Tag Archives: The Creative Habit
We Have Change Covered for You – Our Three Public Workshops: November 12-13
No matter what your circumstances, you WILL deal with change in any organization, and no matter how you want to work with it, we have you covered….
Please spread the word about our November 12-13 public workshops on change. We hold these three workshops at the Richardson Civic Center, and to facilitate interaction among the participants, we limit seating to the first twenty persons registered for each program. See additional discounts at the bottom of this blog.
Our schedule and details follow:
Wednesday, November 12 – 8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
MANAGING CHANGE Facilitator: Randy Mayeux
In the midst of ever-increasing change, the ability to manage your own effectiveness is now required for virtually every position in an organization. In this program, learn how to turn change into a powerful competitive advantage, and into a friend, rather than an enemy. Register for this program if you want to:
- cope with change you must implement
- work in a change-friendly environment
- reduce personal anxiety about change
- produce an environment of freedom
- look for positive changes to implement
- use change as a tool to boost productivity and effectiveness
Price: $695.00 per person,* which includes breakfast, manual, and “work-with’s”
Wednesday, November 12 – 1:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION FROM CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE EXPERTS Facilitator: Randy Mayeux
Randy will brief you on four separate business books on creativity and innovation, and build on the transferable principles from these books. Each participant receives a copy of all four books.
Part 1: Think Creatively
- Identify strategies to actively seek out and hire people with diverse backgrounds and thinking styles
- Explore steps to effectively manage resistance to novel or experimental proposals
Part 2: Demonstrate How to Develop Processes, Products, and Services
- Describe how to evaluate new opportunities unconstrained by existing paradigms but keeping an eye towards organizational goals
- Identify and describe steps to maintain the organization’s competitive edge with breakthrough solutions and disciplined risks
The four books are: (1) The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, (2) The Ten Steps of Innovation by Tom Kelley, (3) Weird Ideas That Work by Robert Sutton, and (4) Creativity, Inc., by Jeff Mauzy and Richard Harriman
Price: $775.00 per person,* which includes lunch, manual, four books, and “work-with’s”
Thursday, November 13 – 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
LEADING CHANGE Facilitator: Karl J. Krayer, Ph.D.
Why sit in the passenger’s seat for the next change initiative in your organization? Instead, sit in the driver’s seat and lead it! Your organization can maintain productivity and achieve results while in the midst of change by following three key principles to make the initiative you lead to be: (1) inclusive, (2) systemic, and (3) systematic. Register for this workshop if you want to:
- take a proactive approach to an issue, problem, or opportunity
- gain commitment by influencing others affected by a change
- measure and evaluate the effectiveness of a change initiative
- design a change initiative that you can implement in an inclusive, systemic, and systematic way
- boost the positive impact of a change initiative that you organize
Each participant receives a copy of Karl’s book, Organizing Change.
Price: $1,370 per person,* which includes breakfast and lunch, manual, CDROM template, book, and “work-with’s”
———————————————-
*SPECIAL DISCOUNTS
Both MANAGING CHANGE and CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION FROM CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE EXPERTS for $1,200 (save $270)
Either MANAGING CHANGE or CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION FROM CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE EXPERTS and LEADING CHANGE for $1,770 (save $375)
Best value – all three workshops for $2,200 (save $540)
We offer discounts for multiple registrants from the same organization with a single payment:
- 2nd person – receives 10% discount from the per-person price
- 3rd person – receives 15% discount from the per-person price
- 4th person – receives 20% discount from the per-person price
- 5th person – receives 25% discount from the per-person price
————————————————
REGISTRATION AND CONTACT INFORMATION
You can use this registration form and return it to us. Simply click on the image below and you will see a full, printable page.
If you prefer, we can also mail, fax, or e-Mail this registration form to you.
We are glad to answer questions from you, so please call or send an e-Mail. The number is (972) 980-0383. The e-Mail is:
We look forward to hearing from you.
Click here for full image
We Have Change Covered For You – Three Great Public Workshops in November
No matter what your circumstances, you WILL deal with change in any organization, and no matter how you want to work with it, we have you covered….
