The Creative Value in Extreme Brevity

Meaningful messages in just six words?

Hemingway could do it; why can't we?

His most frequently cited example follows:

"For sale: Baby shoes.  Never worn."

High-intensity meaning.  Just six words.

What else could we thus condense?

Perhaps those creative provocations could shrink ... 

• What if that was upside-down?
• Could the cart proceed the horse?
• Why sell that?  We could buy!
• Would that widget suit some stripes?
• What would Francis of Assisi do?
• Could B2C or G2C become B2B?

Or try a creating thinking motto--

A laconic used to drive behaviour

Michael Michalko came up with one:

"All cats look grey at night"

Prompted thus, I'll submit my own:

"Helicopter pilots spot the best paths"

Is this exercise in consicion serious?

Yes!  There's value in extreme brevity

Ask tweeters, ad men and authors

A crisp headline holds everyone's attention

And therein common understandings are established

Collaboration is kindled; the fire starts

And rages, unconstrained by excess meaning

(Inspired by Michael's excellent new book.)

In the Company of One

Now here's a thing ...

I've recently experienced a very graphic demonstration of just how slow a large enterprise can be to adopt a simple, low-cost innovation.   (I'll mention no names, but you know who you are, insurance company X!)

So a provocation (a "po") seems in order ...

'What if you were you own company in your own right: A company of one?  Would you tolerate excess delay to implementation?

No.  I'll tell you exactly what would happen ...

- There's no way in the world you'd suffer ten or more naysayers to every good idea -- they wouldn't be there to naysay!
- You wouldn't need ten or more "specialists" to vet every idea, half of whom are unavailable to talk at any given time
- The facade of the business case would be present, but not dominant
- Gut instinct would have a place
- Change wouldn't strike fear into the workforce in quite so compelling a way
- Attack (improvement) would matter more than defence (preservation)

Is any of this instructive?   I like to think so.

Sometimes we have to act like we work in a company of one, to get things done.  If we want our creativity-inspired ideas to go anywhere, then we'll need to think small.

I've coached the sole ideas evangelist in the offending company to assume responsibility for what is, after all, a small, powerful, self-contained idea.  He plans to push it through, end-to-end, to see it realised.   This means constant effervescence, and the adaptability to do lots of different types of leg-work for himself.

But what's his reward?

Money?   ... Unlikely.

Recognition?  ... Maybe.

Self-satisfaction?   Yes.  It has to be that.

And perhaps something even better:  There's something wearyingly comparable about large enterprises and their take on "new stuff".  If he can push this through, with a smidgen of moral support from me, then maybe we have a model for evangelistic innovation, which would yield results in a hundred other UK  plcs.?

Fingers crossed.   I'll let you know.

Some words are worth a thousand pictures!

How many business books from 1963 still hold a position of status in the collective psyche today?

I'd be surprised if any were held in better esteem than David Ogilvy's "Confessions of an Advertising Man".  

I've been interested in advertising for some months now, because it's one of only a handful of vocations which are truly creative but which also directly support businesses.  So I recently discovered this book, and read it from cover-to-cover one day last week.

How does it stand-up then?  And what can it offer to the creative thinker?

The first thing to say is READ THE BOOK. There's a wealth of commonsense advice in there, even if it's not all germane to this topic.

If we're looking for advice on creativity though, there are pros and cons.   A lot of good messages about constructing the right environment to encourage new thinking, but then something rather more controversial ...

"I will not allow [new recruits] to use the word CREATIVE to describe the functions they will perform in our agency."

How surprising.

Didn't I just classify advertising as a CREATIVE industry?  So why is the "Father of Advertising" dismissing the word?

Ogilvy worried that the focus of his new recruits could too easily become the perceived artistic quality of their adverts, rather than the more concrete measure of the product sales they stimulate.  He had little respect for advertising for its own sake, only seeking to measure them by their quantitative benefits to the clients.

So what do we reckon?  Should I be flinging-around the word "creative" as liberally as I do?

Yes, I think I should.   And here's why:

I seek to appeal to professionals in industries which are traditionally seen as non-creative.   In those industries, people need active encouragement to rediscover their instinctive creativity.   They need reminding that creativity exists, that it exists in them, and that it's a valuable means to an end.  Few of us in the more analytical sectors would fall into the trap of thinking themselves as "creative" first-and-foremost, and so few would run the risk of forgetting the business imperitives in their excess enthusiasm for creativity.

