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• Using Conflict to Create More Compelling Content
• Getting More Out of Brainstorming Sessions
• Conducting More Productive Meetings
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• My morning show could be much more compelling
• 10 Steps to more effective radio air check and critique sessions
• Changing Air Personality Performance Behavior
• Improving the Creative Process at your Radio Station
• Air Talent Coaching Tactics that get results
• The Difference Between Speaking and Being Heard.
• The Morning Show as Improv
• American Culture Post 9/11
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• Building Better Time Spent Listening
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• Techniques for Managing Air Personalities New to Radio
• Maximizing News On a Music Radio Station

Now, there may be those who argue that they have a good one, but rarely can any of those services compete with a really great in-house creative culture.

There are three big impediments to a great in-house creative culture. The first is a lack of time. With increasing radio station consolidation, more and more radio on-air personalities are being asked to perform operational duties on top of an air shift. The more tasks you have to complete, the less time you have to create. But, in all fairness to radio broadcasting companies, many air personalities also fail to make the best use of the sparse time they do have to create.

The second impediment to a great creative process is a negative culture. Too many radio programming people look for the why we can't in an idea before analyzing it for its possibilities. In addition, there is still a strong don't mentality among radio managers. When you focus creative people too much on what they should not do, instead of what they might be able to achieve, you foster an impotent creative environment.

But, the biggest single reason why most radio stations do not achieve their creative potential is simply because the station personnel do not know how
to approach the creative process. One of the most important things to understand about creativity is that it requires doing nothing to happen. Henry Ford was once giving a magazine writer a tour of his factory just outside of Detroit. After the two had passed room after room of people involved in all manner of frenzied automotive activity, they stopped at the door of a room where a single man was sitting with his feet on the desk doing nothing. The shocked writer said, "My God, Mr. Ford, that man is doing nothing!" Ford replied, "I know. I pay him to do nothing. He's my best idea man."

Stephen Covey, in his best selling book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, says most of us spend far too much time on creating a product and not enough time on product development or capability. As a result, we are not nearly as effective as we could be if we spent more time doing "nothing" and asking "what if?".

Regular brainstorming sessions are one of the most effective ways to explore product possibilities and capabilities. Yet, one of the first components of a healthy creative environment to be sacrificed for operational reasons is almost always regular brainstorming sessions. A focused, monthly brainstorming session attended by key creative staff members can yield months and months worth of great ideas. It is also a creative endeavor that is quick, easy and free. If you have not conducted a brainstorming session at your station in over a month, you might want to move planning for one up a few slots on your to-do list.

While brainstorming is a powerful creative tool, it is not the only one you need to build an effective in-house creative environment. The highest level creativity is achieved when you use a three-step process. The first step is to settle on your subject. More specifically, what do you want to create?

Step two is processing without filters. More about that in a moment. Step three is settling on how you will finally present your subject, whether it is on the air or some other creative application. But, more often than not, in radio, the most vital step, step two, is skipped altogether. Typically, a piece of potential content is selected and everyone focuses on what to do with it within the rules and context of the radio station. This is precisely why there is so much literal radio and so few really creative ideas flowing out of the speakers
of radios across America.

The key to tapping into your deepest level of creativity lies in how you approach the second step of the creative process, processing without filters. To effectively complete this step, you must put aside all parameters, rules, history, format restrictions, laws and social convention or you will prematurely suppress what might be the essence of a great idea.

In his book, Serious Creativity, author Edward De Bono describes the two ways to approach creating as being literal and lateral thinking. Literal thinkers say, "I need a new idea. What should I do?" Then, they go about trying to come up with that new idea by research, logical thinking, stealing the idea, twiddling their thumbs and hoping for inspiration or asking a creative person to produce the idea for them. Literal thinkers tend to spin their wheels and spend much more unproductive time in their creative process. Lateral thinkers quietly and systematically apply deliberate techniques such as word association and tend to generate new ideas quickly and effortlessly.

Word association is one of the simplest, most effective and quickest creative tactics you can use. All you do is take a piece of paper and in the center of it write down the subject of your creative process. Next, for about five minutes just write down all the words and phrases that come to mind when you think of that subject. As you write down new words and phrases, let those lead your mind to other adjunct words and phrases. Don't edit your ideas in this process. Here anything is possible.

Let's say my subject is Mother's Day. My page might include things like this:
Mothers Day gifts, dinner and flowers do not make up for the pain of it all, the ultimate Mother's Day gift of gathering her entire family for a reunion and having it catered, weekend away from everyone in her family so it can be all about her, women becoming their mothers, what I don't want to become, mom-isms, advice my mom gave me, the movie Mother with Debbie Reynolds and Albert Brooks, the movie Groundhog's Day twisted with a mom facing the same scenario every day, comfort foods that mom makes, the bad cooking that ironically is comfort food for me, etc. In the end, what emerges from this process are themes that can later be discarded or fleshed out further after the initial word association process.

Despite what many people think, creativity can be learned. The extent to which a person is creative may be limited. But, there is untapped creativity in all of us. It is only a matter of finding tactics to help us tap into those unseen, fertile creative wells. When you change the thinking at your radio station from literal to lateral, you take the first steps towards bringing forth much more creativity from your staff and inspiring a more productive, overall in-house creative culture.