Conformity vs Creativity - Is There A Gap?

Imagine a world where creativity is dying out. A time when we leave creative thinking to machines. When humans are just entranced, lardy skin bags full of offal sat in front of a bank of TV monitors neuronally connected to a computer terminal. Inhaling information and products like a crustacean scouring the ocean floor for plankton and mollusks.

Latest research out of Stanford University by Gerald Crabtree suggests that humans are becoming dumb to dumber rather than evolving super brains because our relatively safe, sanitized, civilized world has taken away the stress of Darwinian competition. This means our brains were much sharper when we were hunting the woolly Mammoth and gathering the mixed fruits and berries.

And yet a survey of 5,000 people across the US, UK, Germany France and Japan revealed that four out of five believe that economic growth in the 21st century will depend on our ability to unlock our personal creativity. But only a quarter of the people surveyed believe they are reaching their own creative potential at work.

So why is this happening? Why aren't people fulfilling their creative potential?

Apparently people feel under too much pressure to conform. To be productive and increase performance while maintaining the parameters of standardisation. In other words the people surveyed felt they were expected to prioritise conformity over creativity while there is still an expectation by business leaders that they should think creatively and come up with innovative solutions to problems. A clear case of cognitive dissonance.

50% of the people surveyed also said that the biggest barrier to thinking creatively was time. They are just too busy ensuring they attend to tasks that maintain profitability. So, what's the solution?

First let's flip this thought on it's head.

If time was the only barrier between you and increased profitability for you business wouldn't you try to find some extra time?

It follows then that if developing a higher capacity for creative thinking is vital for surviving the shifting sands of today's unpredictable market place it might be worth asking yourself this question.

Is there a gap between what you feel, think, say and do to produce the results required of you and what you feel, think, say and do to come up with innovative solutions?

If there is then where might you find some extra time to start exercising your creative thinking muscle?

Once you've worked that out you might like to try these 5 creative muscle builders:

1. Challenge some Assumptions - Have a long hard think and identify assumptions that you make day to day that both hinder and help you achieve success at work.

2. The Lotus Blossom Technique - Follow this LINKfor a cool creative thinking technique.

3. Random Word Technique - Define a problem then pick a random word. Now force an association between the word and the problem. For example your problem might be how to liven up your journey to work. The random word could be 'Frog'. List how many ways Frogs can move around. Hopping, swimming, crawling, floating on a Lilipad etc. How might you apply these ideas to come up with a more interesting route to work?

4. Polar Response - Look at your problem and create a list of ways you could make the problem worse. Sometimes a solution will emerge that you might not have thought of by thinking only about taking positive actions.

5. The See, Hear, Feel and Touch exercise. This is purely about developing your imagination by using your senses. Take a few minutes in the day to imagine an object that is personal to you. Using visualisation get a sense of how it feels to touch, it's weight and temperature. How it looks, how it smells and even how it sounds as you hold an image of the object in your mind.

So even though there's no wooly Mammoth left to chase and you've got used to grabbing a bag of mixed fruit and berries from ASDA, by practicing the exercises above for just 21 days you could start increasing the creative thinking capacity of your brain and help to close the gap between conformity and creativity.

Okay then?...Pass the remote!

The Entrepreneurial Mindset

Cartoon by Hugh Macleod at www.gapingvoid.com

Does anyone really need reminding that we are facing some heavy, socio-economic challenges on a global scale?

I would lay money that anyone who is keeping up to date with world events will realise that many of the old familiar structures, systems and processes we know, and love to hate, are struggling and failing at an exponential rate.

In terms of education and the young, anyone who's currently dealing with 16 to 18 year olds thinking about what to study for a career for the future is probably struggling to give the best advice. The old job for life is genuinely now a thing of the ancient past.

What advice can we really give when the reality is that none of us have ever been in a world quite like this one before?

As local and global environments change many existing communities and cultures are coming under increasing pressure as a new kind of chaos looms large. New, unseen challenges are emerging all the time.

So... what we need now are new ideas. Ideas that stem from an evolved world view that recognises the diverse, impermanent and yet increasingly connected nature of living, loving and working on this planet in the 21st century.

