Truly creative ideas often seem very simple -- once somebody has thought of them. But how do you get a truly creative idea?
A young engineer was struggling to design a truck that could be taken into the field to search for oil. There were so many conflicting needs for so many different functions that, after six months working on the project, he was not much further along than when he started.
Because he needed to present something to his boss in two weeks, he sought the help of a psychologist. The psychologist told him to return the next week and present the worst possible truck he could design for the purpose. The engineer thought that he might be wasting his time and money, but his desperation was such that he complied.
The next week, he returned to the psychologist's office with sketches of the most outlandish contraption imaginable. The engineer said he had laughed so hard putting his sketches together that his wife wondered what was wrong. He said he also was working furiously on the sketches for the real presentation.
At some point after doing the bad design, he said he "suddenly knew where everything should go. When I started drawing the real designs, it was all as clear as though there were a photograph in my head." The oil exploration trucks he designed are still in use today in Texas and Oklahoma.
Anyone can access the creative hemisphere of the brain -- the right brain. This system of techniques will help you be more creative in the workplace or anywhere else.
In the engineer's case, it was easy to focus on the flash of insight -- the sudden knowing of where everything should go and how to duplicate that kind of lightning bolt of creativity. But a lot happened before that flash took place, much of which the engineer had perfect control over.
Creative insight is associated with the right -- or creative -- hemisphere of the brain. However, the process of creativity often starts with the logical, reasonable, verbal left side of the brain. Your left brain sets up the problem for the right brain, which sets up your creative response.
Therefore, the first step in the creative process is fully using your left brain to approach the problem you are trying to solve. Here are some ways to do this:
• Put the problem into words. Clearly defining a problem is probably nine-tenths of its solution. Putting the problem into words is a discipline that clearly engages and focuses your left brain to find a creative solution. What are the problems? What are the conflicting demands? What, exactly, is the barrier that is keeping you from doing what you want to do?
• Write it down, and tell someone important to you. Don't keep the problem floating around in your own brain. When you write, or when you tell the problem to another person, the words are encoded in your left brain in a logical, linear and digital fashion.
• Approach the problem from all angles. Try many different approaches to describing the problem and describing the solution needed. Think about it from reasonable, logical, straightforward points of view. Think about it from unreasonable, backward, low probability points of view.
• Describe the solution. You don't know what the solution is, but you know what it's supposed to do. What does it look like? How does it work? Who will use it? How will it operate?
• Describe what you would do if there wasn't a problem. What would your ideal solution be if barriers didn't exist? If you could do anything you wanted to about this problem, what would you do?
• Come at it repeatedly. Work on it for a while, then put it aside and work on something else. Come back to it the next day. For particularly complex and involving problems, purchase a notebook and write down your thoughts. Push yourself to return to it often.
These points help your left brain to fully set up the problem, define its parameters and describe the outlines of a solution. They are tasks the left brain does well. Your left brain can't come up with a creative insight, one that is not logical and linear. Until you fully engage your left brain and push it to work on a solution, your right brain can't work on the problem very well.
You know you are pushing your left brain on a difficult or complex problem when you become anxious and worry about what the solution will be. This anxiety is an important part of creativity. It is the left brain turning the problem over to the right. Now you are ready to get to the creative insight.
Hutcheson and McDonald are the founders of The Highlands Program, a nationwide service for life and career planning based in Atlanta. Write, fax or e-mail (atlanta@amcity.com) Your Life's Work c/o Atlanta Business Chronicle.