4 Ways to Harness Inspiration

Brooke Watson

Are you in a professional slump? Is it taking all of your energy to produce fresh ideas and serve your clients? Whatever roadblock you’ve found yourself against at work, it could be that it’s time to rediscover your source of inspiration and take a mental break. However, in our busy world, it is often difficult to find a meaningful and feasible way to do so. Next time you find yourself grasping for creative ideas or suffering from a case of writer’s block, try some of the following tips to get your groove back.

Photo Courtesy to Flickr User
Charles Skipwith Smith

• Remove yourself from the problem. When possible, taking a step back from the issue is almost always a good plan. After so many hours at the drawing board analyzing the dilemma up close, you’re often so focused on one element of the problem that you end up missing the big picture. Being able to include all relevant angles is key when tackling any problem, so being able to take a break and approach the concept from a new perspective will boost your creativity and will ultimately help you be more successful.
• Brainstorm with colleagues. If you’re not already doing this in business, you should give it some serious consideration. While it can initially seem intimidating or even embarrassing to admit that you’re stumped by a recent challenge, it’s actually a trick for gaining a new perspective when you’re short on time. Brainstorming sessions trigger a multitude of ideas and can lead to an answer in a quarter of the time it would have taken you to reach alone.
• Refer to yourself. Another nice trick when harnessing inspiration is looking back in your work portfolio. Do you see any projects completed in the past with a similar theme? What about references to outside work? Oftentimes, you can utilize an answer from the past and modify it to fit your current situation.
• Research. Arguably the most important element to inspiration, it is crucial to understand the culture of the dilemma in order to successfully tackle it. Keep yourself in the know, and study social media trends and recent news to ensure you take a modern approach. Ill-informed creativity is poison to any current project. 

Habits of Strategic Thinkers

Liz Hutton

Recently, I had a conversation with a coworker about my personal business goals and what comes next after “intern life.” As I am extremely new to the PR world, this discussion got me thinking about not only what I want for myself in the industry, but also about the skills I need to get to the next level in my career. 

Following this conversation, I took time alone to consider these personal goals. One specific topic that came into mind was how to become a strategic thinker and the importance of strategic planning for a PR professional. This is one skill I definitely need to work on. 

From a fishbowl perspective, I am the person looking in, absorbing every email, brainstorm, meeting and new opportunity to learn about the PR world and the skills my coworkers have mastered. From time to time, we receive requests from our team members looking for insight on specific client needs, such as ideas for a new campaign. Everyone participates as emails begin shooting back and forth between coworkers sharing thoughts, stirring up ideas and backing up their reasons why certain ideas would work best for the client. This is what we call a team brainstorm. In the midst of the chaos of every brainstorm, I find myself wondering how to respond. Where do I even start? How did my coworkers master this skill to be able to spout out incredible, innovative and thoughtful ideas that work so perfectly for our clients? After a few more brainstorms, I realized that my strategic thinking needed a bit of a tune-up.  

I have come up with a guide of questions to hang on my desk and ask myself from now on before every brainstorm: 

• What is the client’s current situation?
• What is the client’s overall business goal?
• How can you generate new ideas? (Insight)
• How can you separate the client from the marketplace “noise”? (Competitive advantage)
• What are the benefits/costs of the offerings? (Value)
• Where should you focus capital, talent and time? (Target audience)
• Are you able to visually capture the essence of the business issues?
• How can you create new value for customers? (Innovation)
• Does the client have a well-developed mission, vision and values? (Main purpose/key message)
• What is the strategy?

Once those questions are answered, it will be much easier to put down into writing how and why the client should move forward. It’s not always easy to transition back and forth from right-brain thinking (creative, intuitive and subjective) to left-brain thinking (logical, analytical and objective), but for a PR professional it is a necessary skill.

Make it rain...ideas, that is!

Lauren Hannaford

Let’s brainstorm! We love getting that email around here. Brainstorming sessions are not only fun, but you can also get a lot done in a short amount of time thanks to the brainpower of your co-workers.

When we come together to brainstorm for a client, the entire team discusses a certain need and addresses the objective. Then, we open the floodgates and let the ideas start flowing. It’s a simple strategy that goes a long way. Brainstorms can cover a wide variety of topics from renaming a company, developing a tagline and generating pitching ideas to social media strategy, community relations tactics and ideas for events. Sometimes, brainstorms last 30 minutes, and sometimes, they can seem more like a marathon if we’re on a roll. However long it may take, the end result is that you get an Olympic-sized swimming pool full of ideas to take back to the client.

There also are a few simple “rules” to be mindful of in order to ensure a productive brainstorm. 

1. Listen. Listen to the co-worker leading the brainstorm. Listen closely to what their need is. Yes, offering up other ideas might be helpful in the long run, but focusing on what they need will help them achieve their immediate goal. 
2. Try not to interrupt. While we are all guilty of interrupting someone at some point, I think we all know how it feels to be interrupted in mid-sentence. 
3. Get funny! Sometimes, taking five minutes to yell out the most ridiculous ideas can lead to the some of the best ideas. Oftentimes, you get that “aha” moment during a round of the funnies. 
4. Research. Bring your smart phone or laptop and research helpful information during the discussion. Stay on topic. This relates to the first point in a way, but is also important for different reasons. If the group meets to brainstorm ideas for a new program tagline and a question arises about social media, well, that’s not staying on topic. While social media will no doubt come into play sometime down the line, it’s not the objective of the brainstorm.

Here’s how Google employees brainstormed in 2007! I wonder if things have changed since then?