Well, I’ll confess! I played hooky from my work schedule yesterday afternoon and went for a walk on a beautiful spring day. I felt guilty, of course. There’s way too much going on at NorthSky to take time away in the middle of the day. But I shrugged it off and enjoyed the blooming flowers, trees, and did some bird watching. You can probably predict what I discovered. I came back from my walk energized and with a strategy in mind for two complex consulting engagements that I had been grappling with all week. We know this, don’t we? That taking a break and building in recreational time is essential to our work. That some of our most amazing and creative ideas come like a bolt during a bike ride or an afternoon on the boat.
Think about it. When was the last time you truly had a creative or innovative idea? What triggered it? Sometimes working in a group, throwing off constraints like worrying about the budget or the board’s reaction, loosens up our thinking and unleashes our best ideas. Have you been at a family picnic or holiday party and suddenly the great inspiration arrives, seemingly from nowhere. (Well, maybe it was the Chardonnay…)
According to Virginia Smith Harvey at the University of Massachusetts (http://www.indiana.edu/~futures/creation.ppt#256,1,Finding Creative Solutions), we are creative because it’s fun, energizing, and provides opportunities to solve problems. We aren’t creative because our lives are built around routines, it can get us into trouble, and because it requires us to abandon logic, practically and what we already know. Frankly, we’re taught not to be creative. To be creative we need to abandon what we know and look at things differently. Do things differently.
I think this is good advice and that we need to look for opportunities for recreation, exercise and to work in fresh settings. We need to build creativity exercises into our planning and problem solving sessions.
Much has been published about encouraging creativity in your work. One book I particularly enjoy and use often is “A Whack on the Side of the Head: How to Unlock Your Mind for Innovation.” Another is the training series, “Games Trainers Play,” Scannell and Newstrom.
Enjoy the spring and don’t forget to share your creative ideas with the rest of us!
Pam Evans
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