Your Best Creativity Advice Ever

One of the things that struck me the most is that creativity is not learned. Instead, it is unlearned. George Land did research in 1968 for NASA and then did it again with kids. He found that 98% of five-year-olds fell into the genius category for creativity. But only 12% of those same kids would be considered genius 10 years later when they were in high school. A survey of adults showed only 2% were geniuses.

WOW. We are born geniuses and through schooling and peer pressure, it is knocked out of us.

Louis Mobley was faced with this problem in 1956 when he was working at the IBM Executive School. How do you get successful people to “relearn” creativity? His answer ..

First, reading and lectures will not help. As a matter of fact, they probably hurt creativity because they provide answers instead of questions. So, provide questions. He gave the executives experiences that were way out of their comfort zone. He dreamed up experiments where the obvious answer never worked. And then let the executives work it out together. Hanging out with other creative people and figuring out the biases in your own thinking can make you more creative.

Perhaps, one of the most important things that Mobley did was give his students the permission to be wrong. And you should take this one to heart. When running your business or anything else, you will try things and you will be wrong. But if you never try things you will never learn and you probably won’t be right either.

I wonder if entrepreneurs follow the same course. When we first start our businesses we are at our most creative and then we start avoiding new ideas to try. Where are you on the spectrum? What can try to become more creative? When will you try that?

When you are running a business creativity keeps you alive and going. Don’t stop now!!

You can reach Dr. Shaya Kass at Shaya@MindfulAboutLife.com or at 1-800-544-0559

This newsletter is published by Dr. Shaya Kass and is meant for informational purposes only.

Photo by Ameen Fahmy on Unsplash

The article discussed in this newsletter is: Turak, A. (2011, May 22). Can Creativity Be Taught? Forbes. Retrieved from https://www.forbes.com/sites/augustturak/2011/05/22/can-creativity-be-taught/