BETTERIDEASFASTER . THE TEN BEHAVIOURS

Think is what you know. Do is what you can execute. Be is who you are while you are doing it.

Ten behaviours beneath the skills and the tools. Each page answers one question completely, and carries the room it came from and the evidence under it.

  1. 01Why do I get my best ideas in the shower?Because the shower is one of the few places you are awake, alone, and not being asked for anything. Your attention turns inward, and the connections your busy brain was blocking finally arrive. The ideas were already in you. The shower just stopped interrupting them.
  2. 02Why won’t customers tell you the real reason?Because they cannot. People are reliable reporters of what they do, and unreliable explainers of why they did it. Ask why and you get a plausible story invented after the fact. Ask what, then go and watch, and you get the truth.
  3. 03Why do people say they want big ideas and then say no?Because under uncertainty they cannot see that it is a big idea. They are not lying about wanting one. The novelty that makes it valuable is the same novelty that makes it feel risky, and the risk is what they see first.
  4. 04How do I run a creative session that isn’t a brainstorm?Send people new material two weeks out. Open by picking up thoughts they have already had, never by asking who has an idea. Keep it to an hour or two. Then break, and come back days later, because that is where the connections get made.
  5. 05Does a creative process have to happen in order?No, and a process that only works in order is a fragile one. Real creative work leaps. Design the sequence so that somebody can jump ahead, and so that if the jump fails they land somewhere known rather than nowhere.
  6. 06Why does my team stop having ideas when I’m in the room?Often because you are leading from the front, and to people who have ideas of their own that reads as not being open to theirs. The fix is not to lead less. It is to be able to lead from three positions instead of one.
  7. 07Do I have to meditate to be more creative?No. What helps is the open kind of attention, where you let whatever comes, come. The narrow, controlled kind does not do the same job. And if formal practice does not suit you, find your own way in, because the state is the point, not the method.
  8. 08How do you keep going when the idea keeps getting knocked back?By being anchored in the truth underneath the idea rather than in the idea itself. Ideas die. If the insight is real and you actually believe it, it survives every version, and you can keep making new ones out of whatever is to hand.
  9. 09Why should I make something that has nothing to do with my job?Because the making feeds the part of you that your job is spending. A thing of your own gives you mastery, control and relaxation that work cannot, and it comes back as creativity and generosity at work. Occasionally it becomes the work.
  10. 10How do I know when to let an idea go?When you notice you are defending it rather than improving it. Holding on does not only cost you that idea. It hides the better one standing right behind it. The good ones arrive after the obvious one has been released, and that order almost never changes.