Sentence by Pablo Picasso
Troubleshooting, writing beautifully worded texts, designing marketing campaigns, developing graphics, or just simply doing something artistic. All these things require a lot of creativity and inspiration. One needs stimulation and a clarity that fosters creativity, finding solutions for problems and generating ideas that will help to start a project.
Sometimes, we sit around and wait indefinitely for some inspiration and it can feel elusive and unreachable. It feels like there is some kind of barrier; what many of us call blank page syndrome. It is difficult to start, we barely know what we want to do and the assignment becomes more of a nightmare as nothing is happening.
If instead, we try to get right to work, we can invoke some real inspiration. We can awaken our creativity making it clearer what we want to show or in other cases, the solution to the problem we want to solve. Sometimes it happens suddenly, a clear vision appears before us while at other times it is a bit more gradual and we have to make several estimations or drafts before arriving at a final version. This is good as in both cases, we are putting in the work!
Making use of tools that encourage creativity is one way to curb this feeling of unproductivity. Thanks to games, creative thinking models and mind-clearing activities, we can start to work even though we may not necessarily have a final and clear idea. We can work without inspiration. These tools facilitate divergent thinking, where we see things from another perspective, opening up our minds to other options and possibilities. In project management, these types of tools are a powerful aid for a project manager.
It is difficult to plan projects that need a lot creativity. We cannot really know when we will have that brilliant idea that will make our project really unique and different. While it is not always possible to plan, this does not mean that we cannot apply various project management techniques. Agile methodologies are well suited to projects that require a lot of inspiration.
We can add activities in using Kanban and just like that the entire team will know the activities assigned and can follow the project’s progress. Eliminating the pressure of detailed planning, while maintaining commitments as a key component, it is possible to establish a working process that naturally incorporates creativity, while maintaining proper project management.
We can not continue to make the excuse that a project requires a great deal of creativity and that we have no inspiration. Only by working to foster these things can our projects achieve their objectives and be successful.