If you’re trying to train your mind to be creative, you might try to purposely practice. It can be fun to think about random things and come up with random ideas around those things.  It’s also actually pretty easy to come up with something to target when you are trying to force yourself to think creatively. You look for that really big problem that exists in your life or that impacts the world in general and simply start to think.

“Let’s try to find a creative solution for:

• the economy,
• world hunger,
• predicting earthquakes,
• selling more of this,
• servicing more of that.”

You get the picture.

But what about those things that seem below you? They just seem too easy. How could you actually improve on a thing that is so simple and ubiquitous in the first place?

That sounds like the lizard brain trying to divert your attention away from something that might actually have a real solution upon which someone might expect you to execute. That’s why thinking about the BIG things is easy.  They are so big that no one really expects you to have to work on it. Do they? But something within your grasp. Something you might have control over. Something that could be so straight forward to improve. Well if you figure out a creative solution regarding these basic needs, the next questions beckons, “why not just fix it?”

Here’s the thing: I don’t actually care if you fix it or not. At least not to begin with. The first level of risk that individuals need to overcome is the simple act of expression. Say something. Present an idea. Don’t evaluate it, just say it. The worst thing that can happen is a minor level of embarrassment (think high school) but come on: verbalizing an idea will not generate a life or death situation simply on its own.

All of this became really clear to me today when I watched a short TED video of Gary Lauder talking about traffic signs.

TRAFFIC SIGNS!?!?!

How many stop signs have you encountered in your life? How many yield signs have you encountered? Traffic circles? Have you ever stopped to think about them at all? Maybe as a simply waste of time when your in a rush, but seriously, what could any improvement in traffic signs actually accomplish? I truly hope you take the time to watch the video a consider what I’ve discussed. The most mundane parts of life need creativity too and we need to not be scared to think about them.

I’ve recently turned a major focus toward trying to influence my teams and those around us to really explore creativity.  While a certain inkling of an idea had been flitzing along a couple of synapses, it wasn’t until a company offsite when I was able to recognize the core concept of that inkling.  At that offsite, our chairman asked us to watch a TED presentation by Sir Ken Robinson regarding the uncanny ability that the world’s current education system has when it comes to killing creativity.

The discussion really hit home, not necessarily because I want to fix the education system (though I would certainly support it), but because I saw the groundwork of change was now laying before me.  I initially went to college to become an educator… a music educator to be specific.  It was a frustrating experience because I could see the gears of creative destruction already at work given that every school system was starting to experiment with block scheduling, a system that creates some real challenges for an ensemble educator.  I never did teach professionally, but I’ve never forgotten the many lessons that were afford to me via the process.

After that offsite, I began having individual meetings with everyone on my team.  There were two questions woven into these meetings that were poignantly aimed at uncovering the creativity gap:

1. Do you take time out of your day, week, month… any time at all to step away from your projects and everyday work to dig into something else of interest, whether that is via reading articles, investigating new technologies, or whatever activity that you could think of that would give you the chance to learn or experience something new?
2. Do you have anything that you spend time on that is personal to yourself when you head home that allows you to focus simply on you, growing you, or at the very least something that allows you to stay active and interested in life?

The powers of allusion and foreshadow have probably allowed you to guess, at least in summary, what kind of responses I received.  Not many people take any time to dig into the “new and interesting.”  It seems that there is always too much to do and there are always too many projects at hand to let off the accelerator for one moment.  Even if one were to be forced to schedule time, the evil corporate priority list would probably overpower their judgement because surely “that’s only personal time and I should spend it on more important things.”  But here’s the rub: if every team member were to spend the time learning and experiencing and thinking about different things, their abilities would be enhanced in such a way that the time would be paid back multi-fold.  It is an investment in the future of people and the future of a company.

