Meet David Chislett – Chief Activator & Weapon of Mass Creation

[Transcript]

[00:00:08] Welcome to the automotive leaders podcast, where we help you prepare for the future by sharing stories, insights and skills from leading voices in the automotive world with a mission to transform this industry together. I'm your host, Jan Griffiths, that passionate, rebellious farmer's daughter from Wales, with over 35 years of experience in our beloved auto industry, and a commitment to empowering fellow leaders to be their best authentic selves. Stay true to yourself, be you and lead with Gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership. Let's dive in.

[00:00:58] In this episode, you'll make David Chislett. David wants to activate creativity in as many people as he can. And in his own words, he wants [00:01:00] to turn people into weapons of mass creation. Wow. That's a powerful statement. He understands creativity better than anybody I have met. And if you're anything like me, you struggle a bit with this term, creativity and innovation.

[00:01:16] What is the relationship between the two? How do you and leash creativity in your team? It's difficult to get your mind around that. David debunks, many of the myths that we have around the subject and we go deep into what creativity really is and how to access it. David, Chislett, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you.

[00:01:42] Very nice to be here. Thanks for inviting me along. Now you are quite an interesting fellow to say the least. So, first of all, first and foremost, what's your story right? From the very beginning. Where were you born and what brought you [00:02:00] to where you are today? Well, yeah, I'll try and keep it short. No, please just go to us.

[00:02:06] I will. I think it would be really fascinating to understand your story. All right. Well, I was born in a Harbor town called Portsmouth in the South East of England, and my family immigrated by ship to South Africa in 1974. Uh, which is where I went to school, went to university where weirdly enough, I even got constricted into the military for two years.

[00:02:35] And eventually when I was halfway through a post-graduate degree, I decided that academic life was not for me. And I fled to South Africa for the bright lights of London in part, I guess, because as an English speaking, South African I'd never been made to feel particularly South African or particularly like I belonged six months in London.

[00:02:58] And I realized I was a [00:03:00] lot more South African than I thought, but nonetheless, I stayed there for two years. Uh, worked in television in post-production also worked as a radio journalist reporting back to national pop radio in South Africa and started my career as a music journalist. And then after nearly two years, friends talked to hold in my head and persuaded me to go back to South Africa where I then started my own band management and promotion agency, where I ran a small stable of artists, uh, for a few years before fleeing back to London before fleeing back to South Africa from Joburg DUNS Cape town.

[00:03:38] Uh, more band management, more promotions, um, then ended up working in book publishing, marketing in particular before going back to London and working for a large live events agency in Soho. Um, then back to South Africa, again, for another 10 years where I began publishing a lot of my own work [00:04:00] and started getting involved in training for the first time running workshops, um, on the business of the music industry, leadership skills and various other things.

[00:04:11] And then coming towards eight years ago, now I left South Africa to go traveling the world, just decided I needed a break. Whereas last 10 years in Joburg had been pretty intensive and I really needed a bit of downtime to recuperate. And so when I left, people were like, well, how long are you going for?

[00:04:30] And I dunno, six months, six years, no idea. And yeah, I'm now married. We have two kids in a house in the suburbs. I'm not going anywhere. And, um, this move to the Netherlands is also what precipitated a major change in direction for me, because I was living in a non-English speaking country for the first time in my life.

[00:04:53] My entire professional skillset depended on native speaker skills. So there was no way I was going to be a [00:05:00] marketing specialist or a journalist in Dutch. Uh, seven years later, I still don't think my Dutch is good enough to do that. And, and that's when the, the threads of all of these things that I'd done in the past, sort of started to coalesce the training, the management, the promoting began to realize that what I've been doing my entire life was helping people and helping people to realize their creative ambitions and.

[00:05:27] With the waste, this idea that the people I was helping had something to offer the world to make it a better place. And, um, with the help of a friend of mine, and I was able to bring that into really stock focus and to understand that actually for the first time in my life, I was like, Oh, I have a purpose.

