Are You Facing a Creative Imbalance?

Being in the transportation industry (as I was) meant a lot of time spent thinking about balance, and not being too heavy inbound or outbound. In moving things (or people), the ideal state is the same number arriving and departing. If you're too heavy outbound, it means you have lots of things going out, but very few coming in. Heavy inbound is the opposite - many things arriving, but few leaving. Within the economy, there are distinct geographic and industrial patterns in the movement of goods and people. As a result, transportation providers are constantly trying to achieve balance within their networks.

All of this has a direct tie to creativity. It's not difficult to find yourself in creative imbalance, with a disconnect between the amount of creativity you're producing and the creative elements you're taking in to fuel your own pursuits.

Typically, I run heavy on the outbound side of creativity. Part of it is my personality; part of it is a strategy to provide real-life testing of the various creativity-instigating exercises and tools I share. If I'm creatively spent and a particular approach helps spur my creativity, chances are it will work for you as well.

Right now though, I'm so heavy outbound, it's a little ridiculous. Beyond blogging and tweeting, I've been doing a lot of proposal writing (which is a wonderful situation to have), building messaging for the business side of Brainzooming, and trying to do more commenting and guest blogging, too.

One problem of being too heavy outbound in transportation is you wind up with all the equipment you need to function located somewhere else. You have problems making commitments because you lack necessary resources.

What that means for me in the creativity world is trying to force myself to schedule an all inbound day - no blog writing, no tweeting, no thinking about what I should be communicating. Simply a day to read, absorb, replenish, and learn, unencumbered by the need to say something.

Quite a goal, and I'll let you know when it's achieved! In the meantime, how's your creative balance? - Mike Brown

10 Years Ago Today

Ten years ago today, December 31, 1999, I met Jan Harness, my (then future) creative instigation partner, via phone call.

When I've shared the specifics of first talking with Jan, people have commented how sweet it is I remember the event in such detail. Really though, the story's a great example of creating memorable brand experiences.

A post last October spelled out a formula for memorable brand experiences springing from the convergence of three factors - personal interests, emotional intensity, and a brand's role in the experience. Against that framework, here's how the story of meeting Jan played out:

1. High Personal Interest - I was charged with creating presentations for our company's introductory 2,000 person customer conference which was barely 2 weeks away. Among the challenges, there was no convincing the CIO that with Y2K looming, nobody cared about the history of the computer - her desired way to open her speech. With many other presentations also needing massive amounts of writing effort, it seemed so hopeless my boss was finally convinced I needed outside help for it all to get done.


2. Emotional Intensity - The conference was a big deal, with high expectations for success. We were having various production issues, so the pressure was intensifying as time slipped away. The news was also filled with stories about the ominous potential danger from Y2K. All that led to a pretty vivid sense of the date when Jan and Barb Pruitt got on the phone to see how they might be able to help rescue me.


3. A (Personal) Brand's Role in Enabling the Experience - We quickly figured out the basis of how we'd work, and Jan got started. Within the two weeks leading up to the conference, Jan came in, learned our company and the presenters, and dramatically improved our ability to creatively communicate our important messages. In fact, she had such an impact before the show that she became part of the traveling team responsible for the conference’s on-site production.

So you see, with the high level of personal interest (creating a successful conference from one that was teetering), emotional intensity (both personal emotions and the global emotion and visibility of what 1/1/2000 held), and an incredible brand experience (Jan's amazing contribution and the start of our creative team), there's no way the experience wouldn't be indelibly fixed in my mind.

As a side note, Jan and I have a brother/sister kind of creative relationship, i.e. we pick on each other (okay maybe it's me picking on Jan) constantly. Yet when @lqualls4444 asked the other day on Twitter if Jan knew how much I appreciate her contribution to my creativity, it was great to say, "Yes." Amid a recent late night email rant, I'd shared "lavish praise" for Jan's talents. Here's an excerpt:

"...this experience has reinforced for me not only what a talented writer you are, but that you are the [dare I say] unique [or at least relatively rare] strategist who happens to also be a fantastic writer. There's a HUGE difference between getting words into sentences and a bunch of sentences on a page and organizing thinking, themes, and words in a consistent, strategic flow. You are the best of anyone I've ever worked with at doing that. You create tremendously high expectations for others after having worked with you, and I'm not sure there are many out there who can meet them!!!"

