Why be creative? I can think of two important reasons. The first is change. When new information comes into existence and circumstances change, it's no longer possible to solve today's problems with yesterday's solutions.

A se cond reason for generating new ideas is that it's a lot of fun. As a matter of fact, I like to think of creative thinking as the "sex of our mental lives."

The creative person wants to be a know-it-all. He wants to know about all kinds of things: ancient history, nineterenth century mathematics, current manufacturing techniques, flower arranging, and hog futures. Because he never knows when these ideas might come together to form a new idea... he has faith it will happen.

Nonetheless, knowledge alone won't make a person creative. The real key to being creative lies in what you do with your knowledge. You use crazy, foolish, and impractical ideas as stepping stones to practical new ideas. Discovery consists of looking at the same thing as everyone else and thinking something different.

There are ten mental locks in particular which I have found to be especially hazardous to our thinking.

1) The right answer.

2) That's not logical.

3) Follow the rules.

4) Be practical.

5) Avoid ambiguity.

6) To err is wrong.

7) Play is frivolous.

8) That's not my area.

9) Don't be foolish.

10) I'm not creative.

We need an occasional whack on the side of the head to shake us out of routine patterns. They force you at least for the moment to think something different. Sometimes you'll get whacked by a problem or failure; sometimes it'll be the result of a joke or a paradox; and sometimes it will be a surprise or an unexpected situation that whacks you.

Mental locks can be opened in one of two ways. The first technique is to become aware of them, and then to temporarily forget them when you are trying to generate new ideas. If that doesn't work, maybe you need a "whack on the side of the head."

The right answer

Much of our educational system is geared toward teaching people the one right answer. By the time the average person finishes college, he or she will have taken over 2600 tests, quizzes, and exams. Thus, the "right answer" approach becomes deeply ingrained in our thinking. The difficulty is that most of life doesn't present itself in this way. Life is ambiguous; there are many right answers all depending on what you are looking for. But if you think there is only one right answer, then you will stop looking as soon as you find one.

Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.

For example, how many times have you heard someone say, "What is the answer?" or "What is the meaning of this?" or "What is the result?" These people are looking for the answer, and the meaning, and the result. If you train yourself to ask "What are the answers?" and "What are the meanings?" and "What are the results?", you will find that people will think a little more deeply and offer more than one idea.

Tip #1: A good way to be more creative is to look for the second right answer. There are many ways to pursue these answers, but the important thing is to do it.

Tip #2: The answers you get depend on the questions you ask. Play with your wording to get different answers. One technique is to sollicit plural answers. Another is to ask questions that whack people's thinking.

That's not logical.

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who divide everything into two groups, and those who don't.

Soft thinking is metaphorical, approximate, diffuse, humorous, playful, and capable of dealing with contradiction. Soft thinking tries to find similarities and connections among things.

Hard thinking on the other hand, tends to be more logical, precise, exact, specific and consistent. Hard thinking focuses on the differences.

Where do you use soft and hard thinking? To answer this question we should turn to the creative process. There are two main phases in the development of new ideas: a germinal one and a practical one.

In the germinal phase, ideas are generated and manipulated; in the practical phase, they are evaluated and executed. To use a biological metaphor, the germinal phase sprouts the new ideas and the practical phase hervests them.

Both types of thinking play an important role in the creative process, but usually during different phases. Soft thinking is quite effective in the germinal phase when you are searching for new ideas, thinking globally, and manipulating problems. Hard thinking, on the other hand, is best used in the practical phase when you are evaluating ideas, narrowing in on practical solutions, running risk-analyses, and preparing to carry the idea into action.

Soft thinking in the practical phase can prevent the execution of an idea; here firmness and directness are preferable to ambiguity and dreams. Conversely, hard thinking in the germinal phase can limit the thinking process. Logic and analysis are important tools, but an over-reliance on them especially early in the creative process can prematurely narrow your thinking.

Most of life is ambiguous; inconsistency and contradiction are the hallmarks of human existence. As a result, the number of things that can be thought about in a logical manner is small, and an overemphasis on the logical method can inhibit the exploring mind.

Metaphors are quite effective at making complex ideas easier to understand. They can be good tools to use for explaining ideas to people outside your specialty.

Tip#3: For more and better ideas, I prescribe a good dose of soft thinking in the germinal phase, and a hearty helping of hard thinking in the practical phase.

Tip #4: The metaphor is an excellent tool to help you "think something different." As Ortega Gasset put it, "The metaphor is probably the most fertile power possessed by man," Think of yourself as a poet, and look for similarities around you. If you have a problem, try making a metaphor for it. That should help to give you a fresh slant on it.

