Creativity Central Blog

2006-09-12T10:50:00.000-05:00

The Greater Des Moines Partnership (formerly the Des Moines Chamber of Commerce) on September 21st will offer a Carnival of Creativity. This three-hour workshop is designed to unleash the creative spirit within your organization. The event will feature breakout sessions that focus on creative opportunities in branding, leadership, learning and communication. Charlie and Maria Girsch of Creativity Central will deliver the keynote address on the A.C.T. (attitude, commitment and tools) program.

Webster: in it's second definition, defines carnival as
a : an instance of merrymaking, feasting, or masquerading b : an instance of riotous excess

Being of German heritage I grew up in a world of "if you ain't suffering, you're not getting anywhere". This was later fortified by a variety of coaches who railed, "Girsch, no pain, no gain".

This philosophy worked its way into the American work ethic to such a degree that Daniel Pink reports in his book, "A Whole New Mind" about Ford's Rouge Plant having rules against laughter and fun.

Well folks, PAIN isn't the only way to GAIN. I married a Bohemian Princess who challenged my Teutonic ways while teaching me how to play in a very PRODUCTIVE manner. AND indeed we did quite well as professional toy inventors.

Carnival of Creativity honors that reality in offering a fun filled morning of "speed learning" in an inventive creative manner - we call our brand of Creativity Inventivity. So it is that we will convene at the ball park and with the help of our Partners in Creativity:

Mike Sansone - Communications
Mike Wagner - Branding
Victor Aspengren - Leadership
Frank Bell - Learning

And wait for the legendary call "PLAY Ball!!"

BTW: I know the keynoters and might be able secure a few "special" tickets if that would help your decision to join us.

You be the JUDGE

2006-04-05T20:14:00.000-05:00

This rag tag bunch changed the way the world computes. I'm told that this picture shows the original Micro Soft team. You can see some of thousands upon thousands of folks enjoying the fruits of their vision on the Microsoft site.

Would you have hired that 70's team? What kind of judgment or assumption (notorious blocks to creativity and innovation along with habit and fear) might you have reached if you were invited to join them in their adventure. People often ask, what's the matter with young people ... not much given an idea, permission and the opportunity reminds Marian Wright Edelman.

Being a bit of a long hair myself in the 70's, I don't think that the look would have stopped me, BUT I sure would have struggled with the idea of desktop computers, user friendly (?) operating systems and paperless letters.

The success of this band of dreamers reminds me of the Margaret Mead quote, "Never underestimate the ability of a small, dedicated group of people to change the world. Indeed, nothing else ever has." We often think of this quote in terms of social justice and inclusion, as we should.

But that original team believed in a future that included useful personal computing and the whole world is now in debt, some might suggest in bondage, to their efforts AND now their charity.

STONED !

2006-04-03T20:35:00.000-05:00

No, not that kind.

Rather, I'm thinking about Joseph next door. He's a very precocious first grader who proudly displayed his new, wonderful, colored stone collection. After our appropriate oohs and aahs, he ordered us to close our eyes and put out our hands. Into each, he placed a beautiful dazzling red stone. To keep!

A year ago, another little girl, Megan, was showing us, with equal pride, her crystal collection which included some beautiful violet "gems." Just as with Joseph, her immediate response to our admiring comments was to—right then and there---give us one.

How can kids be so connected to what they love, and yet share with such spontaneity, never regretting their benevolence, never looking back to re-think their generosity, only eager to perform their random acts of Buddha-like non-clinginess? Maybe it's the innate creativity of children that allows—no, encourages---them to share, to let go, and to trust that there will always be more or different or extra.

In Chapter 2 of our book, Fanning the Creative Spirit, we offer several definitions of creativity. One says that creativity is "remembered, not learned." Later in Chapter 9, the last of the "Seven Practices of Inventivity," is "to let go and trust."

Thank God (most of the time) for kids to watch and learn from. Anyone who has a child in his or her life has an instant mentor, if only we take the time to remember. Cheers to Joseph's and Megan's uncorked creative spirits!

Six Sigma - SICK????

2006-03-31T14:11:00.000-06:00

Thoughts from Thinking ...

Caught up with Wayne Lindholm, formerly of 3M and now serving the manufacturing community as Manufacturing Advisors, Inc., for lunch today. It didn't take long before Six Sigma was the topic of conversation. Wayne, recalling 3M's encounter with the double S, quoted an interview with John Black

"Looking back to March of 2001 when McNerney, fresh off the GE/Welch machine, announced his Five Corporate Initiatives for 3M; there was no overarching, comprehensive, long-term vision that held the initiatives together. Instead, he launched five, "point improvement tools" that cut, slashed, and burned using up 3M cultural capital that took decades to create."

