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A Creative Look At Routine – 5 Steps To Transform Your Routine Processes or Tasks

  By Christina Lattimer • January 9, 2014 - 1:15 pm
Are you creative in your routine?

A human myth is that there are creative people and people who simply aren’t.  The truth is that we are all creating.   Some of us simply create more routine in our lives than others.  Some create a more adventurous lifestyle, hone artistic qualities or even can create much drama in their lives.   One of the determinants of how you will use your creative skills will be based on your personality preferences.

MBTI (Myers Briggs Type Indicator), is based on the psychology of Carl Jung, where he identified eight distinct personality functions which can strongly influence the way we create our world, our creative approach will differ depending on our type preference.

Until I understood my personality type preferences I used to judge myself for “not having more attention to detail” and for preferring to spend time on my own than with friends (not always, but often!), or for having millions of ideas and not being able to finish  implementing many of them.  Realising that I had unconscious preferences to be a certain way, but I could choose to do things differently, even if that felt uncomfortable; was extremely liberating.

The relevance of all that is that while some people love routine and feel lost without it, for me I get bored very easily with routine tasks, I love starting new projects, a varied workload and trying new things.   At this time in my life I have learned enough about myself and created sufficient discipline to get the routine stuff out of the way, but I simply don’t enjoy it, procrastinate too often and look forward to the utopian day when I can afford to pay others to carry out the routine tasks to free me up to vision, imagine and create new adventures.

Setting up my new business has been a steep learning curve.  I have been self-employed in the past but simply worked as an associate and worked with many different companies.  This time, I’m actually setting up a business, which means it has to have outcomes, structure, financial plans and on and on.  Up until a few months ago I actually sang my way into the office every day.  Using my imagination to decide what I wanted to create, with real meaning and purpose has been exciting, new and adventurous.

A few months ago the social media side of the business took a remarkable positive turn which meant lots of services being delivered to new clients.  Enviable isn’t it?  Well yes it certainly is and we are counting our blessings every day.  The problem of course for me is it meant routine work increased because we simply had to deliver.  Not my strong preference!

 

 

 

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This great article is from the our 6 months themed series based on the Centre for Creative Leaderships Report of 2013, in which they identified the 6 top challenges for leaders across the globe:   Don't Miss Out! Sign up here to be notified of subsequent issues and posts

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If you are a leader, you are continually developing and "Sharpening the Saw".  If you lead and manage teams, then you must read about our Inspirational New Leadership Programme.  Sign up now to find out more details when we launch in July 2014.  There is no obligation to undertake the programme, if you sign up today, you will simply be sent more information about the programme.  You can unsubscribe at any time!  Click below to register for further information.

   
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The Hidden Power For Leadership and Life

  By Christina Lattimer • October 24, 2013 - 1:12 pm
mindEveryone has this power, some of us just don’t realise it.

When I first began leading and managing teams, I would be irritated by negative and “play it safe” people.  My desire to get on and create great outcomes meant anyone or anything which appeared to block the team power  or create resistance was simply just a nuisance.  That was just one of the many immature attitudes I began my leadership career with.

Many years of experience later, I realised  my irritation was more to do with the fact  I wasn’t actually looking in the mirror at my own resistance and negativity and loss of power.   I’ve always seen the world as a giant classroom and what I didn’t learn via Leadership Development, I learned through reflecting on my experiences.

One of the biggest AHA moments in my life and a huge turning point for me was discovering the power of the mind. Quantum science has been showing us for some time that    “by the very act of watching, the observer affects the observed reality”.  This startling discovery profoundly changes the world that we live in, and I am not sure yet we have fully grasped the concept.  Research such as Emoto’s Water Experiment which shows how water structure changed when exposed to different thought patterns is amazing. In essence what these factors meant for me and certainly what I have experienced is this.

  • What I believed about my team was crucial to their success and secondly
  • My team always lived up to my expectations.
  • Quite often I projected the traits I did not like in myself onto my team and instead of dealing with the unwanted trait myself, I blamed others for it.