To the second point, there were certainly a couple of interesting responses.  A couple of individuals were participating in karate and one individual was taking piano lessons.  These are marvelous examples of truly investing in oneself.  On the flip side, there were many that talked about their social lives in that they spend time with friends and family.  I will not deny that this is indeed a way to stay interested and active in life, but I feel that there is something missing here… personal inward focus.  It isn’t selfish.  It’s survival.  Having something of your own that you can improve upon is of utmost importance when it comes to keeping the mind and spirit alive.  While I certainly can’t directly influence this part of a team member’s life, I will keep asking and keep digging because it is VERY IMPORTANT.

It occurs to me that the responses that I got are indeed related to the success of the education system.  First, work all day only on the stuff that we tell you to work on.  If you get out of line you will be sent to the principals office.  Second, when you get home, please just do your homework in a mindless stupor so that you can take a test that you be able to forget about over the summer.

Now just to be sure, I am not resting all of this on a single video or my own perfectly relevant thoughts.  There are others in the world that have the same concerns.  It’s easy to find.  A clip from Tom Peters discusses our level of education for creativity.  It isn’t pretty.  I certainly didn’t expect it to be.

It’s a deep feeling inside me now.  I believe that these topics are extraordinarily important, not only for the education system and the students in it today, but for those that are sitting in the workforce flailing about trying to use an industrial education system mindset to find answers to the thought provoking and creative needs that face us today.  We must find a way to feel comfortable expressing creative and even risky ideas so that we can at least talk about them.

Over the past few years, I have had the pleasure of stepping into roles with increasing amounts of responsibility and opportunity.  Each of these steps have placed more and more team members into my care.  I’ve recently had to reflect upon things and it is this matter that I need to address.

Let us be clear, the number of individuals that report up to someone is not a measure of success.  Many managers measure themselves this way and classify the acquisition of increased headcount as a promotion.  To operate in this manner gives control of your success to those that have the power to approve requisitions.  What happens when the economy faces a retraction?  If you are a “manager” and find that you must face the unfortunate reality of letting team members go, does this get classified as a demotion?  Vying for position be ensuring that you have a lot of people reporting to you in an effort to ensure that your own position is secure is managing toward protectionism as opposed to growth.  People are smart.  Leaders see through this headcount manipulation.  It is not protection at all.

A leader will take time to consider whether they have the resources available to them to take on the added responsibility of adding members to the team.  This is because a true leader is not focused on themselves, but rather the success of those in their care and it takes a ton of energy and focus to truly lead someone.  Every leadership position that I have been in is driven by one main core principle.  Service.  When I dig into the idea of “service” from a leadership perspective, I generally start with major militaries’ use of the rank “Sergeant”.

Sergeant (normally abbreviated to “Sgt”) is a rank used in some form by most militaries, police forces, and other uniformed organizations around the world. Its origins are the Latin serviens, “one who serves”, through the French term Sergent. (via Wikipedia)

Generally, when one unfamiliar with the system thinks about the military, they generate in their mind a hierarchy of commands that come from the top down and nothing more.  However, the military cannot accomplish anything if those who serve do not have the proper tools and training to accomplish their tasks.  This is where the idea of Sergeant comes in.  When a directive does come from the upper chain of command, leaders along the way need to ensure that everyone is ready: that they have the tools and training necessary to carry out this command.

A servant leader in the business world is much the same.  I always lead my teams by ensuring that they have everything that they need to support the vision and strategy of the organization.  Beyond that, I hope to find time to grow each team member’s talents to the point that they could replace me at any given moment.  Herein is major difference between a protectionist manager and a servant leader.  A manager will hide just enough information so that they can remain in power while giving their employees just enough information to squeak by.  Since no one is really growing, the manager needs to hire more people to get more stuff done.  I believe that managers call this “job security.”  A leader will maintain an open rapport so that the team members can think critically and apply their own unique thoughts toward creating amazing solutions to problems.  Team members become very creative and very effecient and can handle harder challenges and more of them.  And please note, it is not a requirement to actually have team members reporting directly to you in order to show dedication as a leader.

