Transcript Creativity in Business Rochelle Myers and Michael Ray

Creativity in Business
Rochelle Myers and Michael Ray
The Basics
• Essence
• Preparation
• Inspiration and Implementation
Essence
• Define Creativity (from T. Amabile)
– Novel, appropriate, useful, valuable
– Heuristic, not algorithmic
• Define Essence
– The true you not your ego or identity
• What stands in the way of your essence
and consequently, your creativity?
– The battle between ego and essence
Preparation
• Surrender
• Destroy Judgment
• Pay Attention
• Ask Dumb Questions
If at First You Don’t
Succeed - Surrender
• Surrender and know your desires and
true nature
• Surrender is an active process
• Change view from mechanistic to
“new science”
– Equilibrium, not order
– Perception is reality
If at First You Don’t
Succeed - Surrender
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Drop mental striving
Apply yourself – joy of doing
Maintain a spirit of inquiry
Acknowledge that the result is
unknown
Destroy Judgment
• Destroy judgment, create curiosity
• Hear your Voice of Judgment
• Recognize the types of judgment
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Internal
External
Collective
Judging Judgment
Destroy Judgment
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Hear it
Attack it – make it go away
Make it out to be ridiculous
Draw on childlike tendencies
Yoga, Exercise, Meditation…
Try The Stated Goal Technique
Pay Attention
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Mindfulness – attention w/o thinking
Find your objective intelligence
Be like an athlete “in the zone”
Examples of “breakdowns”
Pay Attention
• Know the difference between hearing
and listening
• See like an artist
• Hear like a therapist
• Hone your attention skills
Ask Dumb Questions
• Creativity begins with a question
• Again, draw on childlike qualities
• What is a dumb question?
– Emperor’s new clothes
• A dead question is not
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Dead ended
Etiquette Oriented
Accusatory
Argumentative
Shallow
Ask Dumb Questions
• Pattern Evolves
– Dumb questions  Meaningful Answers
 Insights  Meaningful action 
Resolution  New Beginnings  New
Dumb Questions
• Start small, work for clarity
• Your essence may have the answers
Inspiration and
Implementation
• Do what is Easy, Effortless, and
Enjoyable
• Don’t think about it
• Ask yourself if it’s a yes or a no
• Be ordinary
• Be in the world but not of it
Easy, Effortless, and
Enjoyable
• Love your work, love your self
• Business world is often difficult,
distasteful, and depressing
• Look into your essence
• Find your purpose
• Start living by quitting
Easy, Effortless, and
Enjoyable
• Be yourself, make a list of what is EEE for
you
• Exercise - Take a longview of life,
describe your experiences from the end
• Live with purpose
– Rank tasks, break down tasks, work on one at a
time, change your attitude toward work, know
when to quit, be good to yourself, make a game
of it
Don’t Think About It
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Release worry, doubts, expectation
Get rid of the voice of judgment
Don’t let your cup be too full
Be relaxed about your approach
Don’t Think About It
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Shut off mind chatter “monkey mind”
Don’t dwell - learn
Live the eternal now
Methods to let go
– Meditate
– Categorize thoughts at work
– Lock irrelevant thoughts away
Ask Yourself if it’s a Yes
or No
• Good vs. Bad Decisions, Clear Sighted
vs. Distorted
• Listen to intuition, answer with y/n
• Often the choice is professional vs.
personal – finding balance
Ask Yourself if it’s a Yes
or No
• When you decide…
– Be pleased, you worked hard to decide, enjoy
the decision
• Practical intuition
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A gift to be developed
Complements reason
Unemotional
Demands action
It is mistake free!!
Be Ordinary
• Connect with everything your essence
bestows
• Do things to do them, not for recognition
or result
• Live w/ups and downs of life
• Be content with daily tasks, excellence in
execution, and modest pleasure over
results
Be Ordinary
• Know your personal approach to money
• Go beyond desire – ask what if I had
fulfilled my goals
• Techniques for finding self
– Clustering, I ching, lucid dreaming, etc.
• Go beyond outer desires and discover
something greater in inner nature
Be in the World, but not
of it
• Don’t just do something different, BE
something different
• Fulltime expression of your essence
• Work as a celebration not a battle
– Better analysis, deeper intuition,
eliminates competition, skills develop
more freely, many other benefits
Be in the World, but not
of it
• Akido as a metaphor for business
– Breathing, soft eyes, balance, force
• Bring creativity into business
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To be – tao, the way, flow
To see – understand and observe
To detach – lose roles and outcomes
To love
Conclusions & Further
Reading
• Find Your Essence
• Learn to Apply the
Heuristics
• Approach the
Challenges using
those Heuristics
• Practice, Practice,
Practice
• Theresa Amabile
• Zen Mind, Beginner’s
Mind (Suzuki)
• Zen & the Art of
Making a Living (Boldt)
• The Tao of Pooh
(Hoff)
• The Tao of Chaos
(Wolinsky)