Creativity Stirs Up Your Vision, Leading You to New Business Insights

Creativity might be the key your business needs to propel you forward, helping you to achieve tremendous growth spurts in short time spans. It can jumpstart your energy, adding more fuel and fire to the vision you have for your business.

How Business Patterns and Routines Shut Down Creativity

If you’ve been in business for two or more years, you might have established routines or patterns that you follow, perhaps even require your employees to follow as well. Some of these business routines might include start and end times of the workday (a common pattern), protocol and communication styles used during business meetings and daily work processes.

A benefit of working with patterns and business routines is that they can make it easier to measure the results of your efforts. After all, if you and your employees are doing the same actions, performing the same functions, every day, it’s not hard to tie these specific actions to specific outcomes. The downside of routines is that it’s easy to get into a rut, to start feeling stuck. Business routines and patterns can also increase the likelihood that you’ll feel squeamish, maybe even afraid, when shifts occur in your industry, signaling the start of drastic change. 

Stir Up the Levels of Creativity at Your Business

If your business (or your personality) leans toward routines and patterns, you may avoid “ruts” and “feeling stuck” if you stir up your creativity. You can do this by:

• Holding quarterly brainstorming sessions with your staff (encourage open dialogue, idea sharing, humor and self-expression)
• Keeping track of your dreams (you just might be surprised at how creative your mind really is)
• Thinking up two or more ways to tackle a business challenge rather than immediately responding to challenges using former strategies
• Introducing yourself to one new creative business leader a week and keeping in contact with these people throughout the year (if you’re active at social networks this should be a cinch)
• Telling and listening to business related jokes (laughter is an excellent antidote)
• Writing down ideas as soon as they come to you
• Setting aside business funds to try and test new ideas

When you’re looking to exercise your business creative muscles, you can also perform a hobby (e.g. painting, piano playing, wood working). Reading a good book, hanging out with friends, enjoying a walk outdoors and listening to music you enjoy can also help stir your creativity.

Remember that business success involves more than advertising, marketing, customer relations and developing new products and services. Business success also requires creativity – lots of it. In fact, creativity is the tool that can set you apart as a leader or innovator in your industry rather than just a “good follower”.  After all, it’s creativity that generates trailblazing ideas and fuels you with the passion to bring those ideas to fruition

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