Now is Not the Time to be Sensible

Being cautious is what causes slowdowns which lead to a run on the bank. The time when everyone wants to cling on to what they've got, to not take risks and bury heads in sand is exactly the time when you should get up and get out there.

We call the area around us where we feel safe our 'comfort zone'. This is where we retreat to when we feel under threat. But the answers to our problems are not to be found in our comfort zones. We have to step out and that means taking risks.

Creativity is all about taking risks. What happens if it doesn't work? What happens if I look foolish? The creative individual doesn't even ask those questions. Only a risk-averse, self-judging, low confidence loser even bothers to waste time worrying about such things.

Why? Because the creative winner knows that if the same path is followed, it will get the same results. And if the economic landscape is shifting, those results aren't even going to be as good as before. So doing the same (or less) is very, very bad.

"Oh, the phones aren't ringing". Why not try calling someone? Doing something different - actually trying to 'sell' for once (see quote at top of page) - actually doing some targeted measurable marketing - actually defining what your key problems are and working on solutions - improving service and quality. These are the things we need to be doing.

After all - if no-one else is doing it (including your competition probably) you'll have the playing field to yourself.

Being sensible is dangerous and deadly. It's boring. Being boring will destroy your business. No-one cares about you - they're too busy thinking about their own problems. Why should they look up from their own wonderfully delicious doom and gloom to see what you've got? They won't want to risk good money and time on boring and sensible - they won't even notice you.

But if you took the risk and stood out from the crowd and stopped talking about what you've got and what you do and started talking about other people and their pain and how you can solve their problems. What would happen then?

Perhaps you'll not only survive - but thrive. What a silly thing to do.

If you want something entertaining, motivational, unusual and highly relevant in today's climate for your conference or company training have a look at a clip here and visit my keynote page here.
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The Genius of Oliver Postgate

Oliver Postage died this month. His voice, instantly recognisable to millions of British children, harks back to a fairer, more generous, more innocent time. A time of wonder, of looking up to the nights sky and wondering about life on a small blue planet in space and the strange whistling knitted creatures that live there. His animated stories of 'The Clangers' gave us a sense of politeness and calm. A world of soup dragons and copper trees, of magic froglets and music that grew on trees that you could use to power a flying boat (or to eat). "It's nice to have visitors" said Oliver's narration, "but sometimes it's even nicer to see them go".

'Ivor the Engine' told us the stories of a Welsh steam engine who sang in the choir. The stillness and warmth of the tales gave children a sense of peace and friendship not found in modern television storytelling with its crashes, bangs and rushing around. My three year old son loves Ivor. He has a tiny toy train and imagines his own adventures, making the sound, "Sher-ta-coo, sher-ta-coo" as his plays.

The same alternative energy was found in the most loved children's programme of all time, 'Bagpuss'. The story of the most important, the most beautiful, the most magical, saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world. He lived in the window of a junk shop who came to life with all his friends, to mend whatever item Emily brought to the shop.

As you may remember, the Clangers spoke only in whistles. This is what Oliver Postgate said about that challenge:

"They spoke a language of very articulate whistling squeak, which needed to be translated from its natural medium of nuclear magnetic resonance (there being no air to carry sound) into audible terms. The nearest I could get to that was to write out the script in full and then persuade Stephen Sylvester to help me record the dialogue...by reading it, or rather playing the inflections of it, on a selection of Swannee whistles. In this way I was hoping to make a sort of wild-life film in which, by listening carefully, the viewer would be able to understand what was being said and work out what was going on ... I made a separate voice-over tape, a sort of intermittent running-commentary on what was going on. It worked quite well but I have always wondered how the films would go in their original form.

I did try it once, I took an episode of The Clangers to the 1984 E.B.U. conference in Germany and showed it to the participants without my voice-over. Afterwards I asked them whether they had been able to understand what the Clangers were saying. 'But of course.' they replied. "They are speaking perfect German.' 'But no.' said Gerd, 'That is not so. They spoke only Swedish.'"

See the remarkable and creative story of the making of the films here.


If you want something entertaining, motivational, unusual and highly relevant in today's climate for your conference or company training have a look at a clip here and visit my keynote page here.
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Creative Space

Your working environment and surroundings are far more important than people realise when working on creative projects. Process jobs like administration, manual labour and accounting can be done anywhere within reason but to be able to think of ideas, write, draw or design, the surroundings become an extention of you and you part of them.

If you find you have 'writer's block', feel distracted or uninspired it's often because your surroundings are relating to you in the wrong way. The wrong sort of noise, mess, dirt and clutter outside you become refelected in your creative mind which then can't perform.

Before starting on a project or creative session, tidy up everything that does not relate to the task in hand. It's fine to have mess and clutter that is diretly related to the project, but everything else must go. You need to create outside you the space you want reflected inside your mind. A tidy desk and office gives you space inside to think and breathe. Being surrounded by things, sounds, smells and people that inspire you will make massive changes to your creative productivity.

Try this tip: get everything off your desk - yes I mean everything. Put it all in boxes or folders, neatly out of sight. Wipe the desk down. Then put back only the things you need to work on during the next two hours. Leave everything else packed away. See how you get on.

Last month I spoke at the launch of the Portfolio Innovation Centre in Northampton. It's a centre for small creative businesses to supply them with the right creative space to live and breath their craft. If you're in that area, contact Wendy on 01604 779000 and take a look. The event was a great success, organised by Enthuse PR who specialise in organising PR for businesses who want tangible results. Contact Rachel on 01933 666091. You can read the press story about the event here.

Photo: Louise O'Callaghan

If you want something entertaining, motivational, unusual and highly relevant in today's climate for your conference or company training have a look at a clip here and visit my keynote page here.
Click here to read more about creativity.
Click here to read articles on creativity, design and branding.
www.aydinstone.com

On the radio

I was interviewed on the radio this week, and not on my usual topic. The programme was on BBC Radio Suffolk and the theme was if you knew your friend or family member was being cheated on by their partner, would you tell them? Should you tell them? I put the case that you should and that the truth is important. (If it was you being cheated on, wouldn't you want to know?).

The reason I was involved was because I'd written a book called 'How to Survive Infidelity'. The interview was done over the phone, live. I drew upon what little I knew from previous radio interviews and my limited media training; have a single point you want to get across and no matter what questions are asked, make sure you get that point over. I've learnt from experience that if you wait for them to ask you the golden question that allows you to get your message out there, you'll be disappointed by the end which comes all too quickly. Instead, interviewers usually ask questions that take your further away from what you'd like to talk about.

My message was that I'd written the book and it helped people survive infidelity. I managed to squeeze in the website address. So how did I do, talking about a topic I don't really talk about, live and with little idea the direction of the interviewer? You can listen yourself here.

The book by the way is available as a download, here. If you're planning to use the media, consider some advice from the experts. Have a look at what Alan Steven's got to offer.

How to Survive and Thrive in Difficult Times

In difficult times the creativity of you and your team, can be your biggest asset. Following on from my article last month on why there has never been a better time to do buisiness than right now, I've teamed up with Business Link to create a half-day workshop on how we can kick-start our creativity and use it to innovate and troublehsoot our businesses for hidden profit.

This interactive workshop will help you focus on your product or service in a different and more creative way. It will help you improve your offer and in doing so increase sales and profit. You will spend time on your business and work on action points that you can implement after the workshop.

We'll be looking at how to be more creative in problem solving, how to increase in sales and save costs, how small changes can have a dramatic effect as well as looking at how your brand values and marketing messages work in the minds of your potential customers.

It'll be thought proving and fun and you'll leave with a set of creative tools and ideas you may not have come across before.