This is not a flight of fancy.  When the penny dropped and I believed my team could be dynamic, enthusiastic and creative, I focused on those aspects and not only did I encourage those behaviours, when I saw contrary behaviours; instead of getting hung up about them, I practically helped my team find solutions and develop ways to get different outcomes.

Instead of projecting negativity on them, I started to project positive and affirming traits. The fact is our minds are creatively powerful.  Imagination is the creative force of the universe.  Anything which has been created was first envisaged and imagined.  When we experience outcomes we don’t want then we have mis-created, because we have focused on what we don’t want instead of what we do; it is as simple as that.   Mother Therese fully understood this phenomenon when she said, “I will never attend an anti-war rally; if you have a peace rally, invite me”.

Instead of anti-war; focus on peace.  Instead of diversity; focus on inclusion.  The unconscious mind doesn’t understand filler words, so if you say: I don’t want to go bankrupt, guess what you have set in motion? If you say, I am becoming successful and my business is abundant, and believe it, then that is what you will set in motion. This simple fact is hard to believe because much of our mindfulness is unconscious and it is our unconscious beliefs and tapes which are often creating our world.  Our job is to become aware of our unconscious faulty beliefs and change them with life-affirming and sustaining beliefs.

Every single one of us is creating, we just aren’t aware of it, or we have disconnected from our awareness of it, and so quite often we mis-create.  Much of leadership is about facilitating different mind-sets in order to consciously create rather than unconsciously mis-create. The mind is our creative force, and how we use it is extremely important.  Most commonly because we don’t realise or understand the creative power of the mind, we are constantly in Groundhog Day.  Our script is set, our beliefs are set in stone, our thinking patterns are habitual, we doubt our actions and our days and lives will trundle along.

Many of you will be familiar with the famous quote from Marianne Williamson “Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness that most frightens us” The truth is whenever we are judging or blaming or denying responsibility we are in fact running from the astonishing power of our creative mind.

 

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If you are a leader, you are continually developing and "Sharpening the Saw".  If you lead and manage teams, then you must read about our Inspirational New Leadership Programme.  Sign up now to find out more details when we launch in July 2014.  There is no obligation to undertake the programme, if you sign up today, you will simply be sent more information about the programme.  You can unsubscribe at any time!  Click below to register for further information.

   
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7 Common Qualities of Inspirational People, Leaders Should Know

  By Christina Lattimer • March 7, 2013 - 9:26 pm
 Leaders can learn from inspirational people

I’d read about Philippe Petit some years ago, and while being amazed at his death defying tightrope walk between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre in New York City, I was either was too young, too busy, in the wrong country  or too focussed on other things to truly absorb his story.  That changed last weekend when I happened upon an old documentary in which Philippe was recounting his experience on that day,  7th August 1974, and the events leading up to it.

I realise as I write this, I am almost 40 years behind, but I also know there is a right time for everything, and I needed this story now, because it clicked into place a piece of jigsaw I was toying with, but not quite knowing where it fit.

I have always admired people who have made a significant impact, and have been inspirational people.  People who particularly inspire me are Martin Luther King, Jr., Mahatma Ghandi, Viktor Frankl, Sir Winston Churchill, Carl Jung, Abraham Lincoln , and latterly Nelson Mandela, Oprah Winfrey, and Steve Jobs,  to name but a few. I am now adding Philippe Petit to my list.

These inspirational people on my list are famous for very different achievements. Some didn’t particularly set out to be “world” leaders in their field.  But to me and many others of course, they are leaders, because by virtue of their achievements they have led a way, which has helped many people, and so been inspirational. Their stories and work have certainly changed my world.

Simon Sinek in his brilliant book “Start with Why” concludes the reason some inspirational people and their dreams (like Jobs and King for example) are globally successful is that they act from the inside out, they don’t sell their products, they sell their beliefs.  It is these beliefs that other people relate to which harnesses their commitment, support, and buy in.

I was blown away when I heard Simon speaking about this phenomenon, because I know it to be true, certainly about me. I finally realised the reason I was so enamoured  by these inspirational people was my interpretation of their beliefs and qualities embodied my own beliefs and value systems which I aspire to.

