Scott Cochrane - Your Creative Mind: How to Disrupt Your Thinking, Abandon Your Comfort Zone, and Develop Bold New Strategies

Praise for Your Creative Mind

Your Creative Mind is a thought-provoking work that will challenge you and your business to think, to value the creativity that drives innovation, and, more importantly, to be committed to whats next? and to understand how to achieve a successful outcome.

Luanne Lenberg, senior vice president, Retail
Properties, Penn-Florida Companies

Students of business, and life, will find that this book stimulates their thinking. Your Creative Mind helps us understand how to harness the power of our individual, and collective, minds.

Gerald Weber, CEO,
Fast-Fix Jewelry & Watch Repair

DISRUPT
YOUR THINKING,
ABANDON
YOUR COMFORT ZONE,
AND
DEVELOP
BOLD NEW STRATEGIES

SCOTT COCHRANE

Copyright 2016 by Scott Cochrane

All rights reserved under the Pan-American and International Copyright Conventions. This book may not be reproduced, in whole or in part, in any form or by any means electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without written permission from the publisher, The Career Press.

YOUR CREATIVE MIND

TYPESET BY PERFECTYPE, NASHVILLE, TENN.

Cover design by Howard Grossman/12E Design

Printed in the U.S.A.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

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THIS BOOK WOULD NOT have been possible without the contribution of many people in a variety of ways, and I am endlessly grateful to all of them. Javier Carbajo stayed by my side during the entire process, fueling my creativity with his unique and meaningful insights. Maria del Moral enabled me to remain successfully focused on both the book and our business at the same time (wow!). Kevin Brown contributed volumes of stimulating research. Yolanda Harris helped me clarify my vision for the book and encouraged me to actually write it. Ganna Tiulkina created all of the artwork and was great fun to work with.

I would also like to thank my agent John Willig and all the people at Career Press and Brilliance for their tremendous support and flexibility. And finally, a very special thanks to my many valued clients throughout the last 25 years who have given me the opportunity to walk this creative path I call my life. They have consistently challenged me to continue learning, growing, and sharing.

WEVE ALL READ ABOUT the legendary inventors, scientists, and designers whose discoveries changed the world forever. And the way the stories go, many of their brilliant insights seemed like destiny: James Watt got the idea for the steam engine from watching his mothers tea kettle boil on the stove; Alexander Fleming discovered penicillin when a petri dish was accidentally left open all night; and we all remember the legend about Sir Isaac Newton and the apple.

Whatever actually led to each of those defining moments, for centuries we have made certain assumptions about the men and women whose ingenuity still inspires us today. Although their biographies reveal admirable work ethic and perseverance, we presumed that they were also born with a unique set of gifts that enabled them to see ordinary things in a different light. This kind of genius, we were told, was given to a select few. You either had it or you didnt.

For a very long time, this conventional wisdom went unchallenged. Standardized tests given in elementary school were used to divide children into different ability groups, often for their entire academic careers. If no one had recognized creative genius in us by high school, we assumed we didnt have it. Once we entered a career track, we were encouraged to work hard and pay our dues, and then successat whatever level we were destined forwould come.

But what if thats not how genius works? What if Einstein and Edison were simply using their brains in a different way than how we are using ours? Ralph Waldo Emerson once made this observation about the creative process: Bare lists of words are found suggestive to an imaginative and excited mind. This implies that creativity is a state of mind rather than an innate ability. What if ingenuity isnt given, as much as it must be awakened?

For 25 years, I have coached executives and other corporate leadersboth in Europe and the United Stateswho sought a greater measure of success. Many of these men and women had already accomplished more than most professionals would hope to achieve in a lifetime, but they were looking for ways to take their companies and their personal performances to the next level. To make this kind of change, I had to help them access deeper levels of creativity, ingenuity, and innovation. This potential had always been inside them; they simply needed to learn to release it more effectively.

In addition to more than a decade of experience as a corporate executive and my subsequent education in psychology and human behavioral sciences, my years of work as an executive coach have motivated me to become a lifelong student of the human mind. I constantly research new coaching techniques, as well as develop new creativity models to help my clients reach their potential. Throughout the years I have kept the methods and models that yield the greatest results and discarded the rest.

Time after time, I have been astounded by what happens when you teach an individual to access even just a little more of his or her creative potential. I have watched client companies increase their revenues by billions of dollars. I have seen the leaders who apply my techniques reduce their turnover of valued talent, reduce their costs, and optimize their productivity. They have also been able to accelerate their pace of innovation and design, and launch new products and brands, while many have also opened new business locations around the globe. But perhaps even more importantly, the theories and techniques outlined in this book have helped my clientssome of the busiest people in the world who are under tremendous pressureenjoy their lives more, both at work and at home.

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IN 1971, TWO BROTHERS opened an 800-square-foot used bookstore in my hometown of Ann Arbor, Michigan. Throughout the next two decades, this family-run enterprise would grow into Borders Books, the giant chain with more than 650 stores and thousands of employees. Borders created an amazing in-store experience, bringing the joy of browsing through thousands of titles to areas of the country that had never had bookstores before. Two years after its IPO in 1995, Borders stock hit an all-time high. Yet just 16 years later, the company that one publisher had called the envy of the industry filed for bankruptcy. What happened?

There are many reasons that businesses close their doors. Weve all heard the dismal statistics about how often new businesses fail. The precise numbers are hotly disputed, typically ranging from a grim nine out of 10 to a more optimistic five out of 10 enterprises shutting down within the first year to 18 months. Writing in Forbes