I have certainly spent time this week on prying into our sensitivities.

One of my interests at the moment is the path to more innovative skills. It is more common to see CEO’s interviewed and express this as a most important component for their business prosperity. These days it might even mean business survival.

How do businesses spot innovative or creative new prospects? What is their criteria for hiring employees with skills and the ability to contribute to their enterprise.

Ideally, the hunt is on for the skilled and altruistic employee-the one who contributes without the motivation for reward but out of the spirit of improving their environment.

This maybe asking a lot, but lets face it, good jobs are scarce and applicants are in abundance.

One interview I linked to this week from a CEO that employs 10,000 people says he always asks personal questions about people’s ambitions and what they like and dislike. He says one of his prime interests is to see if they are team oriented or self interested.

He wants to see if interviewees will answer the questions or hesitate as they put on a spin to create an answer he will think is appropriate as opposed to what they really think.

He reiterates that brain storming these days might be cross disciplinary and include different personalities, races, ethnic groups, and specialties to create different perspectives. He wants authentic contribution not input intended to game the system.

Another article I linked to discussed what jobs may look like in the next ten years and it claimed future collaborations might be online sessions of group think with people we don’t know. Businesses might throw together a diverse group of backgrounds, specialties, and personalities to challenge the status quo.

Both scenarios depict the need for authentic contribution without fear of judgment. How comfortable are we with our own thoughts and feelings? I have mentioned in two previous posts that we need to get in touch with the deepest feelings and even darkest secrets that might inhibit our ability to feel great about ourselves and ability to contribute on the world wide stage.

The process I have followed to cleanse my body through healthy eating and fitness leads to spiritual awakening. I have become appreciative of the human potential to feel great, appreciate nature, and explore our God given right to express ourselves.

If we are called upon to account for our ambitions, our principals, and our perspectives are we afraid of what we think or feel? Are we in touch with who we are and our entitlements? Are we aware that we have every right to be here and express ourselves the same as everyone else?

Developing spirituality and inspiration sources our expressions with more universal energy of appreciation and generosity. Business is certainly looking for the altruistic individuals who want to contribute as an expression of who they are.

Developing the mind set that is parallel to this demand could create personal and financial rewards. In a sense, you develop a path that is ultimately beneficial to your well being and it turns out to be attractive for financial enterprises looking for your type of perspective.

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I have several E Books that explore a path to health, fitness, inspiration, innovative thinking.

The first two are Free Downloads and the third is $4.88.

Getting to Peak Performance

Healthy, Lean and Happy Forever

Life Begins at Inspiration

In this age the need to be right all the time can strangle innovation.  We were raised and schooled on the necessity of being right every time. If you were right 90% of the time, you were probably a straight “A” student.

But “Lateral Thinking” has come of age. It is juxtaposed to logical thinking where all thoughts are rejected if they are not set up as A leads to B leads to C. Or that “that is not the way we do it around here.”  Or “what are you, stupid?”

It is time to have some wrong answers in order to provoke new thinking. Those who can master new ways of creating solutions will be fully employed and prosper where as many of those stuck in old school may be replaced by technology. Technology is faster than humans at going from A to B to C. 

“In lateral thinking, one is not looking for the right answer but for a different arrangement of information which will provoke a different way of looking at the situation” Edward de Bono, Father of Lateral Thinking.

The other very positive process of leaving all options open to group think is to never condemn ideas in the process of looking for new solutions. Even bad ideas could lead to a breakthrough. It might be A to D to J to B.  The logical process might become evident once the best solution is found and it is worked back to the original requirement.

“The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar there is to new ideas” Edward de Bono.

We need to encourages management to lighten up and allow everyone to creative think. The best ideas can be screened and given budgets later. Companies have learned to the tune of $250 million a year spent on Collective Intelligence that new ideas are not just the domain of Senior Management.

Some of the dangers of having to be right all the time might be:

• An idea might be right but arrogantly began with a false premise
• In incorrect idea might have lead to a correct one
• The right idea is not always the best one. It might leave the best one undiscovered
• The importance of being right leads to the fear of making mistakes.

The suspension of judgment on ideas might have the following advantages:

• An idea that survives longer may lead to further ideas
• People will offer ideas that might be better than they realized when seen through different eyes
• Impractical or whimsical ideas can lead to unintended great results
• Ideas that don’t fit in a frame of reference may show a different frame of reference is needed

If the United States is going to find a place for itself in this new age and people want to advance in this technological world, we better throw open the doors of imaginative thinking.

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Ideas here were stimulated by “Lateral Thinking” by Edward de Bono in my continuing efforts to stimulate creativity, inspiration, and innovation.

You can buy his book used for about $1 if you want to expand your horizons.

I have posted the last several days about creativity, innovation and thinking. You can read the past few posts to catch up with the trend of thought. The current theme is that innovation is key to competitiveness.

Creativity and ideas lead to a plan to develop the ideas and see if they are practical and worth funding. Big corporations have committees that do this and may analyze 3,000 employee submitted ideas to implement 200. It is a worthwhile endeavor.

