Creative Streak

Two Ways to Improve Every Brainstorm

In the past few weeks, I’ve been part of brainstorms that range from big, formal but low-tech, to informal, 1-on-1 and over Skype.  Between idea generation, I scribbled some immediate thoughts on how these brainstorm could have been improved.

Originally I had nine points ... but really, it's just two things you should do.

1.  Prepare.  Think about how to use the brainstorm time most wisely, such as …

• Defining the structure up front.  The most essential points:  1) What’s the objective?  2) What issues are you facing?  3) What quality research do you have?  4) What insights about the audience mindset have you learnt?
• Understanding the audience.  You really are wasting time if you have shallow information about the target audience, such as demographics.  Know the mindset, their perceptions and attitudes, and any existing knowledge about the product or service.
• Knowing the tangents.  For a variety of reasons (not all good ones), the time spent brainstorming is shrinking.  Use valuable time wisely by limiting conversations which go off tangents.  Deal with these potential issues in advance.  Or, be ruthless in parking issues for discussion at a later time.
• Inviting the right people with the right mindset.  A brainstorm is not a cattle call.  Particularly with less time, brainstorms should involve people who are prolific idea generators, people who understand the target audience and those with open minds.
• Keeping negativity at bay.  Whether it’s colleagues or supervisors, or you yourself, keep negativity at bay until all ideas are given the chance to be researched or improved.
• Setting the right environment.  You don’t need a large, state-of-the-art facility to be creative.  A basic room with lots of wall space and creative tools is all that’s needed to inspire the participants.  If you’re working online, how can you share notes with digital media?

2.  Schedule the right amount of time.  An hour should be minimum.

Artwork: 'Free Your Mind' by Catrin Welz-Stein.

The Dog House: A Political Cartoon

My friend Glen Frost has been drawing cartoons for as long as I've known him.  The Dog House follows two dogs - Vister and Steve - who live at 1600a Pennsylvania Avenue.  Some wry overservations about America and its political system.  Give it a read.

Learning Who We Are Through Communications

Once again, it’s funny how two different points-of-view can inspire.

I’m reading The Time Traveler’s Guide To Medieval England: A Handbook for Visitors to the Fourteenth Century.  Among many of its fascinating elements is the concept that medieval folk lived in and for their communities.  Virtually the entire population fell into one of three parts of the estate system: 'those who fight’ (such as knights), ‘those who pray’ (such as monks), and ‘those who work’ (such as villeins).  Of course, much of the estate system - and life in general - was extremely harsh, but there were also some positive aspects.  The community gave its people a sense of fraternity (how they treated each other), identify (how they related to each other), and purpose (how they supported each other).  In all, the system influenced how they communicated with each other. 

Yesterday, in The New York Times, I realized just how far away from that era we’ve come after reading The Flight From Conversation by Sherry Turkle.  As a psychologist and professor at M.I.T. (and author of Alone Together: Why We Expect More From Technology and Less From Each Other), she speaks about how technology has changed how we communicate, how we react and participate in relationships, and how we’ve learnt how (not) to be alone.

Don’t worry, she’s not telling us to ditch our devices.  But she does make an eloquent case for recognizing that we’ve becoming confused about what true communications means.

"Human relationships are rich; they’re messy and demanding.  We have learned the habit of cleaning them up with technology.  And the move from conversation to connection is part of this.  But it’s a process in which we shortchange ourselves.  Worse, it seems that over time we stop caring, we forget that there is a difference.

Is Your Mind Open or Closed?

In the 'either-or' spirit of my last post, which one of the two options below sounds most like you when you're at work?

Option #1:  Lots to do, probably under pressure to get them done.  Focused on a task before jumping to another task, or juggling several (or many) projects at once.  People coming into your office – your supervisor, team members who report to you, colleagues – enquiring about status updates, asking questions, demanding this or that.  Given these distractions, you become tunnel-vision, if not rigid, inflexible and impatient.  It may sound negative, but this environment may be pleasurable to you: invigorating, having a purpose, being efficient and ordered. 