So, if you need a great strategist who also happens to write fantastically, seek out my creative instigation partner of 10 years, Jan Harness! - Mike Brown

Who is Your Producer?

Listening to The Beatles Abbey Road show provides a sense of the incredible talent they brought to the recording studio. The impact of George Martin, their producer, is also clear in how he shaped the group's artistic sensibilities and vision, crafting them into a coherent whole.

Considering the benefits a producer can provide, do you have one (or more) producers in your creative life? Your "producer" could be a mentor or a creative instigator who's there to:

• Expand and shape your creative perspective
• Bring in other talents to help realize your vision
• Challenge and edit your work from a less invested perspective than you have

Maybe you self-produce your own creative efforts. That's a viable approach, and some people do it well. But if you don't have a producer for your major projects, think seriously about working with someone in that role who can be the catalyst for new creative success. - Mike Brown

Creative Quickie Report Out - Here's How I Helped Someone Creatively

Everybody received an assignment Friday morning: look for someone to help with a creative challenge over the weekend and then comment here to create the Monday Creative Quickie post. The early submissions are included below. You can still add others in the comments section for today's post.

Mike Brown said...
My wife Cyndi honed her web skills by volunteering to do websites for our Church and her sorority. It helped both out and let her engage new areas of creativity. Mike

Jan said...
I'm helping my daughter who's away at college celebrate Mother's Day with us ... by breaking the rules. Instead of celebrating May 10, we'll observe Mother's Day May 17, after Kate's out of school and back home. It's important to know the rules, so you can choose to break them!

Terry said...
Today one of our field managers shared a great analogy comparing one of our old web tools to a simple remote control (you know, the kind that only has power, volume and a channel changer) with our new web tool that's more like a universal remote with more features. Envisioning a remote with thousands of buttons, I helped him take the comparison a step further by comparing our formerly separate online tools that required customers to go three separate places to my coffee table covered with separate TV, VCR and cable box remotes.

Amy Hoppenrath said...
I received a question from a professional associate today asking for advice about a project she is working on. She was stuck. After some discussion, we determined that before she would find the answers, she needed to ask more questions.

A Weekend Creative Instigation Assignment - You're Doing Monday's Post!

Don’t feel like you get enough opportunities to be creative in your job? Maybe so.

If that’s the case, here's an assignment for today and over the weekend: be on the lookout for an informal opportunity to use your creative talent to help someone else, then report back on it here by Monday.

Want a quick example - at a party earlier this year, one guest was talking about trying to come up with an intriguing name for her new business idea. I joined the conversation and offered to help generate some possible names. My motivation? I'd developed a new messaging ideation technique that hadn't yet been tested. This was a great low-risk way to see if it could really generate lots of cool ideas.

We both benefitted. She received more than a 100 possible names; I learned what worked and didn't with the new technique.

Be on the lookout for people with creative challenges this weekend and share a brief story in the comments section on this post, ideally by Monday. Let everyone know how you tried to help someone - either previously or over the weekend. And in so doing, you'll address another creative challenge: your comments will become the whole Monday Creative Quickie post!

So have a great weekend and report your successes in helping others with creative challenges on Brainzooming!

Everyone's Got Some! A Guest Post from Linda Fitzgerald

One unexpected benefit from investing time on Twitter has been the interest of others in contributing guest posts for Brainzooming. That's great since it helps introduce other perspectives to Brainzooming through both comments and entire posts.

Today's guest post is from Linda S. Fitzgerald, M.S.Ed. I've been tweeting back and forth with Linda, who is CVO (Chief Visionary Officer) of A Women’s Place Network, Inc., for several weeks now. She agreed to share her perspective on an important topic: the creativity that's in each of us.

