Earlier in my career, I worked for a brilliant editor. After getting a new position, I went in to have a conversation with him about what he expected. I described my own vision for my new role for several minutes, then paused, and waited for his response. After a couple of minutes of silence and staring off at a corner of the ceiling, he looked directly at me and said, “I want you to zig when everyone else is zagging.” And then he waved his hand to end the conversation.
While at first puzzled by the seemingly cryptic nature of his comment, I realized he was giving me valuable insight into the roots of his own creativity. His imperative was to find stories on topics and in places where others weren’t looking. He wanted me to pay attention to what was going on around us and find those stories that other competitor news organizations weren’t seeing, or concentrating on covering.
Trying to follow that formula, I soon was working with colleagues in new ways. Stories happened successfully, audiences reacted enthusiastically to the work, and peer recognition followed.
Now looking back, I see how deeply his simple message has informed my own work. Our core creativity is valuable only when we release it by first paying attention to what needs attention. Often, that means doing a lot of thinking and observing the world around us from a variety of different perspectives.
Now I always start by asking clients what outcome they envision for my work, and how they will define success. Then, I work backwards, trying to identify all the variables needing attention that might get me to that result.
If we can spot solutions to problems, or even problems themselves that others aren’t seeing, we can make our creativity valuable to others. And when we release creativity in that way, others have to pay attention to because we are offering something new and different. To do so, we need to be fully aware, constantly looking and listening for meaningful environmental cues.
To be fully creative, as Apple ad campaign once said, “think different.” I would add we also need to “hear and see different” by listening and looking for what others are missing and then filling in voids with our own creativity.
Complacency is a disease that kills faster than the world deadliest disease! Stop being complacent today and get of out that comfort zone!
They will say you are mad, but simply say: If being MAD means “Making ADifference”, then I am totally MAD!
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