Creativity + Organization = Impact

Making Ideas Happen is a brilliant book that had me thinking every page along the way! Written by Scott Belsky, Founder of Behance and the99Percent.com conference series (and one of my favorite websites), this book takes tons of research of successful creative minds and breaks down some key strategies to leverage creativity and organization to bring ideas into action and maximize their impact!

Are Creative Minds Different From Others?

This book really gets its competitive advantage, or unique selling position, from the hypothesis that “creative minds” operate differently than others. “Creatives” are notoriously known for not being particularly organized, but Scott points out that successful creatives — the ones we all know by name — use very similar sets of organization tools and processes to turn their creativity into impact. But the organization strategy put forth by Scott and his Behance team, called the Action Method, is eerily similar to David Allen’s Getting Things Done. I will admit, however, that the stories, case studies, and explanations of how the “creative mind” works really resonated with me unlike any other book I’ve read.

The Action Method

The first section of the book is focused largely on “The Action Method” — Behance’s version of the productivity method extremely similar to David Allen’s Getting Things Done philosophy. The premise is that we need to look at our lives as a collection of projects — both personal and professional. Some are long-term, some are short-term. Each project consists of Action Items, Backburner Items, and Resources. And this is how we must capture and categorize the content in our lives. Everything should result in a series of action items, and these should be well organized! Then its all about pumping out results!

Throw Into the Mix: Community and Leadership

While I found the Action Method interesting and immediately applied it to my life, the real value in the book came from the following sections about community and leadership! It really resonated with a lot of what I’ve been going through and figuring out lately as a business owner and emerging entrepreneur. The “creative mind” tends to be fairly introverted, keeping ideas close to the chest. However, a lot of critical value comes from surrounding yourself with a community, exposing your ideas early on to build on feedback, and be held accountable by your peers. There’s a really interesting process in how ideas develop and evolve, and this was broken down into a science at Disney (an interesting story shared in the book!).

When it all comes down to it, though, it rests on your shoulders to bring your ideas into action. This is where the leadership comes into play. You have the responsibility and obligation to take control of things, inspire others to buy-into it, and to “make ideas happen”.

Who Should Read This Book?

I’ll admit, I had never really thought of myself as a “creative” before reading this book. But, as I mentioned before, everything in it from the case studies to the explanations of how the “creative mind” works really resonated with me on a deeper level than most books. I almost felt as if the author knew me! So its hard to say, “if you have a creative mind you should read this book.” I’ll break it down and say, instead, that if you have an idea or something you are passionate about getting done or seeing come into fruition — read this book! It will give you inspiration and the tools that you need to move forward! I’m sure of it!

If You’re Explaining, You’re Losing

Julian Mulvey gave a talk on “Reinventing the Political Campaign”. He spoke about a political campaign he was working on where they were put on the defensive having to explain several instances that had been over-genearlized by the opposition. Describing this, Julian said something along the lines of, “If you’re explaining, you’re losing.” This stood out to me as an excellent take-away!

A few days ago I shared the insights of Rohit Barghava in the post “Don’t Just Share, Be Shareable”. When creating a movement, advancing ideas, or starting a business, we as leaders to distill our messages so that they can easily spread. Similar principles are stressed in Malcom Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” and the Heath brothers’ “Made to Stick”.

What Julian brings to the discussion, is that we must constantly be ahead of the news. Increased transparency and authenticity allows us to build stronger relationships with our constituencies. We never want to get caught in a lie, have to backtrack, or explain ourselves after-the-fact. Get out in front of the news, and break things down so its easy for people to understand and explain to others. I think with the rise of social media, we are facing a world of increasing transparency and the rapid spread of ideas. We can either choose to leverage this to our benefit, or let it run us over. But I see this societal shift as a huge opportunity for high-impact leaders and ideas, as it gives us an opportunity to build loyal and personal relationships with large constituencies, engage them, and bleed authenticity. If you take one thing away, it should be that authenticity wins every time.

Plan For the Beginning of Something Great, Not the End!

Kim Scheinberg gave a great talk on “Reinventing Angel Investing”, where she pointed out that we invest way too much energy into planning for the end of things (eg. Prenuptial Agreements and Term Sheets for Angel Investing)! Kim’s strategy for angel investing through her fund, Presumed Abundance, is based on building strong long-term relationships with entrepreneurs. In fact, the entrepreneurs she invests in become her partners in choosing future investments. Kim doesn’t just invest in businesses, she invests in people — and I think that’s what we can all learn from her. Build strong relationships based on “the beginning of something great”, rather than planning for the “break-up”.

Don’t Just Share, Be Shareable

Rohit Bhargava gave an interesting talk on “Reinventing Marketing”, where he shared a seriously critical takeaway: ”Creating a story that is shareable is much more important than the actual story.”

We hear in the business and marketing world a lot about the importance of stories in creating successful brands. Rohit’s point takes this one step further, stressing the need for that story to be quickly and easily shared. Everybody knows the story of Humpty Dumpty because it’s easy to understand and share: Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall…you can fill in the rest! When designing the story around your brand or product, remove the complexity and focus on simplicity and ease of re-telling.

If the story rocks, people can easily share it with friends, you brand will be on its way to becoming a household name!