Forget the means until you understand the ends.  When the ends are clear, revisit the means.

Something Borrowed

I've sheepishly raised the subject of my 'reading pile' before.  Much as I aspire to read regularly, I'm invariably months behind.

For you, dear reader, I feel this can only be a good thing.  How comforting it must be to read my observations on news events which you've had ample time to acclimatise to; and how pleasant must be the feeling of deja vu when I seem to be alluding to something groundbreaking which actually broke it's ground back in 2010.

With this in mind I'd like us to cast our minds back to the month of May.  Spring was in the air (a bit), Twitter's gossip was occupying the bored more than ever before, and we were all about to witness the collapse of a long-standing UK tabloid.

Had I been paying proper attention, I would have been delighted to spot an article by Daniel H Pink in the Telegraph's "Business Thinking" column, presenting a set of research in support of something I already thought I knew.

This week, when I finally did read the column, I was delighted to see that something solid and scientific appeared to be backing-up a hypothesis I was already nurturing.

The contention was that it's much easier to arrive at unusual ideas if you're one step removed from the focus. That's to say: I'm far more likely to give you something new to think about if I work in a different company, or a different sector, or hold a different specialisation.

Although there's value in bringing local knowledge to a problem, there's even more value in applying scarcer foreign knowledge.

Several experiments were submitted as evidence:  In general, people were judged as more creative when trying to solve other people's problems.

In some respects this is just natural fallout from my grand unified theory of creative thinking.  And it's encouraging to others in the field too, supporting as it does the idea of Weak Ties.

It leads me to question the Six Thinking Hats though: They certainly help surpress local knowledge, but they can't readily be used to replicate foreign knowledge.  And nor can any amount of attempted random provocation properly synthesise that outside nous.

Good news for me, perhaps, if I want to continue working in this area with clients.  But uncomfortable food-for-thought for anyone seeking to find all their ideas within the bounds of the immediate organisation.  Maybe one low-cost way to address the problem is an ideas exchange, where organisations lend their time to each other to provide these all-important outside perspectives.

Acquired Creativity

In media, last week's MacTaggart Lecture by Eric Schmidt of Google considered the UK's appetite for fostering sustained innovation.

Despite the critical responses, I'm sure there is more we could do here.  And given the difficulties (documented extensively on this site and elsewhere) that UK's largest enterprises have improving their creativity organically, perhaps a change in attitudes could be a 'win' for them too.

So what does large enterprise already do to encourage new ideas ...?

• Feed and water a rather privileged R&D shop, with only loose measures for success
• Periodically experiment with broader cultural change, suggestion schemes, rewards for new ideas, etc.
• Decreasingly, license it's people to experiment with the way they get their tasks done
• Occasionally sponsor extra-curricular work with charities, industry bodies and civic groups

It's all rather hit-and-miss.

So why not supplement (or re-assign some of) the R&D function to acquire ideas instead?

Some organisations are already trialling Open Innovation, and that's certainly one way to do it. But how about a direct approach?

Why not have a small team explore the emerging outputs of entrepreneurs in a wide range of fields, run "Dragons' Den"-like events to assess them, and set-up alongside the venture capitalists in licensing the ideas before they hit the market?  Or if the idea is strong enough, why not just acquire the small enterprise?

At least in principle, this idea ought to be sound, and one response to the Schmidt lecture suggests it's already happening - at least in pharmaceuticals.  This approach really leaves a lot less to chance than does the cultural change programme so beloved of the HR department!

So what does our Idea Acquisition Squad look like?

Let's start with a leader.  A leader who is a former serial entrepreneur, so thinks like the target audience, but also values ideas, knows about risk vs. reward, and recognises the virtues of a diverse portfolio.

Then let's have a couple of roving reporters, enthusiastic about innovation, varied in their backgrounds, and with good instincts about the market.

And finally, let's balance the team with an analyst, to keep them on the straight-and-narrow.  Ideally this should be someone who can fill in the gaps in any business case, combining management accountancy with substantial and applied market intelligence, and solid product development experience.

The legal and commercial teams would be waiting in the wings, but not a core part of the team.

If you run such a team then I'd love to hear all about it.  If not, then isn't it about time you did?

