Being direct... AdVantage Jul 2003
Exchanging Routine for Some 'Creative Crowbars'?
A couple of months ago I wrote about a new book with the title: 'How Customers Think', by Gerald Zaltman. I have now had time to consume it in its entirety, and thought that this month I would share some Professor Zaltman's insights on that most intriguing of human challenges: Creative Thinking. As always, my quoting of the work of others is primarily to whet the reader's appetite so that you would hopefully become intrigued enough to go out and buy your own copy, and so get into the detail of the original author's holistic view of the subject.
This book focuses on a number of central marketing-related themes, including evidence that much of the thoughts and feelings that influence human behavior (consumers and the people who manage the process of marketing to them) - occur in the unconscious mind. Similarly, he makes a good case for the fact that insightful analysis of human thought and behavior - requires an understanding of how mental activity occurs. The mind (as we think of it) simply doesn't exist in the absence of brain, body and society; it is a holistic combination of all of these.
A lot of this book's content is a fascinating exposition of the mechanics and emotions of human communication, including issues like 'how the mind works' and 'how memory (both short-term and long-term) operates', and actually goes into some detail on how triggers can and are being used to 'leverage' commercial benefit from this understanding.
Zaltman makes the important distinction that it is not only the ability to tap into the consumer's unconscious thinking that drives commercial benefit, but also how such benefit hinges on a manager's ability to think creatively. How we think is more personal than what we think. That's why many managers will spend considerable money to validate an existing idea - long before changing what and how they think about it. He has distilled ten theories-in-use as 'crowbars' to pry us loose from our conventional thinking - when such thinking proves to be ineffective.
Here is his list and a short explanation of each of these: 1. Favor Restlessness Over Contentment - contentment may feel good, but it does little to foster innovation. Ask yourself 'what makes me restless?' Whatever it is, make sure that you have plenty of it in your work life. 2. Wonder About The Cow's Crumpled Horn - data that falls outside of the established pattern tends to get discarded by researchers, because it 'messes' with expected or 'known' patterns. Managers should detect both patterns and anomalies. 3. Play With Accidental Data - Consumers present data to marketers in accidental form - that is, they haven't conveniently arranged cues about their innermost thoughts and feelings so that managers can easily 'fill in the blanks'. Marketers have to learn to 'play' with this data to creatively find meaning.
4. Treat Conclusions As Beginnings - managers and researchers often see themselves as detectives solving 'crimes'. To formulate new questions and think outside the box, managers must not only solve 'crimes' but also commit them - that is, create entirely new mysteries. 5. Get Outdated - If you simply can't break something that is working fine, then ask yourself 'How can I make what I currently know and do look out of date or as old-fashioned as possible?' 6. Stop Squeezing The Same Baby Chicken - We often become overly attached to a new idea and hold onto it very tightly, as children do to baby chickens. It's not healthy for the chickens.
7. Nurture Cool Passion - Emotion (or passion) for new ideas fuels creative thinking, while coolness (or reason) harnesses energy. To practice cool passion a manager must simultaneously explore the conditions under which an idea will and will not work, and then ensure the presence of the former and absence of the latter. 8. Have The Courage of Your Convictions - naysayers seem uncomfortable with new ideas. Managers should challenge these people to come up with solutions for the objections that they throw in the way.
9. Ask Generic Questions - Marketers can often stimulate their own creativity by formulating the generic question behind a strategic issue. Posing generic questions like 'How do beliefs and expectations shape consumers' perceptions of their own experiences?' help managers identify new ways to apply seemingly unrelated disciplines to marketing challenges. 10. Avoid Premature Dismissal - The tendency to dismiss ideas without asking what the consequences would be - were they to be true, also results in narrow thinking.
Zaltman says that taken together, the above 10 creative crowbars evoke the theme of thought contagion. True creative thinkers often explore other disciplines with passion - in part because they find them inherently interesting, even if those disciplines have no immediate connection to their daily responsibilities. They simply enjoy wondering about and exploring unfamiliar ideas - and then they often transform this seemingly idle curiosity into hard-core business results.
Food for thought!!