If you are interested in learning more about creativity or wish to share any experiences, please contact Karl Mettke at kmettke@fs.fed.us.

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CREATIVITY FRINGES

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FOREST SERVICE		      EASTERN REGION	              DECEMBER  2006
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CREATIVITY, BELIEVE AND SUCCEED

Creativity should not be a luxury item that gets talked about, but with no resources assigned. Today, organizations need to have greater imagination. Organizations need creative and innovative employees that will help them work on workplace improvements that lead to more efficiency, faster time for service improvements and cost reductions that help them strive and survive. These organizations need creativity more than ever before.

A creative workforce give you the competitive edge, it opens up the door to new opportunities. These are just some of the arguments for more creativity at work. Managers at all levels of the Forest Service need to foster a creative culture. Managers need to model the behavior that fosters a creative culture. They must build trust, inspire new thinking, inspire courage to take risks and take us to new heights. They need to seek the opportunities sparked by innovation. Managers must open the doors for creativity in their organizations now!

Before you implement a creative culture, you must understand what is creativity? 
•	Creative thinking often springs from frustration. Like Einstein we have to give the creative process time to work. Give employees some free time to think. 
•	Creative thinking is original thinking. To be original in your thinking takes time, and you won’t always do original thinking sitting at your computer keyboard. Creative solutions to our workplace problems come to us at odd moments and as unexpected breakthroughs. A break through may come when you are walking, driving in traffic, waking up or about to fall asleep. 
•	You can encourage your employee creativity. Edward De Bono, a world authority on developing creative thinking skills,  believes that anyone can learn to be creative. When you pay attention to your creative flashes, you find fresh, new ways of thinking about workplace problems.
•	It’s possible to kill good ideas by too much evaluation. Instead of finding everything that is bad about an employee idea, list what is good. Let your evaluation come later. 

Managing and innovation did not always fit comfortably together.
That's not surprising. Managers are people who like order. They
like forecasts to come out as planned. In fact, managers are often
judged on how much order they produce. Innovation, on the other
hand, is often a disorderly process. Many times, perhaps most
times, innovation does not turn out as planned. As a result, there
is tension between managers and innovation.

						Lewis Lehro, about the first years at 3M

Suggested Readings:

Business 2.0, “Measuring Minds At Work,” Saheli S.R. Datta, Page 36, November 2006 (http://money.cnn.com/magazines/business2/).

Electronic Business, “10 Crucial Elements Of Building An Innovative Company,” Jim Miller, November 7, 2006 (www.edn.com).

New York Times, “The Silent May Have Something To Say,” Kelley Holland, November 5, 2006 (www.nytimes.com).

MarketingProfs.com, “To Innovate…Break A Rule,” Thomas Ordhal, October 31, 2006 (www.marketingprofs.com).

Training, “Train Your Brain To Fight Old Thinking,” Merrick Rosenberg, October 29, 2006 (www.trainingmag.com).

Thinking For Living, How To Get Better Performance and Results, Thomas H. Davenport, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA  2005

Creativity everywhere is
the best guarantee of
future success.
			
							Nigel Paine

Games People Play

Next time you’re fishing for some fresh ideas, why not try some creativity games?  The “Big Book of Creativity Games,” by Robert Epstein, offers dozens of games to stimulate right-brain thinking. Here are just two:

•	The Magazine Game. Divide a group into two teams:  the Rocking Readers and the Super Subscribers. Give the Rocking Readers three trade journals; give the Super Subscribers three popular magazines. Tell the teams to use the magazines to develop as many new products and services as they can in 15 minutes. The Super Subscribers should outperform the other group. Afterwards lead a discussion, asking questions such as:  Which team had more ideas?  Why?  What effect did the magazines have in creating new ideas?  How could the results of this game be applied to the workplace?

•	The Memory Game. In this game, people can work in teams or individually. Everyone will have 10 minutes to name a new chewing gum. But half the group will be allowed to write down their ideas; the other half must try to remember their ideas. When the time is up, have people write their ideas on the flip chart. Typically, the people who were allowed to record their ideas will have more. Lead a brief discussion about the importance of preserving ideas as they occur. Ask such questions as:  Who presented more ideas?  Why is it important having the right materials when generating new ideas?  Do you have the resources that allow you to preserve ideas as they occur to you?  How can practices be improved to encourage employees to capture new ideas?