Supply-Side Creativity

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My day job at the moment is in something very close to sales. As such, I spend a lot of time with (or preparing to be with) clients.

As you might expect, I've been applying creative thinking to this client work.  Usually that's been beneficial, but sometimes not.  And only today did it dawn on me why not ...

Supplying creative thinking really should be something that clients appreciate. It's a relatively scarce skill, at least in my industry, and that's what makes it valuable.   But too often it's rebuffed.  Here's what I think's going on:

1. Sometimes I've failed to present my 'Creativity Licence' in advance.  My interlocutor is receptive to new ideas, but is expecting something rather different from me, and can't adjust away from a preconceived agenda during our short time together.

2. Sometimes I choose an audience which has no licence to receive or process creativity.  Typically this means I've agreed to meet someone with rather a specific remit, whose only real focus is to shave costs and polish the quality of perfectly serviceable machinery. This is an audience for continuous improvement, not for disruption.

3. Sometimes I'm allowing a moderator to surpress creativity.  Three can be crowd sometimes, even in the collective, collaborative world of innovation.  Abdul's outlandish idea has huge potential, which strikes a chord with Belinda.  But Charlie's in the room too, and when he catches Belinda's eye momentarily she withdraws from the idea in her determination to appear grounded and rational.  The greenhouse has smashed, and the sapling withers.

I need to try harder to:

• Wear my Creator's Licence on my sleeve
• Carry some spare licences around with me to loan out to clients
• Avoid meeting people who aren't interested in borrowing one!

(Either that, or revert to purely sequential, logical working again, and miss out on all the fun and fury!)

Innovation you could drive a bus through ...

You've heard about Open Innovation.  It's a very fashionable concept which is probably somewhere around the "peak of inflated expectations" on the Gartner Hype Cycle.  It's a concept with bags of potential, relying mainly on the premise that your business can get better ideas if it opens its doors to selected outside organisations, and GlaxoSmithKline's consumer healthcare division is one of its leading proponents.

My employer is pretty advanced in its Open Innovation thinking too, but I'll leave colleagues to spread that message.

So let's consider for a moment a form of innovation so wide-open that it's gaping, and probably couldn't close-up if its life depended on it?

That's the model for Quirky.com, the brainchild of a rather precocious US youngster who'll could probably have retired at 19!   Here's a brief video featuring Ben Kaufman where he explains the evolution of Quirky in his own words:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqYeWg7igkU

So in five years, Ben has changed his focus as follows:
1. Passion for product #1
2. Using collaborative invention for product #2
3. Using collaborative invention as product #3

i.e. Ben's product is the process of using the whole world to shrink the time to market down to 3 days.  And doing so repeatedly.

Unless there's a whole back-story we're missing, we could all take some inspiration from this story.  It appears to me that Ben hasn't resorted to over-sophisticated methods; he's just worked out what it takes to launch a product, then called on the forces of social media to inject some of the thinking.

What can each of our organisations learn from this?   All comments gratefully received!

Listening

  

As mentioned in an earlier posting, the qualities of the input we receive are critical to creativity.

Those of you in the creative sector might find you can survive predominantly on your imaginations.  (Or is my view of art, advertising and architecture far too romantic?)

But over here in industries which are traditionally more analytical, at least some of our input must be directly relevant to the situation where we seek inspiration.

So we have to listen.  This is a hugely underrated and largely neglected skill.

You may think you're a good listener, but do you exhibit any of these behaviours? 

• You start talking before your interlocuter has finished what sounds like his last word?
• You wish she would stop repeating herself in paraphrase, when the point is already made.
• You're thinking about the next point you need to make, and how you're going to crowbar it in?
• You're pattern matching:  You've heard this tale of woe before, and have already mapped it onto a story you heard three years ago.
• You're nodding emphatically, but not bothering to understand what appears to be deep detail.

(Score minus one mark for each hit!   On a typical day my score is minus two.)

