Today’s post will show you how to tap into the most valuable resource in your business. Your brain!
I want to start with a quick question. How good are you at creatively solving problems? I ask this, because marketing and business development is a largely creative process. We need to constantly, creatively look for ways to:
- Improve our products and services.
- Make our marketing messages more compelling.
- Improve the customer or client experience with better customer service.
- Reduce our attrition rate (that’s the rate at which we lose clients.)
- Increase the reach of our marketing.
- The list goes on and on and on.
Creative thinking in action
I recently learned of a creative solution to a pressing problem, which demonstrates the power and value of creative thinking. It’s a great little story with a wonderfully simple lesson!
An elderly couple from a small town in the UK were being bothered late at night, every night, by a group of loud, often drunk teenagers who had started congregating on the corner of their street. Although the old folk suffered worse, as the commotion was close to their front door, the noise, which would often go on until 3am, impacted around 20 homes. Initially they tried reasoning with the kids, but it didn’t work. Then they tried calling the police, but the kids just came back when the cops went.
One day, the residents got together at a local hall, to see if they could find a way to resolve the problem. They were about an hour into their meeting, when a taxi driver arrived to pick up one of the group to take him home. He asked what the problem was and they told him. Instantly, he announced to the group:
I know how to solve that, it’s easy!
The group listened intently to hear what the taxi driver had to say.
The reason those kids meet there, is because the place where they used to congregate (which was out of the way) has grass that’s 4 feet high and it’s being used as an illegal place to dump rubbish/garbage. Your corner has a lovely clean plot, with railings that they can sit on. So, you need to make their old meeting place appealing again and make your corner less appealing. I suggest you start, by feeding the birds at those railings on your street!
Feeding the birds? Are you crazy?
Those kids spend a lot of money on their clothing. They will not want to sit on the railings at the corner of your street, in the dark, if the birds have been dumping all over it! I’d get started today feeding the birds and then get some people together to clean up their old congregating place. The kids need somewhere to go and you have to give them an alternative, or you are simply moving the problem onto another local street.
It took almost a month, but it worked. The kids went back to their old, out of the way spot; where generations of local teens had hung out. As soon as the kids went, the area on the street corner was cleaned and the residents were able to sleep again.
We are all creative
In my experience, businesspeople often see creative thinking as something that an elite minority are blessed with. The reality is the polar opposite! We are all creative.
Even those who don’t regard themselves as being creative, use their creativity every day. For example, they see a traffic jam on the way to work, so they think of a way around it. They get home from work hungry. They go to the kitchen and realise they forgot to get their groceries, so there is a limited number of ingredients; however, they come up with a meal by creatively designing a dinner, based on maximizing their limited resources. All day, every day, you are creatively solving problems.
Tapping into your creativity
Just like the traffic jam and dinner problems I mentioned a moment ago, you need to focus your creativity on a problem, from a mindset that there IS an answer. Here are some questions to ask yourself, just to get your creative juices flowing:
- Which 10 influential people would I like to know, who could help me with my business?
- How can I attract the attention and interest of these people?
- What new product or service can I offer to my existing clients? (This is the single fastest way to increase your profits.)
- And here are 32 more GREAT questions, to get your business moving forward.
I hope you found these ideas, examples and questions useful.
If you did, I would really appreciate it if you would share this post with your friends on Twitter, Facebook or Linkedin. Thanks!