By Raju Mandhyan
AFTER years of reading, writing, researching, teaching and working with businesses at enhancing creative thinking in workplaces, I have come to one happy conclusion. The conclusion is that at the core of all efforts at coming up with creative ideas, and innovating products and processes, lies the fact that “action speaks louder than words!”
People in research, design, planning, marketing and strategizing constantly bleed and sweat over what wonderful thing to do next and how to come up with an idea that will rock the world and save money at the same time. Consultants like myself catalyze the bleeding and the sweating further by dishing out multiple, hairbrained techniques and methods to “enhance creativity in individuals and organizations.” The whole circus can become a vicious circle of futility over creativity and real innovation. The power truly lies in A C T I O N and execution. Though, I am tempted to, I will not quote Nike over here. Nope!
What businesses need to learn and master is the ability to go out on a limb again and again. Individuals and organizations need to learn to live with ambiguity and risk. The world outside; the economy, the ecology, and the mind of the masses are and always will be in constant flux. Market conditions will change, trends will change and the world will turn. Speed and action to market is important. Pro-acting to feedback and corrections is important. Besides, just ideating and planning, rolling your sleeves and getting into designing and delivering is called for.
It is vital that organizations not just follow a three-step, a five-step or a seven-step method into higher creativity and breakthrough innovations but also give priority to conclusions and ends. Start backwards if we have to but constantly put something out there into the midst of the market and let the world decide. If your ideas are worth the paper they have been brainstormed upon then take action and take it now.
Currently in the marketplace the concept and the framework of Design Thinking is making a major buzz and the two reasons that it stands out and apart from many other thinking and action models is that it starts with empathy and then ends in prototyping ideas which to me is taking action.
Ideas by themselves are worth nothing. Ideas employed into useful processes are everything. Empathy by itself is fine but when empathy is put into action it becomes compassion. Steve Jobs was right and therefore so stratospherically successful when he said, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. Because believing that the dots will connect down the road will give you the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path; and that will make all the difference.”
So if you are sitting on life or a business challenge, if you are hemming and hawing over your next project launch just get off the fence of indecision and ideation and move. Take action! You will either end up on the streets or end up building skyscrapers of success.
Raju Mandhyan is an author, coach and speaker.
www.mandhyan.com
