Adam speaking on innovation next Thursday, March 4

Here is another chance to experience a public innovation session with me next week. It will be a great opportunity for networking, learning and inspiration, and we'll be exploring creativity with a more cross-cultural lens...Adam

VISIONAR Scholarships presents...

“THE TIME FOR INNOVATION IS NOW:

CREATIVITY COMPETENCIES FOR INDIVIDUAL AND CULTURE CHANGE”

In this interactive session, creativity expert Adam Shames will explore today's innovation imperative and share the key competencies necessary for individual and cultural innovation. You'll learn more about the mindsets and skills that boost creativity—and new perspectives and tools to help you be a force for innovation in your personal and professional life.

DATE/TIME: Thursday, March 4, 6pm to 8:30p. Program starts at 6:30p.

WHERE: CATALYST RANCH, 656 West Randolph, 4th floor, Chicago, IL 60661
ADMISSION: $30 (PAYABLE BY CREDIT CARD IN ADVANCE ONLY) includes appetizers and soft drinks.
VISIT THIS LINK TO PURCHASE TICKETS.

Proceeds from this event will provide scholarships to outstanding students in Argentina who need financial help to pursue a college degree. For more information, please call 312-402-7578 or write to: contact@vision-ar.org.

Alive Learning

I've just finished an E-Book called TeamBreakers (email me or click on image for more info/preview or send $10 for single use through Paypal to adam@kreativity.net). It's a 40-page resource chock full of ice breakers and team challenges to increase engagement, participation and general aliveness when we bring people together to meet, learn or even hang out.

As I've written before (see You Lecture I Leave), the truth is most adult educational (as well as university and entertainment) occasions might as well just be watched on video later, given the spectator status of most attendees. And no doubt that watching it on video or on the screen (while connected on the phone) will continue to gain in popularity due to its personal convenience and its savings for companies and organizers.

So what we need now is a radical change in our instincts and expectations when it comes to learning together live. We need that experience to be fully alive for all participants--so that the actual time spent is of a completely different quality than what it would be like watching it later on tape or from your desk. We need to tap into, toss around and share the wisdom that the breathing humans in the room have. We need to become an instant creative community that pushes the boundaries of learning together, and asks more of each other than to just sit our butts down in a seat, take notes and keep quiet until the last 10 minutes of Q&A.

That's what I try to do when I speak or give workshops--find ways for people to connect, for us to learn from unexpected sources and to take on challenges that stretch us and gets our brains and occasionally our bodies way out of our seats. You can check me out in my next public "talk" on innovation, which will be Thursday evening, March 4th, in Chicago--more info to come soon.

In my experience "talking to" or facilitating groups ranging from CEOs to secretaries, real estate accountants to early childhood educators (just gave a couple workshops to them this Monday), kids of all ages to genealogical societies, the key is to change our normal ground rules of passivity right away. You as a participant should feel different from the start--and feel excitement about being in the room, being awake, and ready to both be challenged and have fun.

For those of you who have the chance to rule a room, it's time to engage and enliven attendees in new ways--for some tricks and techniques and exercises new and classic, I invite you to check out my new e-book: TeamBreakers: Ice-breakers and Team Challenges to Spark Connection, Creativity and Collaboration by contacting me.

Breaking into a White Mindset

I'm looking out my window this morning and the world is white, Chicago completely covered in snow. I need to think differently now about people and plans and how I'm going to travel (as I hear a car spinning its wheels in the distance, desperate to leave a parking space). Suddenly the way I see the world has changed, and I have a new mindset that filters how I approach my life.

This time an outside force has caused me to shake up my mindset, but usually it's hard to get unstuck and change how we're seeing a problem or challenge. Creative people hold less tight to their mindsets, constantly seeking out alternative perspectives and foreign experiences--even those that cause discomfort--to keep themselves flexible and more able to adapt to change. Only by cultivating mindset shifts can companies and organizations make breakthrough innovations, like using Gore-Tex fabric for guitar strings and dental floss, or making money through clicks rather than a physical advertisement itself. The mindset of innovation is actually one that moves--that seeks out and considers other lenses all the time.