According to this post on Mashable (Google Buys 20 Years’ Worth of Wind Farm Energy), Google has just signed a contract with an Iowa wind farm to purchase clean energy at a set rate for the next 20 years. While this sets a strong example, certainly, I raise the economic question of how this affects prices for wind energy and renewable energy as a whole.

If the early adopters of renewable energies are largely wealthy companies and individuals, does this drive price (and the cost of adoption) up? And how does this affect access to these clean energies? Are the do-gooders actually creating an exclusive market and preventing wider adoption to take place? I have no idea — I’m certainly no expert in the field!

What are your thoughts?

Know Your Audience, Relate

The very funny Seaton Smith gave a great talk on “Reinventing Black Comedy”. As he spoke about growing up and walking the line between “White Comedy” and “Black Comedy”, he came to realize that different audiences have what he calls “their own truths”. In order to succeed with a particular audience, you must come to understand their specific truths and relate to them. This is a lesson that applies across the board when working with groups of people. The better you can relate and connect with you audience, the stronger your relationship will be and the more you can elicit from them in terms of support.

Here’s some great content from around the web:

Comprehensive List of Social Entrepreneuership Funding Sources [Ned.com] – This is huge! I’ve never seen such a comprehensive list! Definitely a resource to keep on tap!

HOW TO: Use Game Mechanics to Power Your Business [Mashable] – I wrote briefly on this concept in the “ReInventing Series” post “Design to Motivate Others”. This is an awesome follow-up!

50 Power Twitter Tips [Chris Brogan] – Social Media guru and mentor, Chris Brogan, shares a comprehensive list of tips for how to use Twitter effectively!

Best Practices for Landing Impact Investment [Entrepreneur.com] – An interesting article advising social entrepreneurs on how to approach landing impact investment!

Twitter Tip for Networked Nonprofits: Follow the Few To Get To the Many [Social Media Today] – This article does a great job of summing up many of the same techniques that I strongly believe help in developing a strong audience and community through Twitter.

Design to Motivate Others

Kes Sampanthar gave one of the more interesting talks, distinguishing between LIKE and WANT. Placing these two variable on individual axes, you come up with a chart mapping four quadrants: User Experience (Like, Don’t Want), Usability (Don’t Like, Don’t Want), Addiction (Don’t Like, But Want), and Motivation Design (Like, Want). The core of his talk was on “Motivation Design” — a concept that is so critical when designing a product, service, or organization that people both like and want!

I think the best example of motivational design is the game of golf:

• Create a Challenge – Golf is such a widely popular sport because it is challenging! We set goals for our game, practice, but continually face new challenges to conquer. Without the element of challenge, nobody would be interested in going out to the course knowing exactly how they are going to play.
• Understand Behavioral Economics – People are not rational, and going along with the example above: they are going to keep playing golf even though it can be SO frustrating!
• Social Engagement - People want to be a part of something larger, and to be engaged with other people! The social aspect of golf is a major reason for the sports’ success! People can play together, talk about the sport, and have that shared experience that strengthens relationships. I’d even argue that the social component is what drives individual practice to get better! This is increasingly becoming something we can integrate into products, services, and organizations through social media.
• Game Design – The structures of games come with a set of rules, standards, goals, benchmarks, etc. When thinking about how to design a product/service/organization, keep in mind how we design games and plan accordingly.

Reflect, Sketch, Plan, Iterate, Mentor

Chris Bernard shared some interesting reflection on the “Reinvention of Visual Design”, but more importantly some tips for being a successful creative.

• Take Time to Reflect — It’s no coincidence that many of the greatest minds and leaders in history kept journals. This practice allows you to put your thoughts and ideas on paper and reflect. Articulating your thoughts is a critical step toward bringing them to life!
• Sketch – As we go back in history, a common theme across cultures is the use of “sketching” to communicate thoughts and ideas. We are naturally visual learners, and this process of sketching out ideas allows for both ourselves and those we are trying to motivate to map out all of the aspects and angles of a concept. (Something cool Chris shared were early napkin-sketches of major US companies!)
• Plan – Dwight Eisenhower once said, “In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.” With a game plan at hand, you have a reference for where you are, where you want to go, and what needs to be done to get there!
• Iterate – Don’t spend too much planning, though! Start simple, get it out there, and iterate like a mad man! The earlier you expose your project to the outside world, the quicker you can get feedback that will invaluably shape what you’re doing for the better!
• Mentor – I’ve always heard that you should have 3 mentors, and mentor 3 others. We need to share what we learn, and the process of mentoring exposes our thoughts and ideas to somebody that can bring a fresh and new perspective to what we do!

Overcome Your Own Boundaries

Frank Lantz shared some insights at TEDxPennQuarter that he’s gained from the world of poker and gaming — most notably the need to overcome the boundaries we place on ourselves (or that are imposed superficially by society). Negative emotions (eg. fear) distort our view of the world, and force us to make poor decisions that are either not optimal or hold us back from achieving our full potential. The more we take risk, like playing hands in poker, the more we learn that bad hands don’t mean the end of the world. Taking risk allows us to make decisions that will lead to growth and “self-overcoming”.