Our Company Motto and What it Means for You
Episode 705: Show Notes
Today, we’re using you guys for practice. We have a workshop meeting coming up with the team at Boss Project to go over some updates for our team Wiki page, practices for problem-solving, and other aspects, and we wanted to share some of that information with our listeners. Consider these the highlights of what we’ve learned about innovation, problem-solving, and creative thinking.
This episode is best suited if you also listen to our recent episode on the four types of problem solvers that you need in your team. You don’t necessarily need to listen to it first, but it will help you. In the last year, we’ve been able to put definition to the culture behind the scenes at Boss Project, making our mission and vision a more prominent part of the work that we do. We talked about creating a motto to highlight the areas we really want to enhance and how we could share our philosophy with our team in a meaningful way.
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How to identify things you’re already doing but haven’t yet named
If you go back to the beginning of our company, before we were Boss Project, we were Think Creative Collective. For a whole host of reasons, we changed our name, but that’s still our legal business entity. It’s always been a part of what this business stands for, but we never really named what that meant. Creative thinking, thinking critically, and thinking outside of the box are all different ways that you can look at this really big focus that executives and leaders have across industries. These are skills we want to have and that we want others to have, but we don’t always know how to foster it.
We were doing a number of things to support the motto of thinking creatively, but we didn’t really define or outline it. We talked about it within team discussions and individual discussions, and now we have taken the opportunity to define exactly what that means for us, and what some types of creative thinking look like. We’re also taking it a step further and actually researching tasks that can help us all to flex that muscle. We’re not talking about becoming artists, but we are talking about creative thinking. Did you know you have the ability to rewire your own brain? With habit and repetition, you can build the muscle of your brain.
Why we consider thinking creatively as a holistic principle
When we look at a problem, we like to look at the whole thing. We want to essentially become still, and look around from a variety of perspectives. What does it mean to look at the facts and the feelings inside of a team? How can we analyze that from a psychological standpoint, and differentiate between the many different styles of thinking? It’s not just analytical behavior and emotional input. It’s so much bigger than that.
You’re going to fall into your usual patterns of thinking about a solution, or a strategy. How you go about solving a problem is to lean on your natural tendencies. Those are your superpowers because that’s where you are naturally inclined. But that does not mean that you can’t learn how to tap into the other ways of approaching a problem to provide a really unique perspective. As a small team, we can’t deny the fact that no-one has the luxury of being able to sit in one role within our company. Everyone has to have some sort of hybrid approach. For the betterment of the company in the long term, we can’t each stay in our own departments. We have to collaborate!
Five different ways to think creatively
According to our research, there are at least five different types of thinking: aesthetic thinking, divergent thinking, lateral thinking, convergent thinking, and inspirational thinking. Divergent thinking happens when you’re doing traditional brainstorming, when imagination runs wild and you’re trying not to judge what comes out on the other side. Convergent thinking is more of a fact-finding mission. These are the most common types. Lateral thinking happens when you’re coming up with solutions for problem-solving. You’re thinking inside the box and considering what is available to you.
Inspirational thinking means you’re outside the box, with positive intent. You’re imagining all the best case scenarios. People need different ways to blow a problem up. Matter-of-fact inspirational thinking can be really fun to do. Sometimes we need to give ourselves the opportunity to look past the next few years and come up with a long term goal. We call it working backwards. Aesthetic thinking looks at reframing the problem to see its inherent beauty and value.
Our favorite outcome that comes from thinking creatively
Thinking creatively helps you to identify the right problem, and to find the root of the problem. Our clients, team members, family members, and peers in and out of this arena are so often unable to identify what the actual problem is. All too often, we end up focusing on the flashiest and loudest part of the problem, rather than the most important part. Exercising different ways of thinking can help you to identify the real problem and begin to resolve it. You don’t have to accept what’s thrown at you!
Sometimes the solution is just three steps away. Oftentimes, you’re just too close to the problem. You can only see so far, and everything beyond that is fuzzy. It takes practice. Verbal processing with someone else can be really helpful, which is why we love masterminds, coaching, and partnerships. If you can’t lay out the problem at hand, can you take a look at the one next door? Think through how you handled an adjacent problem, and how you can dive deeper for this one. There’s no right or wrong way to dive deeper.
Your roadmap to identifying a problem and creating a plan to solve it
Divergent thinking is your starting point. Make sure you’ve looked at every angle and identified the true root of the issue. Identify and examine it to find the root problem beyond the surface, before moving on to lateral or convergent thinking to find new solutions that may not have been obvious to you before. Once you’ve come up with your options of solutions, think creatively to add constraints that will help you to find the optimal solution. Add a new timeline, add a budget for the project, support, whatever it might be that will help guide you to see new opportunities.
You’ve mapped out your solution. The problem is going to be solved by actually implementing these solutions. Make sure that the constraints you are adding are helpful, and that they are not arbitrary. The constraints are not always necessary, but they do support thinking in a new way. Once you adopt a new way of thinking, you need to include some of those constraints as your new truth. We have a disagree and commit policy; even if you don’t think it’s the best way forward, once we’ve agreed as a unit, we are all working towards that chosen objective.
The collaborative approach we have at Boss Project and the importance of the MVP
We have a collaborative approach at Boss Project, which means that we don’t need to work in silos. However, if a team member is going to bring up a strategy to fix up a problem, then we are encouraging our team to fully vet and explore that problem. At Boss Project, no one person is solely responsible for every single thing that pushes out at MVP. A copywriter will see it, a designer will see it, and a project manager will see it.
Sometimes it’s collaboration from other people that needs to happen in order for a project to actually be done. Other times it’s you needing approval, or ‘the go-ahead’ to finish it on your own, wrap it up, and fully implement it. We’re calling it your MVP because by the time you send it off to be looked at by other members of your team, it’s already 80 or 90% done. It’s your focus. We’ve been talking about the MVP for over a year with our team, and they have been incredible at producing that initial major stride. Their ownership is what has enabled us to bring it into a finalized space.
We hope you found this helpful! Thanks for being here as we brainstorm the training we want to have with our own team. If you have any other ideas about what it means to think creatively for you or for your team, or if you have a motto you’d like to share with us, head over to our Instagram and send us a DM! We love hearing from you.
Quote This
Just because it isn’t obvious doesn’t mean that you can’t find the root problem.
Highlights
How to identify things you’re already doing but haven’t yet named [0:11:58]
Why we consider thinking creatively as a holistic principle [0:15:50]
Five different ways to think creatively [0:19:15]
Our favorite outcome that comes from thinking creatively [0:27:39]
Your roadmap to identifying a problem and creating a plan to solve it [0:33:50]
The collaborative approach we have at Boss Project and the importance of the MVP [0:38:44]
Today’s Guest:
Abagail & Emylee
The Strategy Hour Podcast
The Strategy Hour Podcast is a twice weekly show hosted by Abagail Pumphrey and Emylee Williams, the founders of Boss Project. Join us for semi-ranty biz conversations for service providers looking to ethically grow their agency businesses. Episodes cover everything from lead generation to leadership mindset to team culture and beyond.
Key Topics:
Problem solving, Creative thinking, Disagree and commit, Culture, Motto, Business values