Everyone's Got Some? I’m talking about "creativity." Everyone has some of the stuff that brings new things into being. The energy that makes something out of what appears to be nothing!

Most of us tend to think we are not very creative. In fact, I meet men and women who tell me – flat out – “I don’t have a creative bone in my body!”

The truth is that each of us is born with a level of creativity intertwined with our "destiny design" - the ultimate purpose for which we were born. Most folks' ultimate purpose requires some creativity if it is to come to pass and successfully function on our behalf and that of others.

Creativity may not look the same to you as it does to me. The genius of Albert Einstein is not the same creativity as mine. My creative genius does not inhabit the world of math. Mine is in design and development of programs and projects. It’s also in the fine art of writing – the use of language to paint word pictures that draw others in and invite them to enter my world through my words.

When we deny that creativity lies deep within us, we deny our very existence and certainly our destiny design. If we choose to decide (and it is a “choice” and a “decision”) we have nothing we or the world would identify as creativity, we have denied our very purpose.

Creativity is energy, and it permeates every aspect of our being. It may be small, such as encountering a challenge in cooking a new dish, only to discover how to overcome the challenge without an expert's intervention. That’s creativity. We don’t recognize it as such because we may have been led to believe that creative folks create big things.

Being creative occurs in all aspects of our lives! When we find alternatives to overcome a challenge, do something a little different with the time and energy saved, turn old ways into new ways because we must –we are using natural creative energy each of us has in ready reserve.

The wisdom of the day is: go out and exercise your creativity. If you haven’t yet found it; discover it. Ask a trusted friend how they see you being creative. Make note of the things he/she says, and then practice creativity on a daily basis. Practice until (as the old adage says) “practice makes perfect”.

Have an awesome creative day!

"Hitting a Creative Brick Wall"

In honor of Jan Harness’ birthday today (Happy Birthday Jan!) and her love of poetry, here’s the closest we've come to featuring some on this blog:

“Hitting a Creative Brick Wall” by @Pretty_Awkward

Work work work work, short break,
work work work work, potty break,
work work work, quick snack,
work work work, BOOM! Creative brick wall.

Yet another delightful example of the incredible creativity being shared on Twitter, if you know where and when to look for it. This one appeared in the middle of the night earlier this week.

Here’s a question: Can any of us come up with a comparably elegant and simple word depiction of getting around a creative brick wall?

I’d love to share your creations here. Maybe @Pretty_Awkward might even favor us with an answer post!

Everybody Must Get Stoned on High Velocity Radio

It was a pleasure to do a segment Monday on High Velocity Radio with hosts Stone Payton and Lee Kantor talking about a variety of innovation topics. I met Stone initially via Twitter back in January, and appearing on Stone's show was part of the prize for winning the IDEF140 contest he sponsored.

We covered a range of issues, so beyond a link to the radio show, here are links to many of the topics we discussed during our conversation.

• Slideshare link to "Taking the NO Out of InNOvation" ebook


• Getting comfortable with sharing credit for innovation and the power of "we"


• Why it's important to have diverse perspectives among an innovation group


• Why it's helpful to be forgetful when it comes to innovation


• Ways to be more strategic on a personal level


• Making sure you're able to prioritize ideas


• My creative instigation partner, Jan Harness, her Creative Instigation blog and our upcoming book


• Appearing at a Sydney, Australia innovation event as a result of Twitter


• Following me on Twitter: @Brainzooming


• My Most Memorable Business Mistake

Thanks again Stone and Lee for the opportunity to be on the show, and I look forward to being able to do it again in the future!

Creative Consumers?

I attended a session at last year's IIR The Market Research Event that discussed “creative consumers.” They were nearly reverently described as “consumers” serving as paid ideation session participants; this, after passing personality tests (both oral and written) and receiving creativity technique training. They were lauded for being able to write dead-on concept statements.

According to Marla Commons, co-presenter from Research International, the firm has a panel of at least 250 “creative consumers” with varied backgrounds available to corporations. In reviewing some profiles, one “consumer” has been doing this for 17 years!

