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Creativty is useful, often important, but don't make the mistake of making it an end in itself. It is only one tool available to help you reach your goals. Focus on the goals and how to reach them. If a dull, non-creative solution will get you there, don't try some creative thing that won't.

That said, how do you bring in creative solutions when appropriate? The first step is to open your mind to a lot of new ideas, even off-the-wall things. Some might work, some might trigger your thinking and give you other ideas. Don't limit yourself by NIH (not invented here) thinking, get ideas from wherever you can. Nor should you limit yourself to what's been done before.

Try to get several people together and brain-storm. That means they just throw out ideas without trying to evaluate them. Most ideas won't work but don't worry about that at this stage. The purpose of this is to generate ideas, and sometimes a silly idea will trigger more ideas from the group. In fact silly ideas may be the most effective at this since humor tends to aid creativity.

Don't put too short a time limit on the idea phase. If you come up with some ideas, your right ("intuitive") brain will continue working on the problem, even while you are relaxing or asleep. You will get more ideas. Take a couple of weeks to generate ideas if time allows.

Once you have lots of ideas, evaluate them. This is a job for the left (rational) brain. You will reject some ideas quickly, but don't be too quick. Make sure they really won't work before you toss them in the mental garbage can. Carefully evaluate any idea that looks like it might work, always keeping the goals in mind.

There are good, organized ways to compare ideas (which I teach in a seminar). It might be worth the trouble to pick the very best one, or your time might be too valuable to spend distinguishing between two fairly close ideas. In any case, work to pick an option that will meet your goals at a tolerable price in time, resources, and money.

Remember, focus on the goals, not if the action is creative or not. You might end up using some nice creative idea you or your team generated or you might decide to go with a tried and true solution.

Learn more about this author, Hal Lillywhite.
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