1.)    Keep blue slips and colored pens on the night stand next to your bed.  You can then capture your random thoughts as soon as they occur even while half asleep.  Otherwise your insight may be lost forever.  I like the color blue because it reminds me of the blue sky and unimagined possibilities.

2.)    Create a loving mindset and assume the best in others.  You will then attract ideas and people into your universe who inspire you with new possibilities.  Lie in bed and think about those you love and their gifts that make them truly unique.

 3.)    Breathe deeply and relax.  Let go of your fears and anxieties.  This will allow creativity to flow through you.  As your thoughts float use the language of what is possible.  Think “I will ……….…….” you fill in the blank, smile, and then drift off to sleep.

4.)    With your eyes closed reflex about whatever it is that makes you feel gratitude.  When you feel gratitude, you create an inner life that attracts even more abundance into your life.  More gratitude leads to more creativity.  Breathe deeply and slowly.  Think and feel gratitude about what is going well in your life.   It can be about people or small events and things.  If you have difficulty thinking of something, then express gratitude because you are lying in a warm clean bed.

5.)    If something is troubling you, then think about something totally unrelated, it is helpful if you think of someone or something that makes you smile.  Now go to sleep, when you wake up in the morning you may find that you have some insight into that nagging problem because you distanced yourself from it.

6.)    When you awaken in the morning, stretch and express gratitude because you have another glorious day to be creative and to innovate as you move forward to face the challenges of this new and special day.

Creativity does begin in the bedroom.  Sleep makes you more creative.  What are you going to do when you get into bed tonight to become more creative?

Image: Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

What are you doing to develop your competence in creativity?

Creativity Expert, Alan Black, Ph.D. posed some provocative questions to me, “What are you doing to increase your creative skills, traits, and abilities?  What are the tools you use (mental, physical, emotional, social) to increase your creative thinking?  How do you increase your creative skills?”

After some reflection I developed these responses and realized that this is how I develop my creative competency.  It is my hope that this will spark some ideas for you to develop your own creative competency.  After all, creativity is a skill that can be learned, just like riding a bicycle.

Traits – I am daring and I am unafraid to reach out to people who are so out of my league it is laughable to think they would have anything to do with me.  However, sometimes they respond back to me and it is great fun.  I am passionate about learning as much as I can about creativity and how it can be applied to business, science, and technology.  Traits I possess are, I am daring, unafraid of failure, passionate, and I have the philosophy that if I am not having fun then I need to go do something different.

Abilities – I am always thinking about ways to promote creativity through the use of technology.  I have a Master in Business Administration; therefore, I am always on the lookout for how to justify creativity with (ROI) return on investment because that is the language business people understand.  I am always looking for examples of language to use that will make creativity theory understandable to “rational” people such as those in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM).  I am often told that I am not rational (by my husband); I take this as a high compliment.

Tools – I read books about creativity and then I contact the authors and invite them to engage with me.  Oftentimes they ignore me but I have had some phenomenal successes.  Sometimes the authors find me and initiate the contact.  Michael Michalko did this and he invited me to write an endorsement for his new book, “Creative Thinkering” so I did. 

I use the public relations tools provided by (WITI) Women in Technology International to announce my latest creativity adventures.  They have a market reach of two million.  I am on their leadership team.  I also do webinars on creativity for WITI.  I am the Chief Creative Advisor to the President of Sedaa’s Global Brain Trust, which is a community of over three hundred in the field of (OD) organizational development.  I write blog posts about creativity on their site and how it relates to OD.  I also do webinars for them on social media and creativity.

I am an avid fan of Tony Buzan’s iMindMapping computer software and I use it for all my presentations.  I met him at the American Creativity Association conference in Singapore that I helped to organize.

I learn as much as I can about social media and then I implement what I have learned to promote creativity and connect with others who are interested in creativity.  I go where I have never gone before, for example, I am now a radio talk host on live radio for a program called Women\Men.  It is a new adventure and I am learning as I go along.  I plan to use this as a platform to apply creativity to everyday living and to make others aware of the field of creativity.

I am also constantly promoting RobotLab’s process developed by Lars Ringe that provides training in creativity to build high performance teams.  Our most recent success was his presentation in Copenhagen, Denmark of our white paper, “Mastering Creative Problem Solving within Teams” at the International Association of Science Parks conference.  We will soon begin our new book incorporating the ideas of tomorrow and the management solutions that create and maximize high performance teams by using creative problem solving.

I write blog posts about creativity.  I became a guest blogger for the Front End of Innovation, IIR USA and travelled to Amsterdam and wrote 19 blog posts about design thinking.  I continue to read and study design thinking to gain a better understanding of what it really means.  I recently connected with Roger Martin on facebook, the author of “The Design of Business, Why Design Thinking is the next competitive advantage.” 

Mental – I exercise five times a week.  I sleep eight hours every night.  When I am on the treadmill I zone out and often think about creativity.  I watch the news and think about how creativity might impact some of our world issues.  I am an insatiable reader of books, e-books and periodicals.  My reading ranges from the latest on Harvard Business Review to the latest historical romance novel.  I connect and hang out with international people; they are fascinating because they see the world differently than many of us.