When I examined my own list of inspirational people, I discovered several qualities they displayed which I aspire to, and therefore inspire me.

  1. They owned a deeply held vision
  2. Inner and self- directed, they listened to their intuition and the world around them became secondary if it didn’t accord with their inner guidance.
  3. What they did/shared benefitted the greater good, even if they didn’t realise it at the time.
  4. They were committed and dedicated; in fact most, if not all, view their achievements as their life’s purpose.
  5. They weren’t deterred by popular opinion,
  6. They acted fearlessly, even if inside they felt fearful

And finally, what Philippe Petit made me see so clearly:

7.  They are aspirational, they dare to attempt “the impossible,” feats and successes which any rationale mind may have said weren’t possible.

Inspirational people lead others by letting them see that their hopes, dreams, aspirations, and values are not only desirable, but are possible, by demonstrating they can be done.  Once you have seen impossible being achieved, then the world has changed.

So how can this help our everyday leaders, who aren’t out to change the world, but who grapple with the day to day reality of where they are right now?

I asked this question of a very dear mentor of mine.  “How can I lead in my small way, when all my inspiration comes from people who have changed the world, it seems overwhelming?”   What he said to me can also be true for leaders in every field.   He said, “Don’t concentrate on the world; apply your beliefs, principles and values to your world and the rest will take care of itself.”  Although I agreed I still felt apprehensive.   That was until I witnessed Philippe’s mad impossible mission and suddenly the impossible was possible, and the final piece of the jigsaw slotted into place.

You don’t have to walk a tightrope across tall buildings or ravines to inspire your employees and customers; all you need is a clear vision, faith, commitment and courage. Together with the knowledge you are making a real difference for the greater good.  For me this is the real formula for success.  

 

Join us on this amazing journey!

This great article is from the our 6 months themed series based on the Centre for Creative Leaderships Report of 2013, in which they identified the 6 top challenges for leaders across the globe:   Don't Miss Out! Sign up here to be notified of subsequent issues and posts

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If you are a leader, you are continually developing and "Sharpening the Saw".  If you lead and manage teams, then you must read about our Inspirational New Leadership Programme.  Sign up now to find out more details when we launch in July 2014.  There is no obligation to undertake the programme, if you sign up today, you will simply be sent more information about the programme.  You can unsubscribe at any time!  Click below to register for further information.

   
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Making family friendly work for you – 5 mistakes and how to avoid them

  By Christina Lattimer • June 28, 2012 - 11:20 am

family friendlyFamily Friendly is an employee and business benefit

If you struggle to get the very best people to come and work for you.   If you believe your employees aren’t giving their best, or are stressed because their working life and domestic life don’t work well together.  Or if you have a high rate of unexplained absence, then you may wish to consider reviewing your family friendly offer.

If you want to attract and retain top talent now and in the future;  to remain competitive in the talent marketplace you must consider a family friendly culture as a business benefit as well as an employee benefit.

The main reason why businesses don’t introduce a family friendly environment are three fold, they don’t know how; are afraid that it will detract from and impact negatively on achieving their outputs or results or don’t realise it’s important.

Enlightened organisations create a family friendly culture which fits their business model.  Being family friendly is the way forward and you will find  the best talent (who know they can pick and choose) will opt to work for businesses where they can operate in a way which fits their own personal circumstances.   My guess is you will find that this is the new contractual norm for talented people.

So what do I mean by family friendly?  There are a number of factors involved in creating a family friendly environment.  In short a combination of customs, practices and policies you can adopt to help your employee enjoy and attend to their home life as well as their work life.

Family friendly practices and policies can include:

  • Flexible working – including flexible hours, flexible location and flexible roles.
  • Time out – aimed at helping people care for dependants in the short and long term.
  • Work breaks – including career breaks and sabbaticals
  • Employee benefits – discounted childcare, elderly care, access to family health schemes, onsite crèches, after school clubs, holiday clubs.

Many enlightened organisations realise that a family friendly environment is a key factor in their employee attraction and retention strategy, but not many are easily able to articulate and implement family friendly practices effectively.

