Creativity: The response to pressure

I have a coffee addiction. There, I’ve said it. The confession is finally in print. A day without caffeine is sad and gloomy. As a result I spend a large amount of time in coffee shops imbibing java infused beverages. Last week I walked into the restroom of one of my favourite venues, Freshly Ground in Harare, to be confronted by a larger than life print of a man wearing sunglasses on the wall. Someone had carefully cut mirrors into shape and placed them where the lenses of the sunglasses would be. How creative! How innovative! How different!

Pressure fosters creativity. Right now with economic pressure on creativity needs to come to the fore in order to stand out. The stress will either crush you, causing you to shrink back or it will provide the impetus to explode out in a burst of creative excellence.

The coffee shop with the restroom decor had renovated a few months before but I never noticed the glasses because I had not needed the facilities. It made me question what else I was not seeing. That is the essence of creativity; throwing out the preconceived and asking ‘What else am I not seeing? What is my conditioning stopping me from seeing?’ I strolled back into the main section of the coffee shop and deliberately studied the artwork. There were a dozen details I had taken for granted-from the upside down cups used as lighting to the larger description of coffee on the wall. The details all creatively add to form the vibe that the coffee shop wants to maintain. Your creativity needs to work to create an end result. Your ideas need to say something to you clients about you, or facilitate the transactions behind the scene in a way that makes things better.

The decor will not work in any other coffee shop; they will have to come up with their own furnishings that work for their unique system. Uniqueness that people will not copy because it will not work for them will get you ahead. Now there are some things that everyone will copy and that is okay if you are the first in with the idea. Take cupcakes in coffee shops. Cupcakes became fashionable around the world a few years ago. It took Zimbabwe a little while to pick up on it but someone started it here and then suddenly every cake shop was selling cupcakes of varying sorts. Suddenly cupcakes are no longer unique on the menu. What are unique are the beautiful, state-of-the-art, intricately decorated cupcakes, more than just a blob of icing on dry confectionary, that only one or two places offer and that people will order in lieu of wedding cake.

The temptation right now when the economy is tough is to try differentiating on price, to be the cheapest. While there is a long way for people to go in reducing prices from the level of ‘rip-off’ to ‘reasonable’, simply cutting prices is not a creative way of generating clients and revenue streams. Creative price cutting would be the auction type system that low budget airlines utilise where the earlier you purchase the cheaper the ticket, but as the demand for tickets increases the price goes up the closer to the fly date you buy. Their pricing structure has been an industry game changer. Tried and tested will still work to a degree, but add to it the new innovative. Budget airlines will not compromise on the backbone of safety but you are not going to get a meal on the plane either.

Break out of the nonexistent box that you have put yourself in, refuse to shrink back. Do not remain static and comfortable. Think ahead. Look for that uniqueness that will put you ahead of the game without compromising what you stand for.

The Batman of Business

Superman, Spiderman, Green Lantern, The Hulk; comic book superheroes that littered the landscape of my childhood like fallen leaves on an autumn morning. Comics were infrequently available growing up but when I could get my hands on them I would devour them with a speed that almost elevated me to superhero status (SuperZach: secret power-lightening speed reading, not likely to ever be a popular superpower). More recently there has been a noticeable increase in the rise of superhero movies. Old franchises have been revisited and a few more dragged off the comic book pages into three dimensional flesh and blood enactments. Not only that, they have been a staggering success. Three of the top ten, top grossing international movies last year were comic book crossovers (IronMan 3, Thor 2 and Man of Steel) and both Captain America's and The Amazing Spiderman's second offerings are well entrenched in this years top lists.

Why have they been so popular? One reason is that deep down we all want to be a hero. Superheroes resonate with the little bit of our souls that goes 'if only I could (insert appropriate superpower here)'. Many superhero back stories have a painful past; it makes us like them more and helps identify with them. Noone cares that Spiderman does not earn much, he has spidey-powers dude! We all would love that extra touch that would make the struggle for cash seem irrelevant. I watched the second Amazing Spiderman this weekend and left thinking I should order a Spiderman costume just for kicks.

There is one superhero for me that stands out among the rest though. Sure I like Spiderman, I think Captain America is a pretty solid character, but Batman just rocks it as far as masked vigilantes go. You see, the deal with Batman is this, he has no superpowers. Nothing. No extra speed, no regeneration abilities, nothing. All he has is a brain, some hard earned training, some cool toys and a desire to make the world a better place (he also has a butler called Albert which has to count for something).Likewise he had no quick fixes to get his powers like so many others. There are no radioactive spiders and no booster serums. Batman is simply put 'an ordinary human' who has to work hard to get where he needs to be. And if he can be a superhero, well so can I. I may not run around in tights and spandex beating up the bad guys but I can make a difference in the life of my clients. I can have the discipline and commitment to self improvement and training that he has. I can create tools and inventions that can radically alter the interaction of people with one another and the environment. I can be a positive force of energy to those around me. And so can you.

Here are some tips to help activate your inner superhero:-

Identify your superpowers, the strengths that you have. These are the skills you bring to the table, the abilities that when the chips are down people call of you to activate. From problem solving to fund raising, from the ability to calm a situation down to clinching a deal, there is no end to the possibilities that are out there. You have one or more.

