If you hope to have success as an entrepreneur, you’ll need to be able to consistently come up with new ideas or new spins on old ideas to keep your business on the cutting edge.
Innovation is a major part of separating yourself from the competition. To have that innovation that’s so important, you need to do everything you can to inspire creativity in your workplace. However, there are so many businesses that unwittingly stifle the creativity in their offices.
Here are some of the most common attitudes that limit the creativity within businesses:
“I already know this problem.”
If you assume that you already know everything there is to know about a problem, then you’ve already limited your thinking about it to your own assumptions. Even if you are familiar with a problem, it’s never a bad idea to take a look at it from a different direction. You might come up with a new, better solution.
“I already know the solution.”
Similarly to the first attitude, just because you know the solution to a problem doesn’t mean that you’ve fully analyzed the problem itself. Remember when you were in grade school and your math teacher always made you write down your work, even if you could do the answer in your head? The problem solving process is perhaps even more important than the solution itself. Going through that process in as many different ways as possible is a great creative exercise, and if you skip straight to the solution then you’re missing the point.
“I’m a realist.”
Let’s be frank—a person who says this is basically saying “I’m a pessimist,” or “I don’t want or need to be creative.” The idea of being a realist basically means you constrain yourself to your own perception of reality. Definitely not a frame of mind that’s very conducive to creativity.
“I’m an expert in ___.”
Even the most educated people occasionally let their knowledge or expertise get in the way of finding solutions. Never assume that you know everything there is to know about a given situation or problem.
“I prefer to just see things as they are.”
There’s so much more to basically everything in the world than what we see on surface level, and that goes for the problems you encounter with your business as well. If we really want to stimulate the creative process, we need to be able to see past those surface levels and dig deep to the crux of the issue. These five different mindsets are far more prevailing in the business world than you might expect. Avoid them at all costs if you hope to maximize your creative output.
Prior to joining Viral Solutions, Christine held executive leadership roles at some of the largest small business consulting firms in the USA. Her experience includes leading direct reports of over 130 remote sales agents who generated $38mm in annual revenue. She obtained her Marketing degree from British Columbia Institute of Technology. Bring her C-Suite experience to your small business. Although our company is virtual, and we can work with you wherever you are located, she is located in Denver, Colorado and owns a second home in Vancouver, BC Canada.
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skip straight to the solution then you’re missing the point.
