WHAT MAY/MIGHT BE or IS CREATIVE THINKING?

For me it is simply creating, generating, discovering, using ideas that are from new just to me or perhaps new to my occupation or profession, new to my town, city, state, country or even the world.

or it is the combining of existing to ancient ideas in new ways or combinations to solve problems in new ways.

If you ask this question of 1,000 people on twitter you may receive 1,000 slightly to vastly different answers.

That is still okay.

Each is their answer, their creative answer.

Creative thinking can create problems
Creative thinking can create chaos
usually
Creative thinking produces new ideas that will lead to new solutions.

Yet too many people resist to protest creative thinking.

Do you?

Why?

as Dr. Phil says: "What's that doing for you?" or "How's that working for you?"


Choose to think more creatively today.

Choose to think creatively more today.

Best wishes,

Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

WHO CAN THINK MORE CREATIVELY?

Everyone

you
your spouse
your children
your neighbors
your friends
your relatives
your fellow employees
your supervisors, managers, bosses
your fellow students

strangers you meet

everyone of the 6+ billion people on the earth.

Why aren't you?

Why aren't we?

Why aren't they?

My hope for you that these annoying, in-your-face, questions spark you to deliberately choose to think creatively each day, more each day.

Best wishes,

Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

WHERE TO THINK CREATIVELY?

At home
at school
at work
on the street

these are simple places where you THINK CREATIVELY.

The question is do you?

Does your teacher,
do your parents,
does your supervisor, manager, boss
do your friends

actually encourage you to THINK CREATIVELY?

Do you encourage your spouse, children,friends, employees, total strangers to be creative?

Each day consider WHERE ELSE MAY/MIGHT I THINK CREATIVELY or MORE CREATIVELY.

Perhaps carry a reminder card that simply says


THINK CREATIVELY MORE TODAY!

or


HOW MIGHT I THINK CREATIVELY RIGHT NOW?

Best wishes,


Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

WHEN oughta/mighta/shoulda/coulda/woulda we think CREATIVELY?

How, Why.....now When?

In the morning
In the afternoon
In the evening
Late at night

at home
at work
at school
on the way to work or school

with family
with friends
with fellow workers
with clients
with strangers

The more often we take 10 to 15 minutes to think creatively before doing something the more creative we will become.

Every skill needs to be practiced, developed, enhanced.

Deliberately choose each day to think creatively.

At the end of each week spend 30 to 60 minutes reviewing when, how, where, when, why, with who/whom you were creative.

Then list how did you gain from being creative throughout the week.

Do not take your creativity, creativeness, creative traits, your creative thinking skills for granted.


Deliberately, purposely, consciously think creatively each day.

Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

HOW OFTEN SHOULD WE THINK CREATIVELY?


Every day
for at least 10 to 20 minutes.

On every challenge, problem or project we work on.

With each person we work with, love, meet.

To improve your abilities to think creatively you can approach every aspect of your life with this question or statement:

How may/might I do "X" more creatively?

Then do it.

From when you wake up in the morning to when you lay down to sleep for the night.

Periodically ask yourself that simple question:

How may/might I do "X" more creatively?

Then use one of the ideas you think of or discover.


The famous 3M corporation is known for its 15% Rule that was started in the 1940s by their CEO Terry McNight. Any employee may spend up to 15% of their week's work time working on a new potential project / product or to improve an existing one. One requirement is that they complete their assignment work in the other 85% of their work week. Though not all employees uniformly do this many do. It has become part of their highly Innovative Company's culture over the past nearly 70 years.

Make it part of your culture, your life, your workplace, your family.

Simply ask yourself throughout the day HOW may / might I do "X" more creatively.

Then as NIKE says so strongly JUST DO IT!

WHY THINK CREATIVELY?

The first of the classic 6 questions I asked was How?


The second is WHY?

Why would any of us on this planet want to, need to, desire to think creatively?

We have problems.
We have challenges.
We have goals.
We have dreams.
We have needs.
We have desires.

Using only old, tried, conventional thinking rarely can get us out of the holes or problems we are in.

Einstein is given credit for saying

"We can not solve our problems using the thinking that created them."

In some cases using someone else's thinking, "Best Practices" or systems may temporarily solve or appear to eliminate or stop a current problem of ours.

Seldom are the results lasting.

Why is this true?

Generally because "OUR" problem was not exactly like the problem that they person/company/profession solved.