Tip #5: Go on metaphor hunts. Pay attention to the metaphors people use to describe what they're doing.

Tip #6: Pay attention to the metaphor you use in your own thinking. As glorious a tool as metaphors are, they can imprison your thinking if you're not aware how much they're guiding your thoughts.

Follow the rules

Almost every advance in art, science, technology, business, marketing, cooking, medecine, agriculture, and design has occured when someone challenged the rules and tried another approach.

"Every rule here can be broken except this one."

Tip#7: Play the revolutionary and challenge the rules especially the ones you use to govern your day-to-day activities.

Tip #8: Remember that playing the revolutionary also has its dangers. One man told me that whenever he gets bored with routine, he likes to throw a "perturbation" into it to make it interesting.

Tip #9: Periodically inspect your ideas to see if they are contributing to your thinking effectiveness. Ask yourself, "Why did this program, project, concept, or idea come to be?" And then follow the question with, "Do these reasons still exist?" If the answer is no, eliminate the idea.

Tip #10: Avoid falling in love with ideas. I got this advice several years ago from my printer. He said, "Don't fall in love with a particular type style, because if you do, you'll want to use it everywhere even in places where it's inappropriate. I think one of life's great thrills is falling out of love with a previously cherished idea. When that happens, you're free to look for new ones.

Tip #11: Have rule-inspecting and rule-discarding sessions within your organization. You may even find some motivational side benefits in this activity finding and eliminating outmoded rules can be a lot of fun.

Be practical

Asking "what if" is an easy way to get your imagination going. To do it you simply ask "what if?" and then finish the question with some contrary to fact condition, idea or situation. It allows you to suspend a few rules and assumptions, and get into a germinal frame of mind. It is not only a lot of fun; it also gives you the freedom to think something different. The real key to asking what if is allowing yourself to probe the possible, the impossible, and even the impractical for ideas. After all, you're only limited by your imagination; in the germinal phase, anything goes. Try playing the magician (a magician is a person specializing in the fantasy what if).

Stepping stones are simply provocative ideas which stimulate us to think about other ideas. Stepping stones may be impractical or improbable, but their value consists not in how practical they are, but in where they lead your thinking. Remember, when you are in the germinal phase, real world constraints don't apply. It often happens that an impractical idea leads to a practical, creative one.

The point is this: you don't execute stepping stones, you launch your thinking from them. Indeed there are some creative ideas which can only be reached through a stepping stone or two.

You may have to ask many what if questions and follow out many stepping stones before reaching a practical creative idea.

The amount a person uses his imagination is inversely proportional to the amount of punishment he will receive for using it.

Tip #12: Each of you has an "artist" and a "judge" within you. The open minded attitude of the artist typifies the kind of thinking you use in the germinal phase when you're generating ideas. The evaluative outlook of the judge represents the kind of thinking you use in the practical phase when preparing ideas for execution. I recommend that you avoid bringing in your judge before your artist has had a chance to do his job. Premature evaluation can prevent conception.

Tip #13: Be a magician: ask "what if" questions and use the provocative answers you find as stepping stones to new ideas.

Tip #14: Cultivate your imagination. Set aside time every day to ask yourself what if questions. Although the likelihood that any given "what if" question will lead to a practical idea isn't high, the more often you practice this activity, the more productive you'll become.

Tip #15: Encourage what-iffing in others. Many of my clients have established a "what-if question of the week" within their departments as a way of looking for potential problems and opportunities.

For more effective thinking, rotate your ideas every 10000 thoughts. Creativity involves not only generating new ideas, but escaping from obsolete ones as well.

One of the exercises participants in my workshops do is make metaphors for their companies.

There are two kinds of truth, small truth and great truth. You can recognize a small truth because its opposie is a falsehood. The opposite of a great truth is another truth. (Niels Bohr).

For those of you who consider life to be a joke, consider the punch line.

When everyone else zigs, zag.

Avoid ambiguity

This is a good rule to follow for most practical situations such as giving directions, documenting programs, or drawing up contracts. On these occasions, it's important to be clear, precise, and specific in order to get your message accross.

There are instances, however, when ambiguity can be a powerful stimulant to your imagination. When you're in the germinal phase of the creative process, a little ambiguity can whack you into asking such questions as:

What's going on?

What does this mean?

How else can it be interpreted?

These are special questions, the kind you ask when you're looking for new ideas. So, one way to find the second right answer is to look at things ambiguously. For example, what is half of eight? One answer is 4. But if you assume the question is ambiguous, you'll look for other answers such as 0, 3, E, M and "eig," all depending on how you define "half."

