Don’t Sprint Until…

“Wanna do a 400 meter dash real quick?”

If someone walked into your office right now and asked you to run a 400-meter dash, would you do it? Could you do it? Unless you've just been in the gym, warmed up, stretched, etc, you'd probably balk at the request.

Sprinting is not the kind of thing we like sprung upon us.

Why is creative sprinting treated differently?

For all of the important benefits that the notion of “the design sprint” has conferred upon the corporate world, I think it has done the practice of innovation a great disservice: it has implied that great ideas are easily come by, and are the function of episodic, haphazard bursts of effort.

Nothing could be further from the truth, and I think people know it.

That why sick kids suddenly need to be picked up from school when the boss calls for a brainstorm in the conference room. It’s because there’s a fundamental disconnect between the desired outputs, and individual readiness.

To use a metaphor, I see it something like this. Far too often, managers perceive idea generation like it’s a trip to the grocery store: “just pick up a couple new ideas on the way home!”

Instead, I'd suggest an approach more like gardening: carefully cultivating inputs. Outputs sometimes delightful, sometimes frustrating. Not automatic, no guarantees, but lots of surprises.

This misperception is manifested in how folks reach the end of a creativity workshop with a victorious, “I'm done! I did it!” As if now that I know the right thing to do, or have had this experience, I'm good. No further effort required.

But that’s akin to attending basketball practice for a couple of days — or worse, watching videos of Steph Curry drain 3-pointers — and having understood the technique, declaring oneself to be a master hooper.

Instead of saying, “I'm done,” I suggest a different mindset.

Think, “I've begun.”

“I've entered into this practice. I recognize that, like every other important area of my life (from my hygiene and health, to my spiritual life, to hobbies like piano and painting), my creative capacity is something that requires regular attention and careful cultivation.”

“Use it or lose it” applies as much to creative problem solving as anything else — an interdepartmental research collaboration between folks from the d.school and Stanford Medical School have demonstrated just that.

That's not to say that sprinting isn't an incredibly valuable tool and ability. It is. We are constantly invoking a sprint mentality in the programs and classes we teach Stanford. But to go along with the metaphor, if we are going to sprint, we need is more stretching, more training, more warming up.

That way, when the time for sprinting comes, we're ready.

Related: Practice
Related: Monitor Creative Wellness

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