Effective implementation means not only do employees enjoy a work/life balance allowing them to attend to pressing domestic responsibilities and values, but also harnesses their loyalty, commitment and enthused effort.  Implemented well a synergistic effect of boosting motivation, leading to improved productivity, efficiency and profitability will result.

If you have tried to introduce a family friendly culture and are struggling, or you want to get started, here are 5 mistakes that business make, which you must avoid.

Mistake 1 – A vision setting out the factors involved in the family friendly offer is not clearly articulated.  The vision does not include what employees can expect, and importantly, omits expected benefits for the business.

Mistake 2 – The organisation doesn’t emphatically state  boundaries.  A family friendly culture must overall improve and energise the performance of the organisation.  There are limits and parameters.  If a family friendly culture begins to negatively impact it has overstepped accepted boundaries.

Mistake 3 – Managers only want to offer family friendly policies to best performers.  They fear some of the workforce will take advantage and not reciprocate by seeing it as a way to improve their contribution. This leads to managers unconsciously choosing who can and can’t take advantage of family friendly arrangements.

Mistake 4 – Managers do not assess workload impact of individual family friendly ways of working on the employee or on others in the team.  Thus adjusting the frame but not changing the internal picture.

Mistake 5 – Organisations don’t adequately train managers to a) understand the “bottom line”, b) harness a win/win result  c) review patterns and workloads d) be confident to say no, when it is fairer to do so and objectively justified

So now you know the pitfalls, here are some ways you can both avoid those mistakes and harness the best of both worlds, by getting the best out of your people, whilst improving their work/life balance.

  • Articulate accepted boundaries, and use as an acid test before you introduce any measure towards a family friendly culture.
  • Be clear about work patterns acceptable to you.  If compressed hours really don’t fit in your organisational model, don’t offer them.
  • Be clear about parameters of each measure. If time off for domestic emergencies is included in your family friendly package for example, make it clear it is not a default position.  Develop a framework to work through setting out alternatives an employee must consider.  If a situation develops which isn’t a one off; you and the employee need to agree an approach to deal with this.
  • Be imaginative about the extent of your work patterns and location framework.  Would extending to evening hours not only give employees some well needed flexible working solutions, but also benefit your customers?  Can employees work from home remotely, and could such a way of working ultimately cut accommodation overheads?
  • Be very clear your family friendly culture is a win/win offer.  You want to help employees with domestic responsibilities so they can be at their best at work, and give you maximum performance.
  •  Manage expectations of all employees.  Resentment can quite often fester when some of your workforce believe they are not included.  Manage perceptions; I once had someone tell me they thought my family friendly approach excluded them because they didn’t have children, or any dependants.  That was until she had to take time off because her dog needed a lifesaving operation.

If you are already going down the family friendly route, or intend to, then congratulations.  If devised and implemented thoughtfully through consultation with your strategists and your people, then it will be successful.  By being clear about your bottom line, you will gain the commitment, loyalty and best performance from your people and have people queuing up to work for you.

 

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This great article is from the our 6 months themed series based on the Centre for Creative Leaderships Report of 2013, in which they identified the 6 top challenges for leaders across the globe:   Don't Miss Out! Sign up here to be notified of subsequent issues and posts

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If you are a leader, you are continually developing and "Sharpening the Saw".  If you lead and manage teams, then you must read about our Inspirational New Leadership Programme.  Sign up now to find out more details when we launch in July 2014.  There is no obligation to undertake the programme, if you sign up today, you will simply be sent more information about the programme.  You can unsubscribe at any time!  Click below to register for further information.

   
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The Followers’ Guide to: What your Leader wants

  By Christina Lattimer • June 15, 2012 - 8:45 am

emotionsDo Followers know what their leaders want?

Today, a search on showed 98,516 results for “leadership”.  A further search for “followship” came back with a mere 39 results.  I searched again for “team player” and received over , although “team player” wasn’t quite what I was looking for.   I know sometimes part of great leadership is setting out what you expect and need from your followers, and “followship” is a little used word, but the yawning gap between the results surprised even me.

