Avoiding the Slipping Point

 
Most readers will be familiar with, or have heard of Malcolm Gladwell’s best selling business book ‘The Tipping Point’. The author suggests that there is a point at which you need apply only a small effort to create an effect. This is rather like giving the final push to topple a large boulder or tipping [...]

Goddess Saraswati: rocking the creativity

Saraswati, by Pieter Welteverde www.sanatansociety.com
Saraswati is my #1 Goddess. She rules what I dig most. I’m surprised she’s not up there with Kali and Aphrodite in mass popularity. Saraswati is regarded as the Goddess of knowledge and the arts. She represents consciousness and wisdom, is regarded as the goddess of sound and speech, and is [...]

3 keys to unbranding…and why I changed my twitter name

In my commitment to live bolder, truer, Me’er, I’ve got to be clear that I am not “a brand.” (Yep, that’s rather strange for a “branding expert” to say.) I earn my living by teaching about what I live. And it never fails that the more transparent I am, the more useful I seem to [...]

Avoiding Death by PowerPoint!

I must say that I am equally fed up of the numerous ‘rules for making presentations’ that we stumble across every few days either in a presentation or on the net. When you google ‘rules for making presentations’, you get more than 8 million results! Most of them are standard clichés that irk me no end. So I have created my own set of presentation rules. I follow my rules to the last detail and I have rarely been disappointed. I implore you, urge you and beg you to follow my rules as well.

Your Weakness Is Your Strength

As an immigrant to the United States, I am not what one would consider part of the fabric of mainstream culture.  Of Asian descent, I belong to a group that makes up just 4.4 percent of the population.  I have dark hair, big eyes, a Singapore smile and a unique accent influenced by my British [...]

Appearances Can Be Deceptive!

Analysis. The human mind is very simple. It zeros in on the obvious. The guy whose drawer is in a mess is seen as having a disorganized pattern of thinking too. This is as crude as it can get.

You’ve Been Framed!

Years of conditioning and training can lead to a freezing of frames. These frames help us to simplify the world but the danger lies in oversimplification and holding on to frames after they are no longer relevant. Albert Einstein admonished his colleagues, “Make it as simple as possible but no simpler.”

How to purposefully increase your natural creativity!

There are three different kinds of creative responses. Which is yours?

Time to Change YOUR Leaves?

Fall is one of my favorite times of year—the temp starts dropping, the air gets crisp, the trees put on a glorious display of color—I love it! I also think it’s a great time to drop what’s not working for you. If trees can let go of every leaf, why can’t we let go of what no longer serves us?

Top 10 Tips for Being UNcreative

It’s easy to be creative. Think out of the box! But have you imagined how difficult it must be to be UNcreative?

Paradox: The Heart of Creativity!

One of the most brilliant displays of paradoxical thinking is by scientist Faraday in the 1830’s. He had observed that a current of electricity passingthrough a wire could have the effect of causing the magnetized needle of a compass to deflect, that is, move in a rotational direction when a compass was located close to the wire. This was the basis of his invention of the electric motor.

From Best Practice to Next Practice

What on earth are ‘Business Burps’ you may be asking? It was a phrase I thought of whilst … burping. Can you remember as a child when you first let out a burp after gulping a fizzy drink? Wasn’t it a bit exciting (as well as a little bit rude)? Weren’t your parents just a tiny bit embarrassed?

The bipolar vision

The paradox is at the heart of all things. The opposites necessarily coexist. The back of the hand and the front of the hand are dependent on each other for their existence. You can’t have one without the other.

Serendipity is not an accident.

Let us first see what stops us from making happy discoveries. We have been conditioned to see what we expect. Our preconceptions creep into whatever we come across. We don’t see things as they are but as we expect them to be.

Secondly, we force our preconceptions into whatever we do and want a task to go along predetermined lines. Too obsessed with how things should be, we don’t recognize lucky turns of events and new possibilities.

Myths about creativity

Creativity has long been looked upon as an activity behind the closet. No wonder many myths have developed around the creative process. Not to be left behind, there are many myth busters out there as well!

Thinking Clearly

One of the wonders of the world is that obviously intelligent people make elementary but serious errors in thinking. I happened to meet a friend of mine, a successful banker in California who had migrated from India to the US more than a decade ago. He was talking about violence in India and gave that as one reason for his disappointment with his home country.

15 elephant tethers that stop you from being creative!

As you grow up and gain experience, you absorb assumptions which then drive your life and limit your choices. You can break away from them with a simple tug if you want to but you don’t. As you acquire more and more experience, your repertoire of blind assumptions grows too, correspondingly limiting your choices. Your experience becomes a hindrance in your being creative.

