The Creative Touch to Thinking

Paul Morris

CIS144

Accidental or Deliberate?

The Accidental Method

• Effective

BUT

• Slow

• Predictable

• Most don’t know any other way

Are you creative?

• Fortune 500 survey

“100% of CEOs mentioned creativity as one of the primary characteristics they were looking for in hiring employees or promoting managers.”

• Almost 60% of them ranked creativity higher than intelligence!!

Only “Special” People are Creative!!

• False!!!

• We are all born creative

• We are “taught” out of it– Conform– Stay in line– Fit with the program

• A child’s creativity decreases 90% from age five to age eight.

Just Call on the Experts, Right?

• For new ideas?– Creatures of habit– Use ‘tried and true’ solutions

• A better way?– Someone who knows nothing about your

situation or circumstance– They have no way of knowing “The way we do

things around here”– Using their experience and background

How do you start?

• Lunch with someone who knows nothing about your business or problem

• Listen and don’t instantly reject ideas

• Try the Internet– Chat rooms– Discussion boards (familiar and non-familiar)– Compare the results– And free is a very good price!!!

What is Creativity?

The process we use when we come up with a new idea. It can be accidental or deliberate”

But, why do my best ideas coming with I am not thinking about them?

….wake up from a sound sleep, taking a shower, or walking the dog!!

Where do you spendmost of your time?

The Process

• Determine the goal– May be fuzzy, off track or down right wrong– Need a firm, targeted goal before starting

• Crank up the creative thinking– Generate as many new ideas as you can– Expand your 10s into 100s

• Prioritize– We usually do this well

• Plan your course and take some action– Don’t get here to fast…take your time with previous

• Assess your results

Be Logical!?!?!

• Don’t insist on it

• Not while you are in the creative thinking process or brainstorming activities

• Often what we think to be illogical just has another set of rules applying to it

• Save the logic for later

Common Myths

1. We think only a few ‘special’ people possess it

2. You haven’t lost what you have had; it just needs some re-honing

3. It doesn’t have to be some ‘earth shaking’ idea

Paralyzing Power of Precious Perceptions

Think about the word “machine”

• Why the different images?

Questions

• What machine did you work on last?

• What machine did you last see on TV or read about?

• Did you think of a machine ____?

What is the right answer?

• For you or the situation your problem is in?

• Based on this example– Are you surprised at the different

interpretations of volumes of data given a group to analyze?

– Could there be many ‘right’ answers?

• We are all products of our environment and experiences.

Negative Reactions

• Response to your ideas are ‘negative’– Don’t be discouraged– Doesn’t necessarily mean they don’t like the

idea in and of itself– It may just strike them as a negative ‘image’

based on their experiences– Dig deeper to understand their feelings…

Knowledge is your best ally!!

How the mind works

• Remember the Meyer-Briggs Personality Test

• Your mind - a ‘Pattern Recognition System’– Your mind

• Creates Stores Recognizes• Raw data becomes Patterns

• That is where our plans ferment.

• The keySame data different outcome