Again; people are smart.  Even as I lead people toward levels that they can replace me, that just means that I have more and more truly amazing people doing amazing things for the company.  Other leaders in the company will realize this.  They will never say “what do we need him for anymore.”  Instead, they will generally recruit from my team because they too want truly amazing people doing amazing things for them as well.

I believe that a focus on service is a major part of my success, and I generally never focus or dwell on my own success.  I focus on wanting others to succeed and from time to time that means that I must offer my own experiences as evidence.

So… are you a LEADER or a MANAGER?

Some of you may not understand.  I love my job.  Every day brings with it new challenges and a constant drive to change for the better.  To keep up with the environment, you start to acquire new skills either by focusing on the need to develop them or by inheriting the skill through some form of mental osmosis.  This latter form of metamorphosis has started to lead me down the path of noticing things.  Maybe the following awareness test will help to explain a little.

If you didn’t see it, thank the loving scotoma wherein you simply don’t see that which you’re not looking for. This ability to “notice” things even applies to that which isn’t there but ought to be as in my cell phone adventure where a seemingly simple solution to something just wasn’t there.

It’s getting worse for me. Today I saw a simple advertisement in a gas station regarding a bluetooth headset. There was a picture of the headset next to a picture of a model wearing the headset. Actually, she wasn’t wearing it at all. She was wearing a completely different model. Out of all the things to notice, that’s what I picked up on.

To clarify my point, I wanted to share a picture of the ad with you. My cell phone took a really crappy picture so I thought I would check the facility’s website. Amazingly there is a page dedicated to store specials and there is a small version of the flyer on that page (at least for now because they change it every month). That version of the circular doesn’t help illustrate the point because it’s too small. But they’ve apparently thought things through enough to allow you to click through and acquire a .pdf version of the ad. Click! Grrrrrrrr. The .pdf version is the circular from LAST MONTH. Come on!

I’m a nice guy, so I decided that I would let them know about the problem by submitting a comment about their page. My first problem there is that “location visited” is a required field. I don’t have a problem about a location, I have a problem with the website. Well… let’s fill it in anyway.

OK… where the hell was I? I was driving from point A (which I know the name of) to point B (which I also know the name of) but I never had the need to remember what city or town I was in when I had take a piss. So why would I want to look at a list of cities? I’d much rather look at a list of states and then cities. But I’m just being harsh I suppose. Eventually I find out that there is only one location in Michigan, so I chose that one! Let’s fill in the comment itself. And you know what, I am feeling so nice, I want to give the technician who’ll be working on this problem the actual url to the page.

So what exactly am I suppose to make of this? Is this the list of characters that I can’t use, or the list of characters that I can use? Because when they tell me “alpha-numeric,” I’m thinking letters and numbers and I know that letters and numbers are fine. So if letters and numbers are fine and the site is telling me something in relation to letters and numbers, then it should hold that everything else in this list should be fine. Not! Too bad for the technician that needs to fix the .pdf problem. I don’t have enough time to turn into a pro-bono consultant for inept thinking so I’ll leave the shitty form feedback for another day.

Now as you’ve been reading this, I know that you’re thinking that I’m just being picky. Admittedly there is a very fine line between being picky and being hyper-aware. Where that line sits has a lot to do with your environment. If you work in an environment that thrives on improvements and yearns for being the best, then expressing your concerns would be welcome and you are being hyper-aware. If you’re not in that environment… get another job.

To jump to the end of this story, my phone is fixed and I didn’t have to reload anything.  I just wanted to be sure that all suspense is completely removed from your mind so that we can all think clearly about this.

About a week ago, my phone fell to the ground a couple of times because the belt clip on my case was so worn and old that there was about an inch of play.  It’s fallen off before (once resulting in a 45 minute retracing of steps in the snow) and there hadn’t been any problems.  This time, apparently the phone and case landed clip-side down and that inch of play in the product generated the perfect landing point for the screen to shatter.  Luckily, the screen protector kept everything together and the only real usability lost was the touch sensitivity on the screen.