The workshops are FREE (bookings need to be made in advance)

8th October, 8:30am - 12:30pm at National Badminton Centre, Bradwell Road, Loughton Lodge, MILTON KEYNES, Buckinghamshire, MK8 9LA

12th November, 8:30am - 12:30pm at The Oxford Centre, 333 Banbury Road, OXFORD, Oxfordshire, OX2 7PL

To see more details and sign up click here.

If you want something entertaining, motivational, unusual and highly relevant in today's climate for your conference or company training have a look at a clip here and visit my keynote page here.
Click here to read more about creativity.
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www.aydinstone.com

There has never been a better time to do business than right now

"But times are hard, the economy's slowing and inflation is up" say the little voices all around us. That may be the case, and that's precisely why right now is the best time to do business.

Many small businesses think they're in the business of selling their products or of supplying their services. Successful businesses, those that thrive in more trying times, are those that realise this is not quite the case. In reality, every business is a problem-solver. They exist to solve their customers problems. They exist to make the customer money by driving up profits, save the customer money by reducing costs, or to make the customer look and feel good in some way.

These are all problems that our customers have, and in trying times these problems do not go away, in fact they often increase. So to a keen problem-solving business there's plenty to be getting on with. We have to work out ways that we can be more creative in selling, marketing and positioning our problem-solving products and services. Can we turn our troubleshooting skills in on ourselves to hit upon the ideas that will reduce our own costs or increase our own profits? How can we become expert, flexible and creative problem-solvers?

We must understand and unlock our individual and our company’s collective creativity. In affluent times, creativity and innovation are often seen as soft skills, nice to toy with, but not really taken very seriously. In more troubled changing times, your creativity and the creativity of your team become your biggest asset. Creativity has become a hard skill. Fortunately it is one that can be enhanced through training and practice.

Here’s a tip to start you off.
Get a piece of paper and write at the top your biggest problem right now as a question, e.g.. ‘How can I increase sales’, ‘How can I use the internet to drive business’ or ‘How can I improve cashflow’. Then write on the sheet twenty-one answers to the question. Do not stand up or do anything else until you have twenty-one answers. (You’re allowed to shout across the room for help from your colleagues!)

To complete the list, some of your ideas will have to be fanciful or even silly. If you fail to complete the list it is because you’re trapped in judgmental thinking and that is what is holding you back. Be more open and think of some ridiculous ways to answer the question. Just doing this exercise will open your mind to possibilities. You may even find that your stupid ideas are actually inverted good ideas. Do this every day and you will soon become an expert problem solver. Who knows, on one of those lists you just might find the big idea that will change everything and take your business to the next level.

If you want something entertaining, motivational, unusual and highly relevant in today's climate for your conference or company training have a look at a clip here and visit my keynote page here.
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An Englishman in New York

I've just come back from my first ever visit to New York where I attended the National Speakers Association conference. Some of the top speakers in the US gathered (around 3000 of them!) to hear from some of the very top speakers. The highlights were for me my walk in Central Park, the amazing lift shafts in the conference hotel (the Marriot Marquis in Times Square) which looked like something from the Jetsons and a speech by social entrepreneur Bill Strickland.

24 years ago Bill started a programme in his desolated hometown of Pittsburg which has become a foundation for disadvantaged children and people on benefit. His facilities are amazing, full of valuable art, gourmet restaurants and hand-made furniture, provided for or made by the local transformed students. Bill says that there's nothing wrong with poor people except for the fact that they have no money - and that's a curable condition. His aim is to cure the cancer of the spirt with sunlight, flowers and music, which his facilities are full of. The story of how he got backing and finance to fund the project is truely amazing. You can read about it in his book here.

If you want something entertaining, motivational, unusual and highly relevant in today's climate for your conference or company training have a look at a clip here and visit my keynote page here.
Click here to read more about creativity.
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Do our schools programme us to fail in business?

What is the point of the education system? Is it to prepare our young people for a productive and happy life in society? That would be nice. Is it to allow every child to be the best they can be? That would be a great goal. Is it just to keep kids off the streets (as many believe)? Sadly, it is possible that the education system has no goals at all.

But it once did have a goal. It was set down in the Victorian Industrialist era to prepare children to work in factories. That purpose was never replaced with anything more suitable. That’s why we were all educated in a room full of children all sat in rows. We were all told to shut up, don’t talk to your neighbour, don’t look to see what anyone else is doing, just concentrate on your own work and face the foreman at the front. Above the foreman was a clock and when a bell sounded we were all allowed outside and when a bell sounded again we all came in. Just like in the factory. We were given a smattering of almost useless general knowledge and the education system’s job was done.

The problem with having a goal such as this means that we were all trained to behave in a certain way in the world of work, for a world that no-longer exists. Being told that to ‘conform is good’, that to ‘keep quite is good’ and ‘not to copy is good’ all have latent side-effects. Those behaviours give rise to beliefs that strangle creativity and leave us unprepared for a changing world in three ways:

1. If you conform in business you don’t stand out. Ok, you don’t risk making mistakes, but being risk-averse means you become frightened of failure and that means you’re unable to grow. Instead we’re taught that failure is bad.

2. If you’re in business and don’t talk to anyone else you will hate networking and fail at building relationships and teams, the secret to success in society. Instead we’re taught that you should work by yourself in silence.

3. If you’re in business and you don’t look to see what the competition is doing, if you don’t copy the best ideas and improve on them you end up being left behind. But we’re taught that we have to be totally original (which is impossible) so we fail.

As adults, by realising this, we can turn back the clock and reinstate our creative selves that were persecuted and locked away all those years ago. Perhaps times have changed slightly. Perhaps there are individual schools that have greater, more honourable goals. But the ‘system’ has no such goal except to produce ‘results’ by testing and ranking pupils and schools. For our children we can and should examine how they are being educated and ask the simple question - what is the system for.

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Creative, Moi?

The midwife holds up the newly born baby and declares, "we've got a creative one here all right. This one's a genius and no mistake." You can tell just by looking at them can't you?

Well, the people that society judges to be genii, the cleverest people that humanity has ever produced all say that although babies are born with a tendency to be better at some tasks than others or be interested more in one thing than another, 'being creative' is not something you are born with to a greater or lesser degree than anyone else. It's like running. Babies aren't born Olympic sprinters or long distance runners, they become them many years later by training. We could all become Olympians if we went through the relevant education and training and it's the same with creativity.

A dictionary definition of creativity is "the ability to create new ideas or things using your imagination". Notice it doesn't say "the ability to be able to draw and paint a lifelike representation of a bowl of fruit".

So why do people think it is? Perhaps it's because creativity hasn't been understood or taught particularly well in so many schools.

This could be changing. Teachers have realised that creativity can be taught alongside and within every subject. The National Curriculum is tackling this and have come up with their own definition of creativity: "First, creativity involves thinking or behaving imaginatively. Second, this imaginative activity is purposeful: that is, it is directed to achieving an objective. Third, these processes must generate something original. Fourth, the outcome must be of value in relation to the objective." It sounds a bit vague perhaps but it seems to encompass everything.

Creativity is the process of making associations between disparate concepts, to make decisions based on those associations and then take action. What that means is that creativity is looking at things, making connections between things that weren't connected before and then doing something about it. We can simplify that to a formula:

Perception + Decision + Action = Creativity

So what's this all about you say, and how does it relate to me making more money? Well the products of creativity are ideas. Ideas are the currency of tomorrow’s world. We need more ideas. If you can consistently come up with good ideas in your field, for your business, for your life, you win.

Still think you're not creative? No, I didn't think so. I know you'd never admit it but you're probably the most creative person you know.

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We love stupid ideas

Stupid, idiotic, bad ideas are great. Think of bad ideas. Think of very, very stupid ideas. I challenge you - think of five stupid ways you could improve your business or lifestyle right now. Five rubbish ideas.