You may be a leader or a follower or both.  As a leader do you ever think we are disproportionately focused on your behaviours, skills and values?  As a follower, do you ever think about what your leader might require from you?  As a leader, do you take time out to articulate what you need from your followers? And I’m not talking about job specification or role here.

I guess some leaders would say they need different things from the people who work for them and industry differences would drive some of the skills, characteristics and behaviours of followers.    When you consider different dynamics across millions of organisations,  it’s a sure bet if people decided to write about followship with any enthusiasm, you would end up with considerably more books than those written on leadership.

As a leader I am sure you will either consciously or unconsciously know what you require of your followers, over and above their job role.  But do you articulate those wants, or do you get frustrated because your followers don’t actually follow very well?  If you are a follower, do you know what your leader expects of you, and if not would you like to know?

As a leader and manager, and a follower, and subsequently a coach for leaders and managers, I have over the years, experienced and listened to many views and opinions from leaders about their teams and what does and doesn’t work.  As a follower, I have consciously tried to support my leader and have sometimes found continuous support challenging.

As a starter for 10, I’ve brought together the main points gathered over the years and the following describes what I believe leaders commonly want from their followers.

As a follower involved in my leadership I need you to:

  • Take responsibility for yourself
  • Get the big picture and understand exactly what we are trying to do together
  • Have an affinity with and believe in what we are trying to achieve
  • Give a positive account of the organisation and concentrate  on what is good about it
  • At times when it is crucial for the business, go the extra mile
  • Care about others on your team
  • Commit to resolving differences in an adult and win/win way
  • When you’re not able to fulfil your contract for any period of time for family or medical reasons, you commit to doing your best to get back to work as soon as you can because you know how crucial you are to the excellence of the business.
  • Commit to getting the work done, on time and to the best of your ability
  • Give me the benefit of the doubt
  • Trust me to take the best decision I can with the information I have, even if you don’t like it.
  • Understand we have a mutual contract and I will respect your rights, and you respect mine.
  • Forgive me for my mistakes, we all make them
  • If you aren’t happy come and tell me about it constructively, trust me to listen and do something about it
  • If you can’t commit to any of the above, consider how you are contributing to the success of the organisation, and if you can’t or won’t commit then consider if you are in the wrong job.
  • If you are in the wrong job, then do your best you can while trying to find the right job.

Do you think it’s reasonable for a leader to expect certain behaviours and attitudes from their followers?  Do you think employers have a right to state so explicitly what they want and need from their staff?

 

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This great article is from the our 6 months themed series based on the Centre for Creative Leaderships Report of 2013, in which they identified the 6 top challenges for leaders across the globe:   Don't Miss Out! Sign up here to be notified of subsequent issues and posts

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If you are a leader, you are continually developing and "Sharpening the Saw".  If you lead and manage teams, then you must read about our Inspirational New Leadership Programme.  Sign up now to find out more details when we launch in July 2014.  There is no obligation to undertake the programme, if you sign up today, you will simply be sent more information about the programme.  You can unsubscribe at any time!  Click below to register for further information.

   
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When navel-gazing can be healthy

  By Christina Lattimer • June 7, 2012 - 10:52 pm

As a young manager it was drummed into me that I focus on my customers and the services or products I provided to the customer.  It didn’t occur to me to question the philosophy in those days, after all the most senior people in the business advocated it and I certainly cared a lot about customers.

If you are outcome focused and performance manage your people against customer service, company standards, results, targets and outcomes, for example, you are practicing the key behaviours which should lead to success.

I don’t know about you, but as I matured as a leader and a manager I often found even when the company was doing well, a constant thread of discontent existed amongst the team or even across the whole organisation.  For a long time I put this down to human nature.  You know “you can’t please all of the people all of the time, and you can only please some of the people some of the time” syndrome.

I even found times when team and organisational results were high, and leaders were celebrating their successes, employee engagement indicators showed there wasn’t a corresponding “high” in the way employees were buying in or not to the success of the business. In one scenario, one organisation won accolades for leadership excellence when the engagement index for staff was actually sweeping the bottom of the industry league tables.  Obviously the criteria for leadership excellence didn’t include engaging employees.