To me the key phrase in his obersvation is "using up 3M cultural capital". Sadly the marvelous tool of Total Quality was repurposed to slash and burn in the interest of improving the bottom line - short term. McNerney is gone now and so are a lot of Wayne Lindholms. But this isn't just about 3M, it's far reaching. Best Buy just announced a profitable quarter and layoffs. How does that work?

Wayne's passion for a Total Quality manufacturing environment was learned and absorbed during his days with 3M's tape division. From the division president to the manufacturing floor everyone knew and participated in the process of making the best possible product - with pride, for profit and without flaw (almost zero defects).

We talked about the kinds of organizations where "they get it", where the goals, the effort, the resposibility and the rewards are shared. Sadly, most of the examples that he could point to were not publicly traded.

As we parted, Wayne handed me Leading without Power: Finding Hope in Serving Community by Max De Pree, chairman emeritus of Herman Miller - "they got it" he smiled.

Blog CPR

2006-03-30T10:30:00.000-06:00

Is this blog still alive? Let's do blog CPR - STAT! Dr. Blog, line 2 - CODE BLUE! We're trying to give the blog new life, keep your bloggers crossed!

UPDATE - Tis breathing!!

What is it?

2005-01-26T17:16:00.000-06:00

The person with the most "Creative" answer
wins a Creativity Central "What if" Hat

The big question

2005-01-26T17:13:00.000-06:00

Competition or Collaboration? Which leads to the most beneficial solutions and Why?

Invention

2004-12-09T16:43:00.000-06:00

If necessity is the mother of invention, what is the father?

Holiday Entertaining

2004-12-09T16:41:00.000-06:00

by Ed Holahan

At Creativity Central we are fond of saying “NO MORE SAME OLD.” We are in the business of getting people into the habit of getting out of the habit. We offer the following hints as an out-of-the-gift-box approach to dining this holiday season.

Start with the House Rules.
THIS IS MY HOUSE AND I MAKE THE RULES!

Make sure that everyone present understands that you are in charge of everything. That means everything. No exceptions. If someone wants to make a toast, if someone wants to pass food to the left, if someone wants to change seats…anything. You are in charge of it.

I have found it helpful over the years to rent a “take a number machine” like at the bakery or deli and mount it to a wall in the room where you will be eating. Make sure to inform your guests that they will need a number if they are going to want anything out of the ordinary like bacon bits or shaved ginger or ice. In larger gatherings it is a good idea to warn people to take several numbers before sitting. It could be quite some time before their number comes up.

If elderly people are attending, offer to get a number for them, a low number if you are in their will. This will show that you are considerate but still very much in control.

Keep your conversation to a minimum. Talking is everyone else’s job. Your job is being in charge. Try short, punchy phrases like…”I imagine so,” “My uncle suffered from that,” and “Why are you here?” If people still don’t get it, try staring at a spot just above their eyes as they are talking. In short order they will find an excuse to leave the table. Make sure they use a number.

“Please, no gifts.” Don’t let that gift thing get started on your watch. You know where it leads and you don’t want to go there. If a guest arrives bearing a brightly wrapped package, be firm. Meet him or her at the door and adopt a wide stance saying, “I told you no gifts. You may have a glass of punch and then you must leave.” I guarantee you they won’t mess up again next year.

At exactly one hour and ten minutes after dinner begins, push back from the table and say, “That was great. Thanks for joining us. Let me know if you need help finding your coat.” Then walk around the table with a black, 50 gallon trash bag and start shoveling the scraps and paper plates into it.
Finally, try to make sure that each and every guest leaves with a meaningful parting thought from you. I like to write them down in advance with the appropriate guest’s name next to each phrase. People appreciate the personal touch. “Jim, next time no kids, OK?”

That about covers it. If you find that it’s difficult to remember all of this information just think of the bullet points.

You’re in charge.

Take a number.

Talk is cheap.

Time’s up.

No gifts.

See ya.

Happy Holidays!

Customer Focus Succumbs to Greed Pt. 1 of 2

2004-11-09T15:15:00.000-06:00

Customer Focus Succumbs to Greed
by Charlie & Maria Girsch

Part One: The Cause

Our travels through corporate America reveal a growing tendency to abuse the venerable Total Quality Management philosophy and its second cousin Six Sigma. As in all human situations, a tool can be used for good OR evil. Sadly, for most practitioners, Six Sigma has been used to eliminate rather than enhance. The abusers have locked on to that part of the system where cost cutting is “the only right answer.”

