Read Online Creative People Must Be Stopped by David A Owens - Free Book Online

standing in front of the tourist shop. Rather, they look at the scene from all angles, at all times of day, and in all types of light, all the while taking pictures, in an effort to find the best way to express what they have learned from all this looking and seeing.
    Failures of Communication
    The goal of expression is to represent our ideas accurately to ourselves and to others. Even though you may be articulate in expressing your ideas, there is a potential for them to be misinterpreted on the receiving side. For example, you may use different terms than the listener would to express the same concepts, use the same terms to express different concepts, or possibly even have no overlap in terms or concepts. The constraint takes different forms depending on which communication error takes place.
    Correspondence is caused when different words are used for the same basic concept. You may have observed this “violent agreement” as two people failed to realize they were saying the same thing. Conflict results when the same words describe different concepts. This often occurs when communicators use technical terms in imprecise ways, especially across different areas of expertise. The word efficient means something very different to an industrial engineer (more output for less input) than it does to a general manager (done more easily). Imprecisely using words like value, profit margin , or bottom line , to name a few, can reliably create this error. Contrast occurs when there is no overlap in words or concepts, which makes communication all but impossible (Shaw and Gaines, 1989).
    In your effort to convey your ideas to others, these constraints can pose significant challenges. They can make it impossible to get meaningful feedback that might help you improve your ideas; they make the path toward implementation more difficult as people don’t know how to help; and they endanger the adoption of your ideas, because people don’t want to adopt what they can’t understand.
    Overcoming Expression Constraints
    Expression need not be a constraint on our ability to work with ideas, by ourselves or with others. By nurturing your innate ability to communicate in different modes, and by putting effort into using those languages articulately and precisely, you can improve your ability to generate and evaluate the ideas and insights that will be needed to make the innovation process a success.
    Stay Mindful of Your Favored Ways of Talking (and Thinking)
    Many years ago my wife (and best friend) gave me some candid feedback about the clichés I had begun to sprinkle liberally into my conversations: “That’s the way the cookie crumbles!” I’d say. “That’s the net net.” “It is what it is!” I felt down-home and folksy using these kinds of expressions, but she pointed out that I wasn’t really communicating any definite meaning when I used them.
    All of us fall into these kinds of communication habits, and the first step to recovery is to notice them. This small act of mindfulness can bring you important insights about the subtle differences between what you are trying to say and what you are actually communicating. Try recording yourself in meetings and conversations and listening carefully afterward for your pet ways of talking. Or try asking a friendly colleague to wave a hand when you use an expression without clear and definite meaning. Reread your own memos and ruthlessly highlight every cliché or vague expression you can find. Better yet, ask someone else to read your memo and hunt down all the expressions that aren’t doing useful work.
    Once you begin noticing your verbal shorthand, with a little practice you can consciously reach a little deeper for the precise ideas you are trying to convey. When you hear yourself say “Think outside the box!” did you mean “With our established reputation and customer base, what we’re looking for is a slightly