The Lost Art of Creativity

How can your business play offense and defense at the same time? Creativity. It is the superpower that will defend you from being disrupted and simultaneously make you the disruptor.?Adobe’s “State of Creativity” study in 2020 uncovered that 80 percent of people believe that creativity is an important factor in our economic growth. And the World Economic Forum shows that creativity has grown from a top 10 soft skill to top 3 in just 5 years!

But two in three people believe they are not creative? Look left, look right...only one of you believe you're creative. Crazy!

Why is it crazy? Because we are ALL creative! All of us were once kids—and I haven't met a kid yet that was not creative. This must mean that creativity is a use-it-or-lost-it kinda' thing. So, I will cut to the chase. We can get back our creativity by doing two things.

Change the Routine

Have you ever driven to work and realized once you got to the office that you were there—and not really sure how that happened? Our brains went on autopilot driving us to the office while I minds were thinking about the day ahead and what happened yesterday. This is dangerous...not because you drove to work with your subconscious at the wheel. Rather it is dangerous because you set the tone for the rest of day for not being present!

Take yourself off of autopilot by driving to work a different way everyday, even if you just take one different side street. And listen to a different genre of music each day while you commute. If you like hip-hop, go ahead and listen to some pirate metal tomorrow. Yep, that is a real genre. Google 'music genres' for endless inspiration!

Doing these two things will get you moving in the right direction to look at things from a different perspective. It will allow to be more mindful about the actions you take at work and will get you to challenge your team and yourself on if there are better ways of doing things.

Slice the Risk Thinner

When we are in meetings we tend to shy away from suggesting creative ideas to solve a problem. We fear that the idea will not be accepted by the collective group of rational thinkers and we will be judged by the ideas that we bring to the table. The text thread ridiculing you is being created as we speak.

Slice the risk thinner is a term I learned from Jonathan Reynolds , CEO of Mindful Life, Mindful Work, Inc. This is his approach for using mindfulness with teams. Don't go in guns blazing with sitting and reflecting for minutes at the beginning of a meeting. You'll make people uncomfortable. Instead just ask the team to reflect on the objective for 45 seconds when appropriate, which can be much more approachable. The same techniques can be used for creativity. Don't jump into the deep-end of creativity proposing to create new business models or radical organization restructures. Rather make one small suggestion in a meeting once a day that challenges the norms.

A statement of "what if we thought about this differently?" Or "If I were to think outside the box [add suggestion here]" could help you slice the risk thinner and get you to dip your toe back into the pool of creativity.

Just be present in the moment and take small risks by thinking outside the box daily, and before you know it, you will get your creative groove back!