The good news is that there are people in this world who can help us right now. In fact these people have always existed. They are the individuals with an entrepreneurial mindset. These are the people that make things happen. People driven by a need to acquire and achieve while learning and growing. Hungry for self actualisation at any cost they bring new realities into being and the results of their endeavours often lead to innovations that make life more interesting and in some cases much better, safer and more enjoyable.

We had a chat amongst ourselves at 4D and decided that we could definitely describe ourselves as entrepreneurs. We all have bucked convention and tried to live by our own rules in service of a will to discover the meaning and purpose of existence for ourselves. Regardless of the limits of our own four dimensions we have all adopted the 'act as if' approach to life in a state of positive delusion, believing anything is possible if a person is determined to follow their personal bliss.

So, we thought we might take some time to deconstruct the qualities that we at 4D collectively share as a team, and offer them as an insight into a type of entrepreneurial mind set.

Individually we all...

1. Strive to think creatively before coming up with a solid plan with clearly defined goals.

2. Are prepared to quickly adapt or change that plan if required.

3. Will take on arduous or difficult tasks if necessary.

4. Prefer not to compete, but rather try and take the road less travelled in order to be unique.

5. Treat failure as an opportunity to learn rather than a point at which to give up.

6. Try to remain courageous in the face of adversity.

7. Do something each day, however small, that contributes to our journey towards our goals.

8. Continue to develop our communication skills to the highest levels possible.

9. Try to remain alert, informed and open minded.

10. Maintain a strong personal and professional network of friends and colleagues.


We believe most people have the potential to develop an entrepreneurial mindset. If you are willing.

How many of these do you already have?

What qualities do you think should be added to our list?

Which would you like to develop yourself?

When and how will you start that journey?

How will you know if you're succeeding?

Get in touch, it would be great to hear your ideas.

New Book-Spiral Into Love

We are delighted to announce that Philippa Waller's new book Spiral Into Love is now available in paperback from Amazon.

Spiral into Love offers a unique approach to finding, building and sustaining loving relationships.

Being in a relationship can be challenging at times, we all know that, but whether you are looking for new love – or want to keep your current love alive and vibrant, you probably don’t have time for a ten-year self-development or partner-awareness programme. What’s needed is an immediate understanding of the dynamics of our relationships and some practical tools and tips we can put into practice straight away.

Philippa's approach takes a unique perspective on the dynamics of loving relationships by drawing on several theories of the bio-psycho-social development of human values, including Spiral Dynamics Integral and Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. The book contains an easy to use values diagnostic – the Spiral Profiler – that will help you identify which of the five main value systems are most dominant for you. After that, you will explore how each of the five value systems responds to each other when they are in a loving relationship and how each combination creates its own unique dynamic.

So, if you’re looking to find new love, rekindle old love, or check whether your latest flame is the one for you, then Spiral Into Love could well become your relationship bible.

How To Make Your Message Really Memorable.

Research has demonstrated that in everyday, interpersonal communication, people spontaneously generate images via hand gestures to accompany their speech. In this way they help to encode the speech into the listener’s memory by utilizing two cognitive aspects: words and images. Although many of these gestures are made unconsciously certain specific gestures can be isolated and defined. By using specific gestures to accompany your speech, with a little practice you can enhance the physical dimensions of your communications. This creates multi representations of meaning and can really make your message more memorable.

There are three types of gestures: Adapters, Emblems and Illustrators.

‘Adapters‘ are habitual movements that are performed with little or no conscious intent to communicate, for example, touching your hair, fiddling with a watchstrap, or pushing your glasses up the bridge of your nose even when they are perfectly positioned.

‘Emblems‘ are gestures that do not depend on speech, as their meaning is clear and culturally agreed, for example, thumbs up, raising the middle finger, or the ok sign.

‘Illustrators‘ are the category we are interested in and which are essential in effective communication. They are created as part of an intended act of communication and constructed together with speech. However there is no general awareness of a codified meaning – unlike emblems. This is because they can reveal or communicate meanings that speech cannot accommodate.

There are four key illustrators:

1. Iconic: These represent shapes of objects or people and movements of objects and people in space. For example, tracing a square in the air with an index finger while saying, “Have you seen a box anywhere around here?” Or, making a walking motion with two fingers while saying, “I’m just going for a walk”

2. Metaphoric: These are gestures made while explaining something. For example, while answering a mathematical problem an individual may make an arcing or pulsing motion with the hand as they describe the numerical route to an answer. Metaphoric gestures are a visual depiction of a process.

