“Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.”  —Scott Adams

I wrote in my last post that I would expand on this tip: Focus not on the creativity itself but on how it will engage others. It’s when we get wrapped up in our creative juices that we risk producing functional bombs.

Here are three invitations to disasters.

1. In trying to add interest to the activity, we make it too complicated.  Either the cool picture of the spiced up activity in our imaginations is unrealistic or we haven’t thought out how to make the idea work.

Example. In my first year as a Bible Study Fellowship children’s leader, I had fun making foam animal masks with colored tongue-depressor handles – sets of tigers, monkeys, lions, and elephants. I couldn’t wait to use them for the large-muscle activity in the gym.

To marching music, I pictured the preschoolers in a circle marching in place holding their masks as I called out, “Tigers to the center!” All the tigers would march in unison from the circle to the center, growling. Then I’d call, “Tigers back to the circle and Monkeys to the center!” The tigers would step to the music back to their places and the monkeys would march to the center ee-eeing.

But preschoolers don’t always picture what we’ve instructed, don’t always march in unison, don’t remember where their places are on the circle. They are easily confused. In a word, pandemonium. My activity was too complicated for preschoolers.

The children would have enjoyed exercising if I’d instructed them to move around with their masks growling, ee-eeing, etc.

2. In having so much fun being creative, we forget to consider the participants’ needs in our activity. See the example with 3.

3. Our creative activity idea has little to do with the point we want to make.

Example. As an actuarial manager in an insurance company, my area set reserves for small business groups. It wasn’t the most exciting work and the monthly meetings to report reserves were monotonous.

My team latched onto the idea of making a 2-minute video of an analyst pulling out her hair over computer glitches, another analyst snatching reserve numbers from the air, and our boss juggling balls in his office. We stayed after work and filmed a wig flying from a cubicle, an analyst deep in thought suddenly saying some ridiculous number and writing it down, and the chief actuary humoring us and juggling. What fun.

During our opening video, the accounting VP’s normal expression didn’t change and the Small Business VP, although smiling slightly, said she hoped we didn’t bill her for the time it took to film the video. The VPs just wanted the numbers and analysis, and the film added nothing to enhance that activity.

Remember, our failures help make future successes.

Your turn. What other oversights invite disasters when adding glitz to your activities?

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 “Creativity is the defeat of habit by imposing originality and change.” —Andy Law

I’m a writer. I must engage editors and readers. But over the years, I’ve practiced grabbing the attention of middle school students, corporate colleagues, Bible study participants, Sunday school and Bible Study Fellowship (BSF) preschoolers, my children and grandchildren, and young male prisoners.

Here are 3 things that worked.

1. The next time you prepare to interact with people, stop, consider your habitual method, and then change one thing so participants will take note.  An attention-grabber is what makes the point you are trying to get across memorable. Ask yourself: How can I report this information or guide this activity or write this paragraph differently to hook participants? 

Example. As an actuarial analyst in a health insurance company, I asked myself how I could get VPs to focus on a potential problem from my profit analysis. The film “Top Gun” and “Danger Zone” from its soundtrack were popular. On my graph, I inserted a horizontal line at the critical threshold and labeled it DANGER ZONE. Feeling like a top gun analyst for a few moments, I enjoyed hearing the VPs bandy that terminology while they discussed options.

2. Focus not on the creativity itself but on how it will engage others. I’ll expand on this in another post.

Example. One opening activity in BSF was to explain the meaning of the US flag’s colors. Rather than smearing my face with red lipstick, I created a tricking game that would keep the wiggly preschooler’s attention longer than a shocked moment. Wanting to stop me from tricking them, the children engaged immediately. I whipped grapefruit-sized dots in four colors from my apron pocket one at a time. Initially, they called yes or no whether the flag had a dot’s color.

Although learning the meaning of the colors wasn’t our purpose, I played the simple game often because the children loved when I feigned disappointment that I hadn’t tricked them. By the year’s end as I extracted dots, they yelled: “Red is for courage!” “White is for liberty!” Blue is for loyal, true, and faithful!”

3. Call on others to help your creative effort. Whether I prepared for presentations with analysts or trained weekly with BSF children’s leaders or submitted chapters of my manuscripts to critique partners, others often vitalized my preparation for my everyday activities. And for me, God is the One I seek first.

Let’s put our heads together.

Example. As an actuarial manager, I had a problem to solve for a presentation. I asked my favorite analyst into my office. I went through several, “What if we …,” “No, that won’t work because …,” “But how about …,” and finally, “That’s it! Perfect. Thanks for your help.” The analyst smiled, rose, and left without having said a word. Sometimes you need a warm body with ears.

Your turn. How have others helped you plan engaging activities?

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