Our situations, the variables were different. We didn't have the same resources, same clients, same real challenges, they typically only looked the same.

We need ideas. Hundreds to thousands to perhaps millions to solve the many problems we need or have to solve in our lives let alone around the globe.

Set a goal each day to spend 10 minutes thinking creatively about each challenge you have. Give yourself the benefit of those 10 minutes before you do what you would normally do.

Make it a habit daily!

Soon you will see changes happen.

Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

HOW TO THINK CREATIVELY?

News writers, thinkers, problem solvers all use the classic 6 questions:

WHO?
WHAT?
WHEN?
WHERE?
WHY?
HOW?

Do you?

Let's start with HOW? in this message.

HOW are you creatively thinking in your personal and work life?

How are you using creativity or your creativeness, your creative thinking traits in your life?

How are you supporting, promoting, recognizing/rewarding, encouraging/educating, applying, developing your creative thinking and your growing thinking skills and traits?

How are you supporting, promoting, recognizing/rewarding, encouraging/educating, applying, developing creative thinking and the growing thinking skills and traits in other people around you at work or at home?

My hope is that these annoying questions, perhaps personally affronting or challenging questions spark at least short lists of ways you are doing these things.

How will you today?

How will you tomorrow?

How will you next week, month, year?

Conscious efforts will increase, strengthen, broaden and enhance your existing creative thinking traits, skills and the tools you learn.

Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

Karaoke Thinking


Singing Karaoke in a bar or in a friend's basement or rec room can be fun. But are you only using Karaoke Thinking at work or in your life or classroom?



Today while listening to NPR I heard two interviews with authors of the following books:

Karaoke Captialism
Karaoke Faczism

Listening to the two authors sparked the term:


KARAOKE THINKING

For me this is a term for the type of thinking I have seen so much during the almost 50 years I have been working since I began doing freelance work when I was almost 16.

To me it means

Using someone else's thinking
using someone else's script, word for word
using someone else's lyrics even if you can't speak their language

copying
immitating
using formulas with no knowledge of why they really work
using someone else's benchmarks
using someone else's BEST PRACTICES
using someone else's answers to their problems to solve your problems

not thinking new
not thinking for yourself
simply NOT THINKING AT ALL

just doing
repeating
copying
playing
pretending to be someone you are not
without practice, talent, developed skills or experience.

Today around the world individuals, teams, families departments, entire corporations and entire populations need to be thinking.

They need to be challenging why things are working as they thought or assumed that they were 6 months, 12 months, a couple years ago.

We need to be creatively thinking more so now than we have been in years.

300,000,000 plus people in the US. That is a tremendous amount of thinking power.

Are you creatively thinking today?

Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

Develop Your Creativity and the Creativity of Everyone Who Works with You



Read books and share what you are learning from the.

1 a week
1 a month
1 a quarter

Here is a list to choose from as a start in your Creativity Skill Development Plan

Arden, Paul WHATEVER YOU THINK KNIHT EHT .ETISOPPO
Barez-Brown, Chris HOW TO HAVE KICK-ASS IDEAS
Byttebier, Igor & Vullings, Ramon CREATIVITY TODAY
Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly & Richards, Ruth Everyday Creativity and New Views of Human Nature: Psychological, Social, and Spiritual Perspectives by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and Ruth Richards (Hardcover - Jun 15, 2007)
DuPont Employees ARE WE CREATIVE YET?
Eastaway OUT OF THE BOX 101 Ideas fro Thinking Creatively
Gelb, Michael INNOVATED LIKE EDISON
Gelb, Michael THINK LIKE DA VINCI
Girsch, Maria & Girsch, Charlie FANNING THE CREATIVE SPIRIT-Two Toy Inventors Simplify Creativity
Harrison, Sam ZING!
Harrison, Sam IDEASPOTTING
Hurson, Tim THINK BETTER
Krause, Jim IDEA INDEX
Krause, Jim CREATIVE SPARKS
Littman & Kelley The Art of Innovation: Lessons in Creativity from IDEO, America's Leading Design Firm by Jonathan Littman and Tom Kelley
MacKensie, Gordon ORBITING THE GIANT HAIRBALL
Maisel, Eric Creativity for Life: Practical Advice on the Artist's Personality, and Career from America's Foremost Creativity Coach by Eric Maisel (Paperback - Mar 8, 2007)
Mallon, Brenda A YEAR OF CREATIVITY
Michaelides, Dimis THE ART OF INNOVATION Integrating Creativity in Organizations By Dimis Michaelides
Mumaw & Oldfield Caffeine for the Creative Mind: 250 Exercises to Wake Up Your Brain by Stefan Mumaw and Wendy Lee Oldfield (Paperback - Oct 2, 2006)
Naisbitt, John MIND SET!
Pek & McGlade STIMULATED 2008 Greenleaf Book Group Press
Ray, Michael & Myers, Rochelle Creativity in Business by Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers (Paperback - Dec 24, 1988)
Renzel, Rick Inspiring Creativity: An Anthology of Powerful Insights and Practical Ideas to Guide You to Successful Creating by Rick Benzel (Paperback - April 15, 2005)
Robinson, Ken OUT OF OUR MINDS
Tharp, Twyla The Creative Habit: Learn It and Use It for Life by Twyla Tharp (Paperback - Dec 27, 2005)
Wood, Monica THE POCKET MUSE

ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGES KEEP CREATIVITY ALIVE

Lists of traits of highly creative people mostly all contain

fluent
flexible
elaborative
original

school systems, cultures, families, religions, groups, perhaps systems in general tend to reduce the need for being

fluent
flexible
elaborative
original

so when we are born we are born with many capacities that support and cause us to be creative by nature

yet then we grow up and are educated not to be

fluent
flexible
elaborative
original

for those of us whose lives involved much change, variety, moving from place to place, town to town, state/province to state/province or country to country

we were exposed to high degrees of difference
we observed people being

fluent
flexible
elaborative
original

for me it was my parents' annual FAMILY VACATION,
only once did my two older brothers go
I went every year for 13 or 14 years and experienced all 48 mainland US states, 4 provinces and one Mexican state.

during the first 6 years after graduating from architectural school I worked in 9 different architectural firms and my own (10th)....and had to learn almost 9 completely systems and sets of working happens and approaches to doing the same work.

In total since I started working part-time as a freelance artist at 16 I have had 47 jobs in 8 professions.......a source of learning many different ways of doing things.

what about for you?

has there been much change in your environments: personal, professional, family?

physical, psychological, visual, social, emotional?

Alan

Working on Webinar about the significance and impact of PLACE upon creativity in our WORKPLACES.

It will be available for access in May.

Alan

Each of these 8 leaders continually worked at developing their strengths while surrounding themselves with others who had the strengths they were missing.

Begin your Development by reading articles about and by leaders you have respect for on a weekly basis.

We all can improve our abilities as PRODUCTIVE LEADERS by focusing on the TRAITS that are needed in our departments: Now and in the Future.

Which of these traits are your strongest now?

1. Commitment
2. Control
3. Consistency
4. Challenge(s)
5. Competence
6. Centered (focused)
7. Confidence
8. Compromise
9. Creativity
10. Caring
11. Communication
12. Credibility

Chose one Cornerstone/Trait per week to work on.

Start by thinking about the Cornerstone/Trait.

By spending 15 to 30 minutes each day thinking about how you might strengthen and use the C/T will begin to help you to concentrate on improving and developing it.


Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

All workplaces need leaders who champion creative thinking in all their employees.

Here are 7 who did just that for many years in their respective organizations:

Alex Osborn - BBDO who created Brainstorming and co-created the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process, the Creative Education Foundation and its annual Creative Problem Solving Institute

Charlie Clark who ran his own company Yankee Ingenuity and did much of the early research with BRAINSTORMING

Sid & Bea Parnes who championed the CEF, CPSI and many of their colleagues and creativity in general around the world for the past nearly 60 years.

E. Paul Torrance who created his Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking and wrote extensively for over 50 years about the development of creativity and creative thinking in classrooms around the world plus with his wife Pansy Torrance created the global FUTURE PROBLEM SOLVING PROGRAM

Morris I. Stein, "Uncle Moe", researched and authored extensive studies into creativity and creative thinking.

Ruth Noller who co-founded the Buffalo State University, Creative Studies Program, co-leader CPSI and wrote extensive about the use of creative thinking and creative problem solving processes.

Look for the leaders within your organization who will
S.P.R.E.A.D. creative thinking

Support, Promote, Recognize/Reward, Encourage/Educate, Apply and Develop

from your front and back doors to your top floors.

