A couple of Sundays ago, I took my son to the London Natural History Museum to see a photographic exhibition. Over two hundred ‘perfect’ photos had been taken of moments in nature by photographers from all nationalities and of all ages. Underneath each stunning photo was a brief description of the subject matter as well as the lengths that the photographer had gone to find the shot.

I realized there and then that we had found the perfect Creative All-Rounder. This is why…..

He had spent two days scanning the environment, searching out different angles, looking for different viewpoints, exploring different possibilities. He had already taken lots of shots, some good, some not so good. No stone was left unturned. The Stimulator. Then the moment arrived, A lonely stag walked across the ridge. The sky behind was perfectly reflected in the lake in front. The light was just right. All the elements had come together in perfect harmony. He has Spotted the perfect moment. In an instant, he adjusted the zoom lens, framed the landscape in front of him, waited for the sun to drop a few degrees more……. waited…….waited a bit longer, then took the photo. The Sculptor’s work, though brief, was complete. For two days, he had been patient, encouraging himself to go on searching, never giving up. Spirits had never flagged. The Self-Supporter.  Back home, he then enlarged the 3 or 4 ‘perfect’ photos that he has taken on his trip and Selected the one that he wanted to submit for the competition. Which was the one that told the best story? Which one contained the best light? Which one had greatest overall impact.

In either personal or professional contexts, everybody must be creative on their own at certain times. Being successfully creative without the support of others still requires you to exhibit the full range of creative behaviours: Stimulator. Spotter. Sculptor. Selector. Supporter.

He was talking about the learnings he’s picked up from the years he’s been in the ‘ideas business’. He’s distilled these learnings into 20 observations all beautifully and earnestly captured his book “The art of the idea“.

Because we were speaking to the same audience, I read John’s book with an ear to linking some of his messages into the ones I was planning share. And it was uncanny how many of his observations closely mirror the Creative Creatures language.

The Stimulators amongst you will no doubt agree with these two observations:

“The easiest way to increase the cranium’s capacity is to do things you don’t normally do.”
“Scouting literally to find ideas that already exist and then retooling them isn’t intellectual plagiarism, it’s how the world works. That’s the path newness often chooses to take.”

Or how about these Spotter ‘truths’:

“Great ideas often come from quiet people who take stimuli from their surroundings, but work in solitude with their minds.”“Insight appears when you look for meaning rather than facts. Insight demands that you use your brain actively. The passive accumulation of data won’t help you.”
“Silence is the perfect place for an idea to grow in.”

And Sculptors would recognise this learning:

“The real value of an idea is to see how far you can push it. If it gets a little overstretched, there is always time to afterwards pull it back.”

John is above all a huge fan of Supporters and he truly acknowledge their role in the creative journey:

“The smartest ideas come from those who’ve learnt to surf the unpredictable and the unexpected.”
“The big trick is to be relaxed about uncertainty and, if possible, to even enjoy it. An idea can wriggle through almost anything, but the shuttered grid of an uptight mind is a particular challenge. It’s difficult to have an epiphany if all you want revealed is what you already know.”

This is not least because he’s often seen what happens when there are not enough Supporter behaviour around to nurture bravery:

“A huge amount of breakthrough thinking doesn’t make it, not because the idea is wrong, but because, at the crucial moment, our courage leaves us. We notice how high we are and we look down. Suddenly we wonder whether the big leap is the right strategy and consider a game of triple jump. Shouldn’t three jumps be cut into more manageable portions of six?”

Lastly, he understands that Selectors also need a seat at the creative table, but equally urges the Selectors amongst us to understand when our unique value should be added:

“If logic is introduced too early into an idea, it often kills it. The only way to deal with logic, is to beat it at its own game. Declare that it’s illogical to have it around at the beginning of something new. Acknowledge, though, that it does have its place, in the right dosage, at the end of the process. Logic is rarely a catalyst, but it is the consummate filtering process.”

This is a great book. Personable, written from the heart, unpretentious and beautiful in every way. Definitely worth a read!

Once upon a time, there was an Innovation Director at a major company who was holding an Away-Day with his team to brainstorm new opportunities for the company for the following year. He invited an external facilitator to run the day.

She arrived first thing, the team assembled and they got going. The Innovation Director kicked off proceedings, clarified the objectives and set the agenda for the day. The team then got stuck into the task at hand. By lunchtime, they had made good progress, lots of new ideas were generated and the main man was happy! The facilitator just sat there and said nothing.

They reassembled after lunch, brainstormed some more, developed things further and by the end of the afternoon, they had selected three great ideas to take forward in to next year’s pipeline. The Innovation Director had led from the front and everybody had got involved, making strong contributions along the way. The facilitator had sat there and said practically nothing.

