Creativity Central [Marty Baker]

Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so.

                                                                                                Douglas Adams

In 2000, Austrian-born designer Stefan Sagmeister took a sabbatical.

He closed his doors and spent a year conducting an experiment.  He would design no projects but would investigate how the work would change with no outside briefs or deadlines attached.

When he reopened his studio a year later, he started getting job requests with an extraordinary amount of freedom attached.  One from .copy magazine gave him virtually unlimited freedom to design six spreads which would serve as the opening pages of the magazine different sections.

“Filling the pages with no brief and no boundaries turned out to be much more challenging than I naively expected.”

As weeks went by, Sagmeister admits he was getting increasingly frantic to find the right content.  So he looked through a diary he kept during his sabbatical and found a list under the title “Thing I have learned in my life so far.”

That list became the source for the spreads and for a remarkably inventive book with the same title. 

Sagmeister writes, “All the maxims were meant exactly as written and though some might be banal, they contain no cynicism or mockery.”

One of his maxims is “Assuming is stifling.”

“My problem is not overzealous perfectionism. My problem is the assumption of failure. Self-censorship – the little voice in  my brain whispering.  It won’t work -- tends to reduce the possibilities of many things I do.

Because one client killed a good idea.  I readily assume the same client will kill a second good idea. Next time around I show a safe and mediocre one instead.  Or, perhaps even worse, I assume a new client will refuse to go for a concept that a different client rejected.”

I love the idea.

One of the core techniques we use in creativity and innovation training is reversing assumptions.  Identifying assumptions.  Questioning assumptions. 

This approach is either met with delight or annoyance – and sometimes both.  The annoyance comes from a sense that this technique is a waste of time.  A company transports lumber may be looking for new growth opportunities but when we challenge whether or not they are actually in the “lumber delivery business” feels like consultant speak to them.  It’s doesn’t resonate with people who are running that business – if that business model is working.

Change happens (even thinking about change) when the pain of adopting a new model is less than maintaining the status quo. 

Think about the bankrupt Circuit City.  Or the over 130 banks that failed last year.  Or about the flattening of Starbuck’s empire building?  Or the ascendency of streaming video like Hulu.

What assumptions did they make?  What reversals of assumptions might have turned these enterprises around? 

The benefit of reversing assumptions is that it takes very little investment in time and resources to think about them.   For example, the lumber delivery business can simply remove the word lumber and they’ve opened up new possibilities – even if they don’t act on them in the short term.

An idea is not a mandate, it’s information.

Check out Sagmeister’s amazing web site:

http://www.thingsihavelearnedinmylife.com/