Kraft Foods (the other presenter) applied the technique to design service concepts. “Creative consumers” were included at a one-to-one rate with corporate executives (or “drones,” although the term was never actually used) to inject creativity. The first day-long session produced 154 ideas from five custom exercises; these were narrowed eventually to 15 for further development in a second day-long session.

A couple of observations (recognizing that I do ideation primarily in a B2B environment):

• The best ideation sessions don’t require 50% creatives. At 20% of participants, they can really drive creative instigation while remaining participants contribute to other business aspects being explored. Going higher saps the diversity critical for innovative ideas.


• Lack of diversity can hamper the evaluation phase. Interestingly, two later rejected concepts shared to show the group’s creativity both fell apart based on density requirements. Not enough volume in a certain time period usually signals major problems. Density isn’t necessarily a concept driving CPG, but it’s a challenge readily apparent to service marketers since time is a perishable resource that can’t be inventoried. Here's where a little more diversity in a group could have been beneficial.


• One hundred fifty-four ideas isn’t that remarkable a number. We’ve seen 500 or 600 ideas from a more diverse participant group. The number of raw ideas is highly dependent on what your session objectives are and using the right tools to help realize your goals.


• It’s ridiculous to call these participants “consumers.” While companies want to feel they’re involving real consumers in the ideation process, that’s suspect. They may have familiarity and experience in the topic. But with the testing, training, and pay involved ($500-$1500 daily), they’re really “part-time, informal creative staff members.” Seventeen years in, somebody doesn’t enter a session with a completely fresh “consumer” perspective.

This is an intriguing concept, but appears to be misrepresented and oversold. The funniest moment was during Q&A when someone asked apprehensively if the creative consumers could travel. I turned to the guy next to me and asked, “I wonder what they eat?”

Probably special pellets to generate creative sparks!

It's Who, Not How Many

At the Charlotte Business Marketing Association presentation several weeks ago, a question was raised about the right number of people to have in ideation sessions.

That's a common question, and there are certainly optimum group sizes. What's optimum varies based on the business objective and the complexity of the effort needed.

My response though was the much more important factor is the group's composition. For the best thinking, three groups need to be represented:

• People with solid, front-line business experience to help frame business issues.


• Others with functional knowledge applicable to the topic to provide an understanding of capabilities.


• Creative instigators who can act as catalysts for viewing things in new & unconventional ways.

Given that criteria, I've done very successful multi-person strategic thinking sessions with two people who filled multiple roles. Often, it takes 3 to 8 people per group to have enough depth in each of the three areas.

Tomorrow's post will highlight the challenges of overloading an ideation session with too much creativity. Trust me - it doesn't lead to the best, most implementable ideas.

Saturday Special - 6 Keys to Improving Creative Thinking

From Twitter last night, here's a video with Tony Buzan, the creator of mind mapping, talking about ways to improve your creative thinking skills. It's a very worthwhile investment of just over three and a half minutes to learn his perspectives on creativity's prevalence, whole brain thinking, and growing the speed, originality, and flexibility of your thinking. Check it out!

Picking Up on Hints From Twitter

I’m a contemplator and planner by nature, trying to figure out all potential angles first. It’s who I am.

When starting the blog, however, Kathryn Lorenzen, a wonderful career coach (trust me – contact her), suggested diving in more aggressively before understanding everything about blogging. Great advice, and much of Brainzooming is about approaches to do that more.

One way I’ve become comfortable with the idea is being more open to noticing and following “hints” placed in front of me and acting on them.

An example last week was participating in the Twitter-based IDEF140 contest devised by Stone Payton. The week was full of “hints”:

Follow that Tweet - @stonepayton tweeted Saturday, January 17 on a contest to define “innovation” in less than 140 characters with a $100 prize. Sounded cool, so I wrote one (Innovation = A fundamental, valuable improvement relative to the status quo) and tweeted it Saturday, thinking that was it.