But for the individual or small business, the source of creativity and ideas is good thinking. The last post talked about thinking as a larger process than just your stream of consciousness on an idea. The various thinking processes that stimulate “Out of the Box” approaches is varied.

Like a martial artist or swordsman, you should have more than one move. You should familiarize yourself with the whole box of tools on thinking to move an idea to practicality. Your future prosperity could depend on it.

But today I am going to discuss the two aspects of creating and developing ideas.

There are two aspects to consider:

• Having the maximum mental energy for inspirational thought
• Eliminating Distractions that use up valuable brain energy

I will dispatch the first easily because I have covered it many times in discussing healthy eating, fitness, and inspiration and you can read more in “Getting to Peak Performance” or ‘Healthy, Lean and Happy Forever”

So the second part is clearing your mind to have more room for new ideas and/or ability to focus on the most important priority.

We all have a stream of consciousness that continuously feeds thoughts through our minds. Sometimes it is orderly and sometimes it is what we call “monkey chatter”. This stream is often filled with negative thoughts. Our mind second guesses our decisions, reprimands us for past decisions, and scares us about current scenarios.

What we often do to stay out of this stream is load up the brain with activities to avoid the stream. While we work and whenever we have a spare moment, we get active in social websites, we text, we email, we listen to our music downloads and we anticipate people contacting us on our systems and we play with our cell phones.

When we have bigger blocks of time we watch TV or pursue other passions like American Idol, Dancing with the Stars, Football, Survivor, Lost, and so on. We use these passions to substitute for meaningful exploration and thinking

Every single one of these rob our brain’s capacity for new ideas and creative thinking and focus.

The process for getting into a more positive place for focus is the same as getting lean. First eliminate the bad stuff and at the same time start adding the good stuff. I have one by one eliminated activities that use up my focus.

I have eliminated my cell phone, my TV, and the news at the beginning of the day. I still spend hours everyday writing and looking at emails and responding to Face Book messages, but I am generally doing it to create productivity and then I communicate with family and friends.

My priorities are tackled first in the day when I have the most mental energy. I do not engage in most of the other activities until I have finished my most important tasks. Creativity is always first on the list because it requires the most energy.

Then I can resort to the tasks that are the most menial and then concentrate on refreshing my brain power with activities that are invigorating or relaxing like exercise, reading, meditating, and in the evenings watching a good movie.

My down time is then often consumed by thinking of fresh approaches to my number one priority rather than busy ness and allowing less meaningful activities become my main focus.  So it looks like create and then refresh.

By 5 a.m. the next morning I am ready to go again with my best mental energy.

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If you would like an insight into how work will look in the next 10 years this article explores current trends and projects them. I have mentioned how corporations spend $250 million a year on Collective Thinking. Face Book and Twitter are examples of Social non organized Collective Thinking.  Those trends may be merging into organized and unorganized networks of “Social Business Problem Solving”

The Future of Work in Next Ten Years as Gartner Sees it

http://bit.ly/i6Ru1g

I listened to a set of video interviews this morning by newscasters in several capitals of Europe including Madrid, Athens, London, Frankfurt and Paris.

The result of the restructuring of capital and now the dealing with the government debt in Europe is a wave of austerity not experienced for several generations.

What are some of the symptoms?

• People don’t go out as much
• Fewer and maybe no vacations
• Cutting everything in family budgets
• High unemployment for graduated students
• Longer projected working lives for the work force

The U.S. is experiencing the same and may see a more severe reaction as it tries to finance its way out of trouble.

What is clear is that what we have been doing before the melt down doesn’t work and now there is a scramble to increase productivity and leverage resources. If ever there was a need for creativity and innovation, this is the time:

The Creativity gurus may finally have their day. Quotes by some of them are:

“Organizations are desperate for creative people who see things differently,” Chuck Frey

“The results of the IBM CEO study released during May says CEOs want and need creative leaders who can “embrace ambiguity,” “take risks that disrupt legacy business models” and “leapfrog beyond tried-and-true management styles.” Executives surveyed call out creativity as the most important attribute needed in their people.”

“Creativity feeds on hopefulness and positivity.”

Carol Kobza-“ She inspires people to be more creative through laughter, learning and finding the inner reserves of creativity they need to make their work meaningful and fulfilling”

George Por:

1.     Q: What do you see the role of creativity in that (new) paradigm?

Pór: Creativity IS the new paradigm

1.     “… when an epoch got eclipsed by the emergent next, it happened because the new way of organizing work succeeded to liberate more creativity from more people than its predecessor. That was the secret of the industrial society’s triumph over the feudal system.”

Tapping into our creativity to solve problems and create innovative solutions to efficiency, revenues, production, customer satisfaction is how humans get leverage on technology.

To be valued and escape the new “austerity” paradigm, humans need to find ways to contribute substantial improvement to the way we work, play and think. Each person will not only have to learn skills, but will have to become acquainted with processes not taught in schools on how to tap into their own personal creative reserve.

