Think

I’m really pleased with the way it’s shaped up.  It’s involved the contribution of the whole consulting team in the UK and the US, as well as our designer, James Wilson at Subtense and Raz Firmager who has produced all the video segments. 
 
For me, project managing the re-design has been a fairly creative experience.  I don’t tend to see myself as a creative person.  I tend to leave that to musicians, artists, and those people who wear trainers to work.
 
I am not alone.  All of us tend to be constrained by functional fixedness.  We look at problems in the same way we always do – it’s comfortable to us.  When we do have creative ideas that are out of the norm, we tend to self-censor them by telling ourselves they are a bit rubbish, and feel too embarrassed to share them.
 
In this process, when I did have a creative thought, it tended to happen at inconvenient or unexpected times – we’ve all experienced this.  For me it was when playing with the kids in the park, having a shower, watching a film, in the middle of the night, over lunch – it drove my wife nuts. 
 
There are good reasons that it happens this way.  Once we have brought our rational thinking process to bear on a problem, we let it incubate – and leave the unconscious to do the work.  This is where the creative process really takes hold as ideas combine with one another in a way that is non-linear and unpredictable.  We can all do this.  It’s just that we have been brought up actively discouraged from doing it.
 
On the terrific site that is ted.com, Sir Ken Robinson delivers a treatise on the role of education in constraining our capacity for creative thought.

His argument runs that kids are naturally creative – they love music, dancing, painting; if they are not sure about something, they will take a chance – they are not afraid of making a mistake.   However, in education, we subtly, yet persuasively steer children away from the creative things they love because they won’t get a job doing them.  Emphasis is placed on the importance of “getting it right”; mistakes are stigmatised – just as they are at work.  He does not say that creative thinking is about making mistakes.  More that if you are not prepared to be wrong, you will never come up with original ideas.   
 
His point?  Intelligence is multifaceted; education inadvertently curtails our capacity for creativity; and in a fast changing and uncertain world, the capacity to think creatively becomes as important as literacy.  He puts it across more persuasively than this.
 
As the full extent of the downturn becomes clear – just this weekend, the Chancellor was quoted, controversially, as saying the economic times are “arguably the worst they’ve been in 60 years” –  there is unlikely to be much change any time soon in the uncertainty under which all of us are now living and working.   
 
In organisations, at times like these, development budgets are often the first to see cuts.  Arguably, this is the time that creative thought and development are exactly what are required to prepare businesses for the challenges ahead. 

We hope you’ve found something on the site that’s captured your interest, and that you’ll visit us again soon.
 
Craig