[00:05:42] I want to change the world for the better. And how am I going to do that by activating creativity in as many people as I possibly can. Wow. And so here you are today with your own business doing exactly that indeed. Yeah. It's been an interesting ride. [00:06:00] Yeah. The life of the entrepreneur, it is indeed, um, authentic leadership, one of the, uh, basic traits or tenants of authentic leadership, if you will, is this ability to inspire and ignite performance in people on your team.

[00:06:20] Yeah, and inspire and ignite creativity. And we talk a lot about innovation and creativity. And often in the corporate world, innovation is considered this thing that maybe the engineering guy or the R and D person is responsible for. Well, just come up with a, you know, a better widget, that's more innovative.

[00:06:43] Um, or, or maybe they've got some crazy guy, usually ma maybe a PhD who's been in the business for forever knows everything about the product and he's responsible for, or she is responsible for new new products and programs. And so, you know, you [00:07:00] see leaders go and well, ch I checked the box on innovation.

[00:07:03] I've got somebody working on that. And that seems to me like that's so wrong because innovation is how you think. I think it's about your culture. It's so much broader than that. And I know this instinctively, but I don't have the skills or the ability to go down deeper. Right? You do, you go right down into creativity and innovation.

[00:07:30] And, uh, that's one of the reasons why I wanted you on this podcast to educate our audience, the business leaders out there on what exactly is creativity and innovation and how, how do they inspire that in their teams and their businesses? So there's the question? Well, the way I look at it is that innovation is one of the products of creativity in the same way that art is a product of creativity or [00:08:00] music, um, or the solution to a particular problem.

[00:08:03] You know, creativity is not to be mistaken with things. It's more like a process. It's this capacity that we have human beings have. Now when you're in a business situation, you're talking about wanting more innovation. You need to be able to meet the conditions of creativity in order to get the innovation.

[00:08:22] And one of the first things where a lot of businesses normally run a foul of is that in order to get into a creative mindset on a repeatable, reliable basis, in order to work through the process of coming up with new ideas that may result in innovation, you need safe space and unfortunately KPIs and KPAs and, uh, measuring everything and setting fixed goals.

[00:08:51] And outputs is exactly the opposite of the kind of safe space that is required for creativity. So merely by the way that we [00:09:00] choose to manage our people, even if they are in an innovation factory is quite often counter productive. The other big issue is the fact that we have an innovation factory, that we are sitting with our creative genius or just that person in a silo that is not connected to anything else, because we are then creating then treating creativity as a discreet thing.

[00:09:28] And it's not, you know, creativity is, is an open-ended system. The easiest way to explain what creativity actually is, is to say, well, it's essentially a post-it process of joining the dots. If you have one person or one team in a silo, supposedly coming up with innovation, you have a limited number of dots, which they can join.

[00:09:55] They're not allowed to step outside of that silo to find new or interesting dots. So [00:10:00] quite often the things that they come up with don't actually result in much and. We're starting to see a lot of research and responses coming out now where people are basically saying that the innovation team, the innovation factory isn't actually delivering anything of use.

[00:10:20] But if you think about your average large organization, employing anywhere from say 4,000 to 40,000 individuals, that's an awful lot of brain power. That's an awful lot of dots. Not, if you are truly committed to innovation, you need to have a culture where it is safe and encouraged and acceptable for people to come forward with ideas for the guy in the blue overall, who delivers the widgets to say, you know what, if you change the product in X, Y, or Zed way, it would be so much easier to deliver.

[00:10:57] It would cut down on time, which means I could [00:11:00] deliver more, which means you could employ less people, which would result in a significant saving. And the customers will be really pleased. You make their lives interesting. It would be a great innovation, but most often there is no structure in place to accept such feedback.

[00:11:16] And there is also no will or no culture that encourages that kind of feedback. So if you just look at those two factors alone, you can begin to see why quite often companies struggle with innovation. The third factor is. That's how we've always done it. You know, human beings have pattern recognition, engines.