Option #2:  Lots to do, but your choice of tasks is random and leisurely.  In fact, the ‘shiny’ projects get your attention because there’s something curious about them.  You perceive there's something to discover under the layers of information.  Routine is dropped for day-dreaming.  You find a relaxed oasis somewhere to think – even if it’s simply inside your own head – so you can play and be humorous with your thoughts. The purpose is not specific, in fact, you’re not really sure where your thoughts are headed, but your intuition tells you there’s something to be found by letting go of right and wrong, yes or no, completed or unfinished.

For obvious reasons, most people spend their time in the first mode (called te Closed Mode) versus the second mode (called the Open Mode).  The terms themselves were coined by comedian John Cleese, from two famous speeches on creativity (here in 1991 and here in 2009).  His points were built on the research of the late Donald W. MacKinnon, a noted professor of psychology at the University of California at Berkeley.

As MacKinnon demonstrated in his research “The Nature and Nurture of Creative Talent” (1962), “Creativity is not related to one’s intelligence, and it is not a talent.”  Cleese said it slightly differently:  “Creativity is not a talent, it’s a way of operating.”

Cleese’s point is that we cannot be creative in the Closed Mode.  Surrounded by demands, deadlines and details, it’s extremely difficult for the mind to think of different strategies, see patterns, explore possibilities, or observe trends.

For obvious reasons, the Closed Mode is likely to be our default mode because it’s what keeps us employed, promoted and accomplished.  At the moment of making a decision, an executive doesn’t want to start thinking of options and alternatives, any more than they want to see the humorous side during an issues or crisis situation.

The Two Faces of Creativity

An article in the International Herald Tribune two weeks ago – “Innovation Isn’t Easy, Especially Midstream” – captured my attention for a variety of reasons.

Writer Nick Bilton talks about how large organizations often struggle with disruption – in other words, to create innovative products – unlike start-ups.  (“Why was a small start-up with 13 employees able to build up Instagram, while a company like Eastman Kodak, which recently filed for bankruptcy protection, was not?”)

HIs reasons: inability to break out of internal culture patterns, being held captive by customers to current technologies, reluctance to adapt and change, particularly if experimentation may cannibalize existing sales.

But more than the insights of organizational innovation, the article brings to life the complex duality of  the selling process for people in public relations.  Perhaps you've read the articles that outline how creative people are ambiguous, malleable and two-faced – as if they’re negative qualities.  In truth, they’re necessary qualities because the individual brainstormer has several balancing acts to master if they’re going to successfully sell their Big Idea to the decision maker.

Exploration vs. Production

To imagine a new product/service or new alternatives/options requires exploration.  The individual brainstormer needs to search and discover, from yesterday (good ideas of the past, such as Instagram's nod to the Polaroid camera), from today (current events, attitudes and behaviours, as well as the societal and competitive environment), and from tomorrow (emerging trends, technologies and patterns).

My Favourite Ten Points of Public Speaking

I'm heading off to another conference, and I was brushing up on my key points to help prepare the presenters.  I thought these might be useful to you.  Any thoughts?  Anything you'd add?

#1. Own your speech.  A speech is not a series of words important to you.  It’s a prioritized series of key messages which are, above all else, relevant to your audience.  What do you want them to do, consider or become?  Those messages dictate the PowerPoint or Keynote slides, not vice versa.

#2. Use your voice effectively.  Speech is what you do with sound.  It comes from your diaphragm, not your mouth.  An effective voice is clear and enunciated.  It means you need to breath fully and naturally to project your voice.  You also need to think of yourself as an athlete.  Your voice box (the larynx) needs to be properly warmed up, and you need to protect it from the wrong foods – like dairy products, chocolate and too hot/too cold beverages.

#3. Own the stage.  You must look comfortable on stage, even if you don’t feel it.  Beforehand, get up on-stage alone.  Notice the room (how dark, how far can you see), the lights (how bright, how hot), the stage floor (is slippery, what's the distance from off-stage to your speaking position), microphone (hand-held or lavalier) and acoustics (do you sound natural in the back of the room), teleprompter or lectern.  Think about how you’ll enter and exit the stage.