Trainers/consultants who attempt to teach breakthrough thinking skills like to use visual examples, like the two pictures here, that can play tricks on your perception. They illustrate the ways that your mind can get stuck in one way of seeing, even though there are equally valid alternative ways of seeing the elephant legs or square here. I prefer to offer up "mindset challenges"--puzzles or verbal stories that require you to shift your typical mindset in order to solve them. Here are three to challenge your mind, including one I previously shared when writing about Multiple Intelligence theory:

1. A great mathematician determined that half of eight can actually be zero. How is that possible?

2. A father and his son are out for a drive and get into a terrible accident. The father dies immediately but the son, seriously injured, gets rushed to the hospital emergency room. The surgeon comes in, takes a look at the boy, and says, "I can't operate on him; he's my son." How is that possible?

3. Mary and Jonathan are lying dead in the middle of the kitchen floor in a puddle of water and broken glass. A nearby window is open with a blustery wind outside. What happened?

You might remember these from your games of childhood--and please share others in a comment if you have a good one. What they show, especially in a group where several people are unable to figure them out, is how easily we can get stuck in and unable to break a mindset. Together we can then explore ways to get unstuck by seeking alternatives, challenging assumptions and shifting intelligences. Those of us dealing with snow here Chicago probably get a little more practice at doing those things than you lucky (but perhaps less creative?) people in warmer climates...

1. In this case the answer can be found only when you shift from one intelligence to another, from mathematical to visual: Visually cut 8 in half.

2. Despite strides in women's rights, this one still results in more than half of each group unable to figure it out, demonstrating biases we may not believe we have.

3. Since you didn't have a whole lot to work with here, you have to be good at challenging some of your assumptions. Mary and Jonathan, it turns out, are fish whose bowl fell.

No Banana Fever at the Grammys

I'm a big fan of J.D. Salinger, who passed away this week at 91, and of the Grammy Awards, which celebrated music in its stunning spectacle of creative performance on Sunday. Now, Holden Caulfield would likely take issue with the superficial celebrity culture of pop music. As you may recall, Holden, the narrator of Salinger's classic novel Catcher in the Rye, detested "phonies" and gave voice to that part of us that resists conformity and the inauthentic compromises of growing up. I'm sure he would have been disgusted by the idolatry and image-consciousness of the Grammys.

But here's the thing: Holden suffered from "Banana Fever"--as described in Salingers' unsettling "Perfect Day for Bananafish," the first tale of his Nine Stories, one of only four published books which reflect the writer's brilliant combination of uncanny dialogue, telling detail and conflicting angst of a post-World War II privileged generation.

In "Perfect," Seymour Glass (who really is the central character of Salinger's work, a zen-like genius whose New York family populates many of his stories) is explaining the "tragic life" of an imaginary species of "bananafish" to a young girl named Sybil as they look out onto the ocean. "They swim into a hole where there's lots of bananas," he says. "Once they get in, they behave like pigs...after that they're so fat they can't get out of the hole." "What happens to them?" asks the unsuspecting Sybil. "They die," Seymour replies. "They get banana fever. It's a terrible disease."

While the symbolic significance of banana fever may be debated forever, I take it like this: Holden--and many would-be creators--take in and feel so much from life and relationships but can't find a way out of their hole to express themselves. The love that Holden felt for the most authentic and uncorrupted people (Salinger the hermit too--sadly, he seemed to feel there were few left on earth) was so trapped inside him that he became more and more bloated. He suffered from the resentment, frustration and likely gastric reflux common to all of us who aren't able to relieve the pressure by sharing our talents and creativity with the world.

And that's why I love the Grammys--a show where no one ever suffers from banana fever. Instead we get to revel in the full flowering of talent, creativity, nerve and courage. Whether it's the ravaged and riveting Lady GaGa, joined by the still-inspiring Elton John (video below) or the high-flying Pink, her voice perfectly modulated despite the fountain of her body spinning in mid-air (this video is currently unavailable but it's worth finding), the Grammys provide the forum for demonstrating how some of the greatest musical performers of our time get completely get out of their holes and show us what's inside.

It's easy to be a critic about music or fashion or art, but I can't be when watching the Grammys. I love that the performers do not play it safe, that Taylor Swift is joined by Stevie Nicks, that the costumes and choreography of the Black Eyed Peas make my eyes stop blinking. There they are, the Peas, screaming out, "Fill up my cup. Mazel Tov!" and manifesting in celebration the love that incapacitated Holden. This is authentic creativity--full expression, no repression, often with freak flags flying--and, come to think of it, I believe even Salinger would approve.