Don (of the Dead) Isaac works as a supervisor at the Capilano View Cemetery. He says, “April 1 is not only April Fool’s day but also Sharon’s Birthday.

She had just turned 64 and so we celebrated Cemetery Style. We made her a cake that looked like a burial marker with a tombstone and artificial flowers. We also did a Hawaiian Theme Party for Anika’s birthday because she had to cancel a trip to Hawaii for her vacation. We had Hawaiian decorations, Hawaiian Music, and we even sprayed the air with coconut room freshener.

Because staff make an effort to enjoy ourselves together it helps attract good people. One staff member told me yesterday that she didn’t know how miserable she was in her old job until she started working with us, because we have so much fun.

Our motto is ‘A Cemetery Worker is the last person to let you down!’

Grand Prize Winner of the Artistry of Change Retreat at Hollyhock goes to Ruth Payne who conceived of the “I am more than my day job” exhibit at the District of West Vancouver

contributed by Ruth Payne of Cultural Affairs within the District of West Vancouver

Ruth writes, “Here’s what I did to motivate and inspire the District of West Vancouver staff.  It works like hotcakes!

We are just finishing the run of an exhibition entitled ‘I Am More Than My Day Job’.  It is for all Municipal staff, including Fire, Police, Transit, Library. The Mayor even has a piece of art in it!    Over 3000 visitors have been through it.I virtually go dept to dept to drag out of employees just what they do with their creativity in their ‘other life’.  The results is amazing!  This is probably one of the best exhibitions ever, and who would guess?

We have a big opening reception and the staff that are musicians performed.

The results:

1. the public love seeing staff that they normally associate with i.e. a Finance Clerk, now being exhibited as a textile artist, a wood carver, an accomplished photographer,  a jeweller, a mixed media painter…the list goes on.

2. the staff morale is on the ceiling…peel them off…they are so darned chuffed at being featured and perceived as artists.

THE BEST STORY YET:   The Director of Finance, very shyly showed me some photographs he took through the windscreen as he does the long daily drive home to Maple Ridge. He had no idea they were even worth showing to anyone. They are of the traffic when it is raining. They are very fresh, immediate and appealing. I took him by the hand to a frame shop, where he learned how they needed to be framed, then he did it himself to save money, and they have been the rave of the exhibit. All three sold, AND a gallery in W. Vancouver now wants to carry his work. He now has a whole new life. He just can’t get over himself!

I love this example of the arts helps people reinvent themselves. And the best part is that other employees now perceive this quiet finance guy in a whole new light.”

Read more

We recently concluded our Workplace Creativity contest and this week we wanted to showcase some of the amazing entries that we received. This contest asked people to email a description of an innovative way you work, such as creative décor, something fun that happened at work, or any initiative that contributed to a culture of innovation.

Several prizes are being given out and the top place winner receives a free spot in our 4 day Artistry of Change retreat at Hollyhock!

The judges were:

• Carla Rieger, The Creativity Catalyst
• Marisa Cohen,Creative Writer and Blogger
• Phyllis Harber-Murphy,Creative Virtual Assistant
• Carol Ann Fried, Fun at Work expert–Training, Speaking and Coaching
• David Gouthro, Creativity and Innovation expert–Training, Speaking and Facilitation

To be informed about our next contest, feel free to subscribe to our email list and this blog’s RSS feed.

Here are the 4th, 3rd, and 2nd place winners for the Workplace Creativity Contest:

Fourth Place – Having fun with lack of storage space

from Lorian Markin of the Justice Institute of BC in New Westminster BC, Canada

Lorian writes, “We are very short of storage space at the Justice Institute and often the only place to store boxes of classroom materials is literally under our desks. I always joke about someday making a little fort out of them, and one morning I came in and my co-workers had built one for me!”

