We are the authors of a new book titled A Year of Creativity. Kathryn Jacob is the CEO of Pearl and Dean, the famous movie advertising sales company, the one with the iconic music (da da da da da da dah dahhhh) and Sue Unerman is the Global Chief Strategy Officer at media agency Brainlabs. This is our third book together, and part of the reason we write books is because it is such fun to hang out together.
This book is about creativity at work, and our reasons for writing this one are because we have seen how businesses have become obsessed with data and so called left-brain thinking, at the expense of humanity, gut instinct, creativity or right-brain thinking. This doesn’t mean we don’t believe in accountability, efficiency, logic and measurement. It means that we know, from our own careers and from the many examples of what has worked that are in the book, that creativity will add a competitive edge that logic and mechanics alone cannot.
A Year of Creativity argues that following the rules and justifying actions on the basis of known data will take you only so far; everyone needs to learn when and how to take a leap of faith into the unknown. And to understand that this creativity is not enough when it is just deployed for a five-year plan, or an annual away day.
Creativity needs to be baked into everything we do all year round,
whether we’re problem-solving, looking for inspiration at work or navigating personal or family difficulties. Sometimes - perhaps most of the time - sticking to the tried and true is good and proper. Yet this is based on what we know we already know; it’s much less useful when you’re faced with uncertainty. And one of the truths of our world is that uncertainty is increasing and we need to find ways to adapt and thrive.
Left-brain thinking, which loves order, likes to shut down right-brain creativity. Left-brain thinkers tend to swamp right-brain thinkers with logic and proof points, because you can’t prove something new until you try it out. Over time, right-brain thinkers stop suggesting their ideas, as proof is paramount. At the same time, and perhaps understandably in the current economic climate, most people at work do not consider themselves to be creative. Adobe Research shows a global creativity crisis: 8 in 10 people feel that unlocking creativity is critical to economic growth and nearly two-thirds of respondents feel creativity is valuable to society.
Yet a striking minority – only one in four people – believe they are living up to their own creative potential. A key message of A Year of Creativity is that everyone is creative. Don’t believe us? If you ever ask a bunch of kindergarten kids about art and creativity, the chances are that they’ll all stick their hands up. By the time they reach early teens, however, most kids don’t call themselves creative, and those that do are worried about what their peers think of them. Did this happen to you? It did to us, and yet the truth is that everyone has creative instincts – yet, like any muscle, if these are not used, they will deteriorate.
Most people aren’t asked to use their creativity at work. At the start of your career, you’re normally required to carry out specific instructions, and veering from them is frowned upon, even possibly raising a black mark on career progression. If you’re rewarded for doing as you are told, then that’s the behaviour you will continue to deliver. Everyone plays safe and you risk getting stuck in the tried and tested, while the world around you seems to be speeding up and change is constant. Yet in these highly challenging times, everyone needs to think creatively. The challenges and opportunities of tomorrow are not
answered by heritage behaviour.
We are big believers in diversity and inclusion. Not only because it is the right thing to do, but also because people from different backgrounds, with different ideas and assumptions, do generate more creative ideas than you get from a homogenous team. Every time we jump to consensus, we can miss opportunities for driving the ideas forward. If we surround ourselves only with those who think like us, life is an echo chamber – and that gets you literally nowhere in terms of getting to grips with the grim realities of today’s chaotic times. Too much agreement, and a lack of interaction with the real world, doesn’t help creativity. Just because things have been done this way in the past, is no reason to continue to work this way.
The power of creativity to empower people is enormous. If the organisation that you work for operates in a way that means people do only as they are told, and don’t feel that they can find their own way to solve problems, then there is enormous potential that is being unfulfilled. Talented people won’t find it satisfying to work there and won’t stay long. If you can inject a culture of creativity into the organisation the upside will be huge.
Our book details 52 techniques for creativity at work, divided into the seasons. Each one of the techniques, from "Do things in the wrong order", to "Build bridges" is proven to work, and we give real examples of this in the book. Experiment with the ones that work best for the situation that you’re in. But don’t contain creativity to a one off exercise. Once your creative muscles are in shape you can apply innovative solutions to any situation that you face.