Combining and Inspiring Ideas
I encounter so many senior executives who know that the enterprise is ready for a change but can’t devote their attention to it. A suggestion, which is really not so very radical: every leader needs to take a short (one to two weeks) sabbatical every year, but a thoughtful one, one to look back, look ahead, look inward, but stop all other activity. It’s not a holiday but turned to reflection and reinvention. Gertrude Stein said, ‘It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much doing nothing, really doing nothing.’[i]
Looking at the realm of culinary arts of inspiration, chefs move from restaurant to restaurant a lot. Is this the restlessness of the creative spirit, the need to reinvent? Yes, at least partially. A new environment allows individuals to consider themselves in a new light. Many chefs speak about their concern with getting lost in someone else’s vision, or even their own, outdated vision for a particular restaurant that no longer represents who they are. A fresh, clean break is sometimes in order. Now, I’m not suggesting that you must change employers in order to reinvent, though it is worth considering every now and then. At the least, a sabbatical will afford you the time and space to consider whether you need to find a new environment for yourself, to create a different dynamic or leadership impact within your current environment, or if you need to apply new lenses or principles to your creative challenges in order to consider solutions through fresh perspectives.
…And another thing
There was so much rich inspiration in my interviews for my book Sparking Success, that I must include another practical suggestion. Many chefs brought up their technique of combinatorial creativity in inventing new dishes. This method occurs more often than birthing a singularly new idea into the world. Three Michelin star Chef Thomas Keller of the French Laundry in California and Per Se in New York distinguishes between ‘influence’ which comes from countless sources around us and ‘inspiration’ which comes from within and is much rarer.[ii]
In order to keep evaluating combinations of ideas that you hadn’t brought together before, make matchmaking a habit. One exercise that you can do on your own or with your team is to draw two lines down a large sheet of paper, creating three equally sized columns. At the top of the left-hand column write ‘From Our World’. On the top of the second column write ‘From Other Worlds’, and on the top of the third column write ‘Innovations’. In the first column, list the themes, products, services, features, business models, or processes that you want to refresh or reinvent. It’s best to have a focus and just cover one genre such as ‘features’. In the second column, write completely unrelated things, people, ideas or influences. The more seemingly random, the better. In the last column, brainstorm what would happen if you combined each item in column one with the influence from column two.
For example, a team in an office furniture company may want to create a new design for their desk lamp. Their exercise may look something like this:
From Our World – our lamp
1. Straight tube from the base to the shade
2. Lamp shade is monochrome
3. A switch on the base turns the light on and off
4. A cord plugs the lamp into an outlet
From Other Worlds
A. Salvador Dalí
B. Jackson Pollack
C. iPhone
D. Tesla
Innovations, combining...
1 and A: The tube coils into a knot in the middle before continuing up to the shade
2 and B: Spatter several bright colours onto the shade; every lamp is different
3 and C: No switch = cleaner design. You turn the light on and off using an app on your phone
4 and D: No cord. The lamp is battery operated, so it’s more mobile
And so on…. Of course, you can apply every influence from A through D to each item in the first list to surface more possible innovations for each feature. For instance, how would Dalí, Pollack, the iPod and Tesla each alter or improve the cord element on the lamp? Many innovations won’t be attractive or feasible. It’s not about perfection but about volume to increase the odds of discovering a good idea. If you get one interesting idea to develop further from each iteration of this exercise, then you’ve made a great new habit out of innovation and adaptability. You’ve improved the creative capacity of yourself and of your team.
[ii] Thomas Keller, The French Laundry, Per Se (New York: Artisan, 2020), 55.