Shaping a new reality

Do you think of yourself as creative? Interestingly enough, many of the leaders we partner with don’t. They feel artist and designers are creative but don’t apply the word to themselves. Creativity is something you’re born with is the common believe Interesting enough this is not the case, research published in The Innovator’s DNA shows only 33% of creativity is genetic versus 80% of cognitive intelligence. 

Envisioning new futures requires creativity, but just telling people to use their imagination doesn’t do much to overcome personal barriers. However, working with leadership teams across different industries and countries we’ve learned that there are many ways to empower people to be more creative. The key is to focus on personal development by doing – by experiencing the power of your imagination you build creative confidence.

How to best stimulate your leadership team to be more creative depends on your specific strategic question and team composition. Using images might help to conduct the right strategic discussion, by forcing people to think and express themselves in a different way. Having unusual outsiders participate in your team can trigger people to come up with totally new ideas on the future and let them experience the joys of opening up their horizon. And sometimes a creative facilitator can stimulate the discussion by asking what if questions, playing the association game and inviting people to enlarge their comfort zone.

One thing is for sure, if you want to shape your future, you should get serious about creativity. In Einstein’s words “Logic will get you from A to B, imagination will take you everywhere”.

What do you do to stimulate your creativity?
How do you apply your imagination to shape a new reality?