Third Place – Olympics at the Beach

from Bliss at Symantec in Bellingham

Bliss writes, “A few years ago when working with Symantec, we took two teams of folks who worked in different groups–but needed to communicate flawlessly–to the beach.  Once there, we mixed them up in newly formed teams and conducted Symantec Olympics on the Beach.

Seeing each other slipping as they raced, and limbo-ing on the sand and passing eggs on spoons had everyone laughing together in no time.  As I bet you would agree, if you laugh together, you can work together.  I was the one with the stopwatch and whistle, and can attest to that fact. As for other companies, you don’t have to go to the beach to have your own “Olympic” events.  You can be anywhere, from the park to the office hallways, just being willing to get silly together does wonders.”

Second Place – Re-inventing a child’s play area at Salmon Arm Credit Union

Contributed by Louise Delaney, Salmon Arm Savings and Credit Union

I work as the Manager, Marketing for the Salmon Arm Savings and Credit Union. Our main branch had an old run down kids “play” area which featured hand me down books, a painting on the wall and a wooden rocking horse from the 1950;s. We called him “Horsey”.  Horsey entertained generations of children who waited for their folks while they did their banking.

As cute as he was, Horsey seemed dangerous to me. He slid along a metal contraption which could easily slice off little fingers. He was rickety so tended to buck off excited children. And worst of all, he stood in front of a plate glass window.  I couldn’t stand the potential risks we could incur and so I turned a hazard into a creative opportunity.

I lassoed Horsey one night and took him to my office pasture, much to the complaints of the kids, parents (now really, would they allow Horsey to live in THEIR playroom – safely?), and from staff who had to deal with disappointed kids and aggravated parents.

I needed to bring “Horsey” back in a way that didn’t pose any hazards, that enabled staff to work without too much noise, and that would satisfy parents and their kids. I thought about how to design something using local imagery, local design talent and local business to produce it. I put our Ad agency on the case (Mediability Communications and Creatability Design).

After many design drafts: here is the interactive, magnetic board which lines the walls of our kids area. It is 10 feet wide by 5 feet high and surrounds two corner walls. The elements in the design can easily be taken off and can be moved wherever the spirit takes those who dare to play (kids and adults alike). It features local bird life, it is close to the ground for little kids and it corrals little folk into a manageable area.

The kids love it, the parents love it, the staff love it and Horsey remains peaceful in the pasture but reincarnated in the new design. The design is now being custom produced for in home use thereby increasing business for those involved.

See the next blog post for The Grand Prize Winner of The Workplace Creative Contest

A place where the sun isn’t shining now will be eliminated in a few hours.
- Sophia Bedford- Pierce

1. Play with perspective

Make a list of what you don’t like about your work. Ask yourself “What’s good?” about each of these items. Feel free to use your sense of humor, be practical, be whimsical, be bold. It’s for your eyes only.

Ex: Too much email – it’s a great distraction from other jobs, at least there are people (or spammers) that want to connect with me, I can avoid an uncomfortable face-to-face conversation with that annoying person down the hall.

2. Lean into the job

Act as if you loved this job, just for 10 minutes. Take your hands off the handle bar of the roller coaster and jump into the job like it was a thrill ride. Imagine it is something you absolutely love to do, like salsa dancing, or going golfing, or having a double mocha latte from Starbucks.

3. Stay curious

Ask yourself open questions. What triggers me most about this job? What is another way I could deal with this job? Could I be delegating it? Could I abandon it? Could I re-systemitize it so that it’s more enjoyable? Could I invite others to do it with me? Could I do it at another time of day so that I’m not interrupted so often?

4. Become exceptional

With this new information now ask yourself “If I were exceptional at loving this job and doing it brilliantly…what would I do?” When I asked myself this question about email overload I decided to make a game of it. I created a system.

First I went through and deleted anything unimportant. Then I color flagged them: red = deal with now, blue = deal with this week, yellow = deal with next week. Emails for reference only I created a separate folder for in my InBox. I used Dragon Naturally Speaking voice recognition software (which makes it go much faster once you get it going). I decided to do this system for only one hour.