Bad ideas are good because bad ideas lead to good ideas. If you wanted to be a photographer but didn’t take a single photograph until you were sure that every photo you were going to take would be a good one - you wouldn’t take any photos. Creativity seems like an illusive mist to most people who think that creativity is some sort of gift. It is not a gift, it is a skill. Like any skill it has methods that need to be mastered. Like any skill the methods need to be practised. Just knowing the lines of a play aren't enough. It's the rehearsal that makes it work.

You can learn how to negotiate, how to project manage and how to sell. There are courses on all of those. You can practice those in your field of work. But don't leave out creativity from the mix. Learn the techniques and use them to get the ideas to get ahead.

We need to think new thoughts. Find better ways of doing things. Find better things to do. That's what people overlook. That's what creativity is.

So when you have a problem and you need a solution don't be concerned with convention. Don't be concerned with what's expected. Don't be concerned with what people will think. Don't even be concerned with what's possible. If you put constraints like these on your ideas or if you judge your ideas during the brainstorming phase you might as well give up and join the legion of mediocrity because these things will prevent you from having the best ideas at best, but will more than likely totally kill the process at worst.

Work out what is actually possible and allowed later, in the planning phase, not in the creative ideas phase. Learn to play, to make new associations, swap things around, wonder, be silly, experiment. These are the attributes that will enable you to solve the problem with a unique solution and to think of that elusive winning idea.

Where do good ideas come from? From Bad ideas. So don't be a fool, think of foolish ideas. Get them out and get them out of the way. Don’t judge them or analyse them, just get them flowing out. It’s from associations connected to these bad ideas that the really great ideas will come.

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Don’t Fight Fantasy

In 1983 a new craze spread through Britain’s children (mostly the boys). It was a range of books called 'Fighting Fantasy' by Steve Jackson and Ian Livingston. Based loosely on the role-playing game 'Dungeons and Dragons' that had taken the US by storm, the books differed in that they were for just one player/reader and they covered a much wider range of adventures and settings than the role-playing games did. The idea was simple. It was a book where you started reading and after a few pages you were given a choice. Did you want to go north or south? Ask the wizard for advice or not? Fight the monster or run away? Each choice would be accompanied by a page number which you would then turn to and continue reading. So you read the book by constantly moving from one page to another in a non-linear way. The aim was usually to survive long enough to solve the mystery. The adventures, whether set in a magical land, the past or the future where always very exciting and vividly described. The prose was always written in the present tense and from your perspective, "The door opens and you see stone steps leading down into darkness. Do you enter (turn page 263) or turn back (turn to page 47)".

Then the backlash began. The books came to be perceived as a problem by many who misunderstood what was really going on. Some criticised the magical elements, feeling it encouraged interest in black magic (the same issue raised its head more recently with Harry Potter). Had these people not read Grimm’s Fairy Tales or Lord of the Rings?

There was also the old chestnut that turns up every time something is popular for children that they weren't reading 'proper' books. English teachers frowned at the style of prose and bemoaned the lack of variety in children’s reading.

What they all failed to realise was that these books got children reading. We read them over and over again. We devoured them. And when we’d been through the thirty or so books in the series we moved onto other books such as Tolkien, C.S Lewis, Terry Pratchet and Douglas Adams and devoured them too. It doesn’t matter what children read, just as long as they do read.

There were other positive side effects too (again viewed by teachers and parents as bad). We started writing our own inventive fantasy fiction. Initially it took the form of writing your own adventure books for your friends. It was easy to do. You plotted out your story, the characters, events, mysteries and twists and then numbered blank pages of an exersise book from 1 to 100 and then got writing, inventing numerous traps and tricks for the reader on the way.

Slowly and inevitably we all grew up and no longer had the patience to play the book adventures anymore, wanting instead the passive reassurance of a linear novel. But the concept of the Fighting Fantasy books unlocked a unique form of creativity and imaginative invention in those young minds that shouldn’t be underestimated. Don’t fight your children’s fantasy. Let them explore it and express it in any way they choose.

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Lateral thinking problems are evil

One bane of working in the field of creativity is the curse of certain 'lateral thinking' problems like the nine dots you have to join up without your pen leaving the paper or the paragraph were you have to count the occurrence of the letter 'f'. Very few people manage to solve these problems and they seem to serve only as examples to prove how stupid we all are, especially as once the obvious answers are pointed out, we’re kicking ourselves that we couldn’t think 'out of the box' enough to spot it.

Although interesting and sometimes fun to do, these exercises have little connection with enhancing your creativity. Try this one that circulated on the internet recently:

"I am only sending this to my smart friends. Can you figure out what these words have in common - Banana, Dresser, Grammar, Potato, Revive, Uneven, Assess. You will kick yourself when you discover the answer. Go back, look at them again and think hard."

The tedious answer is that in all of the words listed if you take the first letter, place it at the end of the word and then spell the word backwards it will be the same word. Did you get it? Probably not. These tests in no way reflect your intelligence or your creativity. There is no evidence to suggest that becoming good at them in any way increases your creative output. In fact, highly creative individuals, those who actually do produce great creative works or ideas, are no better than average on these tests. Being good at these problems means that you will now be better at that particular problem (obviously as you now know the answer). These 'problems' are worthless and the reason is that they aren’t about anything. They have little or no meaning. If you failed on the word test above you were probably looking for meaning in the connection of the words. You were actually being creative but unfortunately the solution required you to ignore meaning and look at the features of the letters.

It was a trick, like so many of these so called tests, designed to catch you out. A cheap trick to place the perputrator on higher intellectual ground than his audience. This sort of thing is an anathema to me. It goes against everything I talk about which is that everyone can be more creative. The main thing stopping us is confidence in our abilities which smug little problems only eat away at.

So pay no attention to these parlour games and continue to work on developing your true creativity that will enrich your life and work.

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See my showreel here at www.aydinstone.com

Using narcotics to enhance your creativity

Many people have suggested that their creativity has been enhanced by ingesting mind and body altering chemicals. Let’s have a brief look at some of the most common.

The most popular drug in use today is alcohol. Acclaimed for its supposed social skills enhancing powers it actually does the opposite. Users believe themselves to be articulate, decisive and responsive but in reality the drug is a depressant which saps joy and reduces rational and creative thought as well as limiting vocabulary. Any positive affects can actually be assigned to the simple fact of groups of friends getting together to talk.

Although fast becoming a social anathema, nicotine inhaled from smoldering tobacco leaves was thought to be useful to aide relaxation and thoughtfulness. In fact, nicotine acts as a stimulant. Because of the addictive nature of the drug, the stimulation only brings the user back up to the level they were at before initial use. The positive effects of the drug can be ascribed to taking breaks, breathing slowing and deeply and stepping outside for a short time. All of these are better done without the inhalation of carcinogenic particulates.

Tetrahydrocannabinol is a psychoactive chemical inhaled from burnt cannabis sativa plants. It works as an anesthetic, counteracting tics, seizures and spasms by numbing the nervous system. Although the effects are a stress-free relaxed state, the drug is linked to memory loss and loss of cognitive function which prevents the user from getting anything worthwhile done.

The temporary increased euphoria from ingesting cocaine desensitizes the brains neurons’ feel-good neurotransmitters, reducing levels of joy as well as causing irregularities in heart beat and paranoia. It also increases levels of arrogance. There are no discernible benefits that can’t be replicated by just doing something exciting.

Albert Hoffman was a Swiss chemist who died last month aged 102. In 1938 he created the psychedelic drug LSD. A tiny amount of the crystal causes heightened senses and synesthesia (switching of the senses), dream-like perceptual changes and a holistic viewpoint of the world. Although non-toxic it can trigger latent psychosis and makes the user more prone to accidents. Few users could claim to being creative while on a ‘trip’, their creations were made some time afterwards. Any experience can inspire great works. The same effect can be achieved by meditation, religion or simply physically going on a trip.