Today, I decided to take the phone to the repair center.  I put my name on the list and was approached by a representative within about five minutes.  The gentleman then asked me if I had backed up my phone.  Well… no!  I don’t currently use this phone as my main means of organization as my company has given my a Blackberry to stay connected.  I don’t generally have a need these days to connect my phone to a computer.  He went back to speak with the techs and then came back and said “we need you to go backup your phone”.

So here’s where I lose it.  About a year ago I needed a complete replacement and they were able to take care of everything without a problem.  Having a sense that the representatives in the store do not have the power to do much nor the desire to think “outside” of the box, I made a small public tantrum about “improving business over going by the script” and then headed home.  On the way, I dialed *2.

*2 is another way to experience other cultures.  If you think that you have been with too many of the same type of person, just dial *2 and you’re bound to get something different every time.  I’m good with it really.  It’s just kind of random to me.  What I am not fine with is the script wherein ever line begins with “Now Mr. Davis” and ends with “OK Mr. Davis.”  I get off the phone with these people and want to change my name.

The first thing that I said to the kind lady on the line was “Now before I go into this, can you confirm with me that you have a process built in to your organization wherein the feedback of the customer is truly considered and taken into account while trying to improve the business?”

Silence…

“Hello?”

“Now Mr. Davis I understand that to which you may have encounter [sic] some concern to which I can ensure you that we can listen to your experience to which we will make sure that it does not happen again OK Mr. Davis?”

I tell my story and after a while she puts me on hold.  After five minutes of lovely hold music (which hasn’t changed in at least two years) she tells me that maybe the computers at the store aren’t working and that they just didn’t tell me.  She offered to find me a different repair center, but by this point I was committed to backing things up and return to the origination of my fury.  The *2 experience helped me to realize that they are simply a buffer.  They don’t think much, just follow the script, get a consult, and push you away.  The problem is… I didn’t even want a solution, I simply wanted the company to THINK.  We’ll get to “simply” in a moment.

So now I back everything up – head back to the store – and start over.  Another gentleman took care of me.  I showed him the phone and mentioned that I just went home to back everything up and now I’m here “and I think that was ridiculous.“  Mr. Service replied “what do you mean?”

“I think that it is ridiculous that I had to waste an hour of my day to leave here – go home – backup – and come back – when you should be able to take care of everything here.”

“Well we don’t have access to everything.”

“I just think that’s ridiculous.”

“Humph!”

“I don’t really think that this is particularly funny.”

“Well why do you think that we can just back everything up?”

“Because you’re Sprint! You’re the service provider.  You sell these phones. You can probably tap into any technology that you want.”

“Well we just don’t have access to all of the PDA’s information.”

“Well I just don’t get it.”

He then kindly put a service ticket in.  Thirty minutes later I returned to a phone with a new screen with ALL of the information on my phone completely intact.

NOW – Let’s think about this for a minute.   Throw out the box.  There is no box.  Don’t even try to think “outside” of it – because it’s just simply not there.  Wouldn’t someone just want to find a way to “simply” mirror and restore the ROM and RAM?  I don’t know how to do it.  It’s probably not really “simple.” I’m not a technician.  I’m no engineer.  But there has to be something there.  I know that this comes up more often than one person a year because I’ve heard way to many stories about people losing their entire contact list because they had to get a new phone.  There should be a solution for that.  It can’t be complete rocket science.  If you sell a phone, then you should get the intellectual property regarding that phone that will allow you to provide complete service to that phone.

What a company shouldn’t do is rely on the customer to provide their own support.  And you definitely shouldn’t act in a way that would infer that you think the customer is stupid.  This isn’t stupidity – this is a refusal to let the status quo be the only method of operation.  Why aren’t people empowered to make change?  Are organizations that scared of their team members?

It comes down to the fact that “I don’t get it” because it requires me to be completely and utterly ridiculous to “get it.”