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Our years of formal schooling created habits that actually set us back when it comes to productivity and pushing ideas forward! While our instinct may be to live life as we were taught, we must consider the contrary. Some of the most productive creative professionals that we interview have a different approach to conventional wisdom.

We were taught to memorize and take copious notes. But…
Memorizing takes up mental space and leads to forgetting. Especially as we start to get senior moments, organizing information in a readily accessible manner is much more important than memorizing facts. Memorizing also consumes our precious energy for creativity. Note taking, another scholarly impulse of ours, has become a vestige skill. Amidst our busy lives, we’re lucky to complete our action steps, yet alone have time to read old notes. Read entire article.

Posted in Leadership

Many companies place ‘creative stimuli’ like pool tables in their offices to inspire remarkable ideas, but what actually materializes as a result? Whether your office is made up of cubicles or open-plan architecture, your workspace should foster a culture of Productive Creativity.

You can learn a lot about a person from taking a look around their home. Since everything communicates, a brief glimpse at a bookcase is a lens for what your colleague finds interesting. Much like you can tell a lot about a person by looking around their home, you can understand a company’s culture from their workspace. Read entire article.

Posted in Leadership, Planning & Strategy, productivity

Visionary leaders run the risk of overriding the ideas of the brilliant people around them.

Jack Welch, legendary CEO of GE, was known to walk in a room of great people solving important problems and proclaim “Here’s what I think we should do.” He would go on to explain his vision and reasoning. And then, after sharing his solution for the problem at hand, he would ask, “what do you think?” It is no surprise that he would get many nods of affirmation and not much disagreement or new, bold ideas.

Perhaps this is sometimes necessary in a large corporation, but never in a creative team. After all, a creative team’s purpose is to exchange, digest, and refine ideas. If you fail to capture the insights from each member of the team, then you are actually “losing value.”

The tendency to “act first” is a fatal flaw for leaders in the creative community. Read entire article.

Posted in Leadership

Sometimes great wisdom is shared with very few words. Here are some thoughtful quotes I have come across that provide great perspective…

“There is no competition in the world. If you can start something, carry it through and complete it, you are in the top two percent of our society” -unknown

Read entire article.

Posted in Leadership