[00:11:38] We're superbly good at looking at a set of occurrences and spotting a pattern. Unfortunately, quite often what we are doing is reading a pattern into things which have no pattern. And then what we do is we use that pattern to extrapolate scenarios into the future. And then we act on those scenarios as if they are true in order [00:12:00] to create the future that we desire.

[00:12:04] But because it's nothing more than a projected pattern, quite often, these things don't come true and human beings have proved over the centuries to be really bad at predicting the future. And if you doubt that for one second, bear in mind that no one saw world war one coming, and no one thought that a minor noble than being assassinated at a nondescript country that most people have never heard of could kick off the first ever modern global conflict.

[00:12:30] No, of course it seems self-evident because of all the other information we have access to. And that's what happens with innovation. You just don't actually know what's going to happen next. And so by limiting the number of people who are thinking creatively, coming up with ideas, joining the dots and making suggestions, you are hamstringing your company's ability to keep up with the times and specialists.

[00:12:55] Glad you mentioned that Jen. Oh, a bit of a double-edged [00:13:00] sword. Of course they have deep knowledge on a particular subject, but what they don't often have is broad knowledge of many subjects across that. And what happens when you have really deep knowledge is your ideas may be absolutely wonderful and deeply innovative and starting in the good, but nobody else understands what the hell you're on about.

[00:13:24] And so it falls flat. No, it's a bit like the tree that fell over in the forest and no one was there to hear it. It's like what, who cares? Um, which is why diversity is so important. Innovation, a multitude of viewpoints from people with more or less experienced with more or less education from definite different ethnic, economic, social, gender, sexual orientation, age, you name it.

[00:13:52] Because that way, again, you have a lot more dots from which you can [00:14:00] join to, which you can make a Baton where you can start to see where things could potentially go. Hmm. That's uh, that's wonderful, wonderful explanation. And I was thinking of the day about NA TEDx. You know, I love the TEDx. We had TEDx here in Detroit.

[00:14:18] Obviously we didn't have it this year, but I went like last year and the year before. And I just loved it because your brain is going from one thing to another to another, you might be listening to somebody talking about a business related issue, and then you're jumping to music and then something else, and then maybe poetry and you're all over the place.

[00:14:37] And I thought, wow, what a wonderful thing for a corporate team to do, to go to TEDx, right? Just because, just because you expose yourself to so many different things and you can think differently. I, I, this, this didn't happen to me because I was actually out of my corporate job when I started going to TEDx.

[00:14:58] But I could just [00:15:00] imagine going into the corporate world and saying, I want to take my team to TEDx. And then the response being, what's the impact to the bottom line. If you can't draw a direct impact between that expenditure and the bottom line, then it's not approved. It's like, well, just trust me. It's just because I want us to be in this more creative space so we can have conversations about stuff that somehow we'll be able to bring a little smidge of something back into the workplace, which could, could possibly be the next greatest innovation on the planet.

[00:15:33] But people don't want to hear when you say that. Well, when you say it like that, you can kind of understand why, because you're saying could, might maybe, um, As far as I'm concerned, if you exposed all of your people to that kind of thinking, they will come up with new and interesting ideas that will result in innovations that most certainly will have an impact on your bottom line, but it's a long-term thing.

[00:15:56] It's not going to happen overnight. And if you doubt that for one second, [00:16:00] considering that something like the automotive industry is pretty well established, quite traditional lean lean was invented by Toyota, an auto manufacturer. Now you've got lean startup, you've got lean. This you've got lean that, and you got lean.

[00:16:15] The next thing, agile, right? A software development tool where you've got major retailers going agile, because that way of thinking that particular methodology developed for a particular industry was actually so clever that when you transplanted it to a different. Situation in a different industry. It created a whole new range of options that that industry has never seen before.

[00:16:42] And all of a sudden things got better. That's why you should send your team to TEDx because they could discover the next lean or the next agile, not necessarily the next wonderful Bridget, because creativity is a four level construct. It's about processes. It's about people, [00:17:00] it's about products and it's about the environment or the press.

