Most people view Steve Jobs as a creative genius. And history may well just judge that to be the case. But what if you were to discover that Bill Gates is also a creative genius—and perhaps even more so than Steve Jobs! Now that would be controversial. That would be uncomfortable. That would go against the accepted orthodoxy.
But not if you look at it with a Creator Mindset.
Deeply embroiled in a lengthy lawsuit over the look and feel of the operating system, Apple and Microsoft were hitting dead end after dead end. And it turns out that Apple at the time was in dire straits. They needed a cash injection. And they needed it now.
So out of the mire emerges one of the tech sector’s most unlikely heroes of Apple. No, it wasn’t Steve Jobs. It was Bill Gates. Gates gave Jobs a loan to keep Apple in business. In the middle of a bitter lawsuit no less! Can you imagine?
Gates figured that keeping Apple in business was good for his business. And that competition made his brand better. Effective leadership relies on sound business acumen. But what if that acumen has forever been changed? What if trusted management principles and best practices are no longer relevant?
Nowhere in any manual of proper and accepted business practices does creativity like this occur. Nowhere does the analytical mind provide this type of thinking. This is the type of thinking that can only emerge from a very special place.
And that place is creativity.
How to Implement Creativity at Work
Now more than ever, looking at your career or business creatively will help you compete in this tumultuous world of COVID-19 and civil strife. Here are three tips to help you implement creativity at work or in your business, immediately:
1. Re-Learn Creativity
If you have ever been up late the night before a big meeting or conference or client call unable to sleep, you understand the big chess game in the sky. It’s that game you and I and everyone else plays when we try to figure out what we are gonna say, what the other person is gonna say, what we will do, and so on and on.
But what if I were to tell you that this game is unnecessary? It is a game that is played because we are not listening to our creative voice. The one that has been with us since childhood.
As children we are all born creative. We are all born with an innate ability to solve problems creatively before even language skills emerge. Yet somewhere along the way, we lose our way. It turns out that creativity can not only be taught and learned; it can be re-learned.
So, we lie awake in bed at night trying to figure all this out. If we were just in touch with our inner creativity, we would already know what we needed to do. We would have listened to the hints dropped along the way to help us solve problems in a way that analytical thinking cannot.
2. Listen to Hints
This isn’t about how to align your inner chakras, or ring the three tones of Solomon. If you are into those things, then fine. That’s great. But if you’re a business leader, serial entrepreneur, or driven professional and need some concrete ideas on how to be more creative, then you need to start listening.
Listen to what customers are staying. Listen to what your staff is saying. And not just the senior staff. Listen to what the market is telling you. And perhaps most important, listen to your gut. In there, you will find amazing creative potential in hints on what you should be doing. Your gut is really hints of your childhood creativity yearning to get out.
Yet so many of us shut down that voice—the voice of the crazy creative idea—and feel it gives us no value. But it’s that crazy idea bubbling up right now as you read these very words. It can be a new warehousing technique. A new distribution model you want to apply. A crazy idea to improve sales. We are so ingrained with a love affair of analytics that we cannot accept and listen to feedback from the creative side of our minds. The time to stop that is now.
3. Write down a crazy idea. Right. This. Second.
Instead of burying that crazy idea you have right now, go get a piece of paper. Or a notepad or even a Post-It. And a pen. Or pencil.
Ready? Now, write down the crazy idea that you would never share with anyone because you feel it might be “too out there” or “too crazy or different or wild.” Write it down right now, then look at what you have written. Study the shapes of the letters. Did you write it down in haste? Do the letters look thought out and organized?
What creative ideas are you coming up with by just looking at what you have written down? Is it possible that an idea emerges that is just so far out there—just so radical—that it may work? Like the loan Microsoft gave Apple to keep them afloat? Never underestimate the potential of creativity that we all carry around inside of us trying to get out.
This by no means captures all of what you need to do to be more creative. But these three ideas should give you a great start in your journey to embrace the Creator Mindset in your business or career. Remember, creativity is about doing. And these tools will help spark that first seed of creativity on your way to embracing creativity in all you do.
Guest Author Nir Bashan is the founder and CEO of The Creator Mindset LLC, where he teaches business leaders how to harness the power of creativity to improve profitability, increase sales, and make work more meaningful. His clients include AT&T, Microsoft, Ace Hardware, NFL Network, EA Sports, and JetBlue. He received a Clio Award and an Emmy nomination for his creative work on albums, movies, and advertisements, and was one of the youngest professors ever selected to teach graduate courses at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. He lives in Orlando, Florida.
Learn more about his new book, The Creator Mindset: 92 Tools to Unlock the Secrets to Innovation, Growth, and Sustainability (McGraw-Hill; August 2020), at https://www.nirbashan.com/the-creator-mindset. Or visit https://www.amazon.com/dp/1260460010.
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