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Are you stuck in a creative rut? Do you need an idea—now—but nothing’s coming? Don’t worry, your creativity is still there. Your brain is just taking a little “creativity catnap.” Here are a few ways to wake it up again and get those creative juices flowing.
1. Read an article. [You: “About what?” Me: “About anything!” You: “Huh?” Me: ...
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Yesterday I was the closing keynoter for a conference of credit union leaders. One of the speakers who was on before me mentioned what was, to me, a startling statistic. He said that the average credit union CEO spends roughly 60% of his or her day just dealing with regulatory red tape. For the record (in case you’re not a credit union professional), this is not the best or most productive use of the CEO’s time. Which begs the question:
Are ...
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Leaders should be intelligent, right? I mean, it doesn’t always work out that way, but that’s kind of the ideal. We want our leaders—community, corporate, political—to be intelligent.
But what kind of intelligent?
There are some leaders who know everything there is to know about their industry. Other leaders have read dozens—maybe even hundreds—of books about leadership. Some leaders are particularly strong in emotional intelligenc
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“Curiosity is one of the permanent and certain characteristics of a vigorous intellect.”
~ Samuel Johnson
If there were a “magic bullet” trait for living an interesting (and interested) life, I would have to echo Dr. Johnson’s sentiments and go with curiosity.
I’ve found that the most intelligent, the most interesting, and the most creative people that I know tend to also be the most curious.
[You: “Curious about what?”]
[Me: “Good! You’re curious about that! Way to go!”]
Curious about, well, everything. These people have ...
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Imagine this: There’s a crisis looming in your business.
[You: “Why do you have to be so negative, Bill?”]
[Me: “Fair point. Let’s reset.”]
Imagine this: There’s an opportunity looming in your business. [You: “Thank you.”] And now you need your team to come up with creative ideas to best take advantage of this great opportunity. You want them to “think outside of the box.” You want them to “go wild!” You tell them, “Let your imaginations flow!” You expect magic.
And instead, you ...
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Part of a leader’s job—a big part—is to define the destination. You can call it the vision, the target, the goal. At a certain point, these terms become almost interchangeable. They are all some version of “This is where we want to go.” Problems can arise, however, when the leader follows “This is where we want to go” with a rigid “And this is how we’re going to get there.”
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Leaders—good leaders, that is—put a lot of thought into the makeup of the various teams for which they’re responsible. They’re very concerned with, as Jim Collins put it, “getting the right people on the bus.” I’ve even written about the 5 people you should have on your team (you can read that post by clicking here). But, what about the size of the team? It turns out, when it comes to teams, size does matter.
David Bowie existed before Ziggy Stardust, but it was Ziggy Stardust that put him on the map. The striking, glam costume; the red hair; the over-the-top Spiders from Mars tour—all these elements, plus, of course, the music, shot David Bowie into stardom. But the glam rock era eventually faded. And if David Bowie had stayed there, he would have been solely of that time, and faded along with it.
All businesses depend on innovation to stay ahead and thrive in an ever-more-competitive landscape, and all innovation begins with a creative idea. But many businesses have set up policies that actually make it harder for people to come up with and/or implement these vital creative ideas. Is yours one of them?
When I was the executive producer of Seattle’s ...
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“In the Spring, a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love.”
So says Tennyson.
“In December a young (and not-so-young) leader’s fancy somewhat more heavily turns to thoughts of goals for the following year.”
So says Stainton. Although not as poetically. But in order to give yourself the best chance of achieving those goals, you need to make sure you don’t make any of these 5 mistakes.