After the hour I took a break to actually go get a double mocha latte from Starbucks as a reward

Send us a story

If you have a way of loving a job you hate, post it below in our comments. ) Or you can email it to carla@carlarieger.com

Enter our Workplace Creativity Contest and get a chance to win one free spot in my 4 day retreat at Hollyhock. Also, books, CD’s and other great prizes.

Email us a poem, short story, art work, or photo of the creative environment in which you work. Or tell us about décor your workplace created, or an innovative initiative to bring in more business, or to better service your clients, or something fun and creative that brought your team together, or anything that helped inspire a culture of creativity in your workplace.

Send it by July 31st, 2009. Winners announced by August 15th. Entries can be sent to me at Carla@ArtistryofChange.com.

See below for examples.

========================================

Workplace Creativity Contest
Deadline for Submission – July 31, 2009

Here are some examples of workplace creativity:

1.   Hakia
2.   Motely Fool
3.   Google
4.   W.L. Gore & Associates
5.   Whole Foods
6.   BC Ministry of Children & Family Services

1. In the Manhattan offices of the search engine Hakia.com, employees can express themselves on blank canvases that hang on the walls.

2. At the offices of Motley Fool, a financial Web site, workers can unwind through a couple of networked Xboxes hooked up to a 5-foot plasma screen in a dedicated game room.

“Work has changed from being something you do with your hands to something you do in your head,” the New York Post quoted Alexander Kjerulf, author of ‘Happy Hour is 9 to 5,’ as saying.

“This means that how people feel at work is now terribly important, because you do better head-work when you’re happy,” he added.

3. Leading the ‘Fun at Workplace’ concept are the dot-coms, best among them Google, which got the top spot on Fortune’s “Best Places to Work” list this year, for its impressive perks such as game rooms that offer diversions like billiards, PlayStation, pingpong and foosball.

4. After rigorous evaluation Fast Company magazine finally voted W.L. Gore & Associates as the most innovative company in America. You’ve no doubt heard of its most famous product: Gore-Tex fabrics, which have a transparent plastic coating that makes them waterproof and windproof but keeps them breathable. They also make over 1000 different other products such as synthetic blood vessels, Glide dental floss, the first floss that resisted shredding, and its Elixir guitar strings, which last five times longer than normal strings. Yet, Gore’s uniqueness comes from being as innovative in its operating principles as it is in its diverse product lines. For example, they encourage risk taking. Since they are a privately owned company they don’t have to report their quarterly earnings, thus they happily allocate 10% of their resources to new initiatives and allow anyone in the company who wants to try a new initiative a generous amount of resources to develop it. Of course, some of those initiatives fail, but they expect that. And, when Gore people pull the plug on a failing initiative, they’ll still have a “celebration” with beer or champagne, just as they would if it had been a success. Because they know that lowers stress and validates trying new things.

5. Whole foods market ranked 15 in 2007 in Fortune magazine’s list of 100 Best Companies to Work For. It’s mainly for their management processes and practices. That’s one reason why no competitor has matched the performance of Whole Foods Market, which has grown during the past 25 years to 161 stores. While other grocery chains have been slashing costs to fend off Wal-Mart, Whole Foods has been rapidly evolving an extraordinary retail model– one that already delivers the highest profits per square foot in the industry. John Mackey, the company¹s founder and CEO, says his goal was to “create an organization based on love instead of fear” and describes Whole Foods as a “community working together to create value for other people.

The basic organizational unit isn’t the store but small teams that manage departments such as fresh produce, prepared foods, and seafood. Managers consult teams on all store-level decisions and grant them a degree of autonomy that is nearly unprecedented in retailing. Each team decides what to stock and can veto new hires. Giving them this kind of responsibility seems to engender much more a creative working environment rather than a stressed out one. Partly because they have control over the decisions.