igeekforcreativity

Have you ever been working on something creative for a certain amount of time and eventually found yourself feeling mentally drained?

Maybe you’ve tried painting or drawing or writing or designing for a few hours, only to find yourself completely exhausted and unable to press forward due to lack of creativity.

Do you know what it means when the ideas simply won’t come?

Some people believe that they can’t come up with ideas for the simple fact that they’re not creative. But that’s not true. Some would have you believe that if you ever wear thin with ideas, it’s because you’re not a Picasso or Einstein or Edward de Bono. But that’s not entirely accurate either.

The reason you ran out of ideas or began to feel uncreative wasn’t because you’re not creative.

You ran out of creative mojo when you did because your brain was tired. That’s all.

You have to remember that the brain works like a muscle. If you try to exercise it too often you’ll only end up getting hurt. Your brain, like every other muscle in your body, needs a break from time‒to‒time.

So the next time you begin to feel worn mentally thin, or the next time you’re working on something and the creativity seems to suddenly stop, remind yourself that it’s natural. Put away whatever it is you’re working on and take a break. Let your brain relax for a while and the creativity will come back almost automatically. In‒fact, a break could be exactly what you need to come up with even more creative ideas in the future.

Not feeling creative? Maybe all you need is a mental break. Try letting your mind rest for a few minutes today in order to build up your creativity. You may be surprised by the results of a well‒deserved mental break.

Illustration by Pablo Boffelli.

Each of us, I firmly believe, has that mission, that sense of purpose.

Each of us, I firmly believe, has that mission, that sense of purpose.

Here’s a few links of interest that I wanted to share with you:

SEO for Bloggers – Thoughtwrestling contributor Ian Rountree wrote a series of posts about SEO for Bloggers – here’s the first post in the series.  There’s always the Copyblogger series on SEO Copywriting as well, if you’re interested in a different take.

You Cannot Sing If You Cannot Cook – Elizabeth King writes about the value of learning more than one creative skill at a time.

The Restless Novice – at Brass Tack Thinking, Amber Naslund writes about the value of staying sharp on basic skills.

Ideas as Killer Social Objects for Enterprise 2.0 – at Blogging Innovation, Hutch Carpenter writes about the value of ideas, especially within corporations.

A double shot of author Eleanor Brown:  How I Got Me an Agent (I think the title is self evident) and Books I Love:  The Stand (which inspired me to start re-reading Stephen King’s classic novel).

7 Dazzling Ways to Ignite Your Creative Spark – another inspiring post from Marelisa’s blog.

How Kevin Spacey Teaches Us Attention to Detail – Suzemuse shares an awesome video of Kevin Spacey at work – it’s all in the details.

Why Editing Could Make a Comeback – Alexis Madrigal writes about the value of editing, with a link to an interesting essay called Real Editors Ship.

We Must Believe In Creativity – I just discovered this blog about creativity (and burnout, actually) and I love these thoughts about how we can lose belief in our abilities when we are tired or down.  She suggests ways to revitalize – good stuff.

I could go on, but I think this stuff will keep you busy for awhile.  

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We’re in an age where creating is easier than ever before, simply because of the vast array of choices and opportunities we have to be creative.

And yet…

We’re in an age where creating is harder than ever before, simply because of the vast array of choices and opportunities we have to be creative.

Which of these two statements do you agree with most?

I think they’re equally true. The options to be creative are infinite. We can learn about any form of creating, find endless information and resources on it, and join a group about it. We can experiment any way we wish with whatever materials we want, within reason.

(Of course if your greatest creative ambition is to build a life size model of the Eiffel Tower in white gold, then obviously there are some financial and spacial considerations there that are beyond most of us!)

For the vast majority of us, our creative ambitions and desires are all well within reach.

So why don’t we create more than we do? Why haven’t we experimented in all the ways we want to?

Why do feel so anxious and overwhelmed about creating most of the time?

I believe most of this is because we don’t just choose just one project to work on, put everything else to one side, and give it our full focus, attention and energy.

Making choices can be a huge source of anxiety and stress.

