Creative Power Ups: how to keep your creativity in shape and be an idea guy when nobody expects you to
Once you have stepped on the path of being Product Manager you probably heard a lot that PM is not “an idea guy” and should never be the one.
It’s true on the one hand because you do not have to:
1. Come up with multiple ideas for apps, software or products to fulfill everyone’s expectations. No need to come to CEO every once in a while saying: “Man, just got an idea of an amazing app, listen up…”
2. Visualize what you work by yourself. Basically, there’s no need to have an idea of what your app or any other product you are working on should look like exactly. The designers will handle that.
3. Be extremely creative and make a novel out of personas you just set for your new product. (No, you obviously can, but there’s no need to.)
And you may think that, phew, I don’t even have to be creative after all. It’s just a daunting job of:
- Endless interviews with clients;
- Constant meetings with Q&A engineers and customer success managers;
- Lots of graphs, roadmaps, and keeping get bigger the backlog file;
- Marketing strategy;
- And more…
But nothing. Nothing creative at all. You just need to be an ordinary employee. Nothing special after all.
Not true. (Sorry.)
No matter how much you do not like to think that you are not an idea guy, you have to be one. In a sense. In a very specific, only product management sense.
Why? Because you do not only manage. You do not only check boxes out when something is done and you do not just talk to people because you want to.
You obviously do not interview people out of pure joy and excitement of talking to them and asking them random questions out of the blue.
By the way… These questionnaires for your product. Where do you get them from?
Right, exactly. You have to come up with them yourself. You have to think and you have to ideate. And not only this. Apart from ideation and interviewing, you have to analyze and make the data work for you and your solution regarding the chosen problem.
Yes, sure, an analysis is not a creative activity.
But making up a solution out of this data is.
Suggesting a new feature is.
Seeing a new outcome is.
Feeling that something is wrong with questions and/or the target group you are interviewing is.
Surprisingly enough, the more you think, the more creative you have to be. You cannot suggest the same feature you had last year. And you cannot use the same questions for the different audience.
Honestly, you have to be on the edge of creativity all the time!
Before you started panicking and decided to quit because of too many responsibilities for you at once, just hold on a minute.
You can do this. There’s nothing scary or awful or impossible in performing such things. As a skill, — and creativity is a skill after all — you can easily obtain and train it.
I can even say more: you can train it right here. In this room. Just at the moment, you are reading this passage. I’m serious. At least you can decide whether you are quitting or not after you have read the following.
Being creative is not being Pablo Picasso in his best at the prime of his career.
Being creative is knowing how to deal with reality when you have your imagination, tools for handling the problem and resources or people willing to help you on the way.
Being creative means to see the world as it is and yet, feel how it can be changed for the best.
Sound like a challenge?
It depends on how many toys you had as a kid. No, I’m serious again!
This article shows clearly that the less you have (no matter whether it’s toys or anything else. Other tools and things in your life) the better your imagination works!
I know it may seem scary for a moment. But you better ask advice of creative people since you will have to be the one. And what do they say?
There’s such thing in the creative world as “a fear of blank paper”, which happens almost to every creative person once in a while. If you have never had any art classes in school or college you may do not even know what it is.
You take a piece of paper and a pan and… stuck. No, seriously. You have no idea how to start, what to start and what to do with your life after all since you cannot figure out what to draw on a paper. To avoid this life crisis, creative people suggest many different things.
Some say that you have to prepare yourself for something big and make a few small, ugly sketches before making something great.
Some suggest not thinking at all and follow your hand as it goes.
Others say you just have to stop judging what you do and follow the flow.
There are may be many other solutions but all of them underline the same thing: you have to do something. Your creative juices won’t flow if you just stare at a white paper for hours.
What to do if you’ve never taken art classes, had plenty of toys as a kid and never played make-believe in your life (I will never buy the last one, but let’s say this is the worst version we can ever expect)?
- Step out of your comfort zone. I know, right! A crazy thing to be done but helps a lot. Your brain needs to start working and look for solutions and come up with ideas… It cannot do this if you have the same daily routines with no changes for years. The first step may be to solve a riddle in a new crime novel you are reading. Do not read it to the end. Stop in the middle and let yourself think of what might happen if…
High-level difficulty: don’t just base your thoughts and assumptions on the characters you already know from reading. Add a new one. Maybe even a few. Make your own story with your own plot-twists. Compare it with the real novel eventually.
2. Write by hand. And vise verse if you are used to writing by hand. Do not write by hand if you usually do this. And start writing by hand if you usually type the things out. And do not force yourself. If you want to write just a few words, let it be. No need to write a novel (unless you want). People also say that writing by hand helps you memorize things more than typing them out. Want to test this out?
3. Play games. I know, right. (At least something nice after all) Get this new table game you have been looking at for a while and play it. Download a new RPG or an arcade and play it for fun.
High-level difficulty: don’t just play, but look at how the game is made and what mechanics are used. Think of the color choice, design, visuals. Protagonists, accessories and all the components of the game. Look how they alight and go together with each other. What do you like the most about it and what things you find the coolest?
Mission impossible: make your own game. With Black Jack and nice ladies.
4. DIY. Remember when you saw something cool in a hand-made store and thought: “Phah, I can do that myself. Easily.” Well, what can I say, time to prove yourself right. No matter what you are about to create, make sure that you spend enough time on solving the problem of “how” you are going to make that. If you wanted to make a doll, what do you need? If you wanted to quilt, what the steps and process you need to go through. Follow the flow and be aware of what you do!
5. Come up with the worst and the most stupid ideas you have ever come up with. Make a list and be proud of it. You know your limits and now you know you can never go beyond that.
High-level difficulty: …or can you?
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Solve problems means being creative. And as a product manager you are the one, and usually, the only one responsible for the problem to be solved. This way people who work with you and people who use your product are happy.
And that’s what your job is about.
How do you handle your challenges and boost creativity as work or in real life? Feel free to share!
