Creativity Loves Constraints

How many people do you know would describe themselves as being creative? A lot I find. “I love new ideas, creating new concepts, building new models, etc.” they will tell you. And many of them are highly creative when working with a clean sheet of paper, in “green field” situations or without any limiting constraints. This could be considered as pure creativity. But I think that the really creative people are those that can come up with new ideas, a reconfigured concept or innovative new models in response to constraints in order to solve a problem. This is what I call practical creativity. In other words it is the constraints that trigger the creativity required to overcome them. Cause and effect. Now, ask those same people how good they are at problem solving. I think you might get a very different answer? Creativity seems to evaporate rapidly when confronted with real problems to be solved.

So here is my point: No constraints, no creativity. The good news is that you can activate your creativity on demand by recognising problems, existing constraints or future constraints. Practical creativity is simply an advanced form of problem solving.

The key thing to remember is that creativity loves constraints. It is often times difficult to tap into our full creativity, but it is seldom difficult to find a constraint or three in our daily lives.

May the problems you face become the drivers of your practical creativity.

From Stress to Serendipity: How to create ‘flow’ and keep it

Stress is present everywhere in our lives today. Stress in the workplace is the most dangerous and debilitating because it is often unquestioned or accepted as being “just part of the job.” But stress directly impacts our effectiveness and productivity and therefore our ability to do our job. Excessive stress or negative stress impacts our ability function normally. When we have high levels of negative stress we lose the ability to remain positive, optimistic and we lose the ability to see solutions to our problems. Our creativity shuts down. The first victims of negative stress are: creativity, innovation and a positive, optimistic outlook. And the second victims of negative stress are effectiveness, performance and productivity.

How can you transform negative stress into positive stress?

Well one simple idea is re-framing how we think and how we encourage those around us to think. Here is a simple and powerful series of questions that will create positive stress for you at work and for your team, colleagues and peers. The quality of answers you get depends on the quality of questions you ask and nothing redirects people’s thinking better than a well-phrased question.

5 Killer questions that create positive stress or ‘flow’ in the workplace.

1. What is already working? This question primes the creativity pump, builds energy and gets people involved. It shifts our focus to ‘possibility thinking’ by tapping into enthusiasm, creativity, energy, drive and collaboration leading to an increase our job satisfaction, performance and productivity. Read More