If you’ve come across a similar situation, have you wondered if even greater achievements, results, customer service and profits could have been made if employees had been engaged?

I certainly did, but I also realised that an absence of engagement wasn’t the only problem.  For me the real problem was threefold:

a)      The organisational culture was resistant to operating outside of the established comfort zone, which would have been forced had results been disappointing.  Results which were “good enough” didn’t leverage sufficient motivation to change and achieve even better results.

b)      A general belief in the mediocre ability of a large percentage of their employees existed which resulted in a self-fulfilling prophesy, i.e. they produced mediocrity in the main.

c)       A lack of “internal customer service” existed. This meant that insufficient attention was paid to the internal relationships, contribution, innovation, values, ethos and helpfulness within the organisation.

If your business is operating on any of the three premises outlined then you have some great opportunities to leverage better engagement and better results.  You need to undergo a little healthy navel-gazing.

Including some healthy, purposeful navel-gazing in your organisational strategy can help you out of your comfort zone, foster self-belief in your people and get your internal customer service to work brilliantly.  If positioned effectively, you will create the right environment to develop the capability to achieve even greater results and consistently go the extra mile for your external customers.

Do you think that internal development is important for an organisation, or is there a danger of losing focus on results?  Either comment below, or drop me an email,  .  I’d love to hear from you.

Why not grab a free copy of my first publication “The 6 Secrets of Great Emotional intelligence – For Inspirational Leaders and Managers” It’s completely free and you can access it in PDF format on my website peoplediscovery.co.uk

 

Join us on this amazing journey!

This great article is from the our 6 months themed series based on the Centre for Creative Leaderships Report of 2013, in which they identified the 6 top challenges for leaders across the globe:   Don't Miss Out! Sign up here to be notified of subsequent issues and posts

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If you are a leader, you are continually developing and "Sharpening the Saw".  If you lead and manage teams, then you must read about our Inspirational New Leadership Programme.  Sign up now to find out more details when we launch in July 2014.  There is no obligation to undertake the programme, if you sign up today, you will simply be sent more information about the programme.  You can unsubscribe at any time!  Click below to register for further information.

   
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Silver Lining – Find the Hope in every Cloud

  By Christina Lattimer • March 15, 2012 - 7:53 am

Every Cloud has a Silver Lining164810012

A couple of weeks ago, I heard from a young mum of three.  In a downsizing by her husband’s company he lost his job after one interview.  He had been in the job for 14 years, and loved it.  Now I don’t know the detail, so I don’t judge.  And I know such hard decisions have to be made if the money simply isn’t there.  I would also say though that I had used services provided by the organisation and he was dedicated, enthusiastic and went the extra mile.  As you can imagine there was shock, indignation and anger from his friends and relatives.

We all know the business reasoning about Remploy, and why the government decided to untangle what seemed to be viewed as an “outdated segregated remedy” by the disability bodies.  It was also making a colossal loss.  But seeing those people talking about their fears not knowing what is going to happen in the future was heart-breaking.     The theory is that employers will be given financial incentives to help these people and more to secure employment.  Will this happen in reality?  I’m not sure.

I am all for facing up to the reality of any unpalatable truth we may have to accept.  I know that it’s important that we all know why hard decisions like the above are made.  I think as a nation, we did actually get the message.   We need now however to refocus, and we need to refocus on the silver lining.

In the two situations above, those decisions appear harsh and inhuman without making sure that the people affected had some hope about what their options might be in the future.  We are not reporting well enough, that vital step.  Any change strategy, including downsizing in any shape or form is poorly executed unless before the decision is made to cut jobs or change course, the fears and possibilities for the people involved have been explored and articulated.  There has to be a plan B for everyone.

And so instead of the process, we need to focus on the vision for the future.  We need to focus on the silver lining, but what might that be?  Well it might not be apparent yet, but here are a few ideas.

