Creating the Innovative You

SUCCESS ON YOUR OWN TERMS NEWSLETTER Volume #59, December 2009

Creating the Innovative You

Several coincidences led me to focus this newsletter on innovation and creativity. My daughter started working for Apple in November, and the November issue of Fortune magazine carried a picture of Steve Jobs on the cover, naming him the “CEO of the Decade” and claiming he transformed American business. I was asked to be on a panel at the Massachusetts Women Conference in Boston this month and speak about innovation and creativity. The December issue of Harvard Business Review focuses on innovation and creative thinking, and the cover story of December’s Psychology Today is — you guessed it — creativity.

So let’s start with what we can learn about innovation from Steve Jobs. According to Adam Lashinsky’s Fortune article, Jobs definitely thinks differently. He’s both visionary and grounded in operational metrics. Passionate and cool. A perfectionistic micromanager and a big-picture guy. He takes risks but has a sense of timing. He’s a careful and practiced communicator who tightly controls his message but gives the appearance of being casual. He exemplifies what I call the “paradoxical balance” required of an effective leader. His ability to lead the way in changing the computer, music, movie, and telephone industries also comes from his enormous drive, curiosity and imagination. Plus, he has that intangible quality of charisma.

You, however, don’t need to be charismatic to be innovative and creative. But the rest of Jobs’ characteristics (except for being a perfectionistic micromanager) are attributes that you should practice building to enhance your innovative abilities. If you are too cautious, too tactical, or too conformist, you’re stymieing your creativity. So, broaden your perspective. Examine old problems from a new perspective. Take a risk and be willing to experiment and fail.

When I think about what you might learn from my far more humble experiences, I’ll share what I uncovered when I was preparing my remarks about innovation for the Massachusetts Women’s Conference. The panel moderator (Gail McMeeken, author of The 12 Secrets of Highly Successful Women) sent the panelists a series of questions to consider: How were we creative and innovative in our business lives? Where did we get our ideas from and how did we fuel our creativity? How do we foster innovative thinking in ourselves? What squelches creativity in our own leadership?

In thinking through these questions I realized that my creativity gets tapped by being observant about the things that are happening around me and my clients, by reading about a variety of topics, and by sitting quietly in an environment where consciously and unconsciously I make connections. I have become fascinated with brain science in the past several years. It spurs my creativity because it solidifies connections I have been making, grounding my work and giving it greater credibility. It rounds out and adds to my knowledge of psychology and communications and it spices up my work. I test my creative ideas by asking people what they think and listening to what they say — not necessarily doing what they say, but listening to their perspective. I can be a stubborn rebel who sees things differently from the group and who wants to do things my own way. Once I have decided to do something, I move into action and do it. Action is what gets me unstuck. My ability to move into action in a creative way has rescued me from some of the worst experiences in my life. I’m very determined and disciplined once I make a decision. My creativity gets stifled when I’m in a chaotic situation (brain science now explains why that happens). I like to be in an environment that I find visually appealing, free from disruptive stress, and where I have a sense of freedom and control.

Interestingly enough, when I read the Harvard Business Review article, it echoed much of my own experience. The authors of “The Innovator’s DNA” claim there are five skills that make innovators different:

Associating — “successfully connecting seemingly unrelated questions, problems or ideas from different fields”

Questioning — “constantly asking questions that challenge common wisdom and assumptions”

Observing — “scrutinizing common phenomena, especially the behaviors of others much like an anthropologist or social scientist”

Experimenting — “acting like scientists, trying out new ideas by creating prototypes and launching pilots to see what insights emerge”

Networking — “finding and testing ideas through a network of diverse individuals to get radically different perspectives”

As a coach and a follower of brain science, I was also pleased to read that the authors recommended practicing and rehearsing to help people develop not only their creative skills but their confidence in their ability to be innovative and creative. In fact, they really sounded like coaches in recommending that you spend time every day in writing down 10 questions that question the status quo of your company or industry to stimulate your innovative thinking.

And, finally, Carlin Flora’s article “Everyday Creativity” in Psychology Today, stresses that we’re all capable of being creative. Drawing from many experts in the field, she points out that the important thing is to keep an open mind, be curious and believe that solutions to problems exist. She says that if you embrace problems everyday and look at them in a new way, you will heighten your creativity and begin to think more innovatively.