It Takes Discipline for Companies to Be Creative
By Lori & Bob Bomes
We often think of creativity striking at unannounced and unpredictable moments. It can happen that way, but is not the only way it does. Creativity can still strike unexpectedly and also when you create the conditions for it to strike.
Being creative requires creating space, environments, and opportunities that inspire creativity to expand the mind. Individuals need to know creativity is as an asset to their career. Many companies are also recognizing the importance of creativity and innovation to sustainable success.
New products and services are necessary to serving today’s growing and changing needs. At first, it may seem like an oxymoron to use the two words “Creativity” and “Discipline” together. “Creativity as a Discipline” refers to both forms of the word “Discipline”—(1) a Body of Knowledge and Practices in itself to be learned, studied, and practiced; and (2) the act of having the focus and drive within a structured environment to both foster creativity and facilitate the creative process.
The structure within organizations itself is often limiting. Both of these two meanings and related practices are important for being able to foster and develop creativity within organizations. Because of the importance of innovation in today’s business world, companies cannot leave creativity to a chance that it will strike. Companies must create disciplined environments for creativity, in order to stay competitive.
TRIGGERING CREATIVITY
Placing priority on innovation and creativity to navigate change creates opportunities for success. It is important to also balance this emphasis on innovation with what needs to always remain the same—core principles and values that endure and sustain.
Not everyone is creative in the same way because they have different natural talents. Different types of creative expression require different types of effort, skills, and abilities. For example, the mental, emotional, and physical effort to create visual versus auditory creative work is different. The visual is focused on what is seen; and the auditory on what is heard. There are many variations that fall within these types of creativity. The combination of visual and auditory works can also create powerful products for companies. Hiring the right talent for the projects is essential for companies to produce the right types of creative products and services to stay competitive.
Having capacity for being creative requires exercising the mind to see beyond what currently exists. The right internal and external stimuli can trigger creativity, where the lack of proper stimuli often prevents creativity.
The mind is a muscle – it will deliver what it knows – consistently. Many of the differences between human beings results from the different choices and decisions we each make within the 24-hour cycle of our days that compound to create our current circumstances. No matter where anyone lives in the world, they get the same amount of time within the cycle of a day. No one gets more or less for that day of their life. With the mind being a muscle, it can be exercised to notice and remember different things that we decide to focus on. Everyone may not have the same ways of being creative, but by deciding to exercise our minds, we can expand and see what possibilities exist for our own creativity based on natural talent and learned skill—or a combination of the two.
By heavily relying on incoming stimuli of mass media, it has impacted our creativity. We have become conditioned to believe that problems can be solved within a thirty- to sixty-minute cycle. There is no problem that occurs in TV Land that cannot reach some sort of conclusion or resolution within a short timeframe. By having the problems simplified and solved for us, our expectations for real life change. We also have shorter attention spans then are often required in real life and business to allow the creative process to flow. Our thinking and creativity are also affected by becoming desensitized to violence common in movies and on TV.
TAKING TIME FOR CREATIVITY
We need to allow our minds to have the time and space to expand our ways of thinking and creating beyond what is being “done to us” through engaging in receiving stimuli from mass media that often programs, limits, and stifles creativity. Many of those images and storylines are geared toward “entertaining” while they are also programming possibilities limited to what is shown—rather than seeing what else is possible. Some of these programs are insignificant, but they can consume people’s thoughts, feelings, and possibly actions. Although there is controversy about the impact these images and storylines may have on us, it is undisputed that in order to increase our abilities to be creative we must have opportunities to think, reflect and express within the context of what we want to accomplish. By “emptying” our minds of mass media stimuli, we have the opportunity of “filling” it full of ideas that would not have surfaced with the continued chatter.
Creativity must be consistently programmed into our working expectations. It has been said by many authorities, that we use less than 7% of our mind’s capacity. Einstein’s genius was based on using an estimated additional 3%, making it 10% that he used. Stretching the mind muscle produces a positive set of actions (and can, in fact, ward off negative ones that lead to diseases and forms of dementia).
Being able to focus your creativity in a disciplined manner requires a combination of formal and informal ways to turn off your mind traffic. For example, activities that encourage creativity are meditation and prayer; gardening; playing an all-consuming sport; listening to a favorite piece of music; and participating in activities that evokes laughter.
At first glance, those types of activities may not be associated with the word “discipline.” Before any of those things can happen, a conscious decision must be made in order to engage in the activity. Deciding to do one of those activities as a form of relaxation and possibility to inspire creativity only occurs when a plan has been established and is then acted upon.
Discipline is required in two key ways: (1) Discipline is required to design the plan and related actions to create experiences that produce creativity. (2) It is also needed to focus in going through the process of creating. Some-times that process gets interrupted. Being able to establish sustained time to work creatively requires discipline.
It might seem counter-intuitive to plan for creativity to occur. Without a plan, however, there can only be random creative thoughts or experiences. Programming expectations around planning for creativity will train the mind muscle to begin to work towards innovations.
At first, start small. Think small. Get a small result. Then, build the amount of creative time slowly so that you can condition your brain to have the expectations that creativity and innovation will come. As the brain’s “wiring” becomes conditioned, give yourself permission to think bigger, plan bigger, and create bigger.
Remember that what you think about the most, you draw to yourself and your world experience. As you consciously think about what you want, the “how you will get it” begins to manifest for you. Your mind is a magnet. Treat it with great reverence. Create and innovate with ease. Although creativity can be serious business, laughter is your higher power’s way of tickling your soul to keep perspective on the lighter side to let creativity flow.