We have a new puppy.
And I am the one with puppy dog eyes – only my eyes are puffy like a pug, and I look a bit exhausted, and hers are bright and alluring.
This puppy makes me silly. She loves silly, and I love her, so on it goes. Play for the sake of play – crazy unstructured ridiculousness. It is both exhausting and revitalizing at the same time. Which made me wonder how can that be?
In university I took a course called “Theories of Play”. An elective meant to lighten my load – a “bird course”! If you wanted to make someone giggle or raise their eyebrows – you told them that yes, “Theories of Play” was a course that I was paying for.
The course held many surprises – as play often does. And when the world surprises us we pay attention.
Now all these years later I am still paying attention because the fundamentals of this “bird course” ring true in a way that for me calculus never did, or will.
There is a direct relationship between play, creativity and the more business buzz-worthy word: innovation. Play often lets us break the rules and experiment with new conventions. (Which should not apply to puppy training!) It forces our brains to find new pathways and new solutions.
When we play we have no agenda, no outcome in mind, process is thrown to the wind. If you can’t go under, you go over, if you can’t go over you go through, and if you can’t get through well who knows what is next. Being surprised is the foundation of play.
We love being surprised. How many of us remember buying the paper bag labelled the “surprise bag”? Or check out Jillian Harris’ outrageously successful launch of the Jilly box: 50,000+ people signed up to receive a box curated by Jillian Harris with no idea what was in it. Not only do we love to be surprised, we will wait hours and willingly pay for the thrill of it too!
The enticing nature of play is that it opens us up to new possibilities. It frees our mind from barriers so that curiosity and innovation reign. Play does not invite nay-sayers to the party! That in itself is revitalizing!
In the Scandinavian Journal of Education Research, Sandra Russ notes, “Central to both play and creativity is divergent thinking.” Her study revealed that “play can facilitate creativity as well as insight ability,” and that we can be taught to improve our play skills.
As adults our play skills can get pretty rusty. Amanda Lang in her book “The Power of Why” noted, “70 percent of creativity is related to environment, which means that it’s entirely possible for just about anyone to learn to think more innovatively.”
How can we ramp up our play skills and create a more creative environment?
- Ignore conventional wisdom
- Get silly with your kids, your puppy, your friends
- Listen to new music
- Learn a new skill
- Be driven by enjoyment
- Try a new board game
- Hang out at a co-work space
- Daydream
- Encourage curiosity in others
- Embrace not having the answer
As 2019 is coming to a close and I glance at my goals for this year, right at the top are the words: Play more! Who knew the abandoned pup we named Stella Polaris Lee, from Fond Du Lac, Saskatchewan would be the surprize that would help me to play more. And enhance my own creativity.
Get silly, be silly, invite silly and watch your creativity soar. And if that seems hard to do – get a new pup. 🙂
What a great evening at WESK Uncorked! The tables were turned and I was the guest host, interviewing our regular host Lisa Peters.
She has a fascinating story. Lisa’s career story begins with her becoming a mechanical engineer technologist. This was the first of many surprising nuggets of her narrative. Designing 18-wheelers was her thing – who knew? Like so many her path to entrepreneurship and the birth of her Eye On Inspire Event management business was not linear!
She shared so many take-aways with us. The one I liked best – “make the call!” We don’t have to wait until we have everything perfectly figured out but until we “make the call” we can’t get to where we want to go. The challenge is to put aside what might be holding us back. Scary . . . you bet! Worth it? Absolutely.
Lisa also reminded us to find our community – the ones who are committed to us personally, and to our businesses. And the very community she was speaking of? It was there last night. You could feel it. The room was filled with people living their full story with arms open to help others live theirs. The Regina business community wants us to succeed. Nights like last night remind us of that.
What call can you make today? Go ahead, throw whatever might be holding you back to the curb . . . we’ve got your back.
You can buy t-shirts and mugs and of course there is even a hashtag for Do something every day that scares you. I want no part of that!
Sometimes I wonder if everyone who buys into this philosophy has ever been really scared before? And if they have been really scared what on earth was so attractive? The racing heart, the sweating palms, the ability to not think clearly, being dictated to by adrenaline? Which one of those feelings is your favourite?
Ok, I get it – the cliché is meant to be a motivator but fear is not my motivator.
In fact, I think a good chunk of what is wrong in the world is because we are letting fear guide our decisions. Really important decisions. Fear based politics is having a disastrous effect! I guess that could be a whole other blog!
Let’s get back to business.
Fear based marketing – it works. But it is not sustainable. And besides is that really how you want your customer to feel when they buy your product – afraid that if they don’t buy it some disaster will strike them?
What about your team – do you want your team operating under a veil of fear, because its motivating? Where is the logic in that?
So what if … rather than doing something every day that scares you that instead … you do something every day that brings you joy and helps someone else. Full heart, open mind, focused and in the zone. Does that not sound more enticing than a fear-based motivator?
