causing creativity
May 21, 2007 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Its encouraging to see that even the more traditional business columnists are writing about competencies and creativity required to succeed in the Conceptual Age. As solo professional service firms (psf’s) we’re in a good position to learn, practice and coach this, if we really want to make a difference in all 4 quadrants: the individual and the collective; the inner state of awareness and the outer world that we experience.
A new documentary film (in my queue) about Frank Gehry provides inspiration for this column: Inside the brain of a genius lies lessons on generating and implementing ideas
The trouble with studying genius at its source is that it mostly occurs inside the brain, so there’s not much to seeing it in action. I’m told that at Adam Smith’s home, you can still see the spot where the genius who came up with “the invisible hand” would stand and rub his forehead against the wood paneling while he pondered economics. That’s not great theater. As Arthur Conan Doyle has Sherlock Holmes say, “It is quite a three-pipe problem, and I beg you won’t speak to me for 50 minutes.” But with this Gehry film we get to see his thinking, sort of. Enough so that there are lessons to be learned.
In attempt to understand creative genius, most writers place the emphasis on the brain. There’s very little, however, written about the downtime between genius brain-storming sessions, when inspiration, ideas, synchronicity and solutions seem to just arise out of nowhere and no-thing. We all experience that, but few truly value it as integral to what and how they create. For those who do, space is as much of the “cause” of idea as is form (cognition, knowledge, genius, ego, process, etc.) which brings the idea to life, or conceptualization. But since form is all that most of us are conscious of, it gets all the credit.
So if you’re in transition, or working with clients dealing with change, you can shift belief away from 100% outer form: will, action, thinking, knowledge, storyline, ego, work, etc. And you can shift into balancing all that with inner space: stillness, synchronicity, meditation, deep breathing, etc. At the very least, stress will lessen. But its also likely that glimpses of the dormant inner creative genius, with the skills and competencies for the Conceptual Age, will emerge. So sharpen your, and clients’, power of observation so you notice and catch the glimpses. Like the Paul Weller song: Blink, and You’ll Miss It.
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generalist, solo professional service firm, empathy, creative process, source, Paul Weller
power
May 9, 2007 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
If you’re feeling diminished or drained or a bit dark, it may help to remember that the atoms that make up “you” are the same atoms that make up the stars, including SN 2006gy which recently stunned scientists in the way it went supernova.
And that’s just an infinitesimal example of the source that we can connect with.
He said the explosion, which was located some 240 million light-years away, polluted the surrounding environment with metals and elements that are needed for life.
Scientists say that the star which blew apart is similar to Eta Carinae, an enormous star in our own Milky Way, 7,500 light-years from Earth.
They say that before SN 2006gy went supernova, it expelled a large amount of material, similar in mass to that now being ejected by Eta Carinae, prompting speculation that a similar fate awaits Eta Carinae.
Dave Pooley, at the University of California at Berkeley, said if Eta Carinae were to explode “it would be so bright that you would see it during the day, and you could even read a book by its light at night”.
Star dies in monstrous explosion: “A star around 150 times the size of the Sun explodes in the most powerful supernova yet detected, Nasa says.”
(Via BBC News | Science/Nature | UK Edition.)
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New! Email option for RedShift subscribers
May 7, 2007 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
About nine months ago I discontinued emailing my ezine to my subscribers. Since then, I’ve been focused on blogging but still get requests for an email version from my subscribers who don’t spend a lot of time on the web, or who don’t use RSS readers.
So now I’m offering an email version (for as long as the service is free to me!) to my subscribers who will get a weekly list of my blog post excerpts by email.
productivity:creativity
May 6, 2007 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
I’m a fitness buff and competitive rower, and always interested in research on training. This NYT article is about the results and benefits of interval training.
But new findings suggest that for at least one workout a week it pays to be both tortoise and hare — alternating short bursts of high-intensity exercise with easy-does-it recovery.
Reading this, I had a flashback to my last ‘real’ full-time job, as a strategy consultant for an agency. One evening, my manager came bounding into my office thinking she was catching me slacking off because I was sitting still, staring at the wall. She quickly became sheepish when she turned around to see my 6′ whiteboard filled with the strategic map that I had created for a large client project. I was far from slacking off, I was being very still and “seeing” the solution.
Remembering this story got me thinking of another way that intervals are important: in the creative and production process. That agency was a good example of denying the importance of the “tortoise” segment, or the quiet still time when the ideas and solutions just seem to come in.
This alternating fast-slow technique, called interval training, is hardly new. For decades, serious athletes have used it to improve performance.
I think its also a metaphor for how solo professionals, and their clients, can improve performance and continually raise the bar for the value of their ideas and content. Its good to remember that you can’t be a great hare without being a great tortoise.
Fitness: A Healthy Mix of Rest and Motion: “New findings suggest that for at least one workout a week it pays to alternate between short bursts of high-intensity exercise with easy-does-it recovery.”
