What it takes to ensure Creativity is King

Further to yesterday’s blog about Dan Pink’s Whole New Mind Presentation … here’s the good news – Creativity is King.

Dan Pink shared with us that apparently Steve Jobs (Founder and CEO of Apple) only looks for two things when he is recruiting people; “I want to know that they can get along with people, and I want to look at their drawing portfolio”. Now I would love that, but this would strike dread into most new recruit’s hearts.

Dan had six points to make for organisations to thrive in the face of “Abundance, Asia, and Automation”.

• • Design
    • To be in business an organisation must be literate in design. This is about creating significance beyond utility.

    “We are in the arts and entertainment business now. We are putting a huge emphasis on world class design”, Robert Lutz Chairman General Motors.

    • When there is more than one car per licensed driver in the US, they have to do something.

    “I don’t think anybody thinks we’re not seriously in the design business? We want to design the purchasing experience. It is all about design”, CEO Proctor and Gamble

    • Facts are now free and anywhere.. and Creativity is King
  • Story
    It is all about the story we create, not the arguments we pose. Seth Godin covers this well in his books, ‘All Marketers are Liars’ and ‘Purple Cow’.
  • Symphony
    • This is the ability to see the big picture, to connect the dots, bring things together. Did you know that self-made millionaire’s are four times more likely to be dyslexic? That is because on the whole they do not get caught up in the detail. The word ‘multi’ is powerful (multi-cultural multilingual, multi-faceted) because you can combine the best of things to create something new.

    “The guy who invented the wheel was not that smart, it was the guy who invented the other three who was a genius”, Sid Caesar.

  • Empathy
    It is not just about logic. Empathy cannot be outsourced or coded. Good sales people test high in empathy, because they get in touch with their client’s feelings, and they are far more interested in the clients than making a sale. They are not there for themselves but there for others.
  • Play
    Have you ever tried to tell your kids to do something and they just say no! No one is interested in ongoing monologues on what should be done. When the MCG banned the Mexican wave, people just did it more. Couched in play, powerful messages can be delivered. The UN released an internet game to educate people on the difficulties of delivering aid to troubled areas. There were hundreds of thousands of downloads in a few weeks. No press release or statement would have achieved the same level of cut through. And who said we could not have fun in business anyway?
  • Meaning
    There is a new blurring between ‘for profit’ and ‘not-for-profit’ organisations. There is a new corporate emerging which can now be labelled ‘not-only-for-profit’. GE’s ‘greening the planet’ project would have been unheard of at the turn of the century. People are far more aware of their footprint on the planet than they ever have been before, and people everywhere want to make a difference, so that their life’s work has meaning.

    The great thing is, according to Pink, this is what people enjoy doing. Have we ever heard of someone with a day job as a sculptor and on weekends for fun they do people’s tax returns? The best days in our lives are the ones where we do things by intrinsic motivation. We need to be literate and numerate ? we cannot bypass this, it is essential. It is now just a matter of using the whole brain. Rather than an either/or, left or right mentality.

    “What a wonderful world we live in”