I was always the
athletic one in the family and my brother, who is 18 months older, was always
the creative one. I always loved playing
along with the things he would come up with, but very rarely had the ability to
come up with them myself. We would really
let our imaginations sore when it came to building things with Pipeworks. This was the coolest toy I ever had growing
up. It was essentially a building kit
for kids. You could build jungle gyms,
vehicles, lemonade stands, and much much more out of pipes, platforms and
connectors. My brother was always good
at coming up with a vision, and I was always good at turning it into
reality.
My brother
always seemed to see the world differently than I did. What I saw and just a blank scrap of paper he
saw as a ticket to the moon. I feel that
he is the one who taught me how to be creative.
It is so much easier to work at being creative as a child, when you have
very few inhibitions. But as I got
older I feel like my ability to be creative is lacking. I like things that are logical and make sense
to me; I guess this is why I like finance.
In my work I
think my creativity shines through in a different way. Maybe it would show in the way that I come up
with new ways of doing things, or making processes more efficient. The Journal article stated that creativity is
pulled from things that you know, or know of.
I think my strengths are understanding computers and being able to see
tasks differently than others do. I
could take a 1-hour task and turn it into a 5-minute task. My ability to create efficiencies is where I
think I am most creative.
When I worked at
Dell I was always encouraged to talk to all different people throughout the
organization. I found that this really
helped when I reached a roadblock, or needed help with a project. I always knew who to ask for help or new
insights into problems. I thought this
was great, but as an organization Dell doesn’t really bring out the most
innovative products. They always seem to
be a step behind everyone else in the industry.
Then they are the leaders in cost and this could be why it seems that
way.
What I liked
about Dell was that they didn’t care how you got your job done, as long as you
got it done. I was given a lot of
freedom in how I went about doing my job.
When I get into a new role, I am constantly asking myself how I can get
the day to day tasks done faster, so I am more time to look at strategy. I think that creating strategy is a great way
to practice creativity. You don’t have
to be in advertising or product development to be considered a creative
person. Anyone can be creative in how
they go about solving problems from day to day.
I love digging
into data and discovering new things about how the company is running, then
taking that knowledge and creating a better way of doing things. This is why I feel I excelled at Dell. People were not used to employees who did
this in my group. For them most part
people just did their job the way they were taught and that was that, but for me
a job is what you make it. Anyone has
the ability to turn any job into something that they love doing; you just have
to be able to make it your own.
I think I do
well operating alone, but bringing in a group allows for a whole new experience
in problem solving. If you get a group
of people together for a lot of different areas and ask them to solve a
problem, I believe they will come up with a very creative solution. It will probably be a better solution than if
one person alone had sat there trying really hard to be creative about it. The great thing about groups is you can pool
the knowledge and ideas of a bunch of different people. Normally they will come up with a better
solution than a single person, and they will do it in much less time. It is the give and take, which makes groups
so successful.
In the article
they talk about how some people have to stop thinking about the problem at hand
in order for their brains to really take in all of the different aspects. They need to talk a walk and clear their
heads. Then on the other hand there are
some people who would be better off if they continued to tinker with the
problem a bit longer. I think this is
very true, and he states that you often know which route you need to take. I can always tell by how clearly I am
thinking. If I start to drift off or my
head starts to feel fuzzy, I know that I need to step away for a little bit, or
work on something else. Maybe it is the
alternate task that gives me an idea for how to solve the problem. I can also tell when I need to keep
tinkering, especially when it comes to data analysis. There are millions of
ways for people to look at a given set of data, and sometimes you just need to
keep tinkering to figure out how to fix something.
In the end I
feel that I have my creative moments, but it is not artistic creativity, it is
logical creativity.
