Tips to Improve Creativity and Your Business

Every small business owner finds a million and one things that have to be done every day. It’s a never-ending torrent of tasks. Since it’s often impossible to complete them all, your stress levels go through the roof. And if there are two things that are deadly to creativity, they are stress and endless busy work.

The first rule for using tips to improve creativity is to give yourself space and time.

If you’re looking for tips to improve creativity, you need look no further. But first, let’s examine why creativity is important in business. You need to understand why businesspeople even bother to be creative. After all, how can it help your bottom line?

Why Creativity Matters in Business

According to Tucker Marion, an associate professor at Northeastern University, “Companies who are creative are more successful.” Creativity spurs innovation, and innovation drives businesses to adapt to market changes and take advantage of new opportunities.

And it’s not just ad agencies or software development companies that value creativity. Retail stores are reinventing themselves. Medical practices are finding new ways to attract patients in an increasingly turbulent marketplace. Every business faces competition. Those that can out-think or out-maneuver its competitors are the ones that succeed.

Tips to Improve Creativity

There are some simple things you can do to enhance your creativity in your business. These tips to improve creativity are meant to help you, but not all of them will work for you specifically, depending on the size of your business and other factors. But don’t let that stop you from trying them! Tips for a more creative team include:

1. Hire more creative people. With the right interview questions, you can tease out the creative candidates. Try: “What’s the last valuable thing you learned?” or “How much would it cost to clean all the windows of this building?” or “What’s the best advice you’ve ever received?” When candidates have to think out of the box, you get an insight into their creative nature.
    
2. Create more diverse teams. Diversity doesn’t always mean differences in race, gender and age (although they help). It also can account for personality types and points of view. Differences lead to varying opinions on how to solve a problem. In a non-competitive group, ideas build on themselves to create innovation. Mix it up!
    
3. Value and incentivize creative efforts. It’s one thing to have a suggestion box, but it’s another to offer cash bonuses for ideas that are successfully implemented. When everyone has a say in making your business better, guess what? Your business gets better. This effort also increases employee engagement, retention and satisfaction, which lead to a more productive staff.
    
4. Explore ideas with an open mind. If you have a way for your employees to contribute, either privately or in a group setting, don’t discount any idea. If one doesn’t seem feasible, maybe there’s a germ of a worthwhile idea within it. Following tips to improve creativity means not saying, “No,” but saying, “Yes and…”
    
5. Enable flex hours and telecommuting. You can still hold your employees accountable for their productivity while letting them work flex hours or from home occasionally. Not all creative people thrive in a buttoned-down environment. Allow them to adjust their hours. As long they hit their goals and attend meetings, everything else can be negotiable.
    
6. Give your employees more space. This isn’t about physical space; sometimes, you can’t control that. But companies that constantly push their employees often lose them to burnout or attrition. If you value your employees, learn to trust them. Give them adequate downtime. Well-rested employees are more productive and more creative on the job.
    
7. Provide inspirational activities. Group activities and personal challenges get the brain racing. When you take your employees out of their regular routines, especially if it’s a surprise, genuine connections and real creativity often occurs.

You may also need tips to improve creativity in yourself, as the owner/operator of a small business. These tips include:

1. Step away from your desk. If you’re struggling to find creative answers to stubborn questions, banging your head against the wall doesn’t work. Instead, use these tips to improve creativity: Take a walk, preferably in nature. Stop trying so hard and just let your mind go blank. Go do a repetitive task like the laundry, stuffing envelopes, anything to get your mind off the problem.
    
2. Change your routine. Falling into a routine isn’t a bad thing. But routines turn your brain off. You don’t have to think when your muscles know what to do. When you wake, do things in a different order. Drive a different way to work. Mix it up every way you can.
    
3. Make a list … of bad ideas. Everyone has bad ideas. So get them out of the way by brainstorming all the poor ideas you can. This does two things: it gets them out of your mind and it forces you to think in a way you’re unfamiliar with, which is a great way to build your creative muscles. And you may even hit upon an idea with possibilities.
    
4. Ask yourself personal questions. The better you know yourself, the better you can find that creative zone that you need to run your company successfully. In your quiet moments of the day, even if it’s just before you go to bed at night or just after you get up in the morning, ask yourself when, where and how you’re most productive and creative.
    
5. Hang around creative people. Tips to improve creativity like this one are similar to others if you want to be a certain way. Want to think smarter? Hang around people smarter than you are. What to be a better basketball player? Hang around people who excel at the sport. Want to be more creative? Well, you get the idea.
    
6. Avoid reading your “masters.” When you’re trying to be creative, nothing can dampen your spirit more than reading what experts in your field have written. You may not be able to reach their heights, which fosters feelings of inadequacy. And that’s fatal to your creativity. Instead, read inspirational books and blogs.
    
7. Set aside “you time.” Email beckons. The latest TV show or online video looks fun. Social media’s always waiting. There’s the laundry, the dishes or the pets. Life generates plenty of distractions. If you really want tips to improve creativity, then set aside uninterruptible time to be creative.
    
8. Schedule regular time to be creative. Creativity doesn’t always obey a schedule. It doesn’t always come whenever you call. But if you set a time, you get in the habit of being creative. You may have to plow through days when nothing happens and the muse doesn’t show, but you’ll also have days when the faucet won’t turn off.

Tips to improve creativity mean nothing if you don’t put them to use. Take the tips that you think may work and try them. Take the others and try them too. You may hit on ideas that otherwise would remain buried. If you don’t have the time or the inclination to dig for creativity, contact the creatives at Ray Access.

Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.