To summarise, try these cheaper, safer and legal methods instead: meet up with friends to discuss ideas, relax, get some fresh air, get excited, meditate, explore what you believe in, do something different and change your state of mind from within.

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Vision On and Take Hart

This month I finally got to meet one of my heroes, the artist, broadcaster and double BAFTA winning Tony Hart.

He wrote and presented the childrens' weekly television programmes such as Vision On, Take Hart and Hartbeat from 1952-2002 on which he demonstated how to draw, paint and create different forms of craft. He also designed the Blue Peter logo, still in use today.

As a child I was inspired by his easy going style style and straightforward step-by-step methods that made artistic creativity fun and imediately do-able.

I never did send any of my pictures to the Gallery (to be shown on the programme), one of the few things I always regreted (not writing to 'Jim'll Fix it' was another), so finally meeting the man and seeing the studio where he thought up all his techniques was a great honour.

Tony was also kind enough to write the forward for my new book which details how everyone can begin and progress on their creative journey. It'll be out very soon. Visit Tony's website here.

Here's a clip from the first episode of Take Hart from 1977.

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What will you leave behind?

I felt a kind of sadness in an odd way when my Grandad died. We were at his house, sorting out the stuff. Grandma had died a few moths earlier. Apart from the funiture and his war medals there was nothing else to say he’d been here on Earth for the past 80 years. None of his memories, thoughts or feelings had been recorded in any form. No writings or drawings, no collections or indications of hobbies, just a few photos of the cat. Of course I’m viewing this from my perspective of being a creator, so I’m looking for these things. It’s not to say he didn't have a happy and fullfiling life, he probably did. But there’s no evidence to show that he did.

My other Gandma on my dad's side had left her play scripts, songs and musicals along with photos of her and my Grandad and their cast performing their concert parties and music hall entertainment during and after the Second World War. I know that she created a lot of pleasure for people. Everybody has a story to tell of how she touched their lives.

What stories will people tell about you? What will you leave behind to pass onto the next generation? We can all expect a digital footprint these days perhaps in the form of left-over information on a long forgotten social networking website profile, but what more can you proactivly do with your talents and your life? Will there be something of worth left behind for future generations? What will it be?

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You CAN draw and don't you forget it!

Can you use a pen or pencil to write your name? Can you catch a ball from a distance of two metres? Can you thread a needle? If you can, then you can draw. If you can write your name you can hold a drawing impliment and make marks on paper. If you can catch a ball you can judge distances. If you can thread a needle you have the dexterity, accuracy and patience. Those are the skills needed to draw, there are no others. The only other element is practice. You'll need to practice the secret of drawing. Want to know what it is? It has nothing to do with art or talent. It has nothing to do with what you were good at when you were at school.

It is simply to look at the object you are drawing. This is the secret that so many get wrong. In my workshops I've positioned a four-legged chair for people to draw. I positioned it in such a way that they could only see three legs from where they were sitting. But they all drew a chair with four legs because they 'knew' that the chair had four legs. When drawing something, never, ever draw something. Never name it or any part of it. It is not a chair, a car or a person. It is a collection of lines, shapes and shades. Look at it and see and you'll open up your non-verbal right brain and the joy and peace of the moment.

Never mind those logic problems, crosswords and sudukos, drawing is a great work out for the brain and it will enhance your creativity.

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Can you draw? Of course you can!

In my workshops I teach people to draw. Actually I don't teach them at all, I just prove to them that they can draw, it's just them telling themselves they can't that stops them. I received this from one of the delegates:

"After your talk I was thinking about what you'd said, about how the conscious mind can't draw but the unconscious can, and I picked up a notepad and pencil and just sketched what was in front of me (a dressing gown on the door). To my surprise it actually looks like my dressing gown!

"I am writing a book on the unconscious mind, and its role in happiness. I am planning to use music as an example. When you mentioned that drawing was an unconscious activity I immediately realised that the techniques I have developed for allowing the unconscious mind access to the body (e.g. the hands) without conscious "correction" - techniques that have allowed me to play the piano in a few months without tuition - should work just as well for drawing, since both activities are best done by the unconscious. Hence, it was not difficult for me to ask my unconscious mind to draw something, rather than play the piano.

"None-the-less, it was your talk that inspired me to try drawing when I had long-since given up!
Thanks again, and best wishes, Paul Rudman"

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Do you use your talents at work?

There's a Monty Python sketch where Michael Palin's character is an accountant who's gone to a careers advisor played by John Cleese. The accountant says he's fed up with being an accountant. He wants to be a lion tamer. The careers advisor says he doesn't suit such a career. Couldn't he work his way towards lion-taming via say, banking.

I had the misfortune of going to a careers advisor once. They asked me some dumb questions about exam subjects and then asked what I wanted to be as they had lots of pamphlets on various career paths. Well the answer to that was obvious to this 16 year old. I wanted to be a rock star. So I told her. She shook her head and said I should take this seriously. I was taking it seriously and I asked her where the relevant pamphlet was. There wasn't one. She advised instead that I join the YTS (the Youth Training Scheme designed for non-academic pupils a bit like an apprenticeship). I said no thanks.

That careers advisor is in our heads, holding us back from what we really should be doing and being 'realistic' and pushing us into mediocrity. Think of the jobs that you've done and that most people do. They all have job titles, but let's be honest, most of them mean absolutely nothing. When you or people around you were children I bet you wanted to be a clear-cut interesting profession like an astronaut, doctor, film star, or vet. No-one wanted to be a marketing assistant or sales manager. How did they become them? There's nothing wrong with any particular job, unless the person doing it isn't satisfied and is capable of doing more. Then it's a cage.

Most workplaces don't know how to deal with talent, it gets in the way. They can't reward it or promote it and it doesn't fit into a neat box. That's why you can't rely on your job or others to give you satisfaction without you doing something about it yourself. Wouldn't it be wonderful if you got paid for doing what you loved doing? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we found the courage to find a way to make that happen?

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The antidote to fear

One definition of fear is that it stands for False Evidence Appearing Real. Fear appears not when we know what to expect or when we don't know what to expect but when we guess what to expect.

When I coach people in public speaking, I explain to them that to overcome the fear you need to remove as many of the unknowns as possible (such as know your material well, you've examined the room, you know the profile of the audience etc.). Whatever unknowns remain, the one's you can control are the ones that could remain in the dimension of fear, such as audience reaction. So for these last few we need to imagine their outcome as the outcome you want. Remember, the fear is always based on imagining the worst, so imagine the best instead. The 'fear' then become 'excitement'.

There are only really two types of fear. We fear not being loved and we fear that we are not enough. Fear of failure is actually one or both of these: we fear people won't love us if we fail (or even if we succeed) and we fear we're not worthy enough to succeed.

Our faith should answer both of these. We are loved. We are enough. Faith not only removes fear - it is the polar opposite of it. To live in fear is to live without faith. In our secular world some people seem to think they don't have or need faith. This is not true. We all have faith in gravity. We don't need to hurl a stick in the air to see if it still works. It is more than just belief. We have a conviction that it still works and will always work. This is faith. Faith is certainty, the antidote to fear.

So if we're living without fear is there a danger that being completely fearless puts us in danger? Actually no. We should still take risks, but only calculated risks, in confidence, through faith.

The only reason we have for not pursuing our dreams is the story that we tell ourselves that we can't. In that situation, fear is controlling us and holding us back. We need to re-write that story. The secret to achieving is to imagine yourself already in possession of the goal and believe you have it with conviction. That is faith. That is certainty.