I heard a story about a guy called Cleve who had great difficulty in doing the simplest of daily activities. Choosing clothing for example. He’d go to his wardrobe in the morning, and carefully choose his underwear. This would take up to an hour, even though he had exactly the same size and style of underwear in only two different colours.

Imagine extending that kind of painstaking deliberation to a whole outfit!

And yet most of us have felt this kind of stress and inability to pick just one thing when attempting to create.

“Do I write or paint or dance? If I write, do I start work on that new idea for a novel set in 18th Century France that I have, continue with my existing novel about the obsessive book collector or collate some poems for that new collection on Summer Memories?”

“If I go with the new novel, where do I start? With outlining the plot, or fleshing out the characters, or writing the key scenes? If I go with the characters first, which should I start with? Should I concentrate on describing them in third person, letting their personality come out through their dialogue, or using the dialogue of others to introduce them?”

And so it goes on, to an almost infinitesimal level of detailed deliberation. I’m sure you’ve experienced a similar situation, and the ever increasing frantic anxious tension that builds inside.

We’re brought up in the Western World to believe that more choice is always a good thing. But more often than not we are crippled by the sheer variety of choices we have available.

Who’s going to enjoy coffee with a friend more out of these two?

Amy, who goes to a coffee shop where the choice is simply black coffee, white coffee or tea, quickly chooses and spends the next hour enjoying the company of her friend?

Or Elly, who goes to a fancy coffee house with 27 different varieties of coffee, and spends 15 minutes just choosing her drink, then the next 45 minutes only half engaged in conversation with her friend because she’s wondering if she made the right beverage choice, and keeps checking out what other people chose and trying to gauge how much their relative enjoyment is?

When we have too many choices, more often than not we choose nothing. If we have too many options as to what to create, then guess what? Yep, we end up creating nothing.

So what’s the answer to this choice overload? What can YOU do to stop bludgeoning your creativity to death with the weapon called choice?

The answer, as you would expect, is very simple.

It can be distilled down to 3 crucial steps:

1. Pick one thing to work on.

(Any one of your current projects are worthwhile.)

2. Set a fixed time to create and remove all distractions and temptations.

(You only need start with 15 minutes. You already know your biggest distractions and most dangerous temptations. Eliminate them.)

3. Create your heart out.

(Don’t stop for anything but the most urgent of emergencies. Just create.)

That really is all there is to it. You can create more in these focused creative sessions, than if you dabble all day in a dozen different projects and not get anywhere significant with any of them.

A final thought to help you:

You will never ever have the time and energy and resources to fully explore every good creative idea you have. You might be lucky if you explore ten percent, or even one percent of them. This fact is so liberating once you accept it.

So wouldn’t you rather focus on creating a few projects to your full ability, throwing everything you have into them and feeling a great sense of pride and achievement, than dip in and out half heartedly to a few dozen? Of course you would.

You know what to do. Pick one thing. Set time aside. Remove all distractions. Create your heart out.

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Today, my wife and I bought a Turkish rug from Mehmet, Istanbul's Steve Jobs of rug merchants.

If I could run my company as well he could sell, I'd be a very wealthy man.

Technically, speaking, Mehmet didn't really sell us anything. He simply created the conditions that allowed us to buy (which some people, I know, will think is really just a clever form of selling, but it wasn't.)

How did Mehmet work his magic, when all we did was sit down at his cafe to drink some coffee with no conscious desire to buy a rug?

Are you willing to crawl through the mud for innovation?

by Holly G. Green

Have you seen the new HBO made-for-TV movie called “Temple Grandin?”

It’s a powerful story about a woman, Temple Grandin, who overcame autism to become one of the most influential figures in today’s livestock and animal husbandry industry. Not only is Temple’s story a testament to the ability of the human spirit to overcome tremendous obstacles, it teaches many principles that all business leaders would do well to embrace.

When diagnosed at a very early age, doctors said Grandin would never speak. When they recommended life-long institutionalization, Grandin’s mother refused to accept that possibility, and continually pushed her daughter to develop her abilities and learn to work around her autistic limitations.

With the support of her mother and several key mentors along the way, Grandin went on to graduate from college and earn a Ph.D. in animal science. More important, she revolutionized the livestock industry by designing innovative systems that improve herd management and facilitate more humane treatment of the animals we depend on for food. (Lesson #1: Don’t let others tell you what you can and can’t do!)