George Por offers his solution to a process he credits to Otto Schammer and Francisco Varala called “Attention Training with Focus”

1. Suspend your inner chatter. Pause the continual flow of thoughts, images, and feelings. When you shake off already-formed concepts, you’ll be able to create the opening needed for something new to emerge. Observe your breath – breathing in and out without judging or evaluating it. Don’t be hard on yourself – 3 to 5 minutes is a good start.

2. Redirect your attention from external things, or thoughts, to its source. In other words, pay attention to attention itself. When the source become the focus, a subtle but powerful shift occurs that enhances your moment-to-moment awareness in the moment. In that split second you see your world anew – from a perspective of the whole. When that happens, just relax into it. This opens to more creative potential.

3. Let go of controlling the result of the exercise. If impatience appears, look at it, then let it go. Even if you think you already got a solution, don’t accept it just yet. This is a time for letting go of any preferred future state of the issue or goal you’re dealing with, temporarily giving it up to the unconscious mind.

4. Hold space for new possibilities to emerge without you pushing them. In that “holding space,” articulate a simple question that is at the heart of your situation. Put it in the focus of your attention but instead of looking for answers, walk around it, and consider it under various angles, in all the contexts in which it has meaning for you.

5. Listen for an answer to what arises from that unhurried space – a space of possibility uncontrolled by your previous attitudes and opinions. First it may appear as a felt sense, for which you don’t yet have words. Don’t force words into it; instead sense its quality and let words come from it. This gives an opportunity for a new and surprising solution to your problem, challenge or situation.”

This is one of many methods to reach your inner creativeness. Let it be just one of the many processes you seek to increase your value to the economic system.

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Developing your personal value involves becoming more healthy, vital, fit, and clear minded. It is a full body, mind, and spirit makeover.

I offer two Free Download E Books to stimulate your thinking.

“Getting to Peak Performance”

“Healthy, Lean and Happy Forever”

Innovation is Everybody’s Business: Make Yourself Indispenseable in Today’s Hyper Competitive World by Robert B. Tucker
Get a great used or new book for About $12.

Creativity is extremely important if you want to be a leader

You can choose if you want to do what people tell you or if you want to decide the course everyone takes. It’s a pretty simple decision.

Robert Frost in “Road Not Taken” said

Newsweek on an American Creativity Crisis:

“Creativity has always been prized in American society, but it’s never really been understood. While our creativity scores decline unchecked, the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses.”

Anthony Manzo commented in an article that creativity is stifled in the classroom

“As teachers, we have not been educated in a climate conducive to creative thinking ourselves, and so we are understandably unsure of how to encourage or even to allow it.”

And yet business also feels the creativity crisis as it encourages its work force to be innovative. To cut costs, major companies are spending to find the problem solvers and innovators in its work force, often offering rewards and bonuses.

Rachel King in Bloomberg Businesss Week says:

“Companies spend an annual $250 million on collective intelligence tools, says Imaginatik Executive Vice-President Luis Solis, who estimates that the market is growing 15 percent to 30 percent a year.”

I find that most tools I see to stoke your creativity are a little too staid. People who write and have to be creative for a living, know there is a process that gives rise to creativity.

Cathy Duncan Agile Career Coach

“I recently read Tony Schwartz’s awesome book, “The Way We’re Working Isn’t Working” and this confirmed what I’d intuitively been practicing. Tony explains how we re-charge our energy (and increase our overall energy capacity) when we work in waves, switching from short periods of intense work to short periods of rest/ play and back again.

We also re-charge our energy when we switch the energy channels that we’re using, as we do when we take a break from writing and go for a run. It’s still active energy expenditure when we run, but because it’s a different channel, running restores our creative/ writing energy.”

Jonathan Fields – JonathanFields.com

“Create in intense bursts. Could be anywhere from a few minutes to a few hours. Then, step completely away from your creative bouts and set aside recovery time, where you deliberately flush your mind of the topic around which you are creating.”

Men With Pens

“I determined my optimal creative hours and write only during that time. The minute I start to feel even a little tired, I stop – that’s it for the day.”

Sid Savara –

“My biggest source of creative inspiration (and stress relief!) hands down is hiking.

I love getting out into the mountains, where it’s quiet and I can recharge my batteries while getting some exercise.”

I incorporated these quotes because I follow all of them. I wake up early in the morning and write blogs for my 6 sites.  When I am burned, I stop and change activities. Then I have to refresh my mind during the day with exercise and relaxation. In the evenings I have been watching movies which, more than TV, take me to another realm.

You have to find your best time.  You have to stop when it’s not happening. You have to find an environment or activity that will totally wash away your previous mind state. (not drinking).  You spend the rest of the time finding seeds for new thoughts and determining the direction you want to travel.

When you are refreshed, you then focus again for as long as you have the high level of energy. Creativity requires mental energy and its own space and can rarely be summoned just because its 2 o’clock and it is the hour you scheduled to be creative in between accounting and shipping duties.

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Develop your personal capabilities for inspiration and creativity.

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