[00:17:03] So innovation can be just as much about fixing up your product as it can be about changing your process. And that's what a lot of people forget and miss, when they start talking about innovation. Tell me a bit about the mantra on your website. I love it. Where did that come from? Tell us about that. Rebel reject create is my mantra and it actually comes from a silly pay offline from a B grade, eighties movie, uh, called them, which was.

[00:17:35] Obey conform consume. And I used to have a t-shirt because I was a bit of a punk, her growing up and I found it, you know, beautifully tongue in cheek, sarcastically. Yeah. I'm not surprised that you were a punk going up by the way. Yeah. And I was thinking about getting a new t-shirt because the one I had in the early nineties clearly fallen apart by now and I couldn't find it [00:18:00] anywhere.

[00:18:00] And I thought, well, I'm just going to make one. And then it just struck me that actually that whole expression is so negative. You know, when I say, be consume, I'm making fun of the way that things are in order to make a point, which is that's, that's standing on the fence and, and, and, and jeering and throwing eggs.

[00:18:23] And suddenly I wasn't comfortable with that anymore. So I asked myself, what is the complete opposite of obey. Rebel conform reject, consume. Well create. Now most of the time people see that rebel reject create and they think, Oh yeah, yeah, you all punk Rocky, you, this is all, you know, and I keep burning the place down and that's actually not what it's all about.

[00:18:53] You need to rebel against your own way of doing things of your patterns, of your [00:19:00] habits, of your assumptions, your biases, you need to reject the status quo the way we've always done it. The things that have absolutely no reason for being done a certain way. And once you've done all of that stuff, you then need to create a new way.

[00:19:17] And that's what it's really about. It's about stepping away from the known through rebellion and rejection. So you can enter into a place which has ambiguous and complex enough for you to find new answers to old problems and to new ones. I would think to do that. You've got to, first of all, be very comfortable in your own skin.

[00:19:39] And secondly, have the safe environment that you talk about. Well, you know, safety features in both of those conditions, doesn't it? It's, and that's not coincidental. You know, being creative is risky business. You're literally stepping into the unknown and human beings hate the unknown. I mean, you know, that's why as a kid, you're scared of the dark.

[00:19:59] You don't know, [00:20:00] you can't see, you don't know what's going to happen. That's why, you know, that's, my micromanagement is so dangerous because it encourages people to stay so far inside the tracks that they don't even, um, I don't even achieve, you know, they just kind of meet the minimum requirement and it's all about fear.

[00:20:19] They don't want to draw attention to themselves because they don't know what'll happen. And I think that's also why maybe creative people have a bit of a weird reputation out there in the world because they just, on that level. People who are thorough, goingly creative. I've learned to be quite fearless in a certain category.

[00:20:38] They've they've learned that if I say something stupid while I was trying to figure something out, it doesn't matter. It doesn't mean I'm stupid. Doesn't mean I'm a failure, you know, all that kind of negative self-talk, which we indulge in, especially around failure. Um, creative people have somehow gotten a lot better at dealing with and, you know, it's [00:21:00] very, very cool and trendy at the moment to talk about failure as the new success, you know, the, these amazing nights where you, uh, you get up on stage and boast about how badly you failed, um, which is a pity because it masks a more fundamental truth that if you failed, it means you've means you've tried.

[00:21:19] And if you've tried, you've learned something. Um, what I always say to people is that if you get something right the first time, what have you learned? So true. Right? Nothing. Yeah. But if you failed, you've learned how not to do it, then there's that fantastic. Thomas Edison quote, which I'm going to mangle, but which basically in response to like, wow, you're amazing.

[00:21:41] You invented the light bulb. He was like, well, first I discovered 2,995 ways, how not to make a light bulb. Um, and people forget always that part. We're so attracted to the magic, to the glitz, the rock and roll with glam, um, about creativity that people tend to overlook the fact that it is [00:22:00] always preceded by a lot of grunt, collecting a lot of dots, building a lot of prototypes, failing a lot.