In North America, almost half of the cattle are handled in a center track restrainer system that Grandin designed for meat plants. Her innovative curved chute and race systems for cattle are used worldwide, and her writings on the flight zone and other principles of grazing animal behavior have helped many companies to reduce stress on their animals during handling. Grandin also developed an objective scoring system for assessing handling of cattle and pigs at meat plants that is currently used by many large corporations to improve animal welfare.

At first, livestock companies balked at implementing Grandin’s designs due to the high cost. But when they saw how much money they could save through lower manpower costs, fewer deaths and injuries to cattle, and more efficient slaughterhouse systems, implementing the designs became an easy choice. (Lesson #2: True innovation is always cost-effective.)

Here’s the most important lesson of all: Grandin was able to come up with her revolutionary designs because she saw the world differently than anyone else in the industry.

Because of her autism, Grandin could see patterns in livestock movement and behaviors that others couldn’t. She studied how the cattle responded to all the different aspects of the stockyard/slaughterhouse process. She listened to their mooing to determine how they communicated with each other. She got down on her hands and knees in the mud and the muck to see what the cattle saw as they moved through the chutes. In other words, she literally got inside the cows’ world to understand what the stockyard experience was like for them and how she could make it better. (Lesson #3: Get an understanding of your customers and other stakeholders as much as you possibly can.)

As with many real breakthroughs, people initially scoffed at her. Just an autistic woman with a tenuous grip on reality. Plus, the industry was dominated by men and their “good old boy” notions about how to process cattle. But once they began testing Grandin’s designs, they quickly realized how much more efficiently and humanely they moved cattle through the system.

Unless you suffer from autism, you probably don’t have Grandin’s innate ability to see the world differently. And I’m not suggesting you get down on your hands and knees and crawl around in the mud and the muck to make your business better. (Unless that’s part of your business process.) But the principles are the same.

Innovation involves looking at your world and the world of your customers in ways that no one else has seen before. It requires constantly questioning the way things have always been done in your industry. And it requires asking on a regular basis, “How can we do things cheaper, faster, better, or different in order to add more value to our market?”

If you haven’t seen the movie, I highly recommend it. Grandin found a way to turn her biggest liability into her greatest strength. And in her triumph, there are lessons for all of us who lead people and organizations. How can we learn to see our world, and the world of our customers, differently? And, how can we turn our own weaknesses into strengths?

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Holly is the CEO of THE HUMAN FACTOR, Inc. (www.TheHumanFactor.biz) and is a highly sought after and acclaimed speaker, business consultant, and author. Her unique approach to creating strategic agility, helping others go slow to go fast, will change your thinking.

by Roy Luebke

Many people struggle with trying to define innovation, or what innovation is within an organization. I’ve recently been re-reading one of the best business books I have, “The Essential Drucker. The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Writings on Management” which is a compendium of his writings.

Drucker wrote that purposeful innovation results from analysis, systemic review and hard work and can be taught, replicated and learned.

Purposeful, systemic innovation begins with the analysis of opportunities. The search must be organized and conducted on a regular basis. It seems that we may be getting hung up on “the fuzzy front end” and other views that make innovation seem really obscure. Drucker identified seven sources of opportunity that will ultimately drive innovation:

1. The organization’s own unexpected successes and failures, and also those of the competition.
2. Incongruities, especially those in a process, such as production, distribution, or incongruities in customer behavior.
3. Process needs.
4. Changes in industry and market structures.
5. Changes in demographics.
6. Changes in meaning and perception.
7. New knowledge.

Innovation is both conceptual and perceptual. The imperative is to go out to look, to ask, to listen. Successful innovators use both the left and right side of their brains. They look at figures and they look at people.

To be successful, Drucker wrote that an innovation has to be simple and it has to be focused. It should only do one thing or it confuses people and won’t work. All effective innovations are breathtakingly simple. It should focus on a specific need that is satisfied and on a specific end result that it produces. This makes innovation seem pretty straightforward, doesn’t it?

