As a business owner, your brain is constantly filled with information, task lists, team issues, new opportunities and lurking threats on the horizon. It can be hard to quiet the noise to think creatively.
With summer approaching, it is a great time to step away from the noise and innovate. Read on for some of my favorite resources to help you find creative brain space.
It begins with imagination.
You can lose sight of your imagination. In honing your craft, you get really good at doing the work, training others to do the work, and making sure that work turns a profit. You may have lost space to think about new approaches, new products or services, or new connections.
But how do you tap your imagination?
Preparation: Get ready for the process.
- Get out of your space.
New surroundings foster new thinking. Finding a space, whether it is in the woods, on the beach, or in a library, can generate new ideas. - Your toolbox.
Spend time pulling together some information including:- Your company information. Look at your trends, your team, your resources.
- Your industry information. What are thought leaders saying? How are competitors or others in your industry innovating?
- Look at competitors or other industries to help inspire new ideas as well.
- Bring anything that you think will help inspire you. These could be tools to help you with brainstorming or visualizing your ideas or books to help you along the way. (Post-it notes! Chart flip paper! Entrepreneur magazine! Fidget spinners!)
- Develop thoughtful questions.
What questions are you trying to answer? What problems do you want to solve? Where do you want to be in a year or two or three? Head here for my favorite annual planning questions. - Your social circle.
Consider if you need time with your own thoughts or if you want to invite a mentor, a coach, or team members to your creative process. You will want to include others at some point but consider if your goal is to organize your own thoughts or want others to brainstorm with you.
Begin imagining
- First, a bit of separation.
Once you set aside the space and time, don’t rush into the imagination phase. You need to wind down a bit and rest your brain before jumping in. Take some time to not think about business before starting this process. - Get your brain charged.
I don’t mean coffee. But yes, coffee if needed.
Once you are rested and ready, you can use some specific tools to spark your imagination:
- Frame or reframe your thinking. This might include what if scenarios, looking at things from different vantage points or role perspectives, turning a problem into an opportunity, or thinking opposite.
- Challenge your assumptions. Identify the assumptions. What are the facts? What other perspectives could I consider?
- Connect and combine. Sometimes looking at different industries and combining two different ideas into something new can foster creativity.
Next steps
- Feedback and evaluation.
The next step is to gather feedback from your circle and evaluate the idea. What other information do you need to collect? What will be the positive and potentially negative impacts of pursuing this idea? - Implementation.
Once you and your team have decided to pursue this idea, it is time for implementation. Create a list of the tasks, responsibilities, milestones, and measures for your implementation as well as a regular meeting cadence to move this forward.
Need more inspiration to find that creative brain space? Check out the Innovation Resources here.
