About

Energized by your problem solving gifts. For sure! Grounded in innovation and creativity. Check. Ready to align forces. Heck yeah! But, wait….you still need THE IDEA! That out-side-the-box solution your customer goes crazy for. Module five will get you there. But, big warning: Don’t go back to your own experiences to create the familiar. True innovation is often unfamiliar. A little scary. It feels exciting.

I talk about and cover how to: Expose what sabotages you from coming up with great ideas How to jump out of your usual, side stepping that to effectively come up with bold solutions

If you love this and want to know more go to: https://www.hihellosura.com/unleashyourcreativity

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Transcript

*This Transcript is Autogenerated

Hey, there and welcome to the HiHelloSura show. I'm your host, Sarah Al- Naimi. I'm so excited to be here and I am so thrilled that you're here as well. And I know that I say this in most Apatow's, but I really do mean it. It means the world to me that you're here and that you are listening and that we are growing the community.

And just to hear from you and your reviews, what you've been experiencing, it just, it makes the world of difference to hear about how you've been applying, what you've been hearing. And also, I just get to learn from you each and every time. So that makes it exciting because I'm learning. So today on this episode, I really want to focus the energy on getting getting those ideas, confidently getting those ideas, getting those winning ideas.

A lot of the time, I spent a lot of time talking about the upfront strategy. I talk about, aligning your forces for good, which is all about getting everybody on the same page. And then I talk about, your cousin is not your audience, which is all about, making sure that you're creating for your end audience versus somebody random or, your cousin or yourself when you don't actually the audience.

And even before that, I talk about. First of all identifying your own creativity, strength and understanding like when you walk in a room what are you bringing in? What lens and perspective are you bringing in? And so finally for me to actually get to the ideation part, to get those winning ideas, it's quite a drum roll moment, you can see that if you've been listening along and if you've missed the episodes before, I'd, I would really invite you to go and listen to them.

But there's just so much that is involved before you even get into the ideation, into creating ideas. And that's, that's what makes this so exciting. That's what makes this well, so exciting. So in this episode, I wanted to focus on getting those winning ideas. I would like to go into some of the mechanics of how our brain works.

Like why does our brain work the way that it works in order to produce the ideas that we've been coming up with so far. And, because we want to come up with breakthrough ideas, chances are, we're going to have to think of things that perhaps we haven't thought of so far. So I'm going to give you some top tips of how to hack your mind if you will.

So that you can jump out of your river thinking, jump out of business as usual and get into those new places. And so the reason that this is so important is that often, the more experience we have in a wild whether that's within the job that we currently have whether that's within our role as a partner, as a parent, as a friend, we are building up a repertoire of experiences.

And so that can actually be very exciting because we have a lot of expertise that we can bring to the table, but, sometimes that can actually not be to our advantage because it can stop us from coming up with new and innovative ideas. And so I'm going to be sharing with you, why our mind works like that.

And so when we think about being competitive in the marketplace or relevant or creative, the growth that we want making the difference that matters to us and to those around us, chances are we're going to need to come up with something that we haven't thought of before. So got to really focus our time together today.

On explaining how the brain works. I'm not a neuroscientist or brain scientist, just very simply how it works for this example specifically, and then going forward, what are some tricks that you can use to hack your mind? Metaphorically speaking so that you can come up with those new ideas.

So if that sounds great, I'm going to launch in right now and I'm, I can't hear you, but I can feel your energy that says that sounds great. So I'm going to continue and go forward. So here, when we think about coming up with winning ideas we are thinking about our challenge and often we will have, a repertoire of ideas that immediately comes to mind, oh we could do this, or we could do that.

And it's usually the low hanging fruit that we've thought 12 that have been, gathering. Around the metaphorical office all the cabins of our mind. And those are actually absolutely wonderful, and those are gorgeous ideas, and we need to capture those and we call out the first bust, right?