I travel internationally at every opportunity.  Last year I went to Amsterdam; this year I am going to Ireland.  I will be going to China; therefore, I am educating myself about China.  I attend lectures and read about China.

Physical – I play with my two year old grandson on the floor and pay close attention to the way he perceives the world.  He reminds me of how fresh things once were to me and how innocent he is now.  I love to play with him and it leaves me filled with joy and new energy.  He loves to look at plants and animals and wonders about them.  My six year old grandson is just so brilliant; I love to have conversations with him about how he sees the world.  His perspective is so fresh and insightful.   They both make me start to think again about life with a fresh perspective.  When I am with them I take the time to look carefully at a plant, a flower, or to watch and think about the ducks. 

Emotional – I have been married for over 40 years and I am fortunate to be surrounded by a stable and loving family.  I do not take this for granted because some of our friends and extended family have the opposite situation.  I think about the creative skills required to stay married and to raise well adjusted children in such a turbulent society.  I am writing a book about my life’s journey entitled, “Mind Shift, Migrant to Main” and a second book entitled “Unconventional Corporate Mom.”

Social – I seek out creative people on social media networks and engage with them.  I became the President of the American Creativity Association – Austin Global.  It is a virtual community.  I seek out other leaders in creativity.  It is my intent to build a collaborative community using the latest technologies to promote creativity.  I envision scientists, software developers, engineers and other “rational” professionals meeting with creatives in one easy to use friendly collaborative virtual space.  I invite everyone to connect with me on LinkedIn, facebook, and Twitter and I engage with them.

What ideas do you plan on implementing to develop your own creative competency?

An electric jolt of creative ideas can lead to change!

1. Do not provide a budget for any creative projects. Everyone knows that when you are measured on a quarter by quarter basis, the ROI is simply not there to make your performance look good on a timely basis. The long term consequences of stifling creativity will become someone else’s problem after you are promoted for achieving short term ROI.

2. Make everybody dress the same in bland colors. A good recommendation, if you truly want to kill creativity, is to have everyone dress in blue or grey with white shirts or blouses. Color inspires creativity and this is dangerous to entrenched ideas.

3. Do not allow laughter. If you hear laughter in the hallways this means employees might be having fun and everyone knows creativity flourishes when individuals are having fun.

4. Schedule meetings where only the presenter is allowed to speak. Too much interaction might spark a creative idea from your employees.

5. Promote employees who say, “Yes” to all your ideas. Strangely enough one technique for becoming more creative is to say, “Yes, and …..” However, in this case the employees simply said, “Yes.” They forgot the part where you add to an idea with “and.” Watch out and do not promote any employees who say “yes and ………”

6. Do not allow animated facial expressions. Be sure to reward and cultivate a poker face where there is no visible reaction to anything that happens or is expressed. If someone is animated then there is great danger that they will inspire other employees with unusual ideas. Employees must keep their facial expressions under control at all times. Showing emotion is a clear danger sign of creative thinking being formulated.

7. Make every effort to have a homogeneous team that looks like you. Diversity in physical appearance and in thinking styles should be avoided. When you have people who think differently it just takes too much time to reach consensus.  Diversity just leads to disruptive thinking.  If you want similar thinking, then homogeneity is the way to accomplish this.

8.   Do not become proficient in the latest social media or social networking. If you allow your employees to blog, tweet, and connect on LinkedIn, then they might be exposed to radical ideas from other industries.  Do you really want to expose your organization to the possiblity that these radical ideas will be brought to team meetings?

9.   Do not allow time for employees to pursue creative thinking pursuits. This is such a time waster. If you insist on everyone doing things the way they have always been done, then they do not need to learn new things.

10.  Do not schedule any specialized training for creativity. If your leaders and employees learn how to be creative on demand by using the tools and techniques available to stimulate their brains then they might start generating hundreds of great ideas. This leads to more work for you and the management team.

Can you think of any other innovative ways to stifle creative thinking?

You often hear from many experts in the field of creativity and innovation. However, they often speak from a theoretical construct. David Tanner was Director of the DuPont Center for Creativity and Innovation. In that role he applied six dimensions including: the creativity-innovation connection, creating a supportive environment, developing creative thinking as a skill, the sources of innovation, motivating momentum, and protecting your inventions.

In his book, Igniting Innovation, Through the Power of Creative Thinking, David Tanner explains how to use creative thinking techniques to create unexpected value and gives many examples in his book. He shares his experience with developing new products, creating new processes, driving cost reductions, resolving controversial issues, igniting needs driven innovations in education, and creating value with discovery-driven innovation.

His topic at the conference is “Defending the Business of Innovation, Ignite your Innovation Competitive Edge through Powerful Creativity Tools.” If you have the opportunity to attend, you must go.

For details on the 2009 Innovation Immersion conference, please go to: Innovation Immersion.

To learn practical techniques for applying creativity and innovation, you may go to: Ignite Innovation

I often refer to his book and have the good fortune to discuss his ideas with him. His ideas are invaluable and have the power to improve your organization.