[00:22:07] And just trying again the next time and not letting any of that derail you. Yes. Yes. That's so true. That's so true. You know, I've, I've not had that much exposure to what I would call real creatives right. In, in my life. But I did. Uh, have some exposure to the guy that built my website. Who's incredibly creative.

[00:22:33] He's amazing. And, and I remember talking to him about the design of the website and he said to me, you know, what music do you like? And I said, well, ACDC, you know, and he said, I'm okay. He said, I'm going to listen to that when I'm working on your website on your branding. And I thought, Oh, okay. And then I thought about it for a minute.

[00:22:56] And I thought, well, that's brilliant. Of course, of course you would [00:23:00] do that. He has to sort of channel me to get the whole brand of me and get a whole sense of who I am. So he really wants to try and put himself in my head and in my shoes for a while. Right. As he was designing it. And I thought, wow, that's, that's brilliant.

[00:23:15] I would have never thought about that. And you can see the results. You can see the little ECDC, Gothic lettering thread coming through, which is absolutely me. He nailed it. But the one thing I, I, I noticed was trying to manage him the way that I've managed every other supplier in my career. Oh no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

[00:23:39] So budgets and check-in points and timelines. No, you know, there was an ultimate end game, you know, there was a, there was a budget and there was an, a date when the thing had to be life. Well, I'm used to putting in milestone points along the way, right? I'm an ex automotive program manager, right. This is what I do.

[00:24:00] [00:23:59] They're a gate Gates and checkpoints and all this stuff. That did not work at all now. Thankfully I sensed it and I felt it early enough to recognize it and pull back. But I go to imagine that there's a lot of creative people out there, even in, you know, an industry as conservative, as automotive that are just, I just paralyzed because they've got all this, all these requirements and check-ins and checklists around them.

[00:24:29] It's too restrictive. Right? Right. Well, there's two things I want to pick up on from what you just said there. First of all, is you, you mentioned about him saying, Oh, what music are you into? I'm going to listen to that music when I'm designing a site now earlier on, you mentioned authentic leadership. So, okay.

[00:24:48] It's less true these days than it used to be when we were young, but your tastes in music is deeply personal. And you know, if you were born before the nineties, You know, [00:25:00] probably identity forming. In other words, if someone designs something for you, that centers around your music tastes, it's going to reflect a deeper you than you probably project in your normal day-to-day business life.

[00:25:13] In other words, anyone who sees it will feel a connection to you, not your business, not your brand. And when we're talking about creativity and authentic leadership, this is what's important, not the nine box blooming performance monitoring system or the meeting, all the milestones. It's about connecting in a way that facilitates progress.

[00:25:40] And to pick up on the other thing about deadlines and monitoring, you can see a lot of that stuff as closed questions. Do you like chocolate? Yes. No. Right. When you have [00:26:00] closed questions, you either get confirmation or denial. That's it? When you say, what do you like about chocolate? Or why do you like chocolate?

[00:26:12] You get a whole story. You get a lot more information and being creative is a lot more like an open-ended question. So when you go for confirmation or denial, you stop the process. When you ask an open-ended question, you facilitate the process. So when your creative person comes back and says, I, whatever, you know, I've got this idea.

[00:26:38] And basically you're kind of going, I'm not sure if I want you to listen to ACDC. Why? Instead of saying, but say, and. Yeah, but ACDC is really not corporate. So I'm in the automotive industry. People aren't going to go for this, you say, well, and I'm also into the cure and a bit of Susie and the Banshees and classical music [00:27:00] like, Oh, all of a sudden, he's got a lot more to work with.

[00:27:05] You did not just mention Susie and the Banshees. I cannot believe you just mentioned that. Well, you mentioned, you said golf, not me. And um, if you're saying ACDC, we're talking same time period. And also I saw your previous haircuts. So definitely it's in the Banshees. She was a huge influencer of mine. I actually had to admit that I had to do a presentation the other day for an automotive organization.

[00:27:33] OESA and they said, put something out there that nobody knows about you. And I actually put a picture of Susie out there and I said, I was influenced by Susie and the Banshees. So I can't believe that you just picked up on that. Yay. Joining the dots. I got to touch her once. That's impressive. At reunion shows somewhere in the mid nineties, I had to fight off five goth chicks to get close enough to touch her head when she was singing.