Please spread the word about our November 12-13 public workshops on change. We hold these three workshops at the Richardson Civic Center, and to facilitate interaction among the participants, we limit seating to the first twenty persons registered for each program. We offer an early-bird discount of 10% for all registrations paid on or before October 20. See additional discounts at the bottom of this blog.
Our schedule and details follow:
Wednesday, November 12 – 8:30 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.
MANAGING CHANGE Facilitator: Randy Mayeux
In the midst of ever-increasing change, the ability to manage your own effectiveness is now required for virtually every position in an organization. In this program, learn how to turn change into a powerful competitive advantage, and into a friend, rather than an enemy. Register for this program if you want to:
- cope with change you must implement
- work in a change-friendly environment
- reduce personal anxiety about change
- produce an environment of freedom
- look for positive changes to implement
- use change as a tool to boost productivity and effectiveness
Price: $695.00 per person,* which includes breakfast, manual, and “work-with’s”
Wednesday, November 12 – 1:00 p.m. – 4:30 p.m.
CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION FROM CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE EXPERTS Facilitator: Randy Mayeux
Randy will brief you on four separate business books on creativity and innovation, and build on the transferable principles from these books. Each participant receives a copy of all four books.
Part 1: Think Creatively
- Identify strategies to actively seek out and hire people with diverse backgrounds and thinking styles
- Explore steps to effectively manage resistance to novel or experimental proposals
Part 2: Demonstrate How to Develop Processes, Products, and Services
- Describe how to evaluate new opportunities unconstrained by existing paradigms but keeping an eye towards organizational goals
- Identify and describe steps to maintain the organization’s competitive edge with breakthrough solutions and disciplined risks
The four books are: (1) The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp, (2) The Ten Steps of Innovation by Tom Kelley, (3) Weird Ideas That Work by Robert Sutton, and (4) Creativity, Inc., by Jeff Mauzy and Richard Harriman
Price: $775.00 per person,* which includes lunch, manual, four books, and “work-with’s”
Thursday, November 13 – 8:30 a.m. – 4:30 p.m.
LEADING CHANGE Facilitator: Karl J. Krayer, Ph.D.
Why sit in the passenger’s seat for the next change initiative in your organization? Instead, sit in the driver’s seat and lead it! Your organization can maintain productivity and achieve results while in the midst of change by following three key principles to make the initiative you lead to be: (1) inclusive, (2) systemic, and (3) systematic. Register for this workshop if you want to:
- take a proactive approach to an issue, problem, or opportunity
- gain commitment by influencing others affected by a change
- measure and evaluate the effectiveness of a change initiative
- design a change initiative that you can implement in an inclusive, systemic, and systematic way
- boost the positive impact of a change initiative that you organize
Each participant receives a copy of Karl’s book, Organizing Change.
Price: $1,370 per person,* which includes breakfast and lunch, manual, CDROM template, book, and “work-with’s”
———————————————-
*SPECIAL DISCOUNTS
Take 10% off the listed price for all registrations received by October 20
Both MANAGING CHANGE and CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION FROM CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE EXPERTS for $1,200 (save $270)
Either MANAGING CHANGE or CREATIVITY AND INNOVATION FROM CREATIVE AND INNOVATIVE EXPERTS and LEADING CHANGE for $1,770 (save $375)
Best value – all three workshops for $2,200 (save $540)
We offer discounts for multiple registrants from the same organization with a single payment:
- 2nd person – receives 10% discount from the per-person price
- 3rd person – receives 15% discount from the per-person price
- 4th person – receives 20% discount from the per-person price
- 5th person – receives 25% discount from the per-person price
————————————————
Registration and Contact Information:
We can mail, fax, or e-Mail a registration form to you. We are glad to answer questions from you, so please call or send an e-Mail. The number is (972) 980-0383. The e-Mail is:
We look forward to hearing from you.
Creativity is a Verb, and feels like Hard Work – insight from Jonah Lehrer, Imagine
I have now read enough about creativity to know that we have our work cut out for us.
