I am sure you’ve been in a meeting before now thinking you have a great idea but, for some strange reason, not having the confidence to mention it. The moment doesn’t seem right, you think it’s too obvious, maybe you feel you’ve not spotted something obvious … either way, something inside you makes you keep your mouth shut. That idea is then lost. Lost to you and lost to the business.
Here I am not just addressing creativity in the sense of creating an oil painting or penning a poem. I am thinking about the creativity involved in solving a problem and working through an issue.
In areas like public relations and media relations, creativity is key. Not holding back from mentioning ideas and thoughts in a meeting is vital. When I used to work at BBC Radio 5Live I’d like to think I was happy to encourage staff to expand on ‘seeds of ideas’ however early on in their gestation. Often these ‘early seed’ ideas became the best stories - they came from things noticed on the tube, overheard in a pub or via junk mail send to the journalists at home. It’s the same in PR, often the more leftfield someone’s thinking and alertness to the world around them, the more they can stimulate discussion.
So why do so many people hold back? Why are some people so good at being ‘publicly creative’ and others only creative in private. When is our creativity ‘killed’, when does that childish ‘anything’s possible’ approach to life end?
I would urge you to take a look at Sir Ken Robinson’s magnificent speech here. He talks about how we deal with creativity in the education system. It’s a speech that anyone in PR should watch and it’s alarming to realise how, potentially, our creativity is stifled.
How we rekindle a creative approach to business, PR, the media and the way we solve problems is something for another post. But watch the speech on Ted and I’m convinced you’ll be thinking about what you can do to effect change!
This has also been asked as a question ‘How do you foster a creative environment in your business?’ over on Linkedin - you can follow the answers here
on Dec 1st, 2008 at 8:30 pm
It’s kind of hard to think outside the box when you are locked inside of it. It’s honestly something to do with being stuck in an office that saps you of all creativity. The people with the best ideas are usually the ones that haven’t been stuck in for that long.