Reach Out – I considered lifting the contest idea since $100 is cheap for diverse input on Twitter to help expand understanding on a topic (i.e. “creative instigation”). That was until Stone raised the potential prize to $1000. Suddenly stealing the cheap idea involved a higher prize expectation. After tweeting Stone (jokingly) about pricing “idea thieves” out of the market, it created a tweet and email conversation about alternatives. That led to visiting each others’ blogs, LinkedIn networking, and finding Chuck Dymer as a common connection.

Keeping Up with @Macker – Throughout the week, definitions were added to IDEF140 (as it became known). @Macker seemed to have an unlimited number of definitions. Seeing that forced me to write others, including a more mathematically oriented one and another (my personal favorite) tied to “Taking the NO Out of InNOvation.”

Mounting a Campaign – When voting started Thursday, I wasn’t planning much campaigning. Then two hints surfaced – Sally Hogshead voted for entry #2, and the organizers said a modest get out of the vote campaign could mean a win. That prompted a more aggressive Twitter, blog, and email effort (including a cut and paste tweet) for votes. My dad and Jan Harness signed up for Twitter and some infrequent tweeters returned to Twitter!

What Matters Is Helping Others – Trying to win wasn’t about the eventual $200 prize. It was about learning of possibilities from new online endeavors. After discovering I won (thanks everybody that voted!), I saw Stone supports the Furniture Bank of Metro Atlanta which helps recently homeless people and others in challenging situations secure basic furniture items (i.e., bedding, sofa, etc.). That seemed like a lot more appropriate recipient for the prize money, so it went to @FBMA.

That was last week. Diving in and following hints led to “meeting” intriguing people, challenging myself to think more about innovation, introducing friends to social media, identifying a potential opportunity to work with Sally Hogshead, and helping people financially who really need it!

Thanks for the “diving in” advice Kathryn. As always, it’s been a huge help!!!

Creative Quickie Week - Finding Inspiration in a Mexican Hotel Room

The first quote below from Matthew Arnold was on a cardboard coaster in my hotel room in Cancun, Mexico last year. It was intriguing, and I brought it back. Doing some quick research on him, uncovered a variety of intriguing quotes of his:

• “Culture is properly described as the love of perfection.”
• “For the creation of a masterwork of literature two powers must concur, the power of the man and the power of the moment, and the man is not enough without the moment.”
• “Use your gifts faithfully, and they shall be enlarged; practice what you know, and you shall attain to higher knowledge.”
• “The freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.”
• “Greatness is a spiritual condition.”
• “To have the sense of creative activity is the great happiness and the great proof of being alive.”

Hope you enjoyed Creative Quickie Week, and watch for weekend updates on Twitter!

Creative Quickie - How Do You Define Creativity?

One of my big projects for 2008 was working with Jan Harness on “Creative Instigation.” As the presentation and book have developed, we’ve asked many people how they define creativity. Here are ten of the interesting answers we’ve received.

How do you define creativity?

• A different way to a usual place or a usual way to a different place.
• Your subconscious leaking out.
• Creating a project, product, or piece that never before existed.
• Humanity at its best.
• Going beyond your expectations to make something that educates, inspires, and entertains.
• Actions to conceive beauty.
• Random associations grounded in strategy.
• An outward expression of the awesomeness within.
• Permission granted to take my brain off its leash.
• Mistakes worth keeping.

Reader Definitions of “Creativity”

• “Anything novel that is meaningful or useful.” – Macker
• “Bending and shaping the everyday and normal into an expression of genius.” – Jan Leslie
• “Going beyond your expectations to make something that educates, inspires and entertains." – Danny Alexander

Share your thoughts in the comments section on how you define creativity and add even more variety to the list!

Creative Instigation Week - The Right Answer

This conversation took place on a plane in the row ahead of me as a child showed a picture he’d drawn to his father.

The little boy asked, “Daddy…is this a masterpiece?”

His dad said without question, “Yes.”

The little boy squealed repeatedly over the next few minutes, “What a masterpiece!!!”

Next time somebody asks you how good something is, and it’s really good, let them know, “It’s a masterpiece!!!”

