Take a look at the image to your right. What do you see?
Just a neural network? Or perhaps you spotted the hidden figure.
If so, you just had a moment of insight.
You know, an “Aha” moment.
“Aha” happens when your brain plugs into something in a new way, spontaneously reinterpreting what you’ve been seeing, hearing and sensing to reach a new and non-obvious conclusion.
Don’t you feel like you can use a few more of those moments when you’re working on your business?
Creativity involves a few simple techniques:
1. Explore: most of us solve problems in one of two ways. We rely on moments of insight, or approach things analytically. Both methods are useful, yet insight seems the best option when you want to stretch your solution to new places yet to be seen. To prime your brain for creativity, let’s wander the world with an open mind, gather a broad base of knowledge, ask questions and step outside your comfort zone.
2. Focus: Creativity links to expertise. Solutions to great problems require practice, skill and study to attain that expertise. That’s why Chris and I always encourage you to make your business stand for one thing. Even the very biggest businesses do this (Disney: put magic in your life; Coke: happiness). Creative solutions appear when you apply your experience in new ways. The more you know about the problem, the better equipped you are to solve it.
3. Incubate: Now that you’ve immersed yourself in the problem, stop thinking about it. When you’re in your insight mode, prepare to tackle the challenge by shifting your scattered outward attention to an inward focus. Stop focusing on what you are looking at. Instead, shift your focus inward.
4. Insight: let your right brain in. It handles info more loosely than your left brain. So info is less tightly defined. Science offers a helpful way to do this. Describe objects or issues in unusual ways—a clothes hanger is a piece of twisted metal, for example. Perhaps new connections appear.
5. Follow-Through: the insight is nice; execution is nicer. Check to make sure your insight, your solution, will work. You know how conviction can send us down the wrong path sometimes. Try on the solution before you “buy.” Test it with customers. Examine it with your team. Creativity is collective. Your “Aha” may not be perfect, but putting it to work will hand you even more useful insights for improvement.
You can be creative every day, especially on those days when you’d give a million for a fresh path to show its face.
What’s one big challenge you’d like to conquer? Try this technique and see what shows up.
Go forth and do great things,
Martha Hanlon and Chris Williams