Drucker indicated that effective innovations start small and they should not try to be clever. Innovations try to do one specific thing. Starting small allows for adjustments. Starting small keeps the requirements for people and money to be fairly modest. Innovations must be handled by ordinary human beings, and if they are to achieve any size and importance at all, by morons or near morons (his words, not this author’s!).

Another key factor was to not try to innovate for the future, but innovate for the present. The innovation may have long term impact, but if you can’t get it adopted now there won’t be any future.

According to Drucker, there are three conditions that must be met for an innovation to be successful including:

1. Innovation is work. It requires knowledge, ingenuity, creativity, etc. Plus, innovators rarely work in more than one area, be it finance, healthcare, retail or whatever. This work requires diligence, perseverance and commitment.
2. To succeed, innovators must build on their own strengths. They must look at opportunities over a wide range, then ask which of the opportunities fits me, fits this company. There must be a temperamental fit with the practitioner and a link to business strategy.
3. Innovation is an effect in economy and society, a change in the behavior of customers, of teachers, of farmers, of doctors, of people in general. Or, it is a change in a process, in how people work and produce something. Innovation must always be close to the market, focused on the market, and market driven.

Drucker wrote that innovation by its nature is risky, as is all economic activity. But defending what was done yesterday is far more risky than making tomorrow.

Innovators define risks and seek to minimize them. Innovations are successful to the extent that they systematically analyze the sources of opportunity, pinpoint the opportunity, and then exploit it, whether an opportunity has small and definable risk, or larger but still definable risk. Successful innovators are conservative, they are not risk-focused, but rather are opportunity-focused.

While many articles, white papers and books have been written lately about innovation, Peter Drucker seems to have nailed it decades ago.

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Roy Luebke is an innovation expert focused on discovering new, customer-driven opportunity areas to help define the future of a company. He is inspired by knowledge and learning, and applying structured tools and methods at the crossroads of strategy and innovation to achieve business growth.

The Rise of the Biomimetist

by Yann Cramer

One of IDEO’s ten faces of innovation is the anthropologist: the one who observes human behaviors and actions to discover wasted effort that could be turned into an innovation challenge. In the past decade, an eleven’s face has been quietly but steadily rising to prominence in the innovation team: the biomimetist, who observes animal and plant characteristics to discover supreme efficiency that could be turned into an innovation breakthrough.

The kingfisher’s beak isn’t just a fashionable accessory that the bird has picked on the shelves of supermarket nature. It is the result of millions of years of evolution and natural selection. The biomimetist starts from the humble assumption that, even if it is not obvious at first, there may be a good reason why nature has designed animal and plants as we see them. The kingfisher’s beak turns out to be supremely efficient at crossing the air-water interface with the minimum amount of turbulence, thus making the bird more successful at catching fish by surprise.

It was the source of inspiration for the design of the Shinkansen, the Japanese bullet train. Obviously the train does not dive into water, but it has many tunnels to pass through. Tunnels tend to create an air-air interface between the inside and the outside, which, when crossed, generates turbulence and noise. The efficiency of the design has enables engineers to create a train that is the most silent of its kind.

Likewise, attentive and questioning observation of the lotus leaf inspired glass manufacturer Saint-Gobain. How does the lotus leaf manage to remain clean in a muddy environment? Electronic microscope observation of the surface of the leaf revealed a hydrophobic nano-structure on which mud does not stick. It then lets the lotus maximize its exposure to sunlight for photosynthesis.

This surface structure that enables the plant to yield maximum benefits from natural resources, namely the sun and the rain, became the inspiration for Saint-Gobain’s design of a self-cleaning glass. The company designed a hydrophobic surface structure on which dirt that is decomposed by sunlight is washed away by the rain.

Observing nature, humbly, questioningly, letting it fill us with wonder, can be a fantastic source of inspiration. Not only for its beauty, but also its efficiency.

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Yann Cramer is an innovation learner, practitioner, sharer, teacher. He’s lived in France, Belgium and the UK, he’s travelled six continents to create development opportunities with customers or suppliers, and run workshops on R&D and Marketing. He writes on www.innovToday.com and on twitter @innovToday.