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The Apple of Your i

Is the iPod the best mp3 player around? Possibly, it's certainly outselling all the others put together, controling over 70% of the market. Interesting that it has the least features of all its competitors. So what's going on? Anyone who owns an iPod or an Apple Mac knows. Apple products appeal emotionally and asthetically. Other manufacturers seem to 'over design' and over complicate things. This is why Apple is doing so well at the moment; their products appeal to the right brain directives of wholeness, meaning and empathy.

According to Steve Jobs, Aple CEO and co-founder, one major reason for the iPod's success was its relative simplicity.

"Look at the design of a lot of consumer products—they're really complicated surfaces. We tried make something much more holistic and simple."

Jobs was asked if he was worried about Microsoft's new media player (Zune) and its "community" features:

"In a word, no. I've seen the demonstrations on the Internet about how you can find another person using a Zune and give them a song they can play three times. It takes forever. By the time you've gone through all that, the girl's got up and left! You're much better off to take one of your earbuds out and put it in her ear. Then you're connected with about two feet of headphone cable."

Proving that the best solution is usually the simplest. Always ask yourself, 'what am I trying to achieve here?' In the case Steve mentions above you want to share your music to get connected with someone. The idea isn't to prove wireless technology. Some companies seem to have lost awareness of the benefits in their race to prove how good their features are. Not Apple, and the sales figures speak for themselves.

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Be a creator

There is an interesting dimension to being a creator that sets apart creators from non-creators. It is that highly creative people value what they have created while less creative people don’t.

A friend of mine, Abbie Cooke, runs a session for business that gets the executives to paint a picture by the end of the session. Everyone enjoyed the session and seemed to learn something from it and the messages that she taught them. But then she noticed an interesting thing. Some of the delegates left their drawings behind. They obviously didn’t feel they had any value and effectively had thrown them away at the end of the session. I wonder, does this mean they metaphorically had also ‘thrown away’ the learning from the session, and perhaps every other training session they’d ever been to? So she changed the focus of the session from then on. Now the delegates had to make a frame for their paintings. She began to teach them the value of what they had created.

To a true creator it doesn’t matter if you took just a few minutes to create the work (Paul McCartney wrote ‘Yesterday’, the most recorded and most played song ever, in just a few minutes.) or whether it took you years to complete the project. Whatever you bring into being in the universe that wasn’t there before always has value. We need to understand this and trust it. All creation has value and worth. Overlooking this will stop your creativity dead as who would want to create something worthless? If you don’t value what you do you haven’t done anything more worthy that what you flushed down the toilet this morning.

To a creator, the worth of their work is tied into their self worth. If you don’t like yourself or trust yourself you’re going to have real problems being more creative.

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Don't turn your brain off

There have always been opponents to new technology. Long before 'luddites' smashed the machines that stole the work of men during the Industrial Revolution, many early philosophers (including Socrates) argued that even writing was dangerous technology. They said that the written word was not alive and the act of reading was passive unlike taking part in an argument. This is actually true and during learning, involvement is much better than reading a textbook.

There is another reason why writing is bad technology; it allows us to forget and to use our m emories in a sloppy way which has destroyed the continuity and accuracy of oral tradition which lasted tens of thousands of years. Obviously writing has so many plus points that we tend to overlook these two small handicaps.

But what about other, more recent technological developments where the advantages and disadvantages are far more evenly matched?

New technology makes idle promises that it often fails to keep, or by doing so causes new, unforeseen problems.

In 1980 by great aunt bought a microwave oven. She must have been one of the first people in the north-east to have one. In those days they were heavier, noisier and weirder than they are today. A large number of the family had gathered for Christmas dinner. Aunty Madge was to impress them all. Their Christmas dinner was to be cooked entirely by microwave, 80s style. We can all guess what that meal was like. They had a course of carrots followed by a course of sprouts followed by a course of gravy . I don't think the turkey was quite edible and the brandy soaked Christmas pudding burst into flames.

New technology is often misunderstood. Around the same time there was the story from America where a woman had put her poodle in the microwave to dry its fur. We of course all know that microwaves cook by vibrating water and salt molecules on the inside of small dogs.

A decade ago a machine was invented that sliced onions perfectly. It peeled and sliced the entire onion into exactly the size of pieces you required. Gone were the days of weeping or getting smelly onion acid on your fingers. Now it was all self contained and perfectly sliced in no time at all. A wonderful labour and hassle saving device. Until of course you tried to clean it. It required disassembly and all the small delicate parts had to be hand washed to remove the onion. So now you were exposed to the tear making acid and the process took ages. Using a simple knife would have been better after-all.

There has been a surge in the number of people who have problems getting to meetings due to over-reliance on sat nav. Satellite navigation is an incredibly sophisticated and complicated technology. Just think about it for a moment. It requires the ability to put a self-powered complex computer system in a geostationary orbit around the Earth. It requires radio transmitters and receivers, advanced micro processors and speech simulators.

It is so wonderfully advanced and useful that people repeatedly get lost using it. "Take the B408 for two miles and then take the third exit onto the B3129" says an emotionless voice. What are you talking about? If you were describing it to a friend you'd say "turn left after the pub". People place their trust in the machine so much that they turn their brain off and then wonder how they ended up on a farm track in a field instead of at the conference centre.

Technology is neither goo d nor bad of course. It provides us with tools which we can choose to use to make our lives easier. But be careful - there is always a trade off. There's an argument that the pursuit of technology for it's own ends is certainly bad, that is when we run into problems.

The best idea may be to apply Occam's Razor to any new development. Occam's razor is a principle attributed to the 14th-century English logician and Franciscan friar William of Ockham which advises economy and simplicity in scientific theories. Occam's razor states that the explanation of any phenomenon should make as few assumptions as possible, eliminating, or "shaving off", those that make no difference in the observable predictions of the theory. Applying the razor to our examples here give us the following simple answers: use a conventional oven, a knife and a map.

So when you are confronted with any new idea, gadget or method, experiment with it by all means, but don't, on any circumstances, as you turn the gadget on, turn you brain off.

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Taste the Moment

We tend to live locked-up in our left-brain controlled critical world. Is it any wonder that we find it so hard to let go and experience the world around us and live in the moment?

I noticed when my son was around a year to 18 months old and he suddenly able to move around, stand up and reach out to explore this strange universe he found himself in. When he came upon something to investigate (like the washing machine), he wouldn’t just stare at it. His first reaction was to get his lips and teeth onto it. Smaller objects were even easier to get in his mouth. It wasn’t that he was hungry. It was his desire to taste.

This was really because taste was his primary sense that helped him experience and make sense of the world. Ours tends to be mostly visual, if we bother to look at all that is. He would want to taste, to smell, to touch and see the object. He wanted to understand it, to feel it, to consume and to be part of it.

A child knows how to live in the moment.

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Thinking on the Eastern side of the Brain

Learning Mandarin is very likely to give you an economic advantage in the years ahead. Recent research has shown that it could help you in other more surprising ways too.

A six-year German-Chinese research project has shown that Chinese brains work faster than western ones. The Chinese students were better at processing information intellectually and quicker at memory tests. But when it came to simple reaction time tests, the Europeans were better. The researchers believe that it is because of how the mind has to process the more complex Mandarin and Cantonese languages than the Roman alphabet. Mandarin has about 50,000 word characters. A knowledge of 3000 would be needed to read a newspaper. A well-educated person may know around 5000. To complicate matters further Chinese languages are phonetic. A vocal change can dramatically change the meaning of words. Mandarin has four tones, Cantonese has eight.

It's also thought that there is less difference between the left and right hemispheres of the average Chinese brain compared with the average European brain. This is perhaps due to the very visual pattern recognition nature of the language which requires a more even balance of the traditional left and right brain specialisms. European languages are much more left brain dominant.

