If the Industrial Age was built on people’s backs, and the Information Age on people’s left hemispheres, the Conceptual Age is being built on people’s right hemispheres. We’ve progressed from a society of farmers to a society of factory workers to a society of knowledge workers. And now we are progressing yet again – to a society of creators and empathizers, pattern-recognizers, and meaning-makers.

Companies need highly creative people at all levels

No matter what business you are in these days or what role you have within a company,you are required to operate at a much higher level of creativity than your predecessor did 20 years ago.
As the rate of change speeds up companies that are full of change resistant and uncreative employees cannot stay competitive. These are people I call “Change Artists” — they can create something out of nothing, demonstrate high emotional intelligence, recognize patterns and create meaning out of chaos. These are all the skills that you learn when you study the arts. The trouble is, arts were often considered just an elective, not something you had to study in school. Therefore, unless you chose to study an aspect of the arts in depth, chances are you didn’t get to activate the skills of the “change artist” as often as you could have.

Given the right environment most people love to be creative

If you give people the opportunity to consume something creative or create it themselves, most people will choose the latter if they think it will be a safe environment to experiment. Luckily, creativity is innate and just needs to be activated. The best way to activate it is to give people permission to fail, to try new things, to break free of convention. It also helps to give people parameters — so their creative brains have a focus and a deadline. Finally, people tend to be more creative in groups than alone, so set people up in teams. Many businesses today are using some aspect of the arts as a teambuilding experience because it can help to improve problem solving, innovation, teamwork and performance in their employees.

Mercer Bradley – Group Paintings

One example is one of my clients, Mercer Bradley.

They specialize in recruitment and job fit analysis for accounting and finance professionals. The company was founded by Cliff Kanto in 2007 and he understands the importance of being as innovative as possible at work—for both his employees and the employees they place.

At their last all team meeting in January 2011 here is what they did:

We took our company and divided them up into 3 random teams of 4 people. The objective was to create a painting together as a team. Interestingly, there were 3 approaches to how the groups chose to do their painting:

Team 1 jumped in and began to just paint randomly

Team 2 divided up the canvas into 4 sections so each person had their own section.

Team 3 discussed how best to approach the painting and created a unified theme for the painting.

As the paintings began to develop, we had certain people move from one group to another. What became quite obvious was that people approached their painting the same way they approach their work and even though each painting started out differently they all ended up looking very similar.

At the end of the painting session, there was a greater feeling of cohesion and unity amongst the entire company because we had all worked together to create something and a sense of pride in what we had created.

We are going to hang one painting in each of our offices: Vancouver, Winnipeg and Edmonton.

– Zoya Kanto, Director of Operations

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Has your company or organization ever done anything together involving the arts — painting, theater, music, comedy, writing? If so leave a comment below, we would love to hear about it.

Like a silently ticking time bomb, a habit of shallow breathing could be eating away at your health until one day it’s too late. Too many people these days are lost in the trance of scarcity around time, money and resources. This means you probably have a habit of operating too often from the reptilian complex, or flight or flight response.

In this state of mind, your entire system functions much less efficiently. The stress response halts or slows down various processes such as digestion, blood circulation and creative thinking. Prolonged stress responses may result in chronic suppression of the immune system, leaving the body open to infections and disease.

Most people in today’s society are having to do more with less, constantly adapt, be innovative under pressure, re-design everything in a moment’s notice–all because of constant change. Those who can stay calm, confident and clear-headed in constant change are the leaders of the future and indispensable to those they serve.

I call this being a “Change Artist”. Change Artists have regular habits that allow them to benefit from the changes affecting their world and inspire creative thinking in others, all the while staying grounded in integrity. One of the top habits of Change Artist is that they breathe more fully than their more “Change Challenged” counter-parts.

For a fun perspective on the situation check out this mock commercial for breathing:

Breathing is one of those safe, inexpensive, readily available techniques that doesn’t get used often enough.

For an easy to follow conscious breathing technique you can practice check out this video below. If you do a technique like this enough times consciously it will eventually become an unconscious habit.

Congratulations to Jan and her team!

“We are the regional office of a Commercial Insurance Company with a staff of 68 people.  We did some “Christmas Challenges” for fun during the holidays.  Employees were to check their e-mail at certain times during the day to find out what that day’s challenge would be.