Charting Trends

Creativity Techniques

“Creativity can be as deliberate as mathematics,” says creativity maestro Edward de Bono, who touts the power of lateral thinking to trigger new ideas. Rather than sitting around waiting for inspiration, de Bono suggests tackling a hypothetical problem…coming up with five different ways of running a parking lot in 20 minutes. “You can use a very simple technique which seems completely illogical in terms of our normal thinking habits. Take a random word and use it to come up with new ideas. If this word is truly random, then it can be applied to any situation…any word would apply any situation.”  To demonstrate the process, de Bono uses the word “coin” to help generate ideas. “Most obviously, the car park could be coin operated,” he notes, but there are other possibilities:  the round shape of coins inspires the idea of a circular car park in a spiral arrangement; the two faces of the coin suggest two options…long-term and short- term parking; coins are like tokens…perhaps gas stations could give away tokens that could be used to pay for parking in your lot; small coins add up to larger amounts…maybe the parking lot could run on a “points” system that would accrue for an occasional freebie. “These are just a few of the ideas that you can come up with using one random word,” says de Bono. “The point of the exercise is to show that we no longer need to see creativity as a mystical gift, or the outcome of a brainstorming session, or the result of a chance event.”  In fact, it’s creativity on demand.

									Management Issues
									June 19, 2006

Inspiring Innovation

The most innovative organizations understand how to communicate to innovate says Gerald Haman, founding partner of SolutionPeople and adjunct professor of innovation at Northwestern University. “If your organization does not have a shared definition of innovation, it’s very difficult for employees to talk about it.”  Or implement it. Haman has collected hundreds of different definitions of innovation during the past decade. “Many are too complex and lengthy. Some definitions confuse innovation with creativity. The communication confusion makes it difficult for employees to talk about what innovation is and how innovation can help.”  If a vision for innovation is not communicated, it’s difficult for people to be motivated. But a shared vision helps the entire organization innovate. “Having everyone in an organization on the same page is always the key to success with an innovation initiative,” says Haman, whose nickname is “Solutionman.”  After working at Proctor & Gamble and Arthur Anderson, Haman began working with communication professionals to design and integrate messages that inspire innovation. Many organizations can innovate for a short time, he says, but it’s much harder to sustain a culture that continuously innovates. Organizations that continuously innovate need to attract and retain talent who can do six things very well: investigate needs, create ideas, evaluate solutions, activate plans, celebrate results and finally, replicate success.

									Innovation Tools
									September 21, 2006

Innovation Is Hard

In his Blog, Dave Pollard says that unfortunately, much of the advice that passes for innovation consulting is mostly wishful thinking. The first obstacle is that most entrepreneurs aren’t really interested in being innovative. “Real innovation is risky, and they’re very risk averse…even more so, in my experience, than corporate executives.”  Entrepreneurs tend to latch onto superficial quick fixes for problems and don’t take the time for study and research that’s required for real problem-solving. “In short, they’re scaled-down versions of corporate managers, who are probably the least innovative people on the face of the Earth.”  Meanwhile, customers tend to be almost as change-resistant as managers. They want sexy, cosmetic improvements, not true innovations, because true innovations cost money and probably require learning how to use them. “Half of all product returns are due not to product defects but because the customer couldn’t figure out how to use the product, and gave up.”  Finally, those who truly need an innovative solution can’t afford it. Intractable problems like poverty, disease, global warming and environment disasters, not to mention our dysfunctional health and education systems, have no constituency capable of supporting the work needed to develop innovative answers. Pollard notes, it’s time for innovation enthusiasts, consultants and pundits to get real and acknowledge that our culture, and the educational, political and economic systems that support it, are stacked against true innovation.

									David Pollard Blog
									September 12, 2006

Some thoughts from a few Dreamers…….

Every Creativity Fringes re-inspires me to keep on working. They give me direction, a lift, encouragement, and enlightenment. Thank you for paving the road for many more like me and for coming into my office at this late hour to inspire me. 

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I want to thank you for all your newsletters and let you know that this one helped me so much. I've been recently having some success with at work, and also instantly feeling an increase in the amount of criticism I've been getting for suggesting some new ideas. After reading your ideas about protecting my ideas I feel a lot stronger. Thanks again!

Web Bites

Michael Michalko is one of the foremost experts on creativity and has just published a second edition of his best selling book, “Thinkertoys”    He has posted numerous articles on creativity on his website www.creativethinking.net.

If you are interested in learning more about creativity or wish to share any experiences, please contact Karl Mettke at kmettke@fs.fed.us.

Back issues of Creativity Fringes are posted at the Federal Consulting Group (http://www.fcg.gov/creativity_fringes.shtml).

					Thank You For Taking Time To Be Creative…..