(Via NYT > Most E-mailed Articles.)
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generalist, solo professional service firm, creative process, interval training
mentoring gen next
May 4, 2007 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
If you really want to understand the issues facing Gen Next, specifically those about to graduate from college, you should read the NYT feature: The Graduates where eight college seniors write their essays about how they see the future. Its pretty amazing, and not just what they creatively and honestly write, but the hundreds of comments that follow the essays. It seems that for every commenter who relates and tries to understand, there’s another from the put-down folks who refuse to see anything but their own (generational?) perspective.
From the empathetic side, Anna Quindlen writes:
There’s an honorable tradition of starving students; it’s just that, between the outsourcing of jobs and a boom market in real estate, your generation envisions becoming starving adults. Caught in our peculiar modern nexus of prosperity and insolvency, easy credit and epidemic bankruptcy, you also get toxic messages from the culture about what achievement means. It is no longer enough to make it; you must make it BIG. Television has turned everything into a contest, from courtship to adoption. In a voyeuristic world, fame becomes a ubiquitous career goal.
So it got me thinking about how we, particularly baby boomer solo professional service firms (psf), can support, mentor, collaborate with and give feedback to these future leaders. I’m fortunate to be involved in a leadership coaching program where I work with similarly talented students as the essayists. But I want to do more to increase integral awareness of how breaking down generational barriers is good for me, us, business and the world.
After reading the essays, and the comments, I thought of using a traditional SWOT analysis as a tool for increasing generation awareness. Maybe I can find a Gen Next student to make one for the Baby Boomer generation.
Quindlen: An Apology to the Graduates: “You all will live longer than any generation in history, yet you were kicked into high gear earlier as well. How exhausted you must be
(Via Newsweek Columnists - Anna Quindlen.)
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generalist, solo professional service firm, empathy, generation x, swot analysis
content strategy
May 2, 2007 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
If you’re a solo professional service firm (psf), your content should be a top priority. However, Seth Godin raises an interesting issue around the subject of how much, and how surprisingly little, people will read. From his post:
True story: I was doing a speech for a bunch of twenty-something campus reps for a clothing company. One young lady raised her hand. She pointed to Purple Cow (about 160 pages long) and said, ‘If we only have time to read twenty pages, which twenty pages should we read?’
However you feel about it, and regardless of the reasons behind it, people not reading is the way things are. So I think its important to have a content strategy to guide what you produce. One approach is to use yourself as a case study. If you have a framework to map your own content and attention (or whatever criteria makes sense to you), and if you write for people like you, you’ll have a barometer for providing value through your content.
Here’s what mine looks like. (I’m a mature, creative, solo psf who once read a ton of business books but now feel lucky, to find one or two that really make a difference for me, over a five-year period.)
Every year, more than a thousand new ‘business’ books get published in the US. Not textbooks or manuals, but general interest books about how to do business better.
Some sell a few hundred copies. Some sell a few hundred thousand. One or two might sell a million. Out of a potential audience of 30 or 40 million white collar workers in the US.
Do they work or are they an utter waste of time?
(Via Seth’s Blog.)
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generalist, solo professional service firm, customer experience
waves
May 1, 2007 by Mary Wynne-Wynter · Comments Off
Solo’s and small business owners can get disappointed about the amount of time it takes to get results: a client base, income, referrals, etc. Often, the response is to urgently look in the typical places: networking groups, marketing and sales advice, business and financial planners, college coursework and degrees, temporary or permanent jobs, search engine optimization etc. But sometimes its good to look in the absolutely least likely place imaginable, Iggy Pop, for example.
If there were ever a guy who refused to look in any of the supposedly “right” places, its Iggy Pop. No, Iggy Pop does his work and catches the waves. From the BBC Faces of the Week column:
He embodies every excess ever associated with rock stars.
Somehow, the man regarded as the forerunner of the punk movement, has survived drug addiction, self-mutilation, mental disorders and violence.
Add to his life mixture other noxious ingredients including under-age sex, habitual indecent exposure and infidelity, and you just about have the archetypal feral rock star.
According to music journalist Paul Lester: “When you look at the edgy, dark side of rock and roll, when you take away all the myths of books and films or whatever, there are only two people who embody the essence of the rock star - Keith Richards and Iggy Pop. Iggy has sold hardly any records in comparison but he’s the biggest underground star in history.”
Even at 60, Iggy Pop is still diving into his audience, a practice he first began in the 1960s as a way of “connecting” with it.
You don’t need much knowledge of quantum physics or metaphysics to sense that there’s more to how we experience our world than what meets the eye. That includes waves. Just as a surfer in the ocean sits and waits patiently for the wave to arrive, so can we. Just like Iggy Pop. Well..not exactly, but you get the drift.
Faces of the week: Rock’s survivor, Iggy…: “Faces of the week: Rock’s survivor, Iggy Pop, turns 60″
(Via BBC News | Magazine | UK Edition.)
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