I sincerely believe that in order to be successful in business (and in life in general), it is vital to be creative. We need to be creative to overcome obstacles in businesses and in life, we need to be creative to make our business and lives better, make more money, have more time, more happiness. The list just goes on an on an on.
And that was a problem to me. I was not creative, not stupid, but not creative. In our younger days, we used to measure the creativity with how well people draw and do in art classes. And I sucked at it (unlike my younger brother who was born with the natural talent to draw). I was a very logical left brain person, and pretty good at it. I can find reason and logic easily and I can easily understand things in a logical way but if you ask me to draw a cat, it would probably look like a house to everyone else. An exaggeration, but you get what I mean: I was not creative by the benchmark then.
But I observed that while many logical persons become successful managers, it is those creative ones that made it as entrepreneurs, business owners and tycoons. Being extremely logical is simply just not good enough, not sufficient. I felt that I needed the skill to be creative to give myself the best possible opportunity to succeed. And if I am not born with it then I would need to learn it, develop it as a skill. And I ahve been doing that since I was young and while I still could not draw any decent shape or figure, I found that I was able to creatively find 'out-of-the-box' solutions to many of the problems that faced my vocation, my business and my life.
The quest to be and remain creative is a lifelong exercise and my latest endevour matched me with a book written by Michael Ray and Rochelle Myers titled Creativity in Business. The book "was based on the famed Stanford University course that has revolutionized the art of success", it says on the cover. It was a combination of their ideas and the revelations made by (over sixty) creative business leaders that spoke at the Creativity in Business class. And these speakers are big names in business.
After reading the book, I found that I would agree with almost 90% of the content (there I go again being all logical and left brained) as it either makes common sense or I personally have gone through what they wrote in the book. I believe that when we intend to achieve something, like in my case where I consciously wants to develop my creativity and ability to be successful, we will be thrown with a series of obstacles and problems that in the end would enable us to learn achieve what we set out in the beginning. That was exactly what happened with me, peace in life seemed like pauses between problems back then but each problems helped me learn the skill of creative thinking and applying the same to whatever issues I had in hand at the time. And when I read this book, all the experiences I had seemed to lend credence to the notions set forward by the writers, hence why I decided to do a review of the book adding to it my experiences, reasoning and logic.
The first topic the book set out is that Business is an Art. Well, if that is true and business is mainly just art, that just sucks for us non-arty people. We logical non-arty people needs the cause and effect of science to work and make decisions and if this is no longer true, then we are done for. To many, we seemed to think that business is a science, where one dollar plus one dollar equals two dollars. Everything about business is numbers, the accounts are numbers, the sales are numbers, the discounts are numbers, the losses are numbers, the salary are numbers. Everything that I seemed to know about business revolves around numbers. To accept that business is an art creates a conflict, a denial within self as we may believe that art is elusive, too non-definitive, too fuzzy for a business, a source of income to be.A business should be as how we draw the cash-flow model to be like. A Series of numbers flowing down to generate the profit. Unfortunately, as I discovered much later, business is indeed more art that science. Nothing in business is certain, just as in life. Business is a continuous work in progress, it is never complete. It is not to say that there is no science in business, but to ignore the art aspect of business is to prepare ourselves for failure. Therefore, as a conclusion, while I agree that business, to a large degree is art, it is not all of it. It is a combination of both.
However, for the purpose of seeking creativity in business, we need to focus on the art aspect of the business. That part, I totally agree.100%
Creativity does not come naturally to some people, especially extremely logical left-brained people.
4. The next topic is titled "If at first you don't succeed, surrender". As a Muslim, I find this fascinating.
5. Next the book talks about destroying judgement and replacing that with curiosity. In a nutshell, the book says that "..". To put this into our local perspective, this basically meand that you have to remove your strereotyping of yourself and others, in Malay it means "sangka buruk". My mom has always tought me to not have "sangka buruk". The key word about this phrase is "sangka" meaning that your are making assumptions which are not based on facts or full set of facts. And that you are assuming the worst. "Sangak buruk" is not only towards others, but towards yourself too. When you doubt your capabilities, presuming that you cannot take on a task or opportunity, you are having "sangka buruk" on your self. You made a judgement on your capabilities. As a muslim, we are thought that there sangka buruk are the ways of the Syaitan, and there is a speficic one that would whisper doubts into you, or "was-was". Therefore, as a Muslim, we are taught to stay away from this bad behaviour and seek Allah's refuge from Syaitan and its evil ways. They way to approach doing business is to replace that "sangka buruk" with curiosity. Curiosity of how does the task look like, curiousity of what would happen if you succeed, curiosity of what would you need to do to get it done, who do you need to meet. If we replace judgement, sangka buruk, with curiosity, we would be making ourselflved and our business closer to being creative and one step closer to success, Insya Allah.
6. The other thing that the book says about building creativity is to pay attention and ask dumb questions.
7. The previous 4 topics basically sets your up, mentally, preparing you to be creative. Making your mind conducive for creativity. Once that has been established, once you are prepared, the book goes on to give ideas on how to conduct yourself in business. It listed 5 ideas which would at least remove the creativity block when you are managing your business.
8. The first idea is the EEE, meaning do what is Easy, Effortless and Enjoyable. This does not mean party all day long, but rather to find out what comes natural to you. As a Muslim, this too makes perfect sense, as our religion taught us that Allah made us different, with different sets of skills. Allah has also removed the burden of guarnteeing our sustenance because Allah had said that substance is his prerogative. We are commanded to search for sustenance but as to how much we are going to get, don't worry our little head with it. This basically means that if we are stuck doing a business that is not easy, effortless and enjoyable; we can switch to another with full faith and peace of mind that Allah has set our sustenance. DO NOT MISTAKE this is an explanation to say that we can do nothing! We have to do something and be smart in making our moves, but when push comes to shove, we as Muslim should find strength in Allah's promise and go forth to make the necessary change.
9. The second idea is "Don't think about it". The book said that " ...". Well, the phrase "paralysis by analysis" always comes to mind whenever I read about people who think too much before making any decision. I don't believe in not thinking, but not thinking too much. And in a way, intuition is also thinking, but in an auto and unconscious way.
10. Next is the notion to as yourself simply Yes or No. Well this is an extension of the previous chapter about leaving it to intuition. As a muslim, we have an added method that we can applly, which is called Solat Ishthikarah. It is how we are taught to seek for divide guide in making a tough decision (actually any decision for that matter). However, even after we have done all this, made the decison based on our best thoughts and intitution, things could still go wrong. And in this situation, we have to go back to the "if first you don't succeed, surrender". Surrender to Allah and know that he knows what lies in front of you that you do not and Allah will give you what is best for you.
11. Nest is about being creative all the time. making creative being an ordinary being to yourself. That means to apply the "no judgement onto yourself rule" and not let the environment stop you from being your creative self. Not to worry about looking stupid or nosy or difficult when being curious about something.
12. Lastly, "bring your creativity to bear with your organisation"; meaning....
There you have it.
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