When we do our genius work – when you feel totally in the zone our heart rate drops, our blood pressure drops, our ideas flow. We are not fighting with ourselves, we are not conquering. It is so much more important than conquering! When we are doing our best work – the work we are meant to do, it is actually easier for our brain. We are more efficient; focus is effortless. We are not concerned about outcome or what others might think of our work. The ego evaporates. There is a quieting of our minds, fear is not driving the car.
What we do best comes more easily to us which makes it easier for us to discount our abilities and say “oh that was nothing”. That can make it hard for us to see what we are best at. We all have something that is easier for us to do, that comes more naturally, and gives us energy rather than takes energy – that is our genius work.
To get to this state takes confidence, and practice.
And it’s fun.
We can’t always be in the zone; some tasks have to be accomplished that are not our genius work. But we can be mindful of managing the percentages. So that more of work falls into the “gives us energy” category than the “takes energy” category
Flow begets flow. When you are lost in the moment, the moment finds you. A study done by Miriam Mosing a neuroscientist at the Karolinska Institute believes that those who spend more time working in the zone maybe also be protecting their own mental health. Her findings indicate that there is a protective effect to the brain when we are in flow. The same cannot be said about the effects of fear.
So, ditch fear.
With a full heart, embrace your genius work. What you do best. That’s what the world needs now!
I once owned a company named Starstruck, and we manufactured and exported a line of women’s clothing to 320 stores in the US and 120 in Canada.
It is quite a story.
A big part of that story is that not everything went as planned. Well, to be honest everyday something didn’t go as planned. It was the nature of the beast. Sometimes things went better than we ever could have imagined. (It really did help to be an eternal optimist in the world of manufacturing women’s fashion.)
There are so many stories, but I’ll tell you one in particular. I know exactly where I was standing when the call came in from our fabric supplier. It had been a great day, sales were up, our new line had been well received, our local retail store was humming. It was early afternoon on a sunny spring day; the kind of day that convinces you winter will never come back. I clearly remember feeling like we were on top of our game.
But, back to the call: our container was stuck in the Pacific Ocean just off the coast of Vancouver. There was a labour strike at the docks. Nothing was moving. There was no foreseeable end in sight, and no one could tell us exactly when we would receive our goods.
We had tight turnarounds – fashion is like that. What retailer wants a shipment of winter coats in April?
There were substantial financial ramifications. Some of our bigger department store clients had relentless one-sided terms. Of course we had reluctantly agreed to them because of the significant advantages of being carried by the ‘bigs’. They were essential to our growth. But those sales were a double-edged sword and we were about to feel the sharp side.
Big retail understands the cost of holding inventory that is not on the sales floor, so deliveries were tightly timed. We were given a 10-day delivery window and every day an order was late we would lose 30% of the value of the order. This business was not for the faint of heart. Likely you have guessed that US department stores did not particularly care about the strike “up in Canada”.
Late deliveries were hard on our smaller retailers too. Although the ‘bigs’ were essential to our growth, the smaller and mid-sized retailers kept us in business – they were always our long game.
Manufacturing is at the best of times a massive amount of moving parts. The domino effect when one of those parts goes astray, well I can feel the headache all over again.
What hurt the most was late deliveries were so off-brand. This is not what our brand promised. We knew how important it was to be true to our word. “Fashionably late” did not cut it.
We were living in the land of Porter’s Five Forces! I don’t always think that “academic” models actually live very well in the real world, but this smacked of one of the five forces.
The Porter’s Five Forces model examines five key aspects of your company’s competitiveness. One of the five forces is Supplier Power. Wow, did we find out that our supplier had a lot of power!! Of course long before Porter, our mothers had told us “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Always listen to your mother!
So, I got on the phone to explain that orders would be late. The true story felt like such a ‘roll your eyes’, dog-ate-my-homework kind of story. I pictured the response, “Seriously this is the line you are going to give us?” My palms were sweating, I paced as I talked (10,00 steps was not a problem!), my stomach turned. The self-doubt gremlin arrived. Maybe we weren’t going to make it?
On the other end of the phone the response was not what I expected.
We had a reputation of living our brand promise. We had made significant deposits. They believed us and more importantly they believed we would do the best we could. It was truly humbling to see the trust they had in us.
They were also truly shocked that we called and owned up.
What happens when you can’t deliver on your brand promise?
Be transparent.
Own up. This is not the time for hide-and-seek.
Make it personal.
It’s hard to imagine, but in the toughest of times the strongest relationships are forged. If you can’t deliver on your band promise, it’s a big deal. Recognize that. Go to the highest rung on the ladder and have whoever that is make the call. It will never be forgotten that you cared that much.
Take care of your Porter’s Five Forces.
Look at each of the five forces and review the strength of your competitors, supplier power, buyer power, threats of substitution, and threats of new entry. It’s a handy tool to protect your competitiveness.
As for this ‘drink from the fire hose’ Starstruck tale . . . we made it out alive. The strength of our brand promise saved us. The strike ended, fabric arrived, we worked like dogs (not like the dog sleeping at my feet right now), to turn raw goods into finished goods, and then into shipped goods.
Then we doubled our number of suppliers.
And went merrily along making more deposits in our brand promise account. (I do love a happy ending)
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