The Ontario Broker - Volume 21, Issue 6 - 25

CHANGE
" Success and failure aren't
the binary outcomes of trying
something, they're necessary
steps in ongoing development. "
Success and failure aren't the binary outcomes of trying
something, they're necessary steps in ongoing development. To
paraphrase an old saying, there's no such thing as good writing,
only good rewriting-and this applies to any form of creativity.
To get any ideas of value, you need to iterate a lot. Much of it
won't be good, but it'll get you closer to finding something good.
Before finally perfecting his revolutionary vacuum, James Dyson
spent 15 years building over 5,000 prototypes of it.
Once you've tried something, learning to view it critically so
you can productively move forward from it is key. In Black Box
Thinking, author Matthew Syed suggests that being able to do
this is ultimately what allows organizations to survive in the long
term. He points to the aviation industry as being especially good
at this. After every crash, there's an investigation. Processes are
refined and improved. Now, flying is safer than it's ever been.
If you come up with a new initiative for your business and it
doesn't work out, that's okay. Catalogue the knowledge and
resources you might have now that you didn't before and ask
yourself what else you can do with them that might work better,
while avoiding the problem you ran into.
Get Others Involved
Learning to harness your creativity can be powerful. Now imagine
if everyone at your company did the same thing. We've talked
about elevating your next brainstorming session by hosting
a Design Thinking Workshop (October 2019). A component
to keep in mind for group creativity sessions is trying to bring
VOLUME 21 | ISSUE 6
diversity into the room. That's diversity in all senses-seniority
level, department, age, gender, race, etc. The more diverse the
group, the more diverse the skill sets and life experiences can be
leveraged to generate a more diverse set of solutions.
Homogeneity can be a real hinderance to a group's ability
to solve certain problems. When Astronaut Sally Ride was
preparing to become the first American woman in space, NASA
scientists asked how many tampons she'd need for the sevenday
journey-was 100 enough? Based on the nature of this
error, you guess what composition that room was. And they
The Ontario Broker - Volume 21, Issue 6

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