pampering Prima-donnas”

    Reply

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