  • As a nation, we are learning to be more financially responsible
  • We are becoming more efficient
  • We are driving up the quality of services
  • We are learning resilience in the face of adversity
  • We can show that we are strong and are able to reinvent ourselves

Ok, not a long list yet, but I’m sure there are more to be identified, as we learn from the situation we find ourselves in.  The main message for everyone needs to be one of hope.  If this doesn’t start coming soon and stridently we will simply be a nation sapped of our energy, enthusiasm and commitment.

Let us shift the balance and focus on and celebrate successes, and find and articulate that silver lining.    For people who are facing hardship and a loss of way of life, let’s make sure we can create meaningful options where everyone wins in the end.  Let’s tell the story of how great our workers are and how dedicated and efficient they can be.  These factors are all there, we are just not looking at them.

There is no doubt about it, if we focus on and celebrate hope and success, the results will surely follow.

What do you think?  Do you think we need to be more positive about the change we are going through?   Do you think a shift in focus is needed at this time?  Let us know we would love to hear from you.

 

Join us on this amazing journey!

This great article is from the our 6 months themed series based on the Centre for Creative Leaderships Report of 2013, in which they identified the 6 top challenges for leaders across the globe:   Don't Miss Out! Sign up here to be notified of subsequent issues and posts

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If you are a leader, you are continually developing and "Sharpening the Saw".  If you lead and manage teams, then you must read about our Inspirational New Leadership Programme.  Sign up now to find out more details when we launch in July 2014.  There is no obligation to undertake the programme, if you sign up today, you will simply be sent more information about the programme.  You can unsubscribe at any time!  Click below to register for further information.

   
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Sparking Creativity

  By Guest Post • March 8, 2012 - 9:38 am

Welcome to this weeks’ Guest blogger – I am really pleased to introduce Claire Marriott.  I have known and worked with Claire over a number of years.  We instantly developed a rapport as we both had similar views about innovation, creativity and life!  Claire has a flair for weaving creativity and innovation both in her communications expertise and other interests.  As you can see she is the perfect person to talk about sparking creativity!  You can  learn more about Claire below.   

Let your Creativity Sparkle!

Hello everyone! Having worked with Christina on a number of projects I am delighted to be her guest on this blog.

For many managers, creativity is something of a holy grail. How many of you, if asked about your ideal working environment, would end up describing a free-thinking, energetic set-up where ideas flow like water and innovation is the norm?

Unfortunately, the day-to-day realities of working life and the typical structure of organisations often work to hamper the very qualities that we desire most in our team members, limiting their ability to generate new ideas or their willingness to think differently.

Letting go of expectations

The first step to unlocking creativity is to let go of expectations. Creative people aren’t fixated on what others think of them and tend not to focus on the ‘right’ way to do things. Instead they try a number of different approaches and see what happens. They follow their instincts and their intuition to see where it takes them and, above all, they ask questions.

Here are two exercises that you can try with your teams to increase the amount of creative energy in your organisation.

  • Summarise a challenge that you are facing in just one sentence and then ask each team member to spend ten minutes writing down everything that occurs to them about the situation. Tell them that they don’t have to worry about spelling and grammar but should just write anything and everything that comes into their head when the y start thinking about the problem. This type of free-writing helps people to overcome their internal censor and can give rise to intriguing new ideas.

 

  • Over a number of weeks ask your team members to save any images that they come across which remind them of your organisation, or what they would like your organisation to be. Gather the images together and paste them all onto a board then discuss what you see. Look for themes that the pictures have in common.  Identify any colours or settings that recur. Imagine the lives of any people in the pictures and see how the images make you feel. Using images activates different parts of the brain and can be a wonderful way to bring a company’s vision and values to life.

 

If you would like to find out more about living creatively then I would thoroughly recommend ‘The Artist’s Way’ by Julia Cameron, a classic book on the subject. I leave the last word to film-maker Frank Capra who said ‘A hunch is creativity trying to tell you something.’

