Ammo for the Uncreative

By Peter Lloyd

Even if you're among the most uncreative, you have the tools to stifle innovation, invention, and new ideas that constantly threaten your comfort and security.

I'm not talking about mealy-mouthed nitpicking. No, sir. Most creative people are clever enough to deal with that. When a really hot idea is about to upset your apple cart, you need strong ammunition. And I'm going to give it to you.

1. What's wrong with the old way? As soon as you're handed a new idea, toss that hot potato right back in their laps. This technique will those clever creative whippersnappers scurrying. And nothing is more satifying to an uncreative bully than the sound of creatives whimpering like a bunch of ninnies.

2. Has this idea been killed before? There's no such thing as a new idea. Find out how the innovation you've just been presented was shot down in the past, take aim, and fire! The most powerful weapon of the uncreative is an old objection.

3. Appeal to common sense. Especially if you have a sympathetic audience. Your mediocre minions will cheer, vice presidents will applaud, and your fellow uncreatives will kiss your feet.

4. Ask who it will hurt? Don't ever take a creative idea sitting down. Rally the opposition. The change-o-phobic are everywhere! Wake up everyone who stands to lose. Stir up those sticks-in-the-mud. Then watch those creative dogs lick their wounds.

5. Rip their clothes off. Creative people always have something up their sleeves. (That's why they wear baggy clothes.) Find those anticipated award, raises, promotions, and expose their creative need for approval. "You're just out for awards. We want sales!" gets them every time.

Of course, if you can, you want to nip creative initiative in the bud, before it bites you in the butt. So be proactive. Shower creatives with phony promotions. Constant lip service works, too. Don't forget to regulate. Standardize. And above all, measure, measure, measure! What creative person can argue with numbers?

A word of warning. Be careful. You can stifle creativity, but you can't kill it. No matter how hard you try.

Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest business problems.

Why So Stupid

Why So Stupid?

We have excelled with mathematics but have done nothing with our ordinary thinking for 2,400 years.

Our achievements in science and technology mean that we are proud and complacent about the rectitude of our thinking. So we have made very little progress in human affairs.

The thought model we use most of the time is to analyse a situation, identify a standard element, then come up with a standard answer.

When Greek thinking came into Europe, at the time of the Renaissance (through the Arabs in Spain), the universities and schools were run by the church. They had no use for perceptual thought because the starting points were not matters of human perception but fixed dogmas. There was no use for creative thinking in religion and they did not need design thinking.

You can analyse the past but the future has to be designed

What they did need, however, was thinking that was concerned with truth, logic and argument. They needed this to prove heretics wrong. Therefore this kind of thinking became the standard software for Western thinking.

You can analyse the past but the future has to be designed. While there are people who do provide the 'design' element in society, design has never become as important or as central as analysis. Design is a matter of combining known ingredients to produce value.

In one sense, creativity is always involved in design. There is something new which delivers value. That is the essence of creativity. But the design can be logical at the same time.

For instance, applying current computer technology to home shopping might be a new design, but the combination of the elements may be completely logical. Architecture design is usually perfectly logical despite the overall idea being new. In some ways design is opposed to routine.

Creativity might feature in providing a new objective or overall concept. You might reach the objective in a logical way. Alternatively, the overall concept or objective might be logical, but require some new thinking and creativity to be achieved.

There isn't much point in separating logical and creative approaches. Logic and creativity are both parts of thinking and you need to exercise both. Also, in hindsight, any valuable creative idea will seem logical - that is the nature of asymmetric patterning systems. But because something is logical in hindsight, it doesn't mean that the idea could have been reached by logic to begin with.

There is always some risk with design. If a design is new, you can't be certain that it will work out and deliver the desired value. Judgment and routine behaviour is low risk so it is the preferred method of thought.

That's not a problem so long as the importance of design is acknowledged. It is even more important to recognise the situations where design is demanded because the routine approaches have failed.

The basic difference between judgment and design must be recognised, as must the importance of design. Design skill and creativity need to be developed, then the human race can increase the scope and power of its thinking.

Edward De Bono