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We’re All Creative 3: Three Year Olds Are the Masters

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Creative Curiosity

Creativity at Work

It’s true. It’s hard to get highly creative folks thinking inside the proverbial box. Curiosity gets us looking at the box inside, outside, and from every direction. Creativity motivates us. Curiosity nurtures and energizes us. “What ifs” drive our vocabulary. Put those qualities together and you have Jean Luc Picards going forth where no one has gone before and enjoying every minute immensely.

It had to be a caveperson’s creativity that got us fire. The wheel is surely an example of human creative thinking. Yet, the best example of creativity is any three-year old. [Read more…]

Think You’re Not Creative? That Could Cost You Your Job

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Balderdash and Piffle

Creativity at Work

Creativity comes from the sum of one’s life experience. It pulls from knowledge, abilities, and skills. It uses neural pathways in the brain made by everything a person has learned and makes new ones as new connections form. It calls upon an ability to get beyond the ordinary, automatic response—to explore the inside and the outside of that darned proverbial box.

Still think you’re not creative? Maybe your definition of creative is too narrow. Some folks, who call themselves “creatives,” would have you believe that all creativity lies only in artistic endeavor. That brings me back to balderdash and piffle. Those folks aren’t creative in how they define creativity.

Ordinary folk have the power for creative thinking.

Creative thinking is essential to most every career on the planet. Businesses need creative thinkers to innovate, to manage risk, to meet ever-changing customer needs, to build efficient processes and solve complex problems.

If you argue for your lack of creativity, that could cost you your job. [Read more…]

We’re All Creative 1: The Bunnies Prove It

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I Drive Myself Crazy Crazier

Creativity at Work

Yesterdays post on 10 Reasons Creative Folks Make Us Crazy — The 10 Dimensions of Creative Complexity got quite a response, particularly on a couple of forums. The most interesting part was that in the comments about the post it seemed that

  1. the folks commenting didn’t seem to have read the entire post, only the list.
  2. they also didn’t know this blog or they would understand that I count myself among the people who drive people crazy.
  3. they didn’t catch my personal belief that everyone is creative.

The fact is I drive myself crazy crazier the more I think. The other fact is business schools need creative thinkers more than ever. The whole world does if we want to get anything to change around here.

With those thoughts in mind, I dug out a piece that explains my thoughts on creativity. I’m posting it because the bunnies prove that we’re all creative types. [Read more…]

10 Reasons Creative Folks Make Us Crazy

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As Business Looks for Creative Thinkers — Look Out!

Creativity at Work

In this age of innovation, Business Schools look to fill theirs eats with more right brain creative people. Folks are beginning to take notice of the value and power of the off the wall idea.

Business Week.com devotes an entire section to innovation and creativity and companies have titles such as Idea Czar on their organizational chart. Tom_Peters asks “Where are the freaks in your company?” and goes on to say that they’re the ones who have the ideas.

Yeah, but how do you deal with someone who is one way one minute and the opposite the next? How do you tell a creative person from someone who just irritates you?

What are the traits that creative folks have in common? Are we all creative? Is there anyone who’s not? Can I boost my creativity? Am I a creative freak? Questions follow creativity — what is it, how does it work, and how do we access our Creativity at Work to make our brand and business stronger? [Read more…]

Flow: Zen and the Art of Having Fun Writing

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Flow

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box logo 2

I want to tell you about one of my heroes. His name is Mihaly Csikzentmihalyi (pronounced chick-sent-me-high-ee). He became a cult figure in the creative world when he published a book called Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. The book came out in 1990 and writers, artists, others who need to be creative still tell others about it.

Everyone experiences flow. We call it being “in the zone.” What you might not know is why and how it happens or that you can make it happen more often. [Read more…]

Bad Boys: You’re Losing Your Memory

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What Was I Going to Say?

badboys of business logo

I’m ready to write something and as I sit at the keys, it’s gone. It was a spectacular idea. I know it was. Damn. It’s the second time this week, or is it the third? Suddenly I’m forgetting things — things that I’ve never forgotten before.

I used to be known for this memory of mine. Some folks even steered clear of it, feared it. They knew it could track details for decades and offer them back at lightning speed. Now what? A brain of mush has moved in where the razor sharp memory was. . . .

-Stop-

That’s the voice of a Bad Boy of Business. Bad Boys are negative messages, bad tape recordings, in our heads. Bad boys are ideas that we tell ourselves that undercut our success and productivity.

The bad boy here is “You’re losing you’re memory.”

What’s happening? [Read more…]