That was our week recapping Creative Instigation. Thanks to Jan Harness for being my partner, and we'll keep you updated on the progress of our "Creative Instigation" book!

Creative Instigation Week - Shakespeare Didn’t Get It

Sorry to break the news here, but William Shakespeare was wrong. In Hamlet, he wrote, “Neither a borrower nor a lender be.” That's not good advice for creative instigation.

When it comes to generating new ideas, it’s valuable to both borrow inspiration from others (making sure that you modify and better it) and to make sure that you’re sharing your ideas with others to see if they can improve upon them in ways that you couldn’t.

So get out there and start borrowing and lending your way to more great ideas!

Creative Instigation Week - Structured Creativity

A primary theme in the Creative Instigation presentation was how you can use structure to help people expand creativity.

We showed how everyone could draw a “gator” by using letters and a couple of characters of punctuation (the gator at the right is drawn with a different color for each letter if you'd like to give it a try). Providing a music structure helped several groups write and perform blues songs, while others drew comic strips or wrote Haikus all within only 10 minutes.

Structure can be powerful in helping anyone get a faster start on thinking and performing creatively.

Here’s a challenge: think about your best talents, stepping back to see how you successfully apply rules, heuristics, formats, and other structural elements to perform well. Then identify how you can teach and share that structure with others so that they can experience new talents that they didn’t know they possessed.

They’ll appreciate it and maybe even show you how to use structure to start experiencing their talents!

A side note: The objective of the exercise above was to have people exorcise past negative people or interactions that said "You can't do that" or "You can't be creative." They ranged from someone being told she couldn't be in a university music program without completing a piano recital (even though she was making money performing music already) to a young woman who was denied playing soccer with boys.

Interestingly, just a few days later, reading the current issue of "Men's Health," it turns out that even David Beckham had a similar experience, being told that he was too small to play English football. Just goes to show that any of us have to be on the watch for "creative disintegraters."

Creative Instigation Week - Be a Creative Pack Rat!

Start a new file with a prominent place in your filing system and call it “Creative Instigators.”

Use the file to save pictures, articles, thoughts, ideas, quotes, thank you notes, cartoons, ads, Brainzooming posts (I couldn’t resist), and anything else that stimulates your creative juices.

When you’re stuck creatively, pull out this file and take a stroll through its contents to kick start your thinking!

Creative Instigation Week - A Bold Creative Quickie

This week we'll cover ideas emerging from the Creative Instigation session on August 12.

Today’s Creative Quickie is to be bold when you're thinking creatively.

One way is to use a Sharpie marker when writing, doodling, or sketching ideas. With a Sharpie, it's impossible to make a bashful line. Everything you create will simply look more bold & forceful!

Just watch out and don't get marks on your clothes - advice from someone who does it all the time.

The Week That Is

Creative Instigation

As someone described it to me last night, the much hyped “Creative Instigation” session for the Kansas City PRSA took place Tuesday afternoon.

Thanks to Tracy Richardson from Barkley and PRSA for hosting “Creative Instigation” yesterday. Several people were instrumental in helping the presentation and workbook come together, including regular readers Leslie Adams and Cory Christensen. Thanks to both of them as well!

We haven’t had a chance to go back through the comments forms to identify questions and points to clarify, but as we do, they’ll get covered here and on Jan’s “Creative Instigation” blog.

"Ain’t It Time We Said Goodbye"

I talked previously about the feedback approach we tend to use in meetings where the junior most person starts with the first comment, and we sequence through by seniority and title. In that way each person conveys their point of view free of undue influence from a boss or senior team members.

It’s been a great benefit for most of the past 8 ½ years that I’ve been able to respond after Angie Davids. Doing so has always prompted new insights that I wouldn’t have gotten to on my own without her perspective and expertise. Angie is one of the smartest strategic thinkers I’ve worked with in my career.

She’s moving to a new position at the end of this week and will be missed tremendously. And beyond being a great strategic thinker, she also has a wonderful sense of humor. So if I start sounding dumber or not as funny, you’ll know what has happened! Best wishes Angie!