[00:27:59] I think [00:28:00] Israel. Yeah, she looks amazing. Have you seen pictures of her today? Yeah. Yeah, sure. I mean, there's a creative, right? You want to talk about creativity? Yeah. You know, and you know, and, and this is the thing where it gets all mixed up, you know? Cause people think, Oh, Susan, the band is punk rock, huge makeup with music, that's creative and they, and they quietly forget that on a neurological level, what your accountant does when he pulls together all your annual financial information and tries to fit it into the funnel of what the receiver of revenue.

[00:28:32] Once he's also being creative. Yes. He might not have spiky hair or phalanx boots, but he's definitely being creative, right? Because it doesn't just fit. It's not a cookie cutter process. He's got to interpret, he's got to extrapolate, he's got to join the dots from what he knows and what he knows you did last time.

[00:28:51] And he's got to make some assumptions and in order to be able to do what he has to do. And we all do this every single day. I mean, every [00:29:00] single one of us, whether we're sitting at our desk or going to work are solving problems and. What do you do when you solve a problem? You generate an answer. Did the answer exist before?

[00:29:14] Well, not for you, therefore you created it essentially out of nothing. You had M and a element B and you went well, if a is true, and then B is true, but I need to get to D then I must go via C ah, there we go. There's the answer. That's new, it's new to you and you made it. And that's what human beings do on all sorts of levels and where it starts, where people get confused is they start confusing the skills that we drive through the creative capacity for the process.

[00:29:48] So if you're good at drawing, what makes you a great artist is your skill. Plus the creative capacity. If you're an incredible entrepreneur, who's constantly coming out with cutting [00:30:00] edge, new products and things for the market. Your skill is a business skill that goes through that process of creativity.

[00:30:09] And just because the business entrepreneur doesn't look like a punk rocker, so many people don't call them. It's the label, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. It's a misconception. It's a fundamental misunderstanding. Um, but the thing is, is though you can't, like you were talking about your web designer, you can't control creativity, you can't measure it because it involves the conscious rational mind, as well as our subconscious unconscious mind, you know, our rational minds are able to access X amount of information.

[00:30:44] Our unconscious minds are able to access hundreds of times more information than that. And it works a lot slower. So when a challenge gets through to your unconscious mind, it takes a long time to process. [00:31:00] And then eventually one day, two weeks later, you're in the shower and you go, I've got the answer.

[00:31:07] It's magic. An angel reached down from the cloud, touched me on the head and said, Dave, I have the answer for you because we're so unused to that notion that that is actually an alternative function of our brain, but it is, it's not divine intervention. It's not the muses it's smell. Even the drugs you're taking.

[00:31:31] It's your subconscious working through the vast swaves of information in order to come up with an answer to your problem. Your rational mind follows rules, logic, rationality, day-to-day reason, quite linear stuff. Your unconscious, quite happily flicks through all sorts of random stuff, bangs it into each other to see what happens.

[00:31:53] That's why your dreams are so crazy psychedelic skitzo because your brain is bringing things [00:32:00] together that ordinarily wouldn't belong together. And that's how you come up with really super-duper innovative ideas is by getting them into your unconscious. And that's why you can't be on the clock. And that's what freaks management out.

[00:32:14] Yes. Now why is it that a lot of these creative ideas come up in the shower? Cause I mean, we joke about it, but it is true. Oh, Oh. I say it for very good reason. Well, neurological research says that in order to get into a creative state of mind, you need to meet four conditions. Number one, you need to be, uh, You have to have inward quiet.

[00:32:42] In other words, your brain can't be doing too much. It can't be thinking too much because every time you have thoughts, neurons, fire, and in order, just to think about what you're going to have for lunch, several tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of neurons fire, but the amount of neurons that fire, when you make a connection, when you have an [00:33:00] aha moment is in the thousands.