 

[message type="custom" width="100%" start_color="#FFFCB5" end_color="#F4CBCB" border="#BBBBBB" color="#333333"]After a 16 year career working in corporate communication for a range of public and private sector companies, Claire  redesigned her life and became a freelance writer, craftsperson and reiki practitioner. As well as providing communications advice to a number of organisations she has also begun to write creatively and is currently studying scriptwriting with the Open University. To find out more, please visit her website: www.clairemarriott.com[/message]  

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Make your Innovative Idea come to Life

  By Christina Lattimer • March 5, 2012 - 6:36 am
The innovative process is available to everyone!innovative

You either own or run a business, and so you know what it takes to make a concept work.  You must be providing a product or a service which is or has been in demand.  If your business is thriving then congratulations, if not doing so well, then take heart.   You have the means within yourself to expand and create new and innovative products or service.  You just have to believe you have and that you can.

You may be in the position where you aren’t sure about how you expand and accelerate growth in your business, or you may have a great idea, but are not sure how to make it a reality.  Either way, the first thing you have to do is get clear.

The innovative process is not going to begin until your mind formulates a clear outcome. The problem is, is that we get fixated on the details, and the “how’s” and this actually inhibits the creative process.  All you need to do, to start is have an outcome.

I remember coaching a young entrepreneur in her 20’s.  She had paralysed herself into inaction because she wasn’t sure which career path to take.  She had got to a crossroads in her life, and wasn’t sure what she wanted.  After some exploration, she realised that she didn’t need to be specific about exactly what her career looked like, but she did need to be specific about how she would feel about what she did.

Thus her success criteria and outcome became.  “She would feel enthused and love what she did.  She would feel motivated and grateful that she was doing work which made a huge difference”.  Ok, so she still had to make choices, but outlining an outcome that meant something to her gave her a standard or a benchmark to work towards.   As she tried different things, if her outcome didn’t materialise, then she knew she had to try something else.

You may have an innovative idea, and a clear outcome for a product or a service which is going to make a difference, but are not sure how to make it happen.   Alternatively, you may just want to make your business profitable, more profitable or make a bigger impact, but at this stage you may have no idea about how that is going to happen.  In both situations simply set out the outcomes that you want, and that process will give you a massive head start.

The next step in the innovative process is to believe it can happen.  Doubt is the biggest prohibitive force in the innovative process.  Doubt shuts off your mind to the possibilities out there.   If you think you can’t then – guess what – you can’t.  If you doubt you can, then it either shuts off the mind, or delays the realisation of your innovative idea.

I’ll give you an example.  A number of years ago, a team I worked with wanted to be great at customer service.  To change the mind-set, the only way was to access some in-depth customer service training.  After some research, across the board of all the providers who could help, the cost came to some £25k for all of the staff to be trained (It was a large team, and the training stretched over  a number of  months).

There was no way that sort of budget was available.  There was a resignation across the management team that it wasn’t going to happen.  But I asked the team to keep open to possibilities.  That if we kept out doubt then a solution would appear.  And it did.  About 3 weeks later we received a call from a company who had heard we were looking for customer service training, could they come and talk to us?  Because we hadn’t dismissed the possibility, we agreed.   It turned out the training company had access to grant funding for just what we were looking for.  Altogether, a team of 30 people were trained for 9 months, with a City and Guilds qualification for under £2k.

I could relate many stories like that which show the power of trusting that you can make things happen is key to the innovative process.  The vital message here is that you simply need to get started with an outcome and then believe it can happen.

Here at People Discovery, we help clients formulate their success criteria, and then find a way to make things happen, which works to each owners individual style, to realise their outcome.

If you have any questions, or have a great innovative story to tell, then let us know.  We would love to hear from you.

This coming week, I have a brilliant guest blogger who is a writer and entrepreneur, who will talk about sparking creativity.  Look out for her blogspot in the next few days!

 

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This great article is from the our 6 months themed series based on the Centre for Creative Leaderships Report of 2013, in which they identified the 6 top challenges for leaders across the globe:   Don't Miss Out! Sign up here to be notified of subsequent issues and posts

121242255

If you are a leader, you are continually developing and "Sharpening the Saw".  If you lead and manage teams, then you must read about our Inspirational New Leadership Programme.  Sign up now to find out more details when we launch in July 2014.  There is no obligation to undertake the programme, if you sign up today, you will simply be sent more information about the programme.  You can unsubscribe at any time!  Click below to register for further information.