Like we want to get that first burst. We want to get that off our chest. And we wanna, we really want to have that because quite often those ideas hold the brilliant basics, right? It's we should have been doing this anyway. We should just go do this. This is not rocket science. We, we need to be doing this in our business.

So that's the initial bus, but the challenges is that it's really difficult. As much as we try. It can be really difficult for us to come up with new and different ideas. And that's because of the way that our brain works. Drum roll to a little bit of brain introduction or science or explanation, if you will.

Very basic. So our brain, when we Edward DeBono talks about. And he he talks about how every time we have an experience, it's imagined like a cloud, it's almost like a rain drop. Like each experience is a rain drop and the more experiences that we have in an area on these raindrops go to form streams and over time, as we, for example, if you think about the work that you're doing and you've been there, in, in that industry, maybe not at that particular company, maybe you've been doing this for five years or 10 years or however many these streams are now turning into full blown rivers, right?

And so with that's called rivers of thinking. And so well, so when we think about coming up with new ideas, if we're in our river of thinking, it's very difficult to come up with something new because everything in that river is very similar. And so in order to come up with something new, we have to jump out of that river, another way to think about this is potentially, filing cabinets like you who who has filing cabinets nowadays?

Like what all they even, if you all if you, especially your head and say what does Sarah mean by filing cabinets? You might have to go at look it up. So maybe I'm showing my age. I don't actually have any filing cabinets, but I know what they look like. And essentially they are containers and you put similar pieces of information into each filing.

If you were to open up the filing cabinet of for example Sera, you might not find a lot of information in it. But you you hear that my voice is quite British, so you might open up another filing cabinet that has a a lot of things about British people and perhaps that filing cabinet is a bit longer, a bit bigger.

Okay. And these filing cabinets give us access to information. And so the assets is that in order to hack, did you see the ways science and how technical I got with the brain science? The assets is that in order to hack your mind in order to come up with those new and inspiring ideas, which you want to do, because if you don't, you're not going to actually stand out and make the growth that you want in your.

So in order to do that, quite simply, you need to go somewhere else for inspiration. And then once you've gone there for inspiration to bring that inspiration back into the ideation process, so it's almost like you need to go on vacation somewhere else and say, oh this is a glorious beautiful over here for all these different reasons.

And then bring that back actually to your challenge. So a few tips of how to hack your mind and how to get out of your normal rhythm of thinking. So one of the ways is to to think about the rules that actually exist in your market place or for that particular instance, and then to break the rules, that can be very invigorating and very exciting.

One of the examples that we could think of for example, is let's think about let's think about getting getting home getting home from wherever you are. There was a time where getting into the call with a complete stranger would be a big. Or that was a time when sleeping in a stranger's spare room was a big no-no and, COVID to the side.

We can fast forward and see that, because the rules were broken. We had the invention of Uber. We also had the invention of Airbnb simply because they broke the rules. So a lot of the things that we have grown really accustomed to and are super used to right now at some point they seemed really absurd and a little bit of rule-breaking had to happen in order to make them happen.

So when you think about the challenge that you're facing what are some of the rules, like steadfast rules that you're noticing and what if you were to break one or two of them? And what would that look like? What would the idea look like? What could you, what would it inspire you to think differently about.

Another top tip is to think about, what is it? No challenge that we're facing is actually new, right? As much as we think they are, they're actually not. There's some sort of essence of them that has existed somewhere else was top tip. Number two is think about what it is that you're really trying to solve for.

I love food, anybody that knows me or has listened to any of these podcasts will know that I love to use the food metaphor. I can not do sport metaphor. That is currently beyond my ability. My acquired ability I could if I wanted to, but food metaphor. So think about the assets, like the reduction source, like the principle of what it is that you're really trying to solve for here.

And where else in the world has that been solved for? There's somewhere else that has faced this challenge and it's been solved somewhere else and go visit that world and say to yourself, what are the principles for success here on what can I bring back to my challenge So one of the examples, for example, could be when Speedo was thinking about creating the next best costumes, swimming costume for the Olympics and, a nanosecond con like it can make the world of difference in those races.