3. Deictic: Pointing at objects, places and people indicating temporal or spatial references are deictic gestures. You may even point at something or someone not visible to the listener, for example, pointing behind you while saying “My mother lives in the next street.”

There are also two viewpoints from which gestures narrate:

OBJECTIVE: These gestures describe an event from an observer’s point of view and depict the elements in a story as items. For example, describing someone running across a road by using the fingers to depict legs in fast motion. The objects and characters in the story are separate from the narrator.

SUBJECTIVE: The narrator acts out the story using gestures as part of a character performance. For example, describing someone running across a road, the gesturer would move his/her arms as if actually running.

By gesturing as if you were the characters and objects in your story you bring energy and life to the spoken word and create more memorable images in the listener’s mind. It is also important to consider the elements you wish to describe during a speech or narration.

Why not try consciously focussing your energy in the physical dimension of gesture and explore the effects. Though, perhaps you might start practicing with with family and friends before you give an important presentation!

Let's Get Physical !

Walking on two legs is what distinguishes us from our primate cousins and this physical skill led to our two species taking different paths - literally. Though it has been a stress and strain on our bodies, walking is largely responsible for our unique success as a species.

People walk in many different ways and how we walk can tell others a lot about who we are. Our confidence, our mood, our status, our attitude and our energy levels. When under threat from attack males will try to make them selves look taller, bigger and wider. When trying not to draw attention to themselves a person can make them selves appear smaller and insignificant.

If you've never thought about the way you move before you can begin to explore the physical dimension of bodily movement by trying the following exercises inspired by the great movement artist and analyst Rudolph Von Laban.

While moving around, going about your daily routines try:

Shape –Opening and Closing

Make your walk wider or narrower by widening or narrowing the gait of your walk and swing your arms further away and closer to your body. Then make your walk higher or lower by walking on tiptoe or slouching. Make the walk deeper by taking larger steps and exaggeratedly swinging your arms forward and back. How does this affect your mood?

Time –Quick and Sustained

Simply move faster and slower using different rhythms and energy levels.

Weight - Strong and Light

Explore how much energy it takes to create light or heavy movement by stomping and gliding around. If you dare, try a subtle version in public and notice how your movement affects you and others around you.

Space – Direct and Indirect

Feel how much energy and effort is required to quickly move in a straight direction and then suddenly change your trajectory. Then slowly amble around in an erratic way and feel how your energy and emotions are affected.

Flow – Bound and Free

Explore the energy required to tense and relax different parts of your body as you move around. For example- clench your fists, hunch your shoulders, clench your jaw, hold your limbs together, dip your head and hold it down. Then release your muscles and try and let your limbs hang loosely.

Again, notice how it makes you feel.

Does it change the way you think?

Use the categories above to help you identify how other people move and what messages they communicate simply by 'walking' into a room.

Notice movement that appeals to you. What is it about the style of certain people's movement that makes you feel a certain way - positive and negative- and think about how you might model their positive movements to achieve a similar impact?

Good luck and have fun playing in the physical dimension.

Project Management in 4 Dimensions

Once we have launched a project it's fairly easy to lose track, or even let things slip.
Having formed the team, made a plan, agreed the budget, set the objectives and accessed the resources we may assume that everything will go relatively according to plan.

However, I'm certain we all know that's not always the case, as anyone who remembers the Apollo 13 moon mission, Coca-Cola's Dasani water, London's Millennium Dome and the Channel Tunnel will testify.

Lack of focus and direction can destabilise a project quicker than boiling water under an ice sculpture. People can change roles, leave a department or even leave the company half way through a longer project.

Here's a quick 4 D checklist to help ensure your project is on track.

Physically:

Am I seeing all the behaviours necessary to make the project a success?
If not, what do people need to be doing?
How do I know people, teams, systems and processes are working in sync?
What must I actually 'do' today?
What specific behaviours do I need to do today to bring me closer to my objectives?
Who do I need to meet 'face to face' with rather than firing off an email or calling on the phone?

Emotional:

Am I still emotionally invested in the project?
How do I feel about it?
How should I feel about it?
Is there a gap? If so, what needs to happen now?
Is everyone still engaged and bought into the project?
If so, how do I know they are?
If not...Who do I need to re-connect with in terms of energising the drives and motivations of people and or teams?