Sources of ambiguity

Humor. Most humorists show you something you usually think of in one way and then present you with another possible interpretation. To understand most jokes, you have to see the ambiguity of the situation presented. What makes us laugh? In the telling of a joke, our thinking is led in one direction. When the punch line comes, the ambiguity of the situation is perceived, and an equally viable, but humorous interpretation is revealed.

Try using humor to put yourself in a creative state of mind. One way I have found to be effective is to listen to about an hour's worth of comedy records. Another way is to settle down in a couch with a few cartoon books. After doing either activity, I'm in a good frame of mind to think something different.

The very act of "seeing a paradox" is at the crux of creative thinking the ability to entertain two different (and often contradictory) notions at the same time.

Be spontaneous!

The little I know I owe to my ignorance.

Mr. Smith was disappointed to find no suggestion box in the clubhouse because he would like to put a suggestion in it about having one.

Only the ephemeral is of lasting value (Ionesco).

A bank will lend you money only if you prove that you don't need it.

Art is a lie that makes us realize the truth (Picasso).

Heraclitus

They do not understand how that which differs with itself is in agreement: harmony consists of opposing tension, like that of the lyre and the bow.

The way up and the way down are one and the same.

It is not good for men to achieve all they wish.

Man is most nearly himself when he achieves the seriousness of a child at play.

A man's character is his destiny.

Lovers of wisdom must be inquirers into very many things indeed.

I suggest that you seek out your own source of ambiguity and cultivate it as a valuable resource. You can improve your idea-having average with such tools.

Tip#16: Take advantage of the ambiguity in the world. Look at something and think about what else it might be.

Tip #17: If you're giving someone a problem that has the potential of being solved in a creative way, then you might try at least initially posing it in an ambiguous fashion so as to not restrict their imagination.

Tip#18: Cultivate your own personal sources of ambiguity. These could be people, books, things, whatever that force you to look for more than one meaning in order to understand what's going on.

Tip #19: Try using humor to put you or your group in a creative state of mind.

Tip #20: Write an ambiguous job description for yourself. What are 3 different ways it could be interpreted?.

To err is wrong

If you're more concerned with producing right answers than generating original ideas, you'll probably make uncritical use of the rules, formulae, and procedures used to obtain these right answers. By doing this, you'll by-pass the germinal phase of the creative process, and thus spend little time testing assumptions, challenging the rules, asking what if questions, or just playing around with the problem. All of these techniques will produce some incorrect answers, but in the germinal phase errors are viewed as a necessary by-product of creative thinking.

"If you are going to be original, you are going to be wrong a lot."

"We're innovators. We're doing things nobody has ever done before. Therefore, we are going to be making mistakes. My advice to you: make your mistakes, but make them in a hurry."

"The way to succeed is to double your failure rate." (Thomas J. Watson, founder of IBM).

Tip #21: If you make an error, use it as a stepping stone to a new idea you might not have otherwise discovered.

Tip #22: Differentiate between errors of "commission" and those of "omission." The latter can be more costly than the former. If you're not making many errors, you might ask yourself, "How many opportunities am I missiong by not being more aggressive?"

Tip #23: Strenghten your "risk muscle." Everyone has one, but you have to exercise it or else it will atrophy. Make it a point to take at least one risk every twenty-four hours.

Tip #24: Remember these two benefits of failure. First, if you do fail, you learn what doesn't work; and second, the failure gives you an opportunity to try a new approach.

Play is frivolous

Exercise: During what kinds of activities and situations do you get your ideas? I've asked this question to thousand of people. The answers I received can be grouped into two categories.

The first is "necessity":

When I'm faced with a problem.

When things break down, and I have to fix them.

When there's a need to be filled.

When the deadline is near... that's the ultimate inspiration.

These responses bear out the old adage "necessity is the mother of invention." But interestingly enough, an equal if not greater number of people get their ideas in just the opposite situation, and they respond along these lines:

When I'm just playing around.

When I'm doing an unrelated activity.

When I'm toying with the problem.

When I'm not taking myself too seriously.

After my second beer.

From this I conclude that necessity may be the mother of invention, but play is certainly the father.

When we win, we win. When we lose, we learn.

One reason children are so good at play is that they don't know all of the "supposed to's."

One of play's product is fun one of the most powerful motivators around. I've noticed that a fun working environment is much more productive than a routine environment. People who enjoy their work will come up with more ideas. The fun is contagious, and everybody works harder to get a piece of that fun.

Tip #25: The next time you have a problem, play with it.

