“I’m not creative.”
That was one of the very first statements I heard during a recent inter-company training session on Developing Creativity.
The participants were managers from a wide range of industries: energy, education, food manufacturing, healthcare, social protection, and banking. Yet they all shared the same concern. On one hand, they felt the explicit—or sometimes implicit—expectation to “think differently.” On the other, they were under pressure to find realistic solutions to very practical problems.
Here are three observations from that training session.
Observation 1 – “I’m Not Creative”
Being—or not being—creative is incredibly subjective. Who can honestly define themselves with certainty by saying, “I am this” or “I am not that”?
Perhaps we should replace the verb to be with to do.
Instead of asking ourselves whether we are creative, we should simply start producing ideas—lots of ideas. We can sort through them later.
Writer Ray Bradbury once advised aspiring authors not to focus on writing a great novel straight away, but instead to write one short story every week. After a year, among fifty or so stories, there would probably be two or three genuinely promising ideas worth developing.
Creativity works the same way: produce first, evaluate later.
Observation 2 – A Storm of Sticky Notes?
Is brainstorming simply a session where everyone writes ideas freely on sticky notes?
Yes… and no.
A brainstorming session only produces truly valuable ideas when each stage follows a clear structure.
First, define the problem accurately.
Then, generate ideas by challenging the initial assumptions.
Finally, move into a structuring phase to transform those ideas into practical solutions.
If people begin thinking about solutions before the problem has been clearly defined, they dramatically reduce their chances of thinking outside the box. The resulting ideas often fail to gain any real momentum.
Likewise, if someone starts discussing technical or commercial feasibility in the middle of an idea-generation session, it becomes very unlikely that anything genuinely innovative will emerge.
Successful brainstorming therefore requires a framework, a facilitator, and clear rules.
In reality, creativity goes hand in hand with intellectual discipline.
To think outside the box, you first need a well-built box.
Constraints are often the very thing that stimulates creativity—as the members of the French literary movement Oulipo have long demonstrated.
During the training, the group worked on a lateral thinking exercise to imagine a new product for the Moleskine brand.
As soon as we began defining the problem, one participant immediately proposed a solution.
Cognitive biases are remarkably persistent.
The facilitator must constantly guide the group, ensuring everyone remains focused on the current stage instead of jumping ahead to the next one.
Observation 3 – Sleep Brings Clarity
At the end of the first day, the group was tired.
One participant appeared increasingly frustrated as we explored the principles of lateral thinking.
The best decision?
Simply stop.
We switched to an easier exercise to end the day.
“Let’s leave this technique alone for now. We’ll come back to it tomorrow morning.”
The following morning, we started with a short stretching session outside in La Défense. The weather was beautiful, and a cool breeze flowed between the office towers.
We returned to the training room.
The participant who had seemed confused the day before came over to me and said:
“By the way… I’ve got it now. I finally understand what we did yesterday. It makes sense.”
Sometimes an idea needs us to stop working on it before it can begin working on us.
Thinking Differently, Acting Effectively
These observations helped shape the Off the Rails – Think Differently, Act Effectively approach.
Its purpose is to help teams break free from their usual ways of thinking, explore ideas beyond their own industry, and then return to reality with practical, usable solutions.
To land spacecraft safely on Mars, engineers famously designed an airbag system capable of absorbing the impact with the planet’s surface.
What if the solution to your next challenge already existed… but in a completely different field?
Watch the video.
Then contact us for an initial exploratory phone conversation.