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Music for Pleasure

A colleague of mine, Alan Stevens, recently wrote in his (excellent) newsletter that he'd been converting his old vinyl LP records to digital files on his PC and commented on his nine year old daughter's astonishment that they had music 'on both sides'. It reminded me of the fact that new technology and new ways of doing things are usually more convenient, but not always better, or more fun. Listening to a vinyl LP (or 45 rpm single for that matter - which can be exhilarating) is a totally different experience to listening to a CD or iPod. I would say that it's a better experience and this is why:

First of all the sleeve is bigger. At 12" the photos are nice and big and the sleeve is satisfying to hold as you listen to the recording. Care is needed taking the record out of the sleeve impressing upon you the value of what you hold in your hands. You need to slowly lower the needle into place, it can't be rushed. The sound of a vinyl record is an analogue of the actual sound that was recorded. That means it's almost exactly the same. This is not true with digital playback which is a sample of the original, it misses data out. True audiophiles can hear the difference and will tell you that CDs sound 'cold' compared to the truer, warmer sound of micro-groove vinyl.

But I haven't mentioned the best bit yet. The record only lasts about twenty minutes or less, even though these are 'long players'. Then you have to get up, walk across the room and pick the needle up and turn the record over. This has a massive impact on how music was presented and listened too. Artists had to arrange the records with a great opening track and closing track on both sides, like two acts of a play. It also means that you don't put a record on and then wander off, you actually have to be there and listen to it. You're involved in it, it's interactive.

When the record industry sold us shiny CDs they were interested in making a lot of money in the short-term, by re-selling us what we already had, more than they were interested in the quality of the music or the concepts of the album and single . But by changing the listening habits and making music more convenient somthings were lost.
For example, it's only now, with the concept of downloads that the idea of buying one song (ie. a single) has come back into play.

We all seem to succumb to the marketing messages and the thrill of the new. New technology is like electricity, fire or money - neither good nor bad. It's what you do with it that counts. Does a high-tech solution always add to the human experience? Or is it better, sometimes, perhaps on a sunny day with a picnic by the river, to open up a hand crafted wooden box to reveal a wind up gramophone which, without contributing any CO2 to global warming, will play a thick shellac disc at 78 rpm and the sounds of musicians and singers who knew nothing of mp3s and downloads, will fill the air. Let's not give up on an experience for the sake of convenience. Keep your records, keep your CDs and keep downloading. There are times and places for them all.

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So Why Can’t We Be Polymaths?

In this age of specialisms and niching, we’re all told to be good at something (see last issue). But by that many people usually mean for us to be rubbish at everything else. We’re streamed and channelled in our education system to hammer home the messages that we can study science OR the humanities, be an artist OR technician, languages OR mathematics etc.

Like many others who came through the state school system in the UK, I was frustrated that I couldn’t do German because I was doing Physics. The system wasn’t flexible enough for that combination of subjects so they had separated the sciences and languages out. The school was obviously unaware that German was the language of physics (until the aftermath of the second world war), just as French had been the language of Chemistry a century earlier. So I chose the science route and amazed my fellow students and teachers by my magical ability to draw. It was almost as though their brains were shortcircuiting, ‘You can draw and yet you study science? That does not compute!’

This pigeon-holing is dangerous to our creativity. Creativity is a whole-brain activity. A truly creative person is both artist and scientist. The greatest scientific discoveries were made by individuals who thought visually, as an artist thinks and had the imagination necessary to push out the boundaries of what was possible. Harry Kroto who was awarded the Nobel prize in chemistry in 1996 loved graphic design. That helped him create two dimensional data into a 3D model of carbon-60. (Interestingly enough my degree dissertation was involved in analyzing a tiny, tiny bit of this work). Scientists who understand aesthetics, beauty and form have a creative edge. The greatest artists knew how the physical world worked for them to be able to create form from chaos.

So why can’t we be polymaths (person of wide ranging knowledge or learning)? If we want to be creative individuals with something to offer the world then I’d say that it is imperative that we become whole, both artist and scientist.

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I'm Having a Laugh

All humans in all recorded cultures have the ability to laugh, to find something ‘funny’ and have what is generally called ‘a sense of humour’, that is the faculty to perceive comedy. It's part of being human.

Some people are nervous about putting humour or comedy in their presentations. There's a joke in the public speaking world that says you should only use humour in your presentations if you want to get paid. This reminds us how important it is in a presentation to appeal to the audiences emotions. Comedic elements are more memorable than dry facts and that use of comedy in education aides retention of information. This could be borne out by the way teenage children are able to recall word for word comedy routines from television comedy sketch shows and sitcoms (like Monty Python, the Fast Show or Blackadder) but are not so able to do so with dry drama and struggle to remember anything from more formal presentations.

But comedy is totally subjective and its success depends on a variety of factors such as the setting, culture, language, delivery and context. This is why in most cases 'jokes' should be avoided as few jokes transcend all barriers to appeal to others without extensive translation or explanation. For comedy to work a shared history is also needed between the comic and the audience.

An excellent way of increasing your creativity and lateral thinking capabilities is to analysise what you find funny (or what you find unfunny where others are laughing!). Take a joke and break it down, see how it works, what does it play on, what information is needed to 'get the joke'?

There are a few key concepts that categorise comedy which include incongruity, repressed desires or fears and an establishment of superiority.

The concept of superiority is perhaps the most primordial form of comedy with humour derived from failures, weaknesses or deformities or either the comedian or another group. This also forms the basis of ‘slapstick’ (physical comedy and clowning) where the audience laugh from relief at someone else’s misfortune or idiocy. Repressed fears and desires have been a common feature of both the sexist joke (such as jokes about ‘the wife’ or ‘mother-in-law’) as well as homophobic and racist jokes which play on peoples fear of the unknown.

It's clear to all but an idiot not to use possibly offensive material in your presentations. The rule is - if it's possible an interpretation could offend - leave it out. The same goes for using profanity. Although a staple diet in most stand-up clubs, big business deals have been lost because most people do not want to hear rude words in a business context. One story goes that when a speaker was turned down for a training session he explained that he would obviously take out the swearwords from his material for that particular client. The client replied that they wanted to book a trainer who didn't have swear words in there in the first place.

Incongruity of either language or action involves the surprising, illogical or unexpected juxtaposition of ideas or situations which are often referred to as ‘surreal’. The comedian Vic Reeves is possibly the ultimate expression of this type in his UK 1990-91 television programme ‘Vic Reeves Big Night Out’ which was so incongruous that it divided the nation into those who gave him comedy god status and those that thought it was shoddy rubbish. Witnessing ‘Noodles the Comedy Duck’, an obvious glove puppet regurgitating prawns when one of the ten commandments was recited or listening to a man with a stick wearing a paper helmet covered in complaints to his local ombudsmen about coloured lights coming out of his taps requires a certain lateral thinking mindset in the audience. One of Reeves’ catch-phrases was the interesting “very poor” which confessed the obvious shoddy nature of the presentation which added an extra ‘in-joke’ to the faithful which drew them in even more.

Memory plays an important role in comedy. The comedian Harry Hill’s trademark routines involve setting up an enormous number of running gags with seemingly no point to them, only to refer back to them much later in the act. An example is he would mention that he saw three bunches of roses available for sale for a pound. Much later he would say, incongruently, in the middle of another story, “great big bunches they were” and then much later, again out of the blue, “three bunches for a pound? Where’s the profit margin in that?”. The comedy comes from the fact that the audience feel pleased to have been able to be ‘in’ on the joke, having remembered the references from earlier. This works because Hill is imprinting each chunk of gag using deep processing by getting the audience to question its meaning and look for a correlation with something he may have said earlier. He's playing on the shared history concept.