After the Innovation Director had made his concluding remarks and agreed next steps with an energised team, he suddenly saw the facilitator gazing slightly anxiously at the flip chart. He said: “You have been very quiet today. You have hardly uttered a word. Do you have anything to add to proceedings?” “Yes, I do” replied the facilitator. “When you use the flip chart pen, make sure you replace the top, otherwise it will soon dry out”.

Moral of the story is this: Good facilitators are great Supporters. Their role is to make sure that the team have established clear objectives, are following a process that will achieve the objectives and are behaving in a way that will help them carry out the process as effectively as possible. They will watch and they will listen… probably harder and more intently than anybody else in the room… but they will only interrupt if they need to.

She didn’t need to, so she kept quiet.

There had been a brutal murder. The chief inspector assembled his team at HQ and briefed them on what needed to be done. Everyone then scattered to different corners of the earth collecting clues, interviewing suspects, checking out ‘seedy’ clubs, reading reports, going hither and thither. Stimulators at work.

They all returned to HQ two days later and posted all the findings on the perspex wall. Every bit of collected data was there for everyone to see. They all sat back, looked at the wall, reflected quietly, made connections, found patterns…..and slowly began to make hunches and early hypotheses. Spotters at work.

They focused on the two strongest hunches (call them hypotheses if you like) and then started to look for hard and fast evidence to back them up. They looked for concrete building blocks to deliver water tight cases. No stone was left unturned. The 30 page dossiers for prosecution were assembled. Plenty of words, plenty of pictures. Compellingly communicated. Two chief suspects emerged. Sculptors at work.

Finally, they all looked at both completed dossiers, discussed and reviewed all the material and evidence that had been collected and decided, quite dispassionately, which of the two suspects they should arrest. A combination of heads and hearts were used in the decision making process. Selectors at work.

And throughout the entire process, the chief inspector was supporting his troops, encouraging them when the going was getting tough, cajoling them when clues were missed, working side by side with them when extra resource was needed. Cruel and kind in equal measures. Supporter at work.

Stimulator. Spotter. Sculptor. Selector. Supporter. The combination of 5 behaviours required for any creative process to work effectively. It also appears, bizarrely enough, that the same 5 behaviours are also required to catch the bad guys!!

And I end up begging them to make time to be creative and use the techniques because the time invested will be worth the end result. They nod, we all agree, but I know and they know that when confronted by 150 emails on their return to the office and and a forever demanding boss, it just ain’t going to happen!! This is professionally frustrating (or all of us)!!

Last month, I ran a session for News International and a manager claimed to turn down invitations at work to brainstorming sessions because they lasted an hour!If these sessions lasted 10 minutes or less, then that would be a different story.

This made me think… Instead of trying to pretend that participants are going to find the time for all your great techniques, why not get real!!

How about giving them tools and techniques that last 15 minutes max? Tools they can use on their own or with one or two other people at most? How about giving them coaching on how to have creative exchanges using email or over the phone… or on their way to lunch? How about trying to find cost effective ways of making their immediate working environment more stimulating so that their creative cupboards can fill up almost without them knowing it?

Instead of pretending that managers are going to magically find an extra hour or two at work during the week… or that they are going to find more reasons to hold off-site workshops with a dozen other time-starved colleagues – why don’t we go with their flow and provide injections of stimulation that help them become creative powerhouses on-the-go? More realistic, more relevant and probably much more rewarding!

I can’t wait to get started on the next bit of this time-starved journey!

To be creative, you need to have courage. Why? Because creativity inevitably implies doing something that’s a bit different – something that you maybe haven’t done before. And whenever we do new things or indeed do things differently, an element of uncertainty and ambiguity is attached to it. That makes people feel uncomfortable. So to still venture ahead, you need to have an element of courage.

Supporters play a central role in creating an environment where people can be courageous. One of the things they’re good at is making people feel comfortable about being uncomfortable. They don’t necessarily smooth out the unpredictable hair-pin turns along the creative journey. Instead they alert people to the fact that these turns are coming up – and that they in fact are a natural part of the journey. By doing that, Supporters are able to instill a healthy level of awareness people can act on (should they wish to do so). In turn, fear moves from an underlying emotion that people ignore, to something that can be talked about and therefore dealt with head-on.

The other thing Supporters are good at, is picking others up from the floor when things have gone wrong – and inevitably they will if you’re being brave and pushing the boundaries further. Supporters don’t feel failure as purely negative. They also consider it an important learning opportunity that ultimately enables the team to perform better in the future.