Be diligent on honing your skills. Develop them, train them, seek mentors in them, learn from others. Read books, take classes, practice your craft. One mentor I have deliberately takes two courses a year; one to better himself (in that is included family, marriage, personal finance etc) and one to better the organisation he leads.

Think ahead. I love movies that have a surprise ending, when you think that the bad guys have won and the protagonist still has a secret card up their sleeve that they set in action well before the action started. Forethought gets you places. Develop thinking ahead. If all you can do at the moment is think ahead one day at a time it is a good place to start, then stretch it to two, a week, a month and so on.

Once in a while you are going to get beat down. You need some resilience. Some of that comes from the discipline of training, and of training out of a comfortable zone. Some of it is going to come directly from the school of hard knocks, you are going to have to get back up from a hit. If you purpose in your mind to get up before the hit even comes your are more likely to be able to recover.

Be ready to take opportunities. Being the same as everyone else is going to keep you ordinary. Seeing a gap in the market or a unique way of solving a challenge is going to elevate you beyond the normal.

Finally keep your moral compass straight. The only difference between a hero and a villain is the intent of their heart. Just like the movies, in the long run villains fall and no one mourns their demise.Oh and if you can afford it, get yourself an Albert like Batman, they help keep you sane.

Doing More in Order Do Do Less

Morning to all , I am of course making the possibly false assumption you are reading this in the morning.
I want you to take part in yet another challenge. Put down the paper and stare at the watch or cellphone for an entire minute.
Do not do anything during this minute, except maybe sip coffee. After a minute continue reading. Go!
Would you look at that, I got you to spend an entire minute doing nothing. I just made you spend a precious minute of your life on a random and futile task.
The sense of urgency associated with time usage is so deeply engrained in us that you are probably experiencing a mini-apoplectic fit at the fact that I made you “lose” a minute of your time. Some of you will probably never forget this lesson. That is probably worth the minute you spent doing nothing.
We spend our lives trying to fill our time with meaningful activities. We start each day with a precious 24 hours and try to cram as much into it as possible.
We are taught that you can never recover time once you have lost it, that time is money or time is important. Above all, we are told to manage time wisely.
You cannot manage time. Think about it; you cannot tell it to slow down or speed up, you cannot tell it what to do neither can you place it somewhere else.
Time is the immutable trundle of seconds flowing past you into the waste basket of “then”. You cannot waste time either, you merely waste yourself.
What we term as “wasting time” is merely our failure to achieve more or to be better people during our lives. You cannot manage time. You can only manage yourself.
Today, I would like to share with you two tricks to enhancing self-management. I learnt these from Todd Henry’s book ‘‘Accidental Creative” and have found that when I engage in both regularly I am much more relaxed and effective.
Both come out of the fact that due to our pre-conceived training on time usage we feel the need to fill every available moment with productivity.
We cram our time with tasks and projects. Most of these are aimed at fulfilling some deadline at work or the appearance of being busy (checking emails every 10 minutes falls under this category).
We get to the end of a day with checklists that are incomplete, actions that will occur again tomorrow and a false satisfaction that comes from being busy.
Busy does not mean productive, nor does it mean money.
What I am sharing with you will not make you less busy, but it may make you more productive. A warning though, these are not quick fixes. They will not work unless routinely applied. The first thing is set time aside each week to think. Diarise it, stick to it and use this time to be creative and to think about solutions to problems.
This is not a time to plan, do that elsewhere. This is thinking time not design time. Take a problem or problems and think about creative solutions. One way to look at this is to outline the current problem, describe it. Then flip it and describe what it would look or feel like if it were not there or solved. Then let your mind churn through creative and innovative solutions.
For example, how can a supermarket improve the checkout experience of its clients? What does the presence experience look like bored customers, long queues, tellers looking sour, card machines often offline.
What would it look like if solved: smiling customers leaving the shop feeling happy, short queues with quick turnaround?
Solutions, there are hundreds, give away random prizes at the till, put up televisions with fun stuff to watch, jazz up the waiting zone with lights on the floor that change colour when you walk over them, hire a random celebrity to come chat to customers for the day, have a trolley queue race. Creative time is important.
We all know this. How many of you believe that ideas are key to your business’ survival? So why aren’t you taking the time to generate them not as a group either.
You need your own thinking time not a company brainstorming session. The second thing is to do something for yourself. I’m not talking about treating yourself to a shopping spree.
Take up a hobby or activity that requires you to be creative, not for anyone else’s satisfaction but yourself. Find something you can lose yourself in for hours.
I said earlier that most of our tasks are aimed at fulfilling some deadline at work. They are aimed at fulfilling something external to us, for an organisation, company or client. Pick something you can enjoy for you. Now it needs to involve creativity or something challenging, preferably something using your hands.
Watching television does not count. Take up writing, art, pottery, do jigsaw puzzles, take dance lessons, woodwork, gardening, learn to code a computer game.
There is an endless list. Why is this important?
Firstly, it makes you value time spent on you. It also allows your brain to meander and flow while you engage in something with no deadlines and no external pressures. It helps to foster and stimulate creativity.
I know that I seem to be asking you to do more in order to do less, but if you can engage in these two activities on a regular (think weekly) basis you will find that your creativity and idea generation is enhanced, your management of yourself will improve, you will be more effective and more fulfilled.