Elizabeth Gilbert on nurturing creativity

In this funny, personal and motivating talk, Elizabeth Gilbert shares on the impossible things we expect from artists and geniuses — and shares the radical idea that, instead of the rare person “being” a genius, all of us “have” a genius.

If Excellence Is Your Ideal Everything Else Will Fall Into Place

A young man went to Gautama Buddha and sought the Master’s guidance on how to achieve Enlightenment. The conversation, which in my opinion must be required reading for anyone, went roughly as follows:
Young Man (YM): Master, how long will it take for me to achieve enlightenment?
Gautama Buddha (GB): It all depends on you.
YM: [...]

E = MC2? All Einstein Challengers….Welcome Aboard!

For generations great thinkers have been asking us to take the road less traveled. Any and every successful biography will tell us not to be afraid to take a stand, not to walk among the masses, to stick out our heads without the fear of being hit by rotten tomatoes. At the same time, [...]

11 productivity tips that creative types already know

Creative types get typecast as meandering goal setters for a reason. They tend to meander. We resist structure (even tho’ we crave it.) We relish spontaneity (even tho’ we’re intrigued by five year goal setting plans.) We tend to be driven by inspiration (when we’re not obsessed with looking good on paper, or to our [...]

Creativity: The Secret Weapon of Every Successful Entrepreneur

Your creative powers are infinite. Yup…think about it. You come from the same source as all of nature around you. Look at fruit trees. How do you think those fruit push themselves up the trunk, through the branches and then hang themselves like beautiful ornaments in just the right place? Well [...]

Letting go of cleverness makes room for true art

The best writing advice I ever received was this: “Sometimes you have to let go of the jewels.”
You have to cut out the best part.
You have to detach from your brilliance.
You have to trust that the whole piece is better the individual shiny parts that make you seem clever or wise.
So that sexy slogan … [...]

Awake To The Power Of Daydreams!

Dreams are precursors to the realities that we are about to experience – Author Unknown
We were all day dreamers once. Who can forget sitting in class in the middle of a hot summer afternoon, daydreaming about the previous year’s cool mountain vacation, or which games we would play when we got back home. We daydreamed [...]

Are You An Original Or A Duplicate?

Whatever or who-so-ever it may be is either an original or a duplicate!
Duplicates as they get compounded, they are often confounded too.
Originals as collectibles are yearned for, owned, respected,
demanded and commanded till eternity.
They are seldom if ever — reprimanded.
They are perpetually — demanded.
As they are never “On Hand.”
Original People, Thoughts, Ideas, Products, Efforts, Plans,
Campaigns, [...]

Challenging Einstein

It is time to challenge the Einsteins and Newtons of this world.
Do you have the courage to stop making a product, even when it is the largest selling one in its category?
Can you think of wanting ‘demanding customers?’
Do you start developing the next model even before introducing the earlier one in the market?
Can you intentionally [...]

When Does The Idea Fairy Like To Visit You?

Richard Bach, author of the metaphysical classics, Jonathon Livingston Seagull and Bridge Across Forever, noticed that the Idea Fairy came to him when he was gardening, or flying in a plane. That’s when he would get his story line ideas and life solutions.
Call it what you want: the zone, the flow, the magical gap, the [...]

Getting To Know You

I was in awe when my friend Rebeka showed me her work. Abstract shapes were exquisitely worked in untamed patterns and fused with breathtaking hues. Her painting was amazingly beautiful, but absolutely surprising to me. Why, you might ask. Well, it was her first attempt at painting. She started barely three months ago – [...]

Clash Of The Norms

Many years ago, when foreign travel was very rare in India, a friend of mine asked me what he could get me from Singapore, the country to which he was traveling. I told him that I really did not want anything at all and would be happy if he were to enjoy his [...]

Stuck for an idea? Try this.

When was the last time you were stuck for an idea? It happens with everyone, but the trick is not to remain stuck for long. What if you had a magic wand and you could come up with ideas about anything at will? How would it change your life? This article lists down some of [...]

Understand Anchored Thinking to make smarter choices

When I  began  my career as a corporate trainer I conducted  workshops on public speaking for which  I was paid a modest  remuneration.  Subsequently I offered workshops on a high value  added subject of Lateral Thinking. I found myself running into  high resistance in respect of my fees which were   much higher than what [...]

Thinking creatively

Based on an experiment that was carried out in the US, I tried this with my trainees, relatives and friends – all Indians.
Here is the experiment.
Find out the odd one out in the following:
A cow, a stack of hay and a pig.
Most people point out that the pig is the odd one.
Westerners tend to point [...]

16 habits of highly creative people

Many people believe that creativity is inborn and only a chosen few are creative. While it is true that creativity is inborn, it is not true that only a chosen few are creative.

AR Rahman and multiple order thinking

I practice a kind of thinking called multiple order thinking. This means that I try to go beyond the obvious and the apparent. At first I try and get into the second order thinking where one can grasp what lies beneath. In the third order I try to get at the underlying concepts of deeper [...]

