Building a Creative Environment

The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt.  Sylvia Plath

Few people during their lifetime come anywhere close to exhausting the resources dwelling within them. There are deep wells of strengths that are never used.

                                                                                 Rear Admiral Richard Byrd

 Lesson 21

To continue to build productivity in the sales district I managed for a large corporation, I developed weekly meetings with my sales managers called “Imaginars.” Naturally where we met was the Imaginar Room.

The room originally had a conference table, which I had moved out immediately. It was replaced with three large couches with a coffee table in front of each. By the way, nothing matched…but it was comfortable.

On one wall there was a large poster that said, “None of us is as smart as all of us.” The poster on the opposite wall said, “You may think you are the highest point until you look up.” This reminded them that there is always someone they can learn from.

We used Story Boards in the meeting and in each individual manager’s office during the week. I would assign a common topic so they could all have the same focus. What one thing did they not want bring back to the following weekly meeting?  Yes! An empty storyboard! This pushed them to develop creativity.

The Story Board was a bulletin board that would fit in anyone’s back seat or trunk. The managers also had a supply of 3 x 5 cards and plenty of  “push pins.”

At the following week’s meeting the managers brought their Story Boards in to the Imaginar Room. We went over each board. If there were duplicates we kept only one and put it on a larger board that we kept in the Imaginar Room. Then the idea cards were arranged in a logical order and the weekly project was then evaluated. Additional ideas popped up and were added during this group session.

As a result of this system, many sales records were broken. As a side effect morale and

camaraderie soared.

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Final Thoughts:

“The chief function of your body is to carry your brain around.”  Thomas Edison

“Be the tree that escaped from the forest.”  Frank Lloyd Wright

“No army can withstand the strength of an idea whose time has come.”  Victor Hugo

“I always say to myself, what is the most important thing I can think about at this extraordinary moment?" Buckminster Fuller