[00:33:03] So if you're thinking too much about too much stuff, you literally will not hear it. So you have to have internal quiet. Second of all, you have to be inward-looking. I'm just busy with your thoughts, not distracted by the printer or, or Jane at the coffee machine on John at the printer. Inward-looking busy with what you already have with what's going on third condition.

[00:33:27] You have to be slightly happy. In other words, no unhappy, not stressed, not angry, just content. And the last one, you mustn't try too hard. So when you're in the shower, you're definitely not trying too hard. Cause you've showered quite a few times before you know what to do. It requires no effort. Yeah, definitely slightly happy because it's warm and the negative ions have a positive recharging influence on your body.

[00:33:58] You're cocooned in a little cabin. It's [00:34:00] refreshing. You're definitely happy. You are slightly inward looking because you're in there alone. And line of sight is limited and all we've got is what you're doing is automated. So it's not requiring any externally focused thoughts whatsoever. And of course you have mental quiet because there's no stimuli and there's no one else there.

[00:34:23] And so when you've quiet, everything down, your subconscious goes, Oh, by the way, here's that thing you asked for? So walking the dog, doing the ironing long distance, driving, exercising, anything you do so much that the actual action you're completing is automated requires no conscious focus. Your conscious mind kind of goes, Oh, I'm so bored.

[00:34:53] And it starts to basically shut up. Your unconscious mind finally is able to bully its way to the [00:35:00] front and make itself heard. Wow. Compare that to your average day at the office. Yes. Yes. Yeah. Wow. That's that's powerful. I still have to think about, yeah. So for business leaders out there, you know, I know that you run a workshop.

[00:35:18] And when I look at that, I think. A creativity workshop. What the heck is that? I can't even imagine what it would be, you know, what, how it would work and what the output would be. And I'm not looking for, you know, an impact to the bottom line. I'm just, I just can't even get my mind around it. So educate me and others, please.

[00:35:41] What is a creativity workshop? Well, essentially there are two breeds of animal that fall under my creative workshop heading. And the first breed is literally turning ordinary people into weapons of mass creation, getting them to understand what creativity is, how it actually works and then how to use it.

[00:35:58] What habits do you need to [00:36:00] acquire? What skills do you need? Um, w what conditions do you mean to need, and then giving people techniques in order to facilitate them, getting that the idea being is that everyone who walks out of that workshop is. Far better equipped to get into a creative mind state on a reliable, predictable basis in order to solve better solve problems, come up with better ideas and so on.

[00:36:24] And so on. The second one is a lot more goal-directed where a company, for example, may be struggling with a particular problem that requires a creative solution, and they're just not getting there. That would be a different process where I would facilitate using all the tools and the tricks and the, in the mind-state stuff that I know in order to take that team through the process of exploring the challenge until such time as we come up with an answer.

[00:36:54] Hmm. Okay. That's fascinating. Yeah. [00:37:00] So tell me about a client or a leader, perhaps in a business that you've seen, who you would say really understands creativity. I mean, you don't, I'm not asking you to name them, but just tell me that the kind of person they are and how they do it. Well, mostly creative leaders create a culture of innovation by walking the walk, no, by, by being open enough, to be creative themselves and by thereby holding a space for others to do it.

[00:37:34] And I think if we look at the early days of companies like Google and we had enough Gore-Tex, um, where yeah. You know, Gore-Tex also had this whole thing where. You can decide what team you wanted to be in, and the team could decide whether they wanted you or not. And you could change teams halfway through a project based on your motivations, your interests.

[00:37:54] And those are the people in the team. You know, that's not typical management [00:38:00] structures whatsoever, you know, I love it. Right. So it's focusing on outputs as opposed to measuring hours. Um, so leaders who were successfully able to do this, first of all, make sure that the environment that people step into is conducive that it's not a gray cubicle farm.

[00:38:20] That there are interesting things to look at. And again, this has been abused terribly when you walk into these hipster offices with a foosball table and sleep hallmarks. And, but you realize very quickly that there isn't a culture of innovation there because, Oh my God, nobody's ever sleeps in their hammocks.

