You do this by being creative. Not by practising art. And we are all problem solvers. That’s just human nature. If someone asks you a question, you experience a biologically driven urge to give an answer, even if you do not know the correct one. We are hard-wired to solve problems.
I encounter a lot of deep-rooted resistance to the idea of being creative in my work. Especially amongst high powered business people. As if, by admitting they are creative, they are admitting they are less than, suspect, unreliable.
This societally led stereotype of creative people is incredibly damaging… and antiquated!
(This video is an extract from The Mavericks Of Mass Creation conversation with Judith Germain)
A quick scan of the history of modern business gives us a solid answer as to where it comes from: the assembly line and popularised by Henry Ford.
When you work an assembly line, the last thing on earth you want is creative thought. Everything is engineered to micro-tolerances and any deviation will result in disaster.
When Ford come up with this, it was necessary. His workforce were farmers and shopkeepers with little to no technical know-how and his machinery was primitive and had a low tolerance for deviation.
Yet here we are, more than a century later, still doing the same thing when… we’re not farmers and shopkeepers. And if we are, we use highly flexible, high tech solutions to lighten the load of our work. Why do we still think creativity is undesirable?
The biggest stock market value in the world is represented by tech-led companies: Google, Facebook, Tesla etc. Where does their value lie? In their IP… their intangible, unmeasurable IP… in short, in the notion of value that has been CREATED via the existence of their tech.
Without creative thinking, this kind and level of business would simply not be possible.
Do you want to know why so many businesses fail? Because they think like Henry Ford… command and control. When a workforce represents the biggest resource ever: machines capable of generating new IP every day… if you empower and allow them to do so.
So next time you ask yourself if you are creative, check that negative answer. Own your problem-solving and future-projecting skills and say,
‘Yes, I am creative and I am going to change the world!
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