In each of these cases something has gone wrong.  I believe these problems can be overcome with four measures:

1. Only enter those interviews and meetings which you expect will be valuable enough to justify the time taken.  Once you've made a rational decision to be in the room, you're likely to engage better.
2. If there's a clear agenda for the meeting, then consciously choose to listen to everything that's said.  It's probably being said for a reason.
3. Actually listen.  This is an act of will, not an unconscious behaviour.  Turning-off distracting phones and laptops helps, but there's more to it than that.  You need single input, but you also need to be single-minded.
4. Show that you're listening.  Behaviours like nodding, maintaining eye contact, and saying "yeah ... uh-huh ... yep ..." are called Active Listening.  They tell the speaker that you're listening, and guard against very some very disciplined speakers repeating themselves time and again until they get a signal that they've been heard.

I actually think I'm rather good at active listening, but that alone doesn't make me a good listener.  People often tell me I am one, when in fact I know different.  Maintaining eye contact and nodding are no guarantee that I'm paying proper attention, they just strongly suggest it.   I'm trying my hardest to change this, and that became much easier in the last couple of years when my job became much more interesting.

Nancy Kline covers some of this in her book "Time to Think".  I've had other books recommended to me, which I'll cite once I've had "Time to Read"!  

Until then, please comment with any suggestions in this area.

Too Busy to Think

You know perfectly well what I'm going to say, don't you?   You've clocked the title of this posting, and you've already worked out the next 600 words!  

I fear you'll be right in your guess, but that doesn't mean it isn't worth reinforcing.  So here goes ...

If you're reading this, then you're probably a "Knowledge Worker".   But wait ... does that epithet really cover it?   No, you're actually an "Intelligent Worker".  You shouldn't just be relying on knowledge (i.e. resting on your laurels) but also using your intelligence to develop new knowledge, and to overcome knowledge where it's simply insufficient to the cause.

Much of modern management is about learning what constitutes "best practice", or what is the approved process, and applying it doggedly to every situation, however dissimilar from the last.  If it doesn't work, you'll just conclude that there's an even better process out there somewhere, and you just need someone to show it to you.  People make very good careers in middle management this way.

But in 25 years, my brain's microscopic co-processor implant will be able to apply best practice to modern management dilemmas while I'm watching my favourite "Britain's Got Robot Talent" repeat on ITV17.  I won't even need to turn the volume down.

So shouldn't we use our uniquely human faculties (like creativity) to solve problems?   Even if we're no brighter than the next person, we can really differentiate ourselves this way precisely because there's such scarcity in the actual application of intelligence.

So ...
You ...
MUST ...
Make ...
Time ...
To ...
Think!

If you always feel too busy to think, you don't need me to tell you that this is because you're doing the wrong things (and possibly in the wrong order too).

Either that, or your busy diary is just your displacement activity, because you're afraid of the consequences of thinking.

Which is it?  

(Do I get my coaching certificate now?  Or just my bullying medal?)

Oh! The audacity!

In this week's post I'd like to use one of the best tools in an innovator's armoury: plagiarism!

To give you flavour of the kinds of ideas that entrepreneurs can arrive at with a pinch of creative thinking, here are my top 5 from the recent archives of Springwise.

In a loose attempt to add some value (and at the risk of trumpet-blowing) I've also outlined the reasons why I think they're extremely good ideas.

1. In retail ...

When a bookstore fails, rent the vacant space and open ... a bookstore. What wonderful bravado. This one is great, because it challenges conventional thinking head-on.

http://www.springwise.com/retail/fleetingpages/

2. In education ...

We need more teachers +

people will pay for teachers +

India is well-educated +

teachers can add value remotely =

Bright Spark

(An obvious idea in retrospect.)

http://www.springwise.com/education/brightspark/

3. In transport ...

I love this one for it's simplicity.  Why on earth shouldn't you give up your car in return for a lifetime's free transport?  A simple solution to an often overcomplicated problem.  Come on Manchester, keep up!

http://www.springwise.com/government/murciacity/

4. In government...

Genius, genius, genius. What usually comes out of fountains? What else can do done with that thing? What varieties are available for the thing which comes out of fountains?  Leave the rest to the project manager!

http://www.springwise.com/food_beverage/eaudeparis/

5. In financial services ...

Social media is massive, and if you look hard enough there's value in all that "Big Data".  Why not apply it to unexpected industry sectors?

http://www.springwise.com/financial_services/derwentcapitalmarkets/

What's to stop us all coming up with ideas like these?  Just two things:

- Confidence to speak the unspeakable

- Determination to see it through

Both barriers are about state of mind, rather than concrete skills or experiences.  I believe that both can be overcome within half an hour, given the right environment.