What we think, what we wish, is that creative ideas just fall from the sky in blinding moments of inspiration. That does happen, but… But, just as Twyla Tharp says in The Creative Habit, and Jonah Lehrer confirms in his thorough study of creativity, creative breakthroughs are the result of specific practices (“habits”), serious attention to work places, and work styles, and many, many interactions and connections, and work discipline…
Yes, breakthroughs may come suddenly, but they come at the end of some very hard and serious work. And then, when the breakthrough arrives, there is much more hard work to do to turn the idea into something real. Here’ s a key quote from the Lehrer book:
I think people need to be reminded that creativity is a verb, a very time-consuming verb. It’s about taking an idea in your head, and transforming that idea into something real. And that’s always going to be a long and difficult process. If you’re doing it right, it’s going to feel like work.”
Our future depends on our creative work leading to those creative breakthroughs. So, we all need to get to work…
—————-
If you are in the DFW area, come join us this Friday, May 4, at the First Friday Book Synopsis. I will present my synopsis of Imagine: How Creativity Works, and Karl Krayer will present his synopsis of Take the Stairs: 7 Steps to Achieving True Success by Rory Vaden. 7:00 am at the Park City Club. Click here to register.
Charles Dickens, Twyla Tharp, Steve Jobs – Focus; Focus on the Core, the Spine
The first steps of a creative act are like groping in the dark: random and chaotic, feverish and fearful, a lot of busy-ness with no apparent or definable end in sight. There is nothing yet to research. For me, these moments are not pretty. I look like a desperate woman, tortured by the simple message thumping away in my head: “You need an idea.”
You need a tangible idea to get you going. The idea, however miniscule, is what turns the verb into a noun – paint into a painting, sculpt into sculpture, write into writing, dance into a dance.
…Spine, to put it bluntly, begins with your first strong idea. You were scratching to come up with an idea, you found one, and through the next stages of creative thinking you nurtured it into the spine of your creation. The idea is the toehold that gets you started. The spine is the statement you make to yourself outlining your intentions for the work… If you stick to your spine, the piece will work. (emphasis added).
Twyla Tharp — The Creative Habit: Learn it and Use it for Life (A Practical Guide)
—————
Charles Dickens
I was listening to NPR the other day. It was the 200th birthday of Charles Dickens. Any author that receives a segment on his 200th birthday (plus a birthday party at Westminster Abbey) qualifies as a significant author. But we didn’t need NPR to tell us that.
In the midst of the story by Linda Wertheimer (Dickens At 200: A Birthday You Can’t ‘Bah Humbug’), this paragraph jumped out.
Novelist Jennifer Egan is a fan who came back to the books and unexpectedly found that Dickens felt modern.
“The way that Dickens structured his books has a form that we most readily recognize now from, say, the great TV series, like The Wire or The Sopranos,” says Egan. “There’s one central plot line, but then from that spin off all kinds of subplots. And so he would go off in all sorts of directions and create these amazing secondary characters who would go in and out of focus. But then there was also this sort of central spinal column of a plot that he would return to.”
“This sort of central spinal column of a plot…” When I heard this, I remembered the section about “spine” from Twyla Tharp’s The Creative Habit. To Tharp, you need an idea! And then, that idea has to be attached to the “spine,” and the “spine” is what centers the piece, centers the project, centers the “idea.”
This idea of “spine” reminds me of the Steve Jobs decision, upon his return to Apple. Apple had too many products in the pipeline. They were too unfocused. They had lost their spine. Jobs got rid of practically every project except the core two or three. Jobs helped them re-find and remember their spine.
Call it backbone, but don’t think just of courage; think of connection to the core, connection to the central idea. Consider the dictionary definition of spinal column: “constituting a central axis or chief support.” Everything is connected to, and supported by, the spinal column. You can’t have a body, a structure, a company without that central axis or chief support.
The word spine is also the word used to hold the pages of a book together. No spine, no book – just a loose connection of pages.
Business books use many words to describe this concept: focus; core product… but here is the clear principle: have a solid, sound, unshakeable core.
In the devotional classic, John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress, the main character, Christian, is trying to cross the river. The water is moving rapidly; the water is rising, and he is about to go under. But Hopeful calls out from the midst of the same dangerous river:
Then they addressed themselves to the water, and entering, Christian began to sink, and crying out to his good friend Hopeful, he said, I sink in deep waters; the billows go over my head; all his waves go over me.
