Creative blockage

Anyone can be creative. It is no different to breathing, eating or drinking in that it is something we do all the time without thinking. People are creative in the way they paint a house, choose a meal in a restaurant or select presents at Christmas. The problem is that when they are placed in a situation where they feel they have to be creative, blocks come into play. These creative blocks are generally self-imposed barriers that can be broken down. The trick is to recognize the blocks and then understand what strategies can be used to overcome them.

There are too many reasons why blocks occur to summarize here. However, it can help to consider creative blockage using the change ladder introduced in the Client section. In simple terms, the act of being creative is one that requires the individual or team to think of something new, essentially to change how they view the world. It can help to focus on the idea of factors that drive personal change rather than creative blocks. When this view is adopted, then it can help to use the change ladder as a framework to understand the creative blocks and how they might be managed.

For each stage on the change ladder, the following blocks can be identified:

• Asset: One of the more common reasons why it can be difficult to develop a creative atmosphere is the environment in which the process is taking place. Although it is possible to originate new ideas in a damp basement, the middle of a field or on top of a mountain, in a business context it can help to have the basic tools. These include plenty of floor and wall space to spread the ideas out, electrical equipment that works and has spare parts in the event of a failure, compatible computer software. It is these seemingly small factors that can lead to irritation and frustration that lose time and block the creative juices. Alternatively, the importance of the work place asset is now high on the agenda for many companies. The rise in the use of in-house coffee bars as places where people can foster accidental creativity through chance meetings is now common. A more radical agenda is offered by companies that use assets in a radical way to drive up the sense of creativity. This includes meetings rooms with waist-high tables and no chairs to limit the time that people spend in the room; the replacement of personal desks with hot desk or mobile work stations; or the use of wireless computer networks to facilitate a greater flow of knowledge over the company intranet. There is clearly no right way that assets can be deployed to enhance the creative process but the first step is to understand just how important they can be.

• Blueprint: Teams can suffer creative blockage because each individual has a preference in the way that the creative process is managed. Just consider how many brainstorming sessions you have been to where people start to argue the "rules" of brainstorming. Where this happens, they are not arguing the need for creativity, they just need to develop a common mental model about the rules. In other cases, the way the people frame their world will affect the creative process they prefer. The person who is outgoing, data-oriented and heavily into planning might prefer to develop ideas on the run with a team. The natural introvert might choose to develop their ideas in isolation and then present them for comment. Bringing these two types together can cause problems. If the preferred creativity blueprints become incompatible then people might clash over the process rather than the content of the session.

• Capability: An individual may have all the necessary desire and need to be creative but has simply not been trained to follow a process. There are a host of different creativity models that will help people to follow a creative pattern or process. One blockage in the team sense can be when certain members suggest that a specific tool that other members have never used before. Do the people that know how to use the framework teach their peers and lose valuable time or do they lose the opportunity to use the technique? There is no right answer but it is important that teams are aware of the potential blockage before they enter the creativity stage.

• Desire: Asking a person or team to "be creative" is like asking someone to cheer up when they have just lost a winning lottery ticket. Since the early stage of the creative framework is driven by the need to be open and divergent, this is the moment where emotions and feelings need to have their head. But if a person is not in the mood to be creative, it can be hard to suddenly turn on the tap. One way to deal with this is by using the force of the low emotional ebb as a trigger for new ideas. Use the antipathy as a frame to consider potential solutions. Another barrier at the desire level is the unwillingness to break with the status quo. When things are flowing in a certain direction and everything feels quite comfortable, it takes a brave person to say let's stop what we are doing and do it differently.

• Existence: An individual's inability to think creatively is often linked to self-limiting beliefs. People are often placed in situations where they have the opportunity to create new ideas but feel unable to do so because of a sense of inadequacy. You may, for example, create action groups consisting of members from different levels as part of a quality drive. However, after many years of being told that their ideas and thoughts are not as important as those of senior managers, the clerical and field staff can withdraw and offer only simple suggestions that they believe won't make them look silly. The other block at this level is where people have a rigid belief. Consider a managing director of a financial software house who attributes lack of market growth to a looming recession. He believes that the company's future lies in targeting small but high-value customer who will pay for unique software solutions. However, the software developers feel that the company is overly exposed to one segment of the market and that they should be able to hedge their bets by operating across a range of sectors. The large gap in these perceptions of the company's direction will act as an initial block to any creativity.

Trying to offer blanket solution for each of these problems would be naïve. Creative blockage is a complex and difficult thing to overcome and cannot be fixed by dispensing a creativity pill. You can invite someone to a brainstorming session but you cannot make him or her come up with new ideas. Any fix must be done inside out, by first understanding what the blockage is, how the individual or team feel about the blockage and what action they are prepared to take to overcome or eliminate it.