Creativity, idlis and nuclear power

In my lateral thinking sessions I like to entertain and educate trainees with this small exercise: “Write down the rule that generates the series of numbers 2, 4, 6…”
 I would then ask each trainees to tell me another three number series based on the rule he had identified. I would merely nod ‘yes’ or ‘no’ [...]

Experts are not always creative

Try this experiment when in India. Walk past a cobbler and notice where his eyes are focused. I can guarantee his eyes will be riveted on your footwear. He, being an expert on footwear repair, cannot but focus on his area of expertise which leads his eyes towards your feet even if you were a [...]

Creativity and Amitabh Bachchan

About two decades ago a CEO faced an existential crisis. His company was in a very bad shape and his career was in danger. As he and his deputy sat in his office late into the night they asked themselves one final question – what would a new CEO do to transform the company? 
They had [...]

Solutions? No problem.

Traffic authorities in a city faced a problem typical of any busy city – a street choc-a-bloc with vehicles, bumper-to-bumper in ordinary parlance. It is evening time and harried office goers are returning home. Suddenly a pedestrian darts across the road, a car driver instantly swerves to the adjacent lane upsetting the car in that [...]

Stereotype threats and the phenomenon of ‘priming’

Try these two exercises with a group of adults.
Assemble three dozen people of which roughly half are women. Tell them that you are trying to do a test to confirm research findings that women fare poorly in a test of their math skills when compared to men.
Try another exercise. Assemble another class in which about [...]

Misunderstanding Modern Art

Being a part of a team which was working with an NGO to put up an art show, I was organizing and coordinating the installation of panels. This show was being held in a leading 5 star hotel, where use of the hall was being allowed, free of charge. Hence, it was made available at the last possible moment as a paying guest’s function went on later than scheduled.

Vu ja de: See old things in new ways

“The question is not what you look at, but what you see” – Henry David Thoreau
Young executives can draw much insight into the art of innovative thinking from this Thoreau wisdom.
In World War II, British and US air forces faced a rising number of their planes being either destroyed or having to hastily abandon their [...]

God of small things!

When I started writing, my initial posts were much welcomed. Encouraged by the feedback I vowed to write more – and immediately my brother warned “Don’t start writing too frequently, quantity will dilute the quality.”  I read an interesting quote the other day, which goes like “Great things in life come in small packages.” Boutique [...]

Creative quickies: The wonders of 15 minute time restraints

I’ve noticed a definite pattern in the countless jam sessions I’ve had with colleagues and clients – the best idea gems often surface in the last few minutes.
A morning spent teasing out the best strategy…two hours back ‘n forthing on what to name the campaign… and, just as you’re clearing away the coffee cups and [...]

You are a mess of contradictions. How very beautiful!

“Do I contradict myself? Very well, then I contradict myself. I am large. I contain multitudes.”
- Walt Whitman
Soon after we met, my man and I were getting ready for a party. “I’m not good at parties,” I warned him. “What?! You’re like the public-speaking power chicklet.” “Noooo. I’m the girl in the kitchen who talks [...]

Driving change home!

There is so much of talk about change these days.
People embrace change easily, when it comes to their desk for execution. But the same persons, when in a discussion, resist or try to block any such move even when they agree that the change being proposed is the right thing to do.
Why? What do we [...]

Forcing yourself to get up early in the morning is pointless!

So here are 10 points about why you should stay up late and still not feel bad when you come across another article by the self-help gurus who preach getting up early in the morning!

Smoking a cigarette is like talking to your mother-in-law because…

Once upon a time, many years ago, in prehistoric times, at a time when there were no cities, no buildings and perhaps even no villages, there was a hunter. He had had a successful day and was walking through a forest back to his tribe. He had slung a deer across his shoulder with some homemade [...]

Ambiguity is good…er…no, ambiguity is bad.

Ambiguity is not a desirable state in most situations. It typically causes communication problems and has no place in certain circumstances. For instance, an infantry commander would not want to say, “Make sure you cross one of the bridges soon or else.” This could be a prescription for disaster. Rather, the infantry commander would say, [...]

I love to fail!

Our attitude towards failure gets formed very early in life. Usually in school…and it never just goes away. All through school, we perhaps take hundreds of tests, exams, assignments etc. And we are in BIG trouble if we fail even ONCE. So we are scared of failure. But real life is different. In real life [...]

Creativity through the metaphor of food

Around two years ago I wrote a manifesto for ‘Change This’ on the topic of slow innovation. This was inspired by the founding of the ‘slow food’ movement by Italian journalist Carlo Petrini. After strolling past a new MacDonald’s franchise in the centre of Rome he paused and said: If this is fast food, why [...]

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