Should You Ban PowerPoint? (Answer: No)

I've spent the past few weeks working on-site at three different clients. At each, I heard the frequent and understandable (if not clichéd) battle cry.  “Ban PowerPoint from our meetings.”

The reasons why are endless. In fact, they're a perfect example of the Snowball Effect.  It begins with slides which are largely incomprehensible:  dripping with too much information, and illustrated with eye-numbing charts and mouse-sized fonts – or more likely, both.

Put a swath of these unfocused slides together and you'll feel like you're reading a James Joyce novel.  (You know it's intelligent, but you spend way too much time reading and re-reading each page to get the point.)  Match the indecipherable document with a presenter who reads the slide content verbatim in a monotype style lifted from Keanu Reeves.

Now you have a meeting that's unclear from the start, and grows increasingly rudderless the longer it goes.  This directly causes a free-for-all Q&A (with pedantic and tangential arguing), and ends with slow or poor decision-making among the participants.

My Top 10 Principles of Communications

I'm off again for work, going East (UK) this time instead West (Australia). In preparing for the workshops coming up next week, I spoke by phone with one of the participants from work in September. She'd asked for "Andy's principles of communications." When I pulled the list from my files, I'd realised I'd never posted the list. So, until I get back in 10 days, here's something for discussion.

My Top 10 Principles of Communications

1. You’re the least important person in the conversation. (Be relevant. It's about them, not you.)
2. Have a clear purpose of why you are speaking.
3. Know what’s going on around you. Don't avoid the obvious.
4. Know as much as possible about the audience, particularly their mindset.
5. "Know what you say" – not "Say what you know."  (Prioritise your messages.)
6. Be explicit about what you want the audience to do.
7. Be concise, succinct and simple (but not simplistic).
8. State an opinion. (Or, be prepared to state an opinion if asked.)
9. Don’t do anything to tarnish your reputation.
10. Be passionate and enthusiastic about your presentation.

Do you have any others to add?

Three Good Rehearsal Tips, from Nick Morgan

Three excellent points on rehearsing presentations, from a post by Nick Morgan entitled When Is Rehearsing a Presentation a Bad Idea?

1. Don't rehearse more than once on the day of the presentation. 

2. Don't rehearse the wrong speech or presentation. 

3. Don't rehearse too often only in your mind.

Lateral Puzzles To Inspire Creativity and Problem-Solving

As a kid, one of my favourite books was the series Two-Minute Mysteries by Donald Sobol, featuring the unflappable criminologist Dr. Haledjian. Sobol’s other famous books for kids – Encyclopedia Brown – never interested me. I’ll take murder, robbery and other serious crimes, thank you very much.

The series lived up to its name in that you could read the story in a few short minutes, but they were also long on mystery, secrecy, red herrings and devilish strangeness. Haledjian was typically called in by Police Inspector Winters to solve a baffling crime. Clues were often absent or, more likely, utterly contradictory (e.g., a frozen body found in a park on a hot summer day).

Sobol’s mini-episodes were a noir hybrid of storytelling and riddle. If the stories has a common denominator, it challenged the reader’s assumptions and preconceptions. Little did I realize these lateral thinking puzzles would be a brilliant introduction to problem-solving and creativity.

What Communicators Can Learn from Comedians

Published in The New York Times on Monday 5 March, "A Stand Up Joke Is Born" provides a fascinating back story about how material is developed by comedian Myq Kaplan through his nightly performances at comedy clubs around New York City. As an added layer of interest, there's several lessons here for people working in commnications and creativity.

"Despite earning a decent laugh, this was a work in progress: wordy and a bit imprecise."

If I've learnt one thing from teaching Business Writing, it's that the vast majority of people assumes their first draft is also their last draft.  Whether it's an e-mail, a board report or a PowerPoint document, writers need to remember three things about editing: