After
my last post, I got several inquires about the complete list of weird ideas
that work, from my 2002 book, Weird Ideas
That Work. I have a soft spot for this book, perhaps because it was the
first book I wrote myself, and also because it resulted from a talk that I gave
for six or seven years before I wrote it up. I can still see – in my minds-eye –
all the reactions that audiences had to the ideas as I developed them, the
excitement in some cases, the boredom in other cases, the disdain for the most
absurd, and the fantastic arguments that people had with me and each other.
As I’ve said before, my aim is not to be RIGHT
at all times but to get people to THINK, and when I am successful, this book – and the talk
that goes with it — does that. In other words these are strong (and evidence-based) opinions, weakly held.
I picked
ideas that would – from logical standpoint – increase the range of ideas (or
variance) in a company, that would enable people to see things differently, and
break from the past. I also emphasized that increasing variance and the like is
great if you want creativity (say developing a new product or service) and
awful if you want to do something tried and true (say building or flying a 747). There is a Harvard Business Review article
called the Weird
Rules of Creativity you can buy if you are interested (although it costs
about half of the whole book), but if you want free stuff, check out my interview
on tompeters.com,
download this article from the Ivey
Business Journal, or see Polly LaBarre’s Fast
Company article.
Two
quick points.
First,
I don’t necessarily believe any of these ideas. Well, except number 7. BUT I can marshal a pretty strong conceptual
and empirical case for each and give you examples of creative companies and
teams that use each one.
Second,
creativity happens when an organization, through some means, brings in varied
ideas, sees the same old things in new ways, and breaks from the past. These are just some ways to make it happen; they
may help you or may not work in your organization at all. My suggestion is not
to view them as a recipe, but as a menu. I suspect that if you tried to do all
of these in one organization, it would be nightmare. Like eating the entire menu
instead of meal at restaurant, it will make your organization sick. But there
might be four or five that will work for you, at least for the places, people,
and periods when you need creativity.
Here
is the list (note I say 11.5, but there are really 12)
1. Hire slow learners (of the organizational code).
1 ½. Hire people who make
you
those you dislike.
2. Hire people you
(probably) don’t need.
3. Use job interviews to
get new ideas, not to screen candidates.
4. Encourage people to
ignore and defy superiors and peers.
5. Find some
happy people, and get them to fight.
6. Reward success and
failure, punish inaction.
7. Decide to do something that will probably fail,
then convince yourself and everyone else that success is certain.
8. Think of some ridiculous
or impractical things to do, and then plan to do them.
9. Avoid, distract, and
bore customers, critics, and anyone who just wants to talk about money.
10. Don’t try to learn anything from people who seem to have solve the problem you face.
11.
Forget the past, especially your company’s successes.
Finally, as a summary, if you look at these, a
reasonable conclusion is that, although creative places can be a lot of fun at
times and being happy is linked to creativity (sort of, I’ll explain in a later
post), note also that Creative companies
and teams are inefficient (and often annoying) places to work.
Leave a Reply