Human nature, sometimes dressed as greed, misuses the initiative in search of greater profits and personal wealth. Enron, Andersen, the tobacco industry et al, while demonstrating amazing levels of creativity and innovation, have left us dispossessed. In truth, Six Sigma’s strength is in cost cutting and improved quality. As such, it’s ability to build the top line is dubious which renders it questionable as a sustainable business strategy. The sad result is that its the most common appreciation is as a cost-cutting utility.

Two recent brainstorming efforts have us guessing about the positives of Six Sigma. Both a midwestern manufacturing company and a Canadian food processor were looking for ways to differentiate their production from that of the competition. In each case, the organization’s product had been reduced to a commodity. Their product was simply no longer unique!

In a world where everyone does the same things, everyone begins to look alike. After all, if you have misapplied Quality and Six Sigma in order to down or right size, if you have delivered “just in time”, if you have “moved your cheese” and gone to “fish camp,” you suddenly realize that all of your competitors have done exactly the same things. When that happens, you’ve gone full circle. The only ways left to differentiate are by product or promotion.

More and more we at Creativity Central are called upon to help a company invent a promotional effort to entice and/or reward clients and customers for choosing their commodity. Innovation falls to customer compensation instead of product innovation. Dan Wallace of Idea Food puts it this way: “In the absence of innovation, organizations have no other options than to rely on Six Sigma etc. to increase quality and reduce headcount. The nature of free market competition will eliminate firms that don’t do this. The irony is that without innovation, Six Sigma and friends will only slow down the death of a firm.”

It’s worth remembering as we enter this reflection that the purpose of the Quality Movement, and its various offshoots, was to provide jobs and bring prosperity to the community. It is further worthy to note that Quality founder W. Edwards Deming believed that "there should be a relationship between the salary of the person at the top and the one on the bottom." That simple concept would be a hard sell in the majority of organizations where Six Sigma enjoys its greatest and most passionate practice.

Leader Source’s Bill McCarthy opines that we succumb “because we place such a high value on quantifying.” Peter Block suggests that "It is easiest to change those things that are easiest to talk about. So we focus on structure, roles, responsibilities. We have intense discussions about innovative pay systems, self management strategies, and the elements of total quality management. (However) if there is no transformation inside each of us, all the structural change in the world will have no impact on our institutions." We would suggest that true transformation can only take place when there is a transition from “same old thinking” to the search for “the next right answer.”

It’s easy to understand the misuse of Six Sigma if you look at two key factors that influence decision making in a growth economy . Here’s what we mean.

The first is the commitment to continued earnings growth and profit that is required by our investment economy. Jack’s Welch’s “Grow or Die” urging summarizes the first of these factors. Jobs and prosperity go out the door as they are replaced by a commitment to growth---an addiction, if you will, which is most easily satisfied by reducing cost to insure profit. This dedication has moved both manufacturing and jobs to places where the “costs” are considerably lower. In truth, the American dream is an economy of growth. And realistically we have come to believe that there are only two ways to grow: you either eliminate the costs of doing business or acquire market share through acquisition or merger.

The second factor influencing our choices is more subtle. Many of our managers fall into the categories of “sustainers” and “modifiers” according to the Creatrix™ Profile offered by The Richard Byrd Company. It seems that these categories eschew the creative risk-taking necessary to generate new product or to launch the initiatives required to successfully differentiate. Since the upside of increasing revenue is almost unlimited, one would expect that there would be a greater value place on promoting managers focused on improvement.

(There is a true story of a midwestern Product Marketing Organization that developed a unique climbing device which is sold in large quantities through a “big box” retailer. A manufacturing facility was set up off shore in order to achieve a very attractive retail price. The far eastern government where the plant is located stipulates that the midwest Marketing Organization (that developed and sells the devices) must sign a contract commitment to keep the laborers’ wages below a certain threshold in order to insure a balance in the off shore’s economy! “Mr. Midwest” complies in order to maintain his business: he likes the profits. As a consumer, you like the price. And finally, his organization enjoys its bottom line. Yet, as a citizen you start to worry about the loss of both the manufacturing AND the jobs. This constant tug between average everyday people wanting—no, expecting---low prices, yet spouting invectives concerning the outsourcing that’s going on in our country is clearly the dilemma that’s making Six Sigma “Sick!” )

This second more seductive factor finds comfort in the realization that Six Sigma (and Quality before it) grew up in a world of numbers. Both were born of the efforts of statisticians. Number analysis isn’t bad in and of itself. Applying numbers to the world of manufacturing has certainly produced an amazing improvement to the benefit of the customer/consumer. The Six Sigma improvement methodology called DMAIC stands for Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control. So far, so good.