And Hopeful calls out: “Be of good cheer, my brother, for I feel the bottom, and it is sound.”
“Feel the bottom.” Get the spine right. Get the core product, the core principle, the core service right. Don’t go off chasing anything that is not utterly connected to your core – your spine.
Dickens, and Tharp, and Jobs, and Bunyan had it right.
What is your spine?
Where Do You Find The Very, Very Best Idea? – Insight from Steve Jobs, from 2004
The first steps of a creative act are like groping in the dark: random and chaotic, feverish and fearful, a lot of busy-ness with no apparent or definable end in sight. There is nothing yet to research. For me, these moments are not pretty. I look like a desperate woman, tortured by the simple message thumping away in my head: “You need an idea.”
You need a tangible idea to get you going. The idea, however miniscule, is what turns the verb into a noun – paint into a painting, sculpt into sculpture, write into writing, dance into a dance.
Twyla Tharp, The Creative Habit
————–
Steve Jobs is still Chairman, and may still hold more sway at Apple than any of us know. (I hope so!)
But the compilations of Jobs’ stories and quotes are everywhere, including on this blog (just scroll through yesterday’s posts). I found this terrific article at the Poynter site, How Steve Jobs has changed (but not saved) journalism by Jeff Sonderman. The entire article is worth reading, but here is a key quote, from a 2004 Business Week article:
“Innovation comes from people meeting up in the hallways or calling each other at 10:30 at night with a new idea, or because they realized something that shoots holes in how we’ve been thinking about a problem. It’s ad hoc meetings of six people called by someone who thinks he has figured out the coolest new thing ever and who wants to know what other people think of his idea.
And it comes from saying no to 1,000 things to make sure we don’t get on the wrong track or try to do too much. We’re always thinking about new markets we could enter, but it’s only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that are really important.”
So, where does that very best new idea come from? From an environment that is a swirling hotbed of conversations, ongoing, coming up with lots of ideas, and saying no to all of the good ones until you are left with only the very, very best ONE.
Our Crash Courses are the Way to Go
One of our unique services at Creative Communication Network is our ability to offer training on important topics based upon the information that we derive from books that we present at the First Friday Book Synopsis.
We call these Crash Courses, and you can look for the first offering, focusing upon Change and Innovation very soon. Don’t miss the opportunity to register for this first course. We will send an e-mail to you that announces the date, time, location, and method for registraiton.
In these Crash Courses, we take principles from several best-sellers on a particular topic and transform these into skill-based activities, facilitated discussions, assessments, and self-reflection. You won’t find anything else like them anywhere. We are putting the final touches on this first course right now.
We have two major components in our first course on Change and Innovation, with these objectives:
Part One: Creative Thinking
Objective 1: Identify strategies to actively seek out and hire people with diverse backgrounds and thinking styles
Objective 2: Explore steps to effectively manage resistance to novel or experimental proposals
Part Two: Demonstrate how to develop processes, products, and services.
Objective 1: Describe how to evaluate new opportunities unconstrained by existing paradigms but keeping an eye towards organizational goals
Objective 2: Identify and describe steps to maintain the organization’s competitive edge with breakthrough solutions and disciplined risks.
In this Change and Innovation course, we draw upon principles from these books that we have presented at the First Friday Book Synopsis, and others:
Kelley, T., Littman, J., & Peters, T. (2001). The art of innovation (lessons in creativity from IDEO, America’s leading design firm). New York: Doubleday.
Kelley, T., & Littman, J. (2005). The ten faces of innovation : IDEO’s strategies for defeating the devil’s advocate and driving creativity throughout your organization. New York: Currency/Doubleday.
Mauzy, J., & Harriman, R. A. (2003). Creativity Inc.: Building an inventive organization. Boston: Harvard Business School Press.
Sutton, R. I. (2002). Weird ideas that work: 11-1/2 practices for promoting, managing, and sustaining innovation. New York: Free Press.
Tharp, T. (2003). The creative habit: Learn it and use it for life. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Look for information about this course really soon!
We hope you make plans to join us.