One of these challenges was to build a “snowman” using only items from your desk.  The rules were, you had 10 minutes to create your snowman and bring it to the breakroom.  You were not allowed to get up from your desk to get supplies from other desks or the supply cabinet, and you were not allowed to use any Christmas decorations that you might already have at your desk for the holidays.

We had a small panel of “judges” and gave small prizes for the most creative snowmen.  Attached are a couple of photos that show a few of these creations. “

Don Isaac from District of West Vancouver submitted 5 entries- “The Phone Less Cord,” “Don Goofiness,” “Sea Monkey Burial at Sea,” “Tree and Boots” and “Glass Eye Collection.” Don and his team won Honorable Mention for these great entries!

The Phone Less Cord

“The Phone less cord” was a stolen humour joke. I sent the photo to management stating that I found a new electronic device that would save us money on phone calls. (A phone less cord)”

Don Goofiness

“Don Goofiness was taken on the day (Halloween) when the new Municipal Manager was coming for a tour of our Cemetery. He had never met us and so he didn’t know what we looked like. I walked over to the next building to greet him with the mask and hat and present him with a treat. (granola bar)  The trick was I actually look fairly similar to what the mask hides (be it the mask has more hair)  I try wear this mask every Halloween in the office for staff only.  You should see what we do on April Fool’s Day. “

Sea Monkey Burial at Sea

“Sea Monkey Burial at Sea was taken a few years back. It came to be from a present we received from a Summer/Seasonal employee. He thought we needed a mascot/pet at the Cemetery. We couldn’t have a pet that moved like a cat etc. due to them setting off the motion sensors connected to the alarm system. Sea Monkeys were the solution and quite popular (we had them as kids) until the sad day when we had to say goodbye. Being Sea Monkeys they had to be buried at sea and so we introduced them to it. We even had a little stick puppet snowman say a few words.”

Tree and Boots

“Tree and Boots was a set up photo. Over night we had a ornamental plum tree fall down and so before we cut it up and removed it, I positioned my rain boots under it and took a photo. I eventually sent a copy of it to my friend the District Health and Safety Officer with the remarks I hate when this happens. “

Glass Eye Collection

“Glass Eye Collection” is just another sample of Cemetery Humour “

The next two images were contributed by Genalyn Fisher, from Alberta Health Services – Community Health .

“Here is a picture with the staff wearing costumes on Halloween…

…we had a pumpkin carving contest and then auctioned them off, the money raised went to the women’s shelter.”

The rules were to send in a photo of something that created fun in your workplace. After all, joy, laughter and appreciation are great ways to get the creative brain working more effectively, and it’s also a great way to boost morale through the winter blues!

The first entry below is from Cheryl Stafford at BC Children’s Hospital Foundation

Kitty Litter and Fingers Dessert

winner of Carla’s honorable mention award! (A Far Side Book)

Cheryl writes, this is “From our Halloween Potluck which almost all staff attended – kitty litter and fingers (desserts).  The kitty litter actually won an award for most creative / best food!  It was pudding and cake with tootsie rolls!”

The next submission is also from Cheryl Stafford at BC Children’s Hospital Foundation

Pin the nose on Knut

“From our Holiday Open House – we had a number of games going on such as “wack a penguin” – electronic set up in one of our meeting rooms and pin the nose on Knut (he’s one of our VP’s).  The picture is of Knut before the red dot noses were put on him for the contest.  Contestants were blindfolded and had to walk up and place a red circle sticker on the picture – closest to the nose won! “

Ed DeBruyn from Fisheries and Oceans Canada challenged his staff in the district offices in Ontario to submit pictures of their best decorated doors. His organization held their own internal contest with prizes.  Check out one of the successful door designs below:

The Nightmare Before Christmas

The next photo was sent in by Narinder Serown, from BC Community Corrections

Narinder at Work

Narinder writes “here’s a picture of me for the Fun at Work contest.  This was taken shortly after I arrived at the Kamloops Community Corrections office.  This was sent around to my former colleagues and it created a few chuckles.”

Michelle Nelson from Tap Communications Inc., an advertising and communications company in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan also won a Honorable Mention for her photo contribution

Amazing Race

Michelle writes “Last year we held a car rally with different points around the city where we had to race to in order to gather clues to the next location. We had so much fun at that party that we decided to invite spouses in on the fun for our 2008 party, but to change it to a foot race so that it would be a safer event. “

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