Overcoming hurdles to creativity

IN last week’s column, we talked about a simple ideation process, broken down into five stages:

■ Prepare—research the problem or issue.

■ Incubate—organize research findings, immerse yourself in them, then leave them be for a while.

n Illuminate—put your ideas down on paper.

■ Verify—make sure that your current idea is the best approach to the issue; discard that idea and move on to the next one if it is not. Refine your idea for presentation to concerned stakeholders, once you decide on the best course of action.

■ Practice—go through the process again for other issues or problems.

Even with these simple and straightforward steps though, we can still hit creativity roadblocks. To prevent our idea well from drying up, there are a few things we need to consider and practice, including chucking existing mindsets and behaviors out the window.

Creativity obstacles

ACCORDING to the Digital Marketing Institute, one of the biggest creativity barriers is fear of failure. This is especially true for ideas that have never been tried before in a particular setting—in your company, for example. Will this fly or flop? Will my colleagues and bosses think I am weird for even proposing this? Will I get mocked for this idea behind my back? For some people (or most people?), fear of failure trumps the desire to put new ideas out there, even if those ideas could potentially reap exponential gains for the organization if implemented well.

Another obstacle to creative thinking is being hung up on old ideas and ways of doing things. “We have always done it this way” – isn’t that a familiar line? Maybe it is not you yourself who think this, but the organization that you’re in and the people on top who have the most say in running it. Some people and organizations just choose to act like dinosaurs, unfortunately. This is an all-too-real idea killer.

One other barrier is something called “functional fixedness.” In psychology, this is defined as a cognitive bias that limits a person’s ability to see beyond the usual purpose for an object. For example, you need to spread jam on bread but all you have is a teaspoon. Functional fixedness prevents you from seeing the spoon as something that you can use to spread the jam as it is traditionally used to stir liquids for drinking or scooping small amounts of food. In problem-solving terms, you may miss some solutions when they are not the usual way of solving particular problems.

Now that you know what the barriers are, let’s explore some ways to overcome them.

1. Challenge your biases and preconceptions

LOOK at problems from various angles. Assume that your understanding of the problem is correct, and also assume that it is wrong. Think about how a third party will view the problem. Doing this will likely change your point of view, and allow you to explore the nature of your problem from perspectives other than yours. In turn, solutions you did not think of before may come up. And one of those solutions might just be the solution to your issue.

2. Alter your thought process

YOU approach problems a particular way— that is your thought process, or how your ideas come out, triggered by the previous idea, in a sequence. Be familiar with your thought process: are you analytical, instinctual, or intuitive? Try to figure out how others think, too.

Choose a person whose thought process you are familiar with and try to apply that line of thinking to your idea generation. For example, if you are highly analytical, choose someone who is typically intuitive in their approach to solving problems. Think: how will this person approach the issue? This can generate new ideas for you. This will also allow you to come up with various scenarios about how your ideas could be received by different stakeholders, and prepare the appropriate responses prior to your presentation.

3. Avoid functional fixedness

MANY things can be used for purposes other their traditional use. The same goes for solutions to problems. Take a step back and think about non-traditional approaches to solving your specific issue. Try not to get bogged down by the thought that this was the only way it was solved in the past, so this must be the only solution.

Consider a toddler that won’t eat vegetables. Some people believe that you can solve this by forcing your child to eat those veggies at all costs—you are the parent after all. The traditional solution then is using authority or force. On the flipside, some parents have resorted to more creative ways to solve this problem, like cutting veggies up into various shapes that toddlers can play with or mincing veggies and integrating them with various food that toddlers like. Crunchy lumpiang shanghai, for example. There is usually more than one way to solve a problem. Try to find those other sways.

4. Change your daily routine

BELIEVE it or not, having the same routine 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year can pull down your creativity quotient. Try shaking things up a bit. Change workspaces every other day, maybe—from your office to the conference room to the coffee shop to the office garden. Or alter your usual task accomplishment order— answer all e-mails first thing in the morning today, do the same thing after lunch tomorrow.

Little changes can go a long way in the long run, as these breaks on your routine can prevent your mind from settling too much into a rhythm that you already forget how to think creatively. Once a new routine works for you, stick to it for a while until you feel your creativity slip. Then change things up again.

5. Take creative risks

LET your wild ideas out into the wild. Try not to let failure or ridicule scare you. Like how the Digital Marketing Institute put it: “It takes courage to be the first person to think of an idea or a new solution. You can’t be sure if it will work, or be accepted, or even if people will find it ridiculous. Nevertheless, the ability to take risks goes hand in hand with innovation and problem solving. So be brave, put your ideas out there, and keep looking at new ways of doing things and of overcoming barriers to creativity.”

PR Matters is a roundtable column by members of the local chapter of the United Kingdom-based International Public Relations Association (Ipra), the world’s premier organization for PR professionals around the world. Abigail L. Ho-torres is AVP and Head of Advocacy and Marketing of Maynilad Water Services Inc. She spent more than a decade as a business journalist before making the leap to the corporate world.