Original Posting November 16, 2015
If I am being completely honest our team would not consider me the most creative person. When a ‘creative’ needs to be produced someone else on the team is doing it. Specifically, as it pertains to graphics. My creativity doesn’t flow through pictures or vision. Even to the point that my husband does most of our decorating ?
But… that doesn’t mean I am not creative. I am just creative in a different way. Such as I created this I AM Series… I like words over pictures. I love to create when I have the opportunity to share my experience and teach someone something that will help them avoid mistakes or get to their result shorter time frame.
I feel most creative when I am problem-solving. As an OBM we spend a lot of time problem-solving! We are exploring new systems, fixing broken processes, developing new structures… we have to get creative at times. If you have ever tried to piece-meal all the parts of a WordPress site with all the variations of bells and whistles a client wants you know what it is to be creative in the problem-solving arena.
Being creative (or at least my version of it) lets me get out of the box a little…
Most the time I am trying to stay in the box (and keep everything else in the box too… after all it’s a lot easier to manage when it’s in the box), but sometimes I have an itch to break free of the box and just do something a little different. Get out of maintain mode and explore something new. This is where being creative comes in for me.
Learning a new technology is creative. I get this isn’t overly creative to super ‘creative’ folks… but those of us who are linear in our thinking and really like our straight lines and super processed tasks… a new tech can truly be a walk on the creative side for us..
Leading my team requires creativity. After all, I have to connect with each one based on their strengths and what will essentially serve them in the highest to ensure they are empowered to do great work. This takes getting creative all the time. Especially if the team member is the client and we don’t think/see eye to eye on things.
We have some brilliant, talented and super creative OBM’s in our community who can do everything from design to copywriting to construction… but I don’t know that you always see yourselves as creative. I just wanted to give you permission too. Sometimes we are just as creative (or more so) then the super creative clients we serve. But know this… you, my OBM friend, are a creative genius!