Ideas don’t just form themselves. If they did, our jobs would be a lot easier, and there would be a lot less frustrated binge-snacking. No, ideas are birthed from the very depths of writer’s block when all seems lost, from a crazy unformed wisp of a concept that seems too stupid to actually say out loud, and from hours-long brainstorming sessions that leave you a shell of your former self. Look, I’m not saying brainstorming is the worst thing ever. I am saying that good ideas come in all shapes and sizes, and that sometimes they come easily and sometimes they don’t.
And it’s easy, when they don’t, to feel like that’s it. You’re done. You’ve maxed out. You’ve already produced all the good ideas you’re capable of, and now you’re just a wrung-out towel of unoriginality. But that just isn’t the way it works. We discussed the creative potential of the human brain when we read Tom and David Kelley’s Creative Confidence for our book club, and the thing they tried to drive home more than any other is that people are not wells of creativity; they’re more like bottomless pits.
It all starts with believing that you are capable of creativity. The next step is to actually be creative. Here at Gemba, we often start off with an activity to get the creative juices flowing. I once took part in a brainstorming sesh where we pre-gamed by messing around with Play-Doh. After that, we adhere to the golden rules:
You’ll notice the judgment thing is on there twice. Plenty of perfectly good ideas come from unruly, terrible ideas with no hope of getting off the ground. But if you stifle that bad-idea impulse, you’ll cut off the thought process that ultimately leads you to The Idea. There are lots of exercises designed to get you thinking, including free writing, mind mapping, and cubing. Pick one and run with it.
Steve Jobs said, “Creativity is just connecting things.” So don’t restrain yourself. Suggest dumb things. Suggest things that won’t possibly work. Eventually you’ll make the connection, and something will work. And above all—you’re a force of untapped creative potential. Don’t forget it.