For the first time since the beginning of the industrial age, manufacturers began to acquire data about their operations. The data was scoured to learn what wisdom it held or revealed about one’s systems and processes. Then, as problems and inefficiencies were discovered, the creative problem solving process was to be employed to create solutions. Look at the data; see what it tells you; change your perspective in order to let the unique aspects of the problem suggest new and viable solutions. That was the good news.

The bad news is that another group of statisticians, a.k.a. bean counters, found Six Sigma and began to MISapply its purpose and philosophy. Rather than use the power of innovation to improve, enhance, and reinvent, these practitioners chose the easy path of cost reduction in order to quickly arrive at a profit. Cost reduction became their “one right answer!” Thus you will hear stories like that of GE Capital, who after an enormously profitable year, announced a huge job reduction in order to reach even newer and better numbers in the next year.

Creativity and Innovation represent lateral not linear thinking---and that seems off-putting to some. So think of it this way. The Best Practices of lateral thinking can be formulaic in design. In other words, it is possible to open up one’s thinking in unusual and unexpected ways. Creativity Central’s no-fail Get Your Butt Fired™ technique, in a fun and productive process, invites out-of-the-ordinary thinking in order to grab outrageous possibilities that can be quickly reduced to practical solutions. We call it “going from the wacky to the workable,” and frankly, it never NOT works! There are literally hundreds of other formulas—and they are truly procedural formulas---which, when exercised by open engaged minds, can and do deliver innovation every time. The Creative Problem Solving method (CPS), which has been around innovation networks for years, is a process that works no matter the challenge. We have used it with clients to invent (or reinvent) everything from products to services to campaigns. It’s always a rewarding experience for our customers. We know this because we have always unabashedly offered a money-back guarantee, and all of our clients have felt they benefitted from the variety of Innovation techniques we shared with them.

Caveat Emptor. As you prepare to embrace the potential of creative, innovative thinking, be advised and carefully note that there is a penchant among the Six Sigma practitioners to embrace the highly systematized Russian Triz system. In a good and methodical way, Triz appeals to the statistical mentality. But like all things, good can be abused in order to produce innovation in a non-messy (read potentially non-innovative) manner. Continuously successful creativity is a lateral process. However, the very human desire (previously identified as greed when it’s pushed for cost reducing high returns) can now reappear seeking uniformity and comfort. Our humanness both embraces and abuses Triz’ “systems approach” in order to avoid the messy ambiguity of living without an answer in the moments it takes to discover the “next great right answer.”

There is hope. A handful of recent examples in our consumer society which demonstrate that product differentiation is possible without the long costly changes in systems that the “sustainers” and “modifiers” so dread. Dutch Boy paints and Round Up weed control have shown that simple yet dramatic innovations in packaging or delivery can differentiate their products in meaningful and profitable ways. Innovative product doesn’t always have to be rocket science!

A Vote for Ministry of Creativity and Innovation

2004-11-09T15:12:00.000-06:00

I truly enjoyed Tom Tresser’s Creativity is America’s Greatest Renewable Energy Source in last month's cNews. (http://creativitycentral.com/cnews/1004_cnews.htm) He makes it clear that creativity is one of America’s true resources, “..a source that lies inside every individual and one that is renewable and endless ... and it should be a national priority.” He’s right on the money. Our government need not worry about those jobs going offshore. Rrather both parties should become proactive and heed Tom’s urging to appoint a “National Director Of Creativity” whose “job it will be to thoroughly ... extend this vital natural resource.”

For better or worse, we are an economy committed to growth. And, we have a consumer base demanding the best price. It’s an insatiable combination that can only be fed by a market dedicated to creativity and innovation. “Cheaper, better, faster” is the rant of our economy. “More” is the cry of the consumer. These two simple demands are cause enough to not worry about the “cheap fast follow” of offshore producers, but rather they are a call to invest in discovering “the next right answer” for a ravenous economy that yearns for novelty. We have the market and the resources. All that is needed is support for the power of the spirit of Creativity and Innovation that have been present since the first moments of this great democracy.

Everyday Creativity

2004-10-29T10:12:00.000-05:00

How do you express your creativity?