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My last three articles focused on how design thinking enables you to look at innovation from a new perspective. Now let’s add a new dimension-creativity. In the flyleaf of the new book: Creative Confidence, it states, “Innovation and creativity are now widely accepted as the driving forces behind business success, and are among the most highly prized qualities in today’s leaders. When you hear the word ‘creativity,’ what do you think of next? Do you tend to think of the word ‘artistic?’ Do you tend to group artists, architects, and designers as creative, but not others like lawyers, doctors or CEO’s? As children, we were all imaginative. Think about it, we drew pictures, sculpted clay models and built things with Tinker Toys, Legos and blocks. Somewhere along the way, maybe in our early school days, something suppressed our creativity.
So, how do we get that creative spirit back? The book Creative Confidence: Unleashing the creative potential within us all is an insightful, compelling narrative on how to unlock, nurture, and strengthen the innate creativity that lies within us all. This book is written by David Kelley, founder of IDEO, one of the world’s leading innovation and design firms, as well as the creator of the d.school, formally known as the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, at Stanford University and Tom Kelley, partner at IDEO and the author of the bestselling The Art of Innovation and The Ten Faces of Innovation. He is also an executive fellow at UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. Their goal is to help clients develop and rediscover their creative confidence. I encourage everyone to read this book and visit the website www.creativeconfidence.com for additional information.
As I see it, the world seems to divide into “creatives” and “non-creatives,” and too many people consciously or unconsciously resign themselves to the latter category. Creative confidence is about believing in your ability to create change in the world around you. The Kelley brothers think this self-assurance, this belief in your creative capacity, lies at the heart of innovation. Creativity is something you practice, not just a talent that you’re born with. This requires getting past the fears that hold most of us back. Here are the most common fears that hold people back:
Fear of Failure: According to Professor Dean Keith Simmons of the University of California a widely held myth is that creative geniuses rarely fail when actually the opposite is true. When it comes to failure – they just don’t let that stop them, they simply do more experiments. If you want more success, you have to be prepared to shrug off more failure.
Fear of the First Step: Creative efforts are hardest at the beginning. The first step will seem much less challenging if you make it a tiny one and you force yourself to do it right now. You need to stop planning and just get started—and the best way to do that is to stop focusing on the huge overall task and find a small piece you can tackle right away. Just think about what the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau is doing for example. They started by looking at the front of the mortgage process and making it easier for the borrower to digest and now they are moving to closing, all the while looking at how to improve the mortgage process with fresh eyes and a fresh approach. They weren’t afraid to take the first step and go from there. More importantly, they collaborated with all the parties involved.
Creative thinking in business begins with having empathy for your customers. Start by looking at your organization from the outside in, not from the inside out. Call your customer service line and see how your problem is handled. Ask yourself: Would you have been satisfied with the response? Was the problem solved to you satisfaction? What could have been handled differently?
Personally, I have been very frustrated with the automatic response lines that have you punching numbers to try and get to the right answer or person. I always punch 0 to get to an operator, but that doesn’t always work. I have been put on hold for long periods of time, only to be told, “Please hang-up and try your call again.”
Fear of the Messy Unknown: One of the challenges to being creative is that people with strong analytical skills go instantly into problem-solving mode. They leap to the finish line and then defend their answers. Here’s what happens as a result: The strategy is reassuringly familiar; the information comes from predictable sources; and the contradictory data is weeded out and ignored. Out in the world, it’s more chaotic. You have to deal with unexpected findings, with uncertainty, and with irrational people who say things you don’t want to hear. But that is where you find insights—and creative breakthroughs. Venturing forth in pursuit of learning, even without a hypothesis, can open you up to new information and help you discover nonobvious needs. Otherwise, you risk simply reconfirming ideas you’ve already had or waiting for others—your customers, your boss, or even your competitors—to tell you what to do.
Fear of Being Judged: Early on in life you begin to care deeply about what other people think. It takes only a few years to develop that fear of judgment, but it stays with us throughout our adult lives. Half the battle is to resist judging yourself. If you can listen to your own intuition and embrace more of your ideas (good and bad), you are partly on the solid path to overcoming this fear. Try using new language when you give feedback. Instead of passing judgments by saying, “that will never work” or “we’ve tried that before” use phrases such as, “I like” and move on to “I wish.”
Fear of Losing Control: Confidence doesn’t simply mean believing that your ideas are good. It means having the humility to let go of ideas that aren’t working and to accept good ideas from other people. When you work collaboratively, you sacrifice control over your product, your team, and your business. But the creative gains can more than compensate. Even when we want to embrace our creative ideas, acting on them presents its own challenges. In a broader sense, we’re also talking about the fear of charting a new path or breaking out of your predictable workflow.
So, how do you get to the next step? How do you become more creative if you’ve lost some of those inquisitive skills needed to question and think differently? To overcome this inertia, good ideas are not enough. Here’s what I suggest: instead of letting thoughts run through your head and down the drain, capture them systematically in some form of idea notebook.
I challenge you to start and think about what would be in your mortgage idea notebook. Would it include things like electronic mortgages? Maybe it would touch on electronic closings? Perhaps you’d touch on how you can incorporate mobile technology into the mortgage business? Or perhaps it’s something near and dear to me like embracing a more transparent, data-driven approach. Think about it and get started on your notebook today.