Tip #26: If you don't have a problem, take the time to play anyway. You may find some new ideas.

Tip #27: Make your work place a fun place to be.

That's not my area

Specialization is a fact of life. In order to function in the world, you have to narrow your focus and limit your field of view. When you're trying to generate new ideas, however, such information-handling attitudes can limit you.

"Make it a habit to keep on the lookout for novel and interesting ideas that others have used successfully. Your idea has to be original only in its adaptation to the problem you are working on." (Thomas Edison).

Recognizing the basic idea of a situation and applying it to another is an important part of creative thinking.

I encourage you to be a hunter and search for ideas outside your area.

Exercise: Where do you hunt for ideas? What people, places, activities, and situations do you use to get new ideas?

Tip #28: Develop the hunter's attitude, the outlook that wherever you go, there are ideas waiting to be discovered.

Tip #29: Don't get so busy that you lose the free time necessary for idea-hunting. Schedule hunting time into your day and week. Little side excursions can lead to new hunting grounds.

Tip #30: Develop different kinds of hunting grounds. The wider and more diversified your knowledge, the more places you will have to draw from.

Tip #31: Look for analogous situations. Often problems similar to yours have been solved in other areas.

Tip #32: When you "capture" an idea, be sure to write it down.

Don't be foolish

New ideas are not born in a conforming environment.

The king's advisers were often yes-men they told the king whatever he wanted to hear. The king knew that this wasn't a good way to make decisions. Therefore, it was the fool's job to parody any proposal under discussion. The fool's jokes whacked the king's thinking and forced him to examine his assumption.

As Einstein said: A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?

Tip #33: Occasionally, let your "stupid monitor" down, play the fool, and see what crazy ideas you can come up with. Who knows, there may even be a job for you at the nearest royal domain.

Tip #34: Recognize when you or others are conforming or putting down the fool. Otherwise, you may be setting up a "groupthink" situation.

Tip #35: May the farce be with you.

I'm not creative

"What concerns me is not the way things are, but rather the way people think things are." (Epictetus).

The creative people think they are creative and the less creative people do not think they are. Creative people pay attention to their small ideas. Even though they don't know where one of these will lead them, they know that a small idea could lead to a big breakthrough, and they believe that they are capable of making it happen.

If you want to be more creative, believe in the worth of your ideas, and have the persistence to continue building on them. With this attitude, you'll take a few more risks, and break the rules occasionally. You'll look for more than one right answer, hunt for ideas outside your area, tolerate ambiguity, look foolish every now and then, play a little bit, engage in "what-if" and other soft thinking approaches, and be motivated to go beyond the status quo. And finally, you will be able to whack yourself into doing all of these things.

The world of thought and action overlap. What you think has a way of becoming true.

Tip #36: Whack yourself into trying new things and building on what you find especialy the small ideas. The creative person has the self-faith that these ideas will lead somewhere.

Questions

What are some ideas and practices in your organization that have been successful in the past but which are limiting your productivity and growth now? How can you get rid of them?

What if the job you have now ceased to exist tomorrow? What would you do? What are three alternatives?

Think of three "what if" questions that pertain to a situation you are currently working on. Use these to stimulate ideas and expand your perspective into the possible.

Think of one of your company's main products or services. What strange or zany uses can you think of for this product? How would you market this product in this new application?

Peter Drucker was once asked by a manager whet skills he should learn in order to be a better manager. "Learn how to play the violin," Drucker told the man. What outside activity might you cultivate to make you more creative?

Make a metaphor for a problem or project you are currently working on.

Propose to your boss that you spend one or two days in the next month doing some unusual operation or activity outside your specialty. What would it be? What would make it worthwile from his point of view i.e. how would you sell him on the idea?

What are the three biggest errors or failures you've had in the past three years? What were their beneficial consequences for you?

List five things you can do to exercise your "risk muscle." What is the most you can lose by taking these risks? What will you gain?

Suppose you have been sent to an oracle on behalf of your organization. You have been given two prophecies. The first pertains to the present, the second to the future. How would you interpret them?

a) Breakthrough. One must resolutely make the matter known at the court of the king. It must be announced truthfully. Danger. It is necessary to notify one's own city. It does not further to resort to arms. It furthers one to undertake something.

b) Enthusiasm. It furthers one to install helpers and to set armies marching.

How do you whack your thinking?

What are you going to be doing one year from today? What creative things will you have accomplished? What goals will you have reached? What factors will have made it difficult to reach these goals?

Moral: If you have an idea, get out of your stuffed chair and put it into action. After all, someone else may have the idea first, and if he does...