Alan
alan@cre8ng.com
http://www.cre8ng.com

Transformative leadership

Here is a recent article in the Hickory Daily Record BUSINESS section on Sunday, January 25, 2009 by Danny Hearn

There are about six characteristics of a TRANSFORMATIVE LEADER that we would like to … understand and adopt…:

1. The ability to think systematically.
2. The ability to see connections among diverse and disparate factors and ideas
3. The ability to ask appropriate questions.
4. The ability to spot trends and weak signals
5. The ability to understand and utilize a diversity of parallel processes
6. The ability to buiild capacities for transformation in organizations and communities.

The difference between a TRADITIONAL LEADER and a TRANSFORMATIONAL LEADER is that…

TRADITIONAL LEADERS focus on short-term needs and tangible outcomes that usually can be measured in quantified terms.

A TRANSFORMATIVE LEADERS focus on building longer-term “capacities for transformation” to prepare organizations and communities for a society and economy in constant change.

Why is TRANSFORMATIVE LEADERSHIP so important at this time in our history?

We are living in an age of historical transformation, not just a pendulum swing between conservative and liberal thinking.

Unless we develop capacities in our people, organizations and communities to see the world differently and to utilize new concepts, methods and techniques, we will continue to try to improve ideas and methods that are increasingly out of date.

When a society begins to change at an expotential rate (as today), only those leaders who are able to think and act as a higher level of complexity will be able to help prepare institutions and communities for the future.

The success of our economy and society will be based upon how well we see new patterns and develop innovations never before conceived. Imagination will be a key to the idea of continuous innovation.

(Perhaps we now need to) create a new system of values, concepts, capacities, strategies, attitudes and behaviors that will need to be understood and used for community transformation.”

Charlie Clark, long-time CPSI leader and mentor to manyin the Creativity Movement recently passed away at 88: A "Founding Father" in the Creativity Field, Author, President of Yankee Ingenuity Programs

Charles Hutchison Clark,88, passed away on January 21, 2009. Charlie was born in Philadelphia, PA on June 14, 1920, he was the son of Fred and Christine Gassner Clark. He was a world-class educational innovator, author of the classic book, Brainstorming, and past president of Yankee Ingenuity Programs, an organization dedicated to developing creativity and stopping brainpower waste in meetings, conferences and conventions. A creativity pioneer, he originated numerous educational methods to encourage creative thinking in a wide range of businesses, churches, associations, and government.

His book on brainstorming, a proven method to increase the free flow of good, usable ideas, was among the first on the subject. Brainstorming and other techniques that he pioneered such as "SLIP WRITING" and "MATRIX CHARTING" are now used worldwide. Brainstorming was first published in 1958 with a paperback edition in 1989. It has been translated into French, German, Japanese and Korean.

When the American Management Association distributed 107,000 copies of his management briefing brochure in 1980 entitled Idea Management: How to Motivate Creativity and Innovation, organizations throughout the US and seven foreign countries actively sought the benefits of his creativity workshops.

A leader at the Creative Education Foundation's Creative Problem-Solving Institute since its inception in 1954, he was honored with a number of distinctions throughout the years. In 1990, the Foundation bestowed its Distinguished Leader Award for his profound contributions to the creativity movement worldwide as a researcher, author and teacher and in 2003, he was inducted into the first Creative Problem Solving Institute Hall of Fame.

In 1985, The Odyssey of the Mind Organization gave him its Annual Lipper Award for his continuing contributions toward developing creativity in individuals in all disciplines.

Clark participated on numerous creativity panels and served as a contributing editor to the Journal of Creative Behavior, the authoritative professional publication on creativity, creative problem-solving and innovation. He also led many workshops on creativity for groups at Exxon, Shell, Chevron, Goodyear, General Motors, the National Association of Manufacturers and Department of Defense agencies, among others. His work to train Navy personnel in brainstorming techniques was featured in the New York Times and Life magazine in 1956. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1944 to 1946.

A Harvard graduate who earned his MS in Education from the University of Pennsylvania, Clark was also a graduate of the Episcopal Academy in Philadelphia. He served as senior education and training consultant for the BF Goodrich Institute for Personnel Development at Kent State University; was President of Idea Laboratory, Pittsburgh, PA, and Vice President of the Center for Independent Action. While with that Center, he originated an "Idea Corps Plan" to help nonprofit organizations improve their programs and services.

Throughout his career, Clark demonstrated his strong unwavering commitment to the creativity movement by responding to what he declared were "new windows of opportunity as we face ever-increasing global demands for innovative ways to increase homeland security, create more jobs, and discover solutions to our crippling economy and health care system, among other challenges."