And so they've asked themselves, they said, what is it that moves through water? Like they said what is the challenge that we're solving for? And they said we need to move through water really fast. And we need to change direction really rapidly. So they said, what else does that really well?

And they said, oh, you never Dole fame, a rocket submarine. He eventually came up with a shock. And so with regards to the shock, they studied the shark and they look, they looked at some of the elements of its skin, how it was rough, if you touched it in one direction and it was really smooth if you touch it in a different direction and they extracted those principles.

So they didn't actually go and make a costume from the shock, but they in fact use some biomimicry and they created a costume that was so successful that it was actually banned in the Olympics. So top tip number two is the think about, the assets of what you're looking to solve.

And who else has already solved for it. And how can you go there for inspiration? Take a vacation that have a good time, put your feet up, have a pina colada my tie, and then say, okay, I've seen what I need to see and then bring that back as inspiration for your challenge. So let's talk to it. Number two.

Top tip number three is to is to reframe it, to reframe the challenge, from different viewpoints. And what do I mean by that when we frame the challenge from different viewpoints? So what are you talking about? I know that my friend Erin will be shaking her head right now and saying, get to the point.

So what I mean by that is we express it from different perspectives. For example, if you are doing a challenge that relates to a call, like a call wash, for example what would happen if you thought about it from the perspective of the sponge, like what does the sponge experience the blue washy thing?

What does that experience What is what is what is the scent or the solution or the water experience, and this might sound really fantastical, but it's true. You're just talking a whole bunch of rubbish right now, but really honestly it works. If you really just get into a different perspective, then you can use that as inspiration to bring back into your challenge, even just changing the words makes a really big difference.

So if you think about coming up with ideas for a carwash, what ideas do you come up with? I come up with, the brushy thing, the blue brushy thing. I come up with ideas around the really not so nice smelling tree thing, sentence thing that you put in the car. I come up with just like a, I dunno, just an okay experience.

But when I changed the words around and I say, an auto spa, which by the way, I did see my first auto spa recently in Florida, I drove and I, it said auto spa and I was very excited to see it. So when you get my auto spa, what comes to your mind? What kind of things do you start to generate?

Are you thinking, Manny petty for the car money petty, for me, I'm thinking Joe Malone sense, Joe Malone sense everywhere for everybody. You can immediately see that you're in a different river and it's giving you inspiration to a whole bunch of new ones.

The very last one is where I would say, have a look around you. Whether it's in your handbag it's in the room, it's in your pocket. You've just picked up a magazine and it's the third word to the left. It doesn't really matter, but you can spend some time with something random and spend a little bit of time with it and then force a connection back to how it can inspire your challenge.

And what, so what do I mean by that? Like for example, if I was to pick up my this pencil, for example, I would be like, okay it's white. Has the ability to to draw and to paint. And it's very easy to hold it's mobile so I could use those features. I could choose one of them to to inspire an idea.

So for example, if I'm doing a let's go back to the. Let's go back to the car wash example. And I said, oh, this is mobile. I'd say, okay what if, what if the the car wash was mobile? What if the car wash came to you, what if the car wash was available whenever you wanted it?

And whenever you needed that, and maybe that would become like a concierge service that could show up within 15 minutes wherever you are, wherever you were parked. That's just one idea that I just came up with. And so you can force a connection from something that seems really random, and you can use that as inspiration back into your idea.

And you might say to me, sir these are all a little bit, I'm not really sure about these. The idea is that with all of this, we go back to our original premise. When we say coming up with a winning ideas, we are looking to extend beyond the obvious we're looking to extend beyond the low hanging fruit.

And so the intention is that all of these just give us access to different containers of inspiration. And if you find that inspiring and it sparks an idea, that's wonderful. And if you're like nothing, that's totally cool to move on. Let's go on to the next one, right? It's just supposed to spark something a little bit different.