But Courage is not the sole territory of the Supporter. Stimulators also play a role in instilling courage across companies and teams. The way they do this is by having bold ideas and being brave enough to challenge established orthodoxies. Stimulators often think the unthinkable. Really good Stimulators put their head above the parapet and look beyond the obvious.

Whereas Supporters and Stimulators play a key role in encouraging and demonstrating courage, Selectors need to watch out that they don’t crush it! Selectors play an important role is setting the direction of a project and the business. And in doing so, they need to be able to make bold decisions and not always back this up with hard data or group consensus (both of which can often end up diluting ideas). 

Supporters are natural ‘signalers’. Their motivation is to create harmony and by signalling, they enable others to get in the right mindset before having to react to new information or inputs. And getting people in the right mindset is critical. It saves times, solves issues before they arise and ensures everyone is aligned on the task ahead.

Creativity is like a journey – you have to go through different stages before reaching the end destination. Some stages might look similar, but they’re not.

For example, the way you provide feedback on an idea during the early stages has to be done very differently to when the idea is fully developed and nearly ready to be launched. To get the feedback you’re after, it is important that you first clearly signal the mindset you need people to be in and overtly state the type of response you need from them.

Signalling is also important because the creative journey has lots of twists and turns – and some of these can be totally unexpected! By merely signalling that you’re heading into a stage of uncertainty, you can make people feel better about the ambiguities ahead. It is a little bit like telling people that the bus will be 10 minutes late – it doesn’t make the bus arrive any sooner, but it makes the wait a lot more tolerable!

Sculptors create momentum because when they make things real, others are able to engage with the idea. This inevitably propels it forward. They also know how to move things through the business by leveraging their superb selling and storytelling skills.

Whereas Sculptors are good a winning people over through realness and a rational argument, Supporters are momentum-makers because they know how to rally the troops behind a shared goal. They leverage the resources available to them to get things done. Supporters are also good at motivating people, especially when ambiguity levels are high or the project hits a hurdle.

Selectors create momentum by the mere fact that they thrive on making decisions. Good Selectors know when to strike and they don’t procrastinate longer than absolutely needed.  Selectors can make the tough calls, they know how to prioritise which enables others to focus their energies on what’s important.

Finally, Stimulators tend to be great ‘passion-givers’ – another key driver of momentum. Most Stimulators are extroverts and their energy and enthusiasm is often contagious.

But watch out! Don’t confuse Momentum with ‘being busy’ – it is not the same thing!

Realness is important because it helps make an idea tangible so others can wrap their heads around it. Only when people ‘get it’ are they able to help really build and give feedback on the idea. This is not just true for internal stakeholders and team members, but also for consumers and customers as well.

Whereas Freshness is the Stimulator’s playground, Realness is the territory of the Sculptor. Sculptors are good at painting a picture – either literally through pictures and visuals or through words – or anything in fact!

Really good Sculptors don’t limit themselves to a certain way of bringing their ideas to life. They look for anything that can help them. Props. Storytelling. Prototypes. Smells. Analogies. Parallel products. Sounds. Memories.

And they have a natural desire to make things tangible as soon as possible. Sculptors simply love getting their hands dirty – and they love getting on with it!

One of the ‘realness mantras’ ?What If! talk about, is the handy little question: “How can we make it real right now?” It is a good one to keep in mind in case you’re not a Sculptor but your project still needs an injection of Realness.

An additional benefit of making things real is the fact people can’t help but become emotionally engaged with the idea. In turn this is a sure way of driving momentum for the project. As such, Realness is a way for Sculptors to help Supporters rally the team up behind a common goal.

Remember: If ideas are not made real, they’ll forever remain on the imaginary drawing board and never see the light of day. And that would be a shame, wouldn’t it?

With Greenhousing, it is the Spotter that takes centre stage with the help of Sculptors and Supporters. Spotters are the ones that say: ‘Hey, I think we might have something here…’. They might not always know what ‘that something’ is or why they feel that way, but they intuitively feel that an idea is worth pursuing.

And it is at this point they need the help of the Sculptors and Supporters around them. The role of the Sculptor is to take the little seed of an idea and nurture it by growing it into something more and fully formed that is strong enough to withstand judgement.

The role of the Supporter is to create an environment where the ‘seed’ can be protected until it becomes clear whether the idea is a weed or a flower. Supporters do this by encouraging others to follow their intuition and by creating time to explore the idea further.

?What If! talk about the fact that to be able to ‘greenhouse’, you need SUN:
• Suspend judgement
• Understand & explore
• Nurture & build

These are three things that Spotters, Sculptors and Supporters cannot help but do when working together as a team.