This is the fifth of several ‘Innovation Perspectives‘ articles we will publish this week from multiple authors to get different perspectives on ‘How should firms identify innovation opportunities and predict market potential at very early stages and in new areas (“green fields”) and ambiguous environments?’. Here is the next perspective in the series:

by Mike Dalton

Last month’s perspective suggested getting out of your environment and into the customer’s as one of the three steps to caffeinate your innovation. It’s fitting then that this month’s call for innovation perspectives should ask how firms can identify innovation opportunities and predict market potential at very early stages and in new areas.

In this innovation perspective, I’ll brief six of the most effective practices in conducting customer visits for the purpose of identifying new and emerging opportunities in B2B markets.

1. Focus on the problems

Customer visits must be focused on both finding problems that you might later be able to solve and also identifying the value that can be created by doing so. Think Mary Leakey the archaeologist there to unearth clues – maybe even a little Sherlock Holmes and Stanley Livingston. Remember, you’re there to study the indigenous peoples, not change them – at least not yet.

2. Find the pain

It’s best if you can observe people at work. What part of the customer’s operation is inconvenient, time consuming, costly, inefficient, dangerous, dirty, messy, frustrating, infuriating, embarrassing, or otherwise holding them back from achieving their goals or desires? That pain is where you need to dig, but don’t feel bad. You’re there to find the places where you’ll eventually be able to help.

3. Dig below the surface

You have to get below the surface of the problem. Continue asking why until you get to the root cause and then if necessary go deeper to find the part of the problem where you might be able to eventually develop a profitable solution.

4. Be prepared to cover the economics

B2B product success depends on helping customers sell more, spend less, or free up working capital. Your interview guide needs to include these questions and the team needs to include someone capable of discussing them at a detailed level with clients.

5. Keep information flowing

The detailed kinds of information mentioned above only comes out if the customer feels you need the information in order to decide if you can develop a win-win solution. Develop being the operative word. Any premature solution discussion shuts down the information flow because they suspect you’re trying to price the solution. So if possible, I recommend not involving your sales force for this activity as it can be quite a challenge for them not to jump to solutions. It’s not impossible, but not recommended without specialized training.

6. Never enter the jungle unprepared

Cross-functional teams, consisting of marketing, technical, manufacturing, and sometimes other functions must prepare before making any visits. They need to develop an interview guide and determine what role each will play in the interview (lead, scribe, observer).

You can check out all of the ‘Innovation Perspectives‘ articles from the different contributing authors on ‘How should firms identify innovation opportunities and predict market potential at very early stages and in new areas (“green fields”) and ambiguous environments?’ by clicking the link in this sentence.

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Mike Dalton is the Chief Innovation Coach for Guided Innovation Group and the author of “Simplifying Innovation” and the Simplifying Innovation Blog. Guided Innovation Group has a simple mission – helping companies turn their new product innovation into more bottom-line impact.

This weekend I’m hosting a group of friends here in Three Oaks.  It’s an interesting group and I’m looking forward to a lot of “new” input. I know that by Monday I’ll have a list of new books to read, new ideas to develop, and newly refreshed friendships.  This is all good! A lot of [...]

The 99% ‒ a tremendously inspirational group of people and website/blog ‒ have an interview with the creative genius Ze Frank where Ze discusses how he makes ideas happen.

Ze Frank is well‒known across the internet for his creative shenanigans, like a video that teaches you how to dance properly or “The Show”, where Ze filmed himself discussing interesting things daily for a year.

Getting a peek into how Ze goes about his creative thinking process is an incredible opportunity. If you want to learn how to think like a creative genius, all you have to do is think like Ze. Here’s a bit of creative thinking inspiration from Ze’s interview with the 99%:

Generally, when I have an idea I start with a sense of scale. Let’s say Procter & Gamble has a new toilet paper. If I’m trying to generate ideas around it, the first thing I’d do is take a general imagination run into scale. What happens if you have no toilet paper? What happens if you have way, way too much toilet paper? … I flip back and forth between the extremes until something interesting comes out of it… . It’s a super-cool exercise only in that it forces you to explore the outside boundaries of things.

You should read the entire interview with Ze Frank here.

Let this image engage your muse. Write a paragraph, a short story, a poem, a memory, a journal entry…or whatever you feel inspired to create.