Intellectually :

How do I know I have enough experienced people on the team? 97% of successful projects are led by experienced project managers.
Am I waiting for information or knowledge that may be holding me up?
Who do I need to talk to about information and knowledge today?
How do I know everyone has the information and knowledge they need to make the required decisions?
How do I know the organisational measurements I'm/we're using to monitor progress are still valid?
How do I know we enforcing them effectively?

Intentional:

Am I still clear about 'why' I am involved in this project and what it means to me?
Am I still clear about my role in this project?
How do I know everyone is clear about the value they are bringing?
How do I know everyone still has a shared commitment to make this project work?
Do we still have executive support? Research has suggested that lack of executive support is the main cause of project failure.
How do I know?

Great project management is all about rigorous planning, realistic expectations and scheduling, and most of all, frequent communication to facilitate continuous learning and improvement. Adapting and responding as and when conditions require.

Taking a 4D perspective now and then can help to keep things on track.

Crucial but Difficult Conversations

I've been preparing for a half day seminar/workshop coming up on the subject of having difficult conversations. I'm talking about the sort of conversations we know we need to have but may put off, avoid or perhaps never have because of anxiety and even real fear of confrontation and conflict.

I am calling the session 'Crucial Conversations in 4 Dimensions'.

Maybe not the most pithy of titles but I like the slight iteration and it's an honest introduction to what I shall be presenting.

Personally, in the last few years I've had a few crucial conversations that have been exceedingly difficult. However, I have noticed that I am much less afraid of having them than I once was. Though brave in the face of physical danger, maybe even foolish at times, when it came to emotional conversations the pattern of my youth was to run away without leaving even the briefest of notes as to where and why I had gone AWOL. In the unlikely event that anyone caught up with me, I would fly into a defensive rage to disarm the psychological assailant and then make a hasty retreat.

I was well into my thirties before I decided that I couldn't carry on this way. After some help from a good and wise friend and a period of rigorous, personal analysis, I understood something profound about the way I processed and expressed my experience of life. Intellectually and spiritually I have always been courageous and would digest and consider philosophical ideas, beliefs and concepts that would shake the psychic foundations of many of my peer group. I was, and still am very aware and awake to the physical dimensions of my being and that includes my own body and bodies in general and the shared environments in which I live and breath. However as far as emotions were concerned I was stultified, confused and in certain instances, emotionally retarded.

Because the other three dimensions were functioning well, I managed to exist and achieve with relative ease. As long as things were going smoothly. But when the going got tough, I got going...in the opposite direction.

But these days I have to say, even at the risk of sounding a little too 'on message' I love a challenging conversation. An opportunity to put things right between myself and another is a genuine pleasure for me.

I put this down to developing a deeper understanding of where and how my four dimensions connect and disconnect when I am communicating with others. How I feel, what I think, what I believe and finally what I do as a result of both giving and receiving a difficult message. Even a highly charged, emotional one. My only regret was that I didn't feel this way when I was in my twenties and starting my first businesses. Oh, how things could have been different!

However, while I am not afraid to look back at the past and learn, these days I don't stare.

In the context of leadership, having honest and regular conversations is the key to employee engagement and, in our experience, though many leaders and managers claim to be committed to engaging and inspiring their people, many find it challenging.

The pre - difficult conversation assumptions we hold can often be negative and full of anxiety about people's reactions to us. Some take receiving a bad reaction very personally. A manager I worked with who had to confront an employee about their repeated lateness once said to me: 'I keep putting off talking to them because if they shout at me I will definitely lose my temper. And that scares me because I just don't know will happen then." That's just terrifying. It's was also a sign that her 4 dimensions were way out of sync. Fortunately they didn't remain so.

Crucial conversations can be honest but should be relevant, can be challenging but should be informative, can be direct but also motivational and this happens most effectively when we are both self-aware and aware of others in 4D.

When we are genuinely in touch with how we feel emotionally and how that affects our thinking, we can connect with intentions based on clarity around our deepest values, beliefs and drives, allowing those to inform the physical expression of our message.

Staying connected to your intentional dimension really is vital and, as a consequence, brings with it the appropriate attitude, words, tone of voice and physical behaviour.

No need for anxiety or fear, just the courage of your convictions...and a bit of conscious effort.