Humour is useful because it allows the audience to relax into behaving as a single unit were laughter can become contagious. In many ways the comic works a form of hypnosis on the audience. Being a group, the audience will take greater risks and may even feel comfortable ‘heckling’ or participating where they would not in a non-comedy or less collective group.

As mentioned earlier, humour enhances creative problem solving. Other claims have also been made of the physiological effects of observing or listening to comedy such as the strengthening of the immune system, increasing pain thresholds and reducing stress. It has even been found to reduce ageing.

All good reasons to look into livening up your presentations with humour or going to see some stand up yourself - for the sake of increasing your income and improving your health!

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Business Unusual

I started my own business on 12th September 2001. That’s right, a day after 11th September 2001. On that fateful day I was flying back from the Caribbean after a two week holiday and had just landed at Heathrow when the first plane struck the North Tower. The next day I went back to work to find the company had gone bust. Completely unrelated to 9/11, but certainly a very strange and un-nerving couple of days.

I was creative director of a mutimedia firm. Don’t let that title throw you, I wasn’t on the board and I had no insight into the accounts or general finances of the company. My job was mainly to manage and do the jobs in the studio. I did know, however, that the boss had recently employed a friend of his on something like £42k as a senior programmer for whom there wasn’t very much work for him to do. I knew that the value of the work coming in couldn’t possibly cover the salaries going out which had been propped up with loans secured against the boss’s house.

The company had been set up ten years earlier to build bespoke PC systems that were used for multimedia presentations. Most of that market had disappeared due to the advancement of PCs and the availability of straightforward software like Powerpoint which virtually did the job for you. Why spend thousands on a bespoke system when you could pay hundreds for an off-the-shelf one that was better?

I saw my role as attempting to guide this outmoded company into the much richer vein of design-led graphics. The company could easily pick up branding, print design and of course web design as well as still doing high-end multimedia such as CD-ROMS which were still in demand. My team created a new identity and marketing campaign along with a brilliant (if I don’t say so myself!) website, that I was sure could have attracted press attention, if not awards, if it had been launched.

But the boss had put the brakes on. He just wasn’t comfortable with ‘creativity’ and ‘design’. He wasn’t comfortable with newer technology, especially the new iBook that our programmer bought. It was able to do exactly the same job that the bosses hot-wired custom built editing suite could do, except that it was faster and didn’t take up half the office. The boss wanted to be fiddling with PCs with their cases off and discussing servers over a pint of ale at lunchtime.

While I was on holiday I had come up with more marketing ideas and the concept of a ‘sub-brand’ that could be used to sell the new design portfolio without appearing to impact on the more staid and traditional image the boss wanted to cling onto. I did a lot of thinking about creativity and how it can be used to solve companies marketing and branding challenges and came up with ideas for names such as ‘Ideas Workshop’ and ‘Ding!’.

So it wasn’t exactly a complete surprise that the company was no longer in business when I got back.

The next day I started my own company and began to put all the ideas I’d come up with into practice. Sometimes you need a kick in the teeth to actually take action and get on with things.

Why did that multimedia company fail? To an outsider it appeared to have everything going for it. Except for clients of course. Inflexibilty, stubborness and fear of change were characteristics of the boss. Not being able to see the bigger picture, to understand where the market was moving was another. The downfall came because of a lack of creativity and a fear of creativity and doing the same things and expecting better results.

Once, perhaps, creativity was a luxury, but not now. Now you have to be creative in business.

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How to Play the Piano

I've had a piano for seven years and a synthesiser for seventeen years and I've just learnt how to play. I'd been trying the play all that time but failed dramatically. Then as soon as I stopped 'trying', within a week I could suddenly play.

It came about because I wanted to retain the 'cool dad' tag for as long as possible with my fourteen month old son. We've been filling his day with music since he was born and when he expressed an interest in the large wooden piece of furniture covered in ebony and ivory keys I wanted to be able to play a tune for him. So I did. Was it as simple as that, you say? Actually yes. And I'm not saying all this to impress you, but to impress upon you a strategy for learning which can be, and should be, applied to everything you want to learn.

Let's have a look at what is going on here.

The first thing was that suddenly the motivation was there to learn. When I was at school my parents and the teacher were concerned that I was late in reading. The reason was that they had given me a load of old boring books to read. I wanted to be able to do it to please them and get away with it and I wasn't motivated in the actual reading of such dull stories. But when I got me hands on the Dalek and Star Wars annuals with their comic strips I suddenly 'got it'. Then I devoured the many Doctor Who novelisations of the television series, a couple I owned and the rest from the library. Remember these were the days before video recordings. A Doctor Who story was on television once and then never repeated so books were the only way of reliving the adventures.

Comic strips, pulp science fiction, novels of tv series and fantasy 'choose your own adventure' books were all decried by teachers and parents in the 70s and 80s. What they failed to recognise, as the author Philip Pulman has often pointed out, is that it's the reading that is important for children. It doesn't really matter what they read as long as they do read. (For Pullman it was the Superman comics). Children soon consume a range of books and then look to the next thing to satisfy their reading desires. It's often those who started on the lesser appreciated literary forms that move quicker onto more advanced works.

What was going on with my early reading was that I was getting a result straight away. I was learning as I went along, but I was getting the result which was the understanding of the particular adventure story.

I'd used the same approach to learning the guitar. I was self-taught. I learnt that I only needed the chords A and D to play 'Mull of Kintyre'. Add in an E and I could play Buddy Holly's entire back catalogue. My goal was to sing and play and within a week I could do that. After a month I was writing my own songs.

So it was this technique that I applied to the piano. The goal was to be able to play and sing some popular songs. I didn't need to start at the very beginning and learn the history and meaning of dots and squiggly lines on wires. All I had to do was to make a convincing sound.

All learning begins with self learning. A good teacher shows the way and needs to surround the student with the right motivation for them. The student then pulls themselves up, by themselves. The thrill of achievement then fuels the next stage; the desire to get better. This is where the teacher is needed as mentor, to guide the student through to mastery by showing technique and information.

So many teachers get this process back to front. They bombard the student with technique and information which goes over the heads of so many students who then feel disenfranchised and lose interest. There is a certain percentage of people who can learn this way but many will get quickly bored if the information is not relevant to their current goal. It's all about finding the right teaching strategy to match the student's learning strategy.

Now that I can convincingly play 'Hey Jude' and 'Let it Be' I can begin to expand my repertoire as well as going back to look at the technique and information for reading printed music. I now have the motivation to be able to get there.

You'll have your own learning strategies. They may be different to mine but they'll be the same in the one vital way: you will always need less will power to learn something you want to learn and that you will enjoy learning. If you have to use will power then you are more than likely to just give up and do something more rewarding at the first sign of hard work. Build the reward into the learning. This will work whether you want to learn Mandarin, Chemistry, salsa dancing or piano. Ask yourself 'why?'. If that 'why' is compelling enough you'll be doing it in no time.

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Take it as red

Have a look outside for a red car. Have a closer look at the body of it. Is it really red? The more you look the more you’ll see that it’s many different colours, few if any of them are actually red. You’ll see that areas are different shades of pink, grey, white, black. Perhaps other colours that are reflected slightly giving us murky greens and browns. “But I know it’s red” you may say. Well it isn’t red. There is unlike to be a situation where the car is entirely red.

We make assumptions, ‘knowing’ that the car will have been painted with one colour of ‘red’ paint. But to say the car is ‘red’ is a simplification, a minimisation or the truth. It is a reductionistic viewpoint. “But it’s still red!” you cry. Well, no, it isn’t. Colour is determined by the frequency of light which hits our retina. When white light bounces of the car, the microscopic texture within the paint diffracts the light and absorbs certain wavelength of the colour spectrum, reflecting only certain other colours. So if the ‘red’ car reflects ‘grey’, than that part of the car is grey from the observers viewpoint. As the viewer moves, the colour of the car changes. Only the ‘ideal’ car, the reductionistic abstract is ‘red’. Likewise, a tin of red paint with the lid on is not actually red. Only when the lid is removed and light shone in does it become red.