Editor’s Note: This is a guest post by Ali Hale from Aliventures.

As well as writing blog posts and the occasional ebook, I write fiction. And one of the things I struggle with most is endings.

You’ve read novels and watched TV series and seen movies, so you’ll understand why. A great ending sticks with you, and makes up for almost any number of blips along the way. But an unsatisfying ending can ruin a brilliantly written novel or a gripping movie.

The first 98% of the movie [Schindler's List] was brilliant, the final 2 per cent was stupid, and I remembered not liking the movie because (for me) it had ended badly. The only strange thing about this memory is that I’ve sat through an awful lot of films whose proportion of brilliance was significantly less than 98 per cent, and I remember liking some of them quite a bit. The difference is that in those films the stupid parts were at the beginning, or in the middle, or somewhere other than the very end.

(Daniel Gilbert, Stumbling on Happiness, p202)

Of course, this doesn’t just apply to stories. Endings are important in every area of our lives. When you think back to a memorable time – like college, a conference trip, Christmas festivities – you’ll probably find that the ending is clear in your mind (plus a few highlights along the way):

Whenever a person thinks about a significant event in their life, they usually first remember the “peak” event that occurred and generally reflect on the event based on how it ended. For example, my immediate memories of the trip to Chicago center on the day I took my son to his first major league baseball game (and the harrowing trip away from the ballpark) as well as the wonderful steak dinner at my cousin’s home the final night.

What’s amazing is that this same “peak-end rule” works with almost every vacation I’ve ever taken.

(Trent Hamm, Some Thoughts on Inexpensive Vacations, The Simple Dollar)

Making Endings Count

Knowing that endings are powerful is only useful when you can apply it to aspects of your life: when you can use the end-effect to get the most out of a particular situation.

This is something which I currently only manage to do in a fairly hit-and-miss way. But over the past few years, I’ve noticed the impact which endings have. Here’s a couple of examples:

• My first job was as a student, doing data entry alongside a couple of others for a biopharmaceutical company. I’ve got fond memories of it (despite it being, objectively, a pretty tedious job – we worked overtime for several weeks as well) because at the end of it (a) our line managers took us out for a great lunch and (b) I bought my first laptop with my overtime bonus.

• I had an brilliant time at SXSW 2010, partly because of all the memorable moments along the way (like the Productivity Lunch which led to Thursday Bram and me launching Constructively Productive…) but the main reason I’m determined to go back in 2011 was because of an awesome last night with a bunch of fantastic people, thanks to Kelly Kingman hosting a party.

Sure, it’s not always easy to plan the perfect ending. But I’ve got a few ideas now:

• I’m off on honeymoon in September, and when I sit down with my wonderful fiancé to plan a few activities, we’ll make sure we have something special happening on the last day.
• I’ve realized how I miss the end-of-the-work-week feeling that I used to have on Fridays. (Now I work for myself, the week doesn’t really end so much as drift on into the next week…) I’m gonna take a leaf out of Charlie’s book and aim for a definite stop on Fridays and some peaceful weekends.
• At every conference I attend, I’m insisting that someone throws a great party on the final day and invites me along.

Daily Endings

Of course, the end-effect isn’t just about big multi-day events. Endings have the potential to make you happier (or not) on a daily basis.

How do you normally end your work day?

What do you do before bed in the evenings?

If you’re always frantically racing through emails at 5pm, you may feel like your whole day was rushed. If you find it hard to focus for most of the day and end up working on into the evening, it might seem like you can never get away from work.

If you find yourself slumped in front of the TV after dinner, watching shows you don’t particularly care about … or aimlessly surfing the net … or running around doing chores … you’re unlikely to look back and feel that was a great day.

Pace and Kyeli really brought this one home to me, with their chapter on “Endings” in The Usual Error (the bulk of the book focuses on communication):

Through simple scheduling, you can now make any potentially unpleasant thing more bearable. Simply make sure to schedule fun or relaxing things directly after the dreaded event. Put your less fun tasks closer to the beginning of your day, rather than near the end. If something emotionally difficult comes up with your partner in the evening, make sure to get some relaxing, cuddling, or other such happy bonding time after, so as to not end on a sour note.

