Top 3 most wanted skills in companies
and how you can reengage with them
When we have to tackle a problem, whether that is in our professional or personal life, we often need to address our creative mind. Unfortunately this part of the brain, as we grow older, is used less frequently. A reason for that could be that our schools educate us out of creativity and teaches us when something is right and when something is wrong. It makes us cautious of making mistakes. People might have difficulty speaking up their ideas, fearing that they might say something wrong, or stupid.
Daring to think creatively and innovatively is crucial when wanting to keep up the pace of fast growing companies all around the globe.
Sir Ken Robinson talks about how education and creativity come hand in hand in a passionate way. It really struck me many years ago when I saw it for the first time.
Education is meant to take us into a future we can’t grasp. Children starting school this year will be retiring in 60 years time. Nobody has a clue what the world will look like in five years time. And yet we’re meant to be educating them for it. The unpredictability is extraordinary. And we’ve all agreed on the extraordinary capacity that children have - their capacities for innovation. - Sir K. Robinson
The world is looking for people who are creative. Or in other words - have the skills to tackle problem solving.
Because the world of business is moving too fast in every way, technology and new products and services are disrupting industries faster than ever and that creates a multitude of problems on a daily basis. How people solve those problems dictates which companies grow and thrive and which companies begin to fail. What you need to do is to refine your definition of creativity. It's about problem solving.
When we look at the job market and at recent surveys, we see that nearly 86% of employers responding to NACE’s Job Outlook 2022 survey are seeking evidence of problem-solving skills in student’s resumes to recruit.
Next to problem-solving skills we see that also analytical skills and the ability to work in a team belong to the top 3 most important skills needed in a fast thriving company.
How to reengage with your creativity/ innovative capacity
Now we know that we were all born creatively, and that being creative isn’t just something that we are, we can start working on becoming creative again. It is a skill that we can reengage with and help it grow.
Kids will take a chance. If they don’t know, they’ll have a go. They’re not frightened of being wrong. It’s not to say that being wrong is the same as being creative. But if you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original. By the time children have become adults, most kids have lost that capacity. They have become frightened of being wrong. And we run our companies like this. We stigmatize mistakes. - Sir K. Robinson
It is vital to keep up with innovations, problem-solving, decision making in order to keep our company up and running. There are several ways to flourish your innovative capacity again.
Observe more
Be more aware of your surroundings. What frustrates people, what are things that make the company better,..
Reframe your challenge
Reframing the challenge in a positive/ constructive way makes it easier to come up with ideas that prevent the problem from evolving. Language is key and it’s important to find the right words to induce solutions. Ask How might we questions.
Make new mind connections
When dealing with a problem it might be interesting to reframe the challenge as written here above. Next to that is that you look outside of your field. How are other fields dealing with the problem which is more or less the same? Could you translate that to your own field? Learning from other fields rewires your brain and makes you spark new ideas.
Start drawing
Pretty frightening to start with, but you could give it a try. And before you say you're not creative and you cannot draw.. You are and you can. Start doing it and get some guidance to start with. I used the book Visual Thinking by Willemien Brand. The book tickles your enthusiasm for drawing. Besides, there are many advantages of drawing, also in our professional lives.
Quantity over quality in brainstorm sessions
Try to let go of the idea of being wrong. An idea is just an idea and doesn’t need to be executed. The more ideas you produce the more you evoke. At the end of the session you came up with a lot of ideas, most of them are probably bad, but that’s okay. You needed the bad ones to evoke some good ones.
Forbes has more ways to reengage with your creativity. These were the ones that I found important.
As children grow up we start to educate them progressively from the waist up. And then we focus on their heads, and slightly to one side. Professors for example live in their heads - and slightly to one side. They look upon their body as a form of transport for their heads. It’s a way of getting their heads to meetings. - Sir K. Robinson
Conclusion
We now see that creativity and innovation skills are crucial in the upcoming years. It is also good to know that it is a soft skill we can acquire. We are not born creatively, we are probably educated out of it. Learning how to solve problems and how to think creatively takes practice and experience, but once nourished and flourished it is very welcome and needed.
Happy new year 2023.
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