“Creativity is not a talent, it is a skill that can be learnt.
It empowers people by adding strength to their natural abilities which improves teamwork, productivity and where appropriate profits.”

(Edward de Bono)

I suspect that few people would disagree that Walt Disney knew a thing or two about creativity.

Robert Dilts is a developer, author, trainer and consultant in the field of Nero-Linguistic Programming (NLP). One of the things he investigated was how Walt Disney was creative. As this was done after Walt Disney had dies he had to use things like writings (including some by Disney) and talking to people who had known the man himself.

What I’m about to write is my brief summary of what Dilts concluded (With my apologies to the author :). For the original source, read Strategies of a genius, vol.1 Amazon.co.uk link Amazon.com link)

The Walt Disney Creativity Strategy follows a specific process. The first stage is “the dreamer”. This is the stage of thinking big with no limitations or boundaries. The second stage is “the realist”, taking the ideas from the “dreamer” stage and looking at the practicalities.

The final stage is the critic, the time to test, evaluate and look for things that go wrong. Potentially this forms a cycle for things to be refined by going back to the dreamer etc until the critic is redundant.

In my work I often see people that get stuck predominantly using one of the above stages and not the others. Maybe it’s someone who has big ideas but never takes any practical action.

Perhaps it’s someone who jumps straight to the practical stage without dreaming big – for example, they would never have considered that anyone would offer payment for the following jobs:

Being a hermit: 40 days and nights shut away in a Manchester museum

Being paid to work just 12 hours a week on a tropical island with full board (for UK TV viewers find out more about this story on “The Best Job in the World” Thursday on BBC1)

Or

The domestic American airline that wanted to employ someone whose sole job was to fly around the country using the company flights and to write about their experience.

While these jobs, to my knowledge, have all been taken, they have all been advertised within the last 12 months. They may not be as common as some other roles; equally someone is now being paid to do the job.

Or perhaps it’s “the critic” that jumps straight in – can you imagine a writer crafting a piece if they were attempting to edit what they were writing before it even reached the page in a first draft?

As always if what you are already doing works for you then great. If it isn’t working then I offer the following definition from Einstein “Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

This week I invite you to do something different and play with the following. You may want to pick something you already know you want to get creative with or something where you are stuck and what you were doing hasn’t worked.

You’ll need a pen and paper to play with this. You’ll probably find this easier if you physical move to a different position for each stage. Depending upon how much space you have this may be as small as changing how you are sat, or on a much bigger scale changing rooms altogether :).

If you realise at any stage that you have drifted into another stage prematurely, just shake it off (physically if it’s easier) and return to the stage you were in. The other one will get its turn, when it will be most useful.

1. The dreamer stage. (Remember to pick how/where you want to sit etc for this stage)

This is the stage of no limitations. What in an ideal world you’d love to be doing in this situation?

Some questions to help with this stage:

· What inspires and/or excites you about this?
· If money was no object what would you do?
· If you had all the time in the world, what would you do?
· If it didn’t mean anything about you if you didn’t get what you wanted, what would you go for?
· If a fairy godmother were to come and wave a magic wand, what would you ask for?
· What would be even better then that?

Keep going with this until you have at least 20 things written down, especially if they seem absurd!

2. The practical stage. (Remember to pick how/where you want to sit etc for the practical stage)

Pick at least one thing from your list that appeals to you. Perhaps if you want a bit of fun something that your immediate thought was that’s insane. We’re just playing with this and doing something different – you can always choose not to take action when you have finished.

If what you have picked was possible, what would you do to make it a reality?

Questions that may help at this stage:

· What information would you need?
· What skills and beliefs would help?
· What’s the time frame that would work with this?
· Would other people be involved?
· What finance would be involved?
· What energy would you have?
· What would be the very first practical step?

3. The next step is “the critic”. (Again, remember to change to a third position to do this stage.)

Evaluate what practical answers you came up with at stage 2.

Questions that may help at this stage:

· What could go wrong?
· How does this look with the big picture?
· How does the small details look?
· How does this look to a customer/boss/other people involved in this situation?
· How can you make this better/ stronger?

4. If appropriate take your answers in the third stage and return to stage 1, the dreamer and cycle through the process until the answers you have from the critic are ones you want.

5. If you then want to choose to take action, feel free.

6. You may have noticed that some roles were much easier then others. That just suggests that you’ll use the one you’re comfortable in most often. Next time you notice that a bit more creativity would help, become aware if you had been using the dreamer, the realistic or the critic and see the difference with using this cycle.

Have a wonderfully creative week

Love

 Jen

This was originally posted on www.YourChangingDirection.com