(Pace and Kyeli Smith, “Endings” in The Usual Error)

So what do good daily endings look like? I’m definitely not fully there yet, but I’m trying to get some of these into my life on a more regular basis:

• Ending the work day in a positive way, with an exercise session.
• Doing something I enjoy after dinner, like watching a favourite show (True Blood is top of my list at the moment…)
• Winding down before bed by reading fiction instead of surfing the net for “just a few more minutes”

I find that journaling about my day also helps me reflect on the bright spots – and lets me get any worries off my mind.

I’ll end this post with a couple of questions for you:

• Pick an event (vacation, conference, project, etc) which is coming up. How can you make sure it ends on a high note?
• What one thing could you do to give yourself a more positive end to today?

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In today’s warp-speed, innovation-driven economy, it is a little surprising how often one still hears that well-worn cliché, “We have to think outside the box!”

Or, perhaps not. With so much pressure on organizations to create ever better, faster, more efficient, more cost effective products and services, maybe that elusive area beyond the box is just that much more elusive.

Whatever the case, these words, or variations with similar meaning, still echo the hallways in organizations of every size, in every area of industry, education and government, and at every level of responsibility.

If you asked what makes it so difficult for these organizations to “think outside the box,” chances are you would get an earful about how impossibly challenging it is for people to simply sit down together and effective develop fresh, new ideas.

The typical list of roadblocks range from “We just keep recycling the same old ideas,” “We’ve tried everything before” and “We don’t have the __________ we need to succeed” to “It’s impossible to make bold changes here” and “The boss/our customer will never go for it!” As one listens to the litany of obstacles, one can’t help but imagine that significantly more creative effort is being exerted in reinforcing limitations than in actually seeking innovative solutions.

So what really is the big problem? What core issue underlies the multitude of “good reasons” organizations have so much difficulty thinking like Google or Apple?

Simply, what we believe—pre-existing assumptions.

It is our assumptions (our firmly held beliefs about what is or is not possible…what can or cannot be done or achieved) that makes up “the box” that restrains our consciousness and limits our thinking. When perceived limitations loom larger than perceived possibilities, we diminish our ability to solve challenges creatively. In short, we cease being innovators.

Henry Ford, a legendary out-the-box thinker, said it best, “If you think you can do a thing, or can’t do a thing, you are right!” He understood that every self-imposed limitation we imagine or verbalize (and we all have lots of assumptions about a lot of things) creates a mental barrier that separates us from unlimited possibility.

When we simply accept any constraint on what is possible, we trade curiosity for caution, and seek solutions in the familiar, rather than venturing boldly into the unknown. Caution and familiarity are hardly catalysts for innovation.

When we free ourselves from our assumptions, our curiosity flows; we are suddenly able to explore, make new connections and imagine new possibilities that lead to innovative solutions.

We are able to answer the question, “What if…?”

The first step toward liberating yourself and others from limited, boxed-in thinking is to summon the courage to identify and challenge your existing assumptions.

How to successfully challenge assumptions

1. Make a list of any assumption or limiting belief you or your group may have regarding the issue you are trying to solve. Be honest—and as thorough as possible. Really dig deep to uncover what you assume to be true. Remember, assumptions often masquerade in the guise of common knowledge, accepted practices and protocols, facts, or even proud tradition. We even harbor assumptions about the way things are, or should to be.

2. Challenge the status quo. Here’s another inside tip: the more “indisputable” a belief, accepted truth or fact appears, the more important it is to challenge it!  Challenging the status quo creates a rich environment for the seeds of innovation to flourish.

3. Take each item on your list and ask these 3 questions:

1. “Is this ______(limitation/assumption)_____ true?” (Yes/No)
2. “Is it absolutely true, all the time, without exception?” (Yes/No)
3. “If it’s not absolutely true, what are the possibilities?”

Make this “reality check” technique for questioning assumptions a regular part of your brainstorming or idea-generation process. You will be amazed to find that most, if not all, perceived limitations will quickly dissolve under the analysis of objective discernment.

As each limiting belief falls away, more and more new blue-sky possibilities will begin to emerge. Before you know it, that proverbial box that once restrained your imagination will have disappeared.

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