We don’t always think of creativity as one of the ways entrepreneurs can enhance performance. However, if you want to be a better business owner, boosting your creativity can help you in surprising ways.
Even if you don’t consider yourself the creative type, you can take steps to get those juices flowing. It might help your business.
How Does Creativity Help You as an Entrepreneur?
I’m not a very creative person.There’s a reason I chose journalism as my path. I write non-creative non-fiction. However, creativity can help you be a better business owner if you let it. Here are some of the ways creativity can help you as an entrepreneur:
- Problem solving: If you cultivate creativity, you are more likely to be able to use creative problem solving techniques. There are times when conventional approaches won’t work as well. Nurture your creativity and you might see new ways to approach problems.
- Flexibility: Developing those creative tendencies can actually help you become more flexible in your thought. You can respond faster, and change course as needed. Many times, creativity helps you see trends quicker and adapt.
- Emotional preparation: You want to be emotionally prepared for entrepreneurship. You’ll be a better business owner if you can handle setbacks and if you know how to turn things around. Creative endeavors can help you in this area.
Take the time to be creative, and you might be surprised at how it boosts your brain power, and helps you see things that you missed before.
How to Encourage Your Creativity
Of course, you also need to encourage your creativity. This means sometimes stepping outside your comfort zone so that you can stretch and grow.
You might be surprised to realize that encouraging your creativity isn’t just about trying an art class. I often try my hand at developing a fictional character or writing a short description of a scene. Fiction may not be my forte, and I’ll probably never let anyone see my efforts, but the attempt to be creative helps my writing in general.
This can be true for you. Look for ways to make efforts to be creative, whether it’s buying an adult coloring book and filling in the lines, or whether it’s learning an instrument.
You can also encourage creativity by looking at the world around you and constructing stories. Take the time to look at the clouds and identify shapes. Look at a stranger on the street and imagine where he or she might going, or what his or her life is like. You can also imagine various responses to different far-out scenarios, such as how you would respond in the zombie apocalypse or what you would do if a meteor was about to strike the planet.
These kinds of exercises force you to expand your thinking outside the box. You might even find a unique solution to a business problem while you are musing on your zombie defense technique or trying to convince your child that you see a lion in the clouds, not a horse.
Make the effort to add a little creativity to your life, and you might be surprised at how you can be a better business owner.
