What is Creativity?

I have given this word a lot of thought lately. I have recently read “The Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron and have started the habit of writing “morning pages”. It really has not been a struggle to adopt this practice since I have kept a journal on and off my whole life.

What is new for me is to think of myself as a creative human being. I have never really thought of myself as artistic. But this book focuses on the word “creative” and the change of term is thought provoking to me. Traditionally, I always think of the two words being synonymous. Someone who is creative is artistic. But does creativity have to be expressed solely though artistic expression?

I find that this morning habit is deeply reflective. I have learned a lot about myself and the stories I run consistently through my brain; some true but most not. But what is most interesting is that I have never thought about how much stuff I actually create.

Is the creation of a strategic plan and a corporate
vision creative? Is coming up with a new recipe for dinner being creative? Is designing my own thank you card on Tiny Prints creative? Is writing a pithy tweet creative? Is planning out an agenda for a meeting creative? Is pulling together synergistic ideas and forming a new strategy creative?

I think it is very true that we are all creative beings. It gets expressed in a million different ways every day. What is exciting to me is how technology is speeding up and easing the ability for us all to express our individual gifts.

We have citizen journalism with the rise of web 2.0, we have Instagram and Flikr for budding photographers; blogging for wannabe writers, and Pinterest for those that love to gather and organize ideas and data, to name just a few.

What is sad is that we don’t embrace and revel in our creativity enough. Maybe that is why we have had a period of innovation stagnation in our country. Too many people were trying to tell us what innovation is and how it can be created and planned in a meeting. A culture that embraces and nurtures creativity creates fertile ground for “black swan” events. The world is ready and in need of big creative ideas. The technology is there and growing at exponential rates to support big step changes. If everyone in the world saw themselves as creative beings how exciting would that be?!

How will you be creative today?

Focus on the Process and the Results Will Come

I am a huge fan of the Olympics. I am in awe of all the athletes and the dedication and training they put in to achieve the status of becoming an Olympian. As it turns out, this Olympics coincides with my vacation. This means I have the time to watch even MORE of the Olympics than usual.

Credit: CBS

Yesterday I was enjoying my morning coffee and watching the Olympics when on comes an interview with Kelci Bryant and Abigail Johnston, the two women who have broken the US diving drought in the Olympics and earned themselves silver medals in the women’s 3-meter synchronized springboard.

The interviewer asked them incessant questions, implying that their focus was on winning a medal. After about the fourth question on this subject, Kelci responded to him by saying something to the effect that they never focused on winning the medal. She continued by saying that what they did do is focus on the process of diving well. She then said that if they worked the process hard enough the results would come.  BRAVA! I said to myself. That is one very smart young lady.

I look to my own business and I can say the very same thing. Bishop-Wisecarver helps manufacturers and automation solution providers engineer linear and rotary motion products. Our 60-plus years of engineering expertise and best practices with more than 20,000 customers enables us to understand our customers’ design and application requirements, ensuring unique solutions that ship within two to three weeks. Our customers achieve 50 percent faster time to market, up to 100 percent lower maintenance and installed costs, product differentiation and longer product life.

What is the underlying backbone to being able to deliver this level of service to our customers? Our relentless focus on process. From lean/continuous improvement to engineering, sales and technology processes, we never stop improving our internal processes.

Scott Klososky likes to say the he who has the most data wins. I would revise that to say he who has the most data and best processes wins. Because, if you don’t have great processes, then you’ll never be able to truly exploit the data to its fullest potential.

So while setting the goal is important, it’s even more important to work on your processes because that constant refinement will result in achieving the goal.

What process has generated the biggest payoff to you? I’d love to hear your stories.