And the reason is. The first third of ideas that we have are generally the low hanging fruit. And it's usually in the last third that we're generating the truly new, the truly innovative. Are we thinking about any idea that we've grown accustomed to? At some point they seemed a little metaphorical, they seemed unusual.

They actually just probably seemed oh gosh, like that will never work. And some of these ideas are going to start off in that place, but then later on, we can bake in the how to, but this is the moment where we can give ourselves the luxury of really generating those ideas in the fantastical spaces.

Because we can always engineer how to, into it later. But we can't really engineer fantastical, exciting breakthrough innovative in, in something that is just gosh, like we've just seen it every single day. So this is the time to give yourself permission to push, this is the time to share those ideas.

Maybe you've just held dear to yourselves. And you've just been like, I can't tell him to be, because they're gonna think I'm crazy if I share this is the time to share those ideas. This is actually pretty exciting. And I go through this in a lot of detail in the unleash, your creativity masterclass, we go through every single tool.

And also there are mindsets, of course, that accompany there's like ways of thinking, so that we can just gently ask the inner critic to take a seat. And so I go through this and a lot more detail. And so we'll go through stories and case studies and you'll get to practice.

You get to bring your own challenge. So you bring your own challenge and then you get to actually use these tools with templates with my guidance so that you can generate those new ideas, those new solutions that are actually going to make a difference for your business that are going to create the growth that you've been seeking.

You can generate the first bus, which is fantastic. But as I mentioned, we need to have that in unleash your creativity. I go into all the detail of how to jump out of your river of thinking how to actually collect inspiration in the world, around you, cause as well that there's ongoing inspiration all the time and that's a creativity behavior.

We go into that and then we actually go into exactly how do we river jump, right? Like it's a technique, right? You don't have to drive a call. You learn how to tie your shoelaces at one point you learn how to boil an air, hopefully at some point, and this is no different, okay. River jumping is a thing.

We go into a lot of detail of how to do that. And then you get straight into the doing of it. So if you're interested, go to hi, hello, sarah.com forward slash only show creativity. And there you'll get to see the details for the master class and hopefully join in. Cause it's a lot of fun. But like it's like serious fun because it's fun for Pappas, right?

And you actually get, you'll get to see what other people are saying about their experiences going through that and the difference that it's made for their business, because ultimately, we wake up every morning. I wake up every morning and because you're here, I know that you're very purpose driven too.

We wake up every morning to make a difference to get off the hamster wheel. And to actually create things that make a difference in the world. And so this is one of the ways in to be able to do that with creating, winning ideas. And then in the next section of the of the master class, I actually go into, how do you choose those ideas?

Like that, that relate back to strategy, right? Because we can have so many ideas, but if we don't do anything with them again, how are we going to make that difference in the world? So I go into how to choose those ideas. And then as I mentioned, a moment ago, usually the idea that you've come up with at some point someone's that will never work.

That's just silly. You're crazy. Did you have that off to five, bottles of wine or glasses or whatever it might be. So after that, I go into, how to nourish the ideas so that we can wait, bake in the, know how the next steps and actually get that idea out into the world. And so that's pretty exciting too.

I think all of it's exciting as you probably know. And have heard from me because I really do. And I really do think it makes a difference and working with brands over the last 20 years I've seen it consistently make a difference across industries. And so that's why I get really pumped up to talk about it and to share it with you as well.

Check out them also calls hi. Hello, sir. Dot com forward slash only your creativity. Let me know how you get on with these top tips that I shared with you today. I can't wait to hear your stories of how you've applied them. I really literally cannot wait to hear them. So please do send some communication carry a pigeon, whatever it might be.

And as always, I'm so happy that you decided to join today. I'm really thrilled that we are growing and that we're making the impact and that, if you have somebody that is currently looking to make a difference in their business, who's currently looking to get unstuck, maybe send them a couple of these shows and they can apply some of these immediately to the challenges and start to get the energy moving in the direction that they want to, that they want to go.

So once again, super grateful that you're here and until next time, so looking forward to seeing you next time, and I'm your host, Sura Al-Naimi