For 14 years now, we have been working with individuals and organisations drawing conversations and unearthing creative solutions.
We’ve looked at the “Big Picture” that results, and together we’ve drawn the connections and created a sense-making and a simplicity of what has been for many, a kind of mental complexity. Some might call this part of an Ideation process.
What happens when you do this?
In our experience:
- Difficulty seems to become less difficult, in fact it makes it different
- Creativity bursts forth from people
- Complexity becomes exciting and eventually reveals simplicity
- Tense or stuck situations become more malleable and more open to possibility to create something new something more workable
In 14 years this technique has never failed us. In 14 years it would be more true to say that we have failed IT! Many times we have lost faith in letting go and the process has dropped flat, become predictable. The air would go out of the wings of the creative process and we would be back inside the box. DAMN!!
Today we offer this picture and five step process to support you with some of the ingredients we have found really work within the workshop environment as well as in any person to person encounter. Indeed, this will support any creative process.
- The first thing you need to do is DARE!!
You need to dare to trust that the process is leading somewhere undiscovered and unthought-of. - Secondly remember that NOT KNOWING what will happen next is OK and important for now.
- Get used to not focussing on the OUTCOME. Dare (again) to throw things up in the air and let them fall into a new place. Dare to marvel at the apparent imperfection of what results.
- As you let go of all the controlling habits, (having to understand everything first, having to hold onto what your head says, having to know how it’s all going to end) devote your time and energy instead to DEEPLY LISTENING.
- Only now, when you feel the time is right, should you stop and step back. Now you can begin phase two, the sense-making phase of joining dots, making new connections, surveying the new map and constructing the new outcome which has appeared.
You will be amazed at the results, so much so, that you will wonder how you got to where you are now.
Vanessa Smith of Crafting Connection brings out personal and organisational Potential and Idea Development through creative techniques.