All of this has consequences relevant here as this level of reductionism goes on all the time, stunting our true perception of the world around us, blinding us to what is really going on out there.

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Think Ahead for Glory

At this time of year sensible people do some form of goal setting exercise. You can’t hit a target you can’t see, so set the target. An easy and fun way to do this something I do every year. Give it a go yourself.

Get a piece of lined paper and write ‘Glory list 20** (this past year)’ at the top. Then write a column of numbers 1 to 30 down the left hand side. For each number write something that you achieved this year that was glorious. Include personal and business, large and small things. You must do all 30.

Then get another identical piece of paper. This time write ‘Glory list 20** (next year)’ at the top and the numbers down the side. Referring to what you wrote on the other sheet, write a new version of it next year that’s bigger and better. So if one of your glories from this last year was “I had a weeks holiday in France”, put for next year: “I had two weeks holiday in France and a week in America” or whatever would upstage last year for you. Write each and every line as if it has already happened.

On a third piece of paper write “Glory List 20** (next year) extra” and write anything else that you missed out on here. This is what you will have achieved come this time next year. Just by doing that you’ve made it so much more likely to come true.

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Don't be a generalist - be a specialist

You can't please everybody all the time. If you try you actually end up pleasing nobody all the time. This is what television broadcasting companies and record companies have only just started to realise. ITV for example has tried for years to please the 'masses', the 'popular vote', the 'average viewer' only to find that now no such viewer exists. As a commercial television broadcaster their revenue comes from advertisements during the programmes. So they have to put on programmes that the demographic for the adverts would want to see. Recent viewing figures have shown that less and less people want to watch what ITV has to offer that many advertisers no longer want to invest in spending their money on commercial television. Last year Cadbury have ended their ten year sponsorship of Coronation Street.

The days of everyone in the nation doing the same thing are long gone. The 1977 Morecambe and Wise Christmas show was watched by 30 million people. That amounted to every home that had a television and 60% of the population. Now the most watched television reaches 15 million (Eastenders and Doctor Who) which is only 16% of the country.

The Sun claims to be the UK's most popular newspaper with an average of 7.8 million readers every day (twice as many and The Times). The Sun claim to be 'the voice of the nation' but the reality is that only 13% of the population actually read it, so it's not that popular after all.

When the BBC started releasing archive television programmes on video in the 1980s they made an assumption that the audience for the videos was a general one who would be interested in the old programmes from a general interest point of view. So they made compilations of long running shows such as Doctor Who and Monty Python, creating a 'best of' video series. What took them a long time to realise was that the potential Doctor Who audience wanted the entire episodes uncut, not edited. The Doctor Who audience was a specialist audience who would pay handsomely to have their favourite programme in its entirety. They even wanted the BBC indents, trailers, out-takes and behind the scenes interviews released. The BBC realised that they were now catering for a specialist market that was so much bigger than the general interest market they'd originally planned for. In the 80s and 90s Doctor Who made more money through merchandise for the BBC than all of the rest of its output put together and that was while the programme was off air for 16 years.

In marketing terms this is known as 'the long tail'. A bookshop in town with limited shelf space needs to stock the books that are going to sell so it stocks all the 'best-sellers'. Simply put it's a business model that relies on selling a few titles to lots of people. On the other hand, an internet specialist shop sells lots of obscure titles to a few people. Because of the internet, the people who love the more obscure titles can be reached, even though they are spread all over the world. In effect the specialist market for something obscure is now huge. This is how new bands are able to market their music more effectively than ever before. There may not be many glam goth teddy boy punk heads in your town but when you capture the one from every town you have a sizeable market.

This is how many business have made a lot of money out of internet marketing in recent years - by realising that the marketplace is fragmented. Everyone is interested in something and there's no common ground to reach them all on. There are no generalist customers out there. They all have specialist needs. We can meet those needs with our business by becoming specialists ourselves. The new rule is that it's possible to please somebody all of the time.

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Avoid Cliches like the Plague

A cliché is a phrase or opinion that is overused or displays a lack of original thought. When an audience hears (or reads) a cliché they unconsciously assume that the rest of what has been said and what else is about to be said will also display a lack of original thought and the message, if there is one, will be ignored. George Orwell said "Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print."

Using a cliché isn't clever and it isn't amusing. People often use them as they think that it makes their prose more professional or business-like. It doesn't. If you want your presentations to be heard or your articles to be read try using your own words to describe the thing you're talking about. Your message will then seem alive and real instead of false and dead. So instead of 'at the end of the day', say something that fits the context of what you're saying. 'Finally' may be enough. Instead of 'at this moment in time' try 'currently' or 'today'. Endeavour to bin such phrases as 'with all due respect' and 'I hear what you're saying' as well as that anathema '24/7'. Using default chunks of cliché is the opposite of poetry.

Some other dastardly favourites are 'on a weekly basis' instead of 'every week' or 'going forward' instead of simply a pause. A bad writer or speaker is always telling us everything is 'literally' or 'basically' something or that they are 'being honest' or even worse 'being perfectly honest' - so was everything you said earlier a lie?

My pet hate has to be the need so many people have to avoid personal pronouns (I, me and you) as if they feel they might offend. So they'll say, 'can I get this for yourself?', 'Speaking personally myself...' or 'Myself and John'. It's simply John and I.

Basically I bet now you're beginning to feel like you're caught between a rock and a hard place. It's time to literally wake up and smell the coffee. Using language creatively is not rocket science. Rocket science is the scientific study of propulsion using explosive chemicals. That is what rocket science is and we all know that. It is not anything else you may like to compare it to. So let's just say 'it's not complicated' instead.

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When Jargon Replaces Thinking

Many businesses find it impossible to run a meeting without lacing it with cliched jargon. Ridiculous phrases, odd metaphors and allegories seem to be increasingly used without a great deal of thought into what's really being said or any consideration for those present who may not have heard this nonsense before.

Investors in People ran a survey last year which found that a third of 3000 workers polled felt excluded when gobbledygook jargon speak was used. Two thirds felt it gave the impression that bosses were being untrustworthy or hiding something. All those polled felt that it was a sign of bad management and showed the bosses didn't really know what they were talking about.

There are also cases of male bosses using male dominated sports metaphors without realising that their audience is mostly women. Some of these are used without knowledge of their origin, eg. 'stepping up to the plate' means nothing unless you know baseball. (The UK version would be stepping up to the crease, from cricket).

Here are some of the most used and what you could say instead:

Blue-sky thinking: Think of some idealistic or visionary ideas - don't worry about their practical application
Get our ducks in a row: Have things efficiently ordered
Brain dump: Tell everything you know about a particular topic
Think outside the box: Don't limit your thinking to within your job description
Joined-up thinking: Take into account how things affect each other
Drilling down: Get more detail about a particular issue
Push the envelope: Improve performance by going beyond commonly accepted boundaries
The helicopter view: An overview
Low-hanging fruit: The easiest targets
Guestimate: A guess
Going forward: from now on
Singing from the same hymn sheet: talking about the same subject
I know where you're coming from: you are wrong

I'm all for metaphors and there's nothing really wrong with any of the above unless they are used when people don't understand them or used out of context. The most successful managers are those that recognise that communicating in a way that everyone can understand is the key to having an engaged, motivated and enthusiastic team. If you find yourself trapped in jargon land, print out the list and play Buzzword Bingo.

The Plain English Campaign have created a 'Gobbledygook Generator'. Click here to try it - You really can't fail with systemised organisational alignment.

Click here to read more about creativity.

www.aydinstone.com