[00:38:35] And only after five o'clock, does anyone ever play football? Because the management is going, Oh, look at that another two hours wasted. Um, if there was a real culture of innovation there, that equipment would be utilized on an ongoing, regular interchangeable basis. So, you know, when you start talking about a culture of innovation and a leader, which is who is able to [00:39:00] nurture that, you're not talking about window dressing, you're talking about actual behaviors, you know, there's a great, and our damn, I can't remember who said this, but it's like, you want to know what your company culture is.

[00:39:13] Just look at the way things are currently being done. Forget the manifest. I forget the mission statement. If you want to know what your company culture is, just look at how people are interacting with each other. And so if people are routinely suspicious and guarded and value their privacy and are highly competitive, you know, that you don't have the kind of open environment where the cross-collaboration and joining of the dots that a culture of innovation requires is actually possible.

[00:39:39] Do you think it's possible for these conservative companies to change and get there? Yes, I do. I do. Um, it, it, it, what it requires is a change in mindset and, and, you know, uh, really Frank acknowledgement that actually the old ways of doing things just aren't. [00:40:00] Delivering what they're used to, you know, the people who are coming into the workforce just don't behave the way that people coming into the workforce 20 years ago.

[00:40:10] Did the people buying your products don't value, the same things the people buying your products 20 years ago did. So why are you still doing things the same way you did 20 years ago? It's cognitive dissonance on a massive scale and one needs to overcome one's ego and one's attachment to this safe, familiar ground.

[00:40:35] Um, and realize that if you do not do that, you are closely related to the captain of the Titanic because you know, up until then, that's how you sail through icebergs, you know, full speed.

[00:40:50] And it was only after that, that people suddenly like, Oh, maybe we should change. And you know, the classic example of this is the music industry. Yeah, a bunch of sweets and [00:41:00] vented the MP3 and all of a sudden share music files over the internet on a dial up connection. And what did the music? Wow. I tried to criminalize, they tried to Sue everybody.

[00:41:13] They tried to shut it down, but there's a fundamental rule of business. The moment a new piece of technology hits your industry. The old business model becomes obsolete and you need to find it the new one, the music industry didn't. And that's why we only have, I think it's now down to three major labels left, and that's why there is nowhere near as much money in the record industry as there was during the eighties, anytime between the sixties and the eighties and the music industry can whine and scream and, and blame piracy, everything they want.

[00:41:45] But in actual fact it's their own stupid fault because they just went full speed ahead. Damn the iceberg. And you know, publishing. Was precarious. They close to following [00:42:00] the same path as were newspapers, but they seem to just learn it in the Nick of time and are adapting and changing. You know, the automated industry actually faces identical problems sooner or later.

[00:42:12] No one's going to want to car because there'll be self-driving things that you can inhale at the drop of a hat using your app on your phone. And what is the point of owning a car? You don't have to pay for parking. I have to pay for insurance. You'd have to pay for maintenance. You'd have to pay for fuel, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

[00:42:28] You know, in, in, uh, in the Netherlands. Now there's a thing called swap feats. Literally swap a bike where you pay 10 euros a month to be able to use a bike. And if you get a puncture, if it breaks, you just call them up. They come and take it away and give you a new one. So over the course of two years, you've spent exactly what you would have spent on a reasonable bike anyway, but no one cares because they don't want to own a bike.

[00:42:53] And I know in America right now, With reference to cause is possibly quite hard to [00:43:00] believe, but it's already happening in Europe and it will get there. And the question is one earth or Cami who's going to do when that happens. Yes. Well, we're seeing some of that already. We're seeing vehicles coming out.

[00:43:17] Canoe was talking about a vehicle that's going to be subscription only. Yeah, that's it. You can't buy it even if you wanted to, you couldn't buy it. And these Evie car companies that we see starting up tend to be. Technology companies who are taking the technology and putting it into a vehicle, you know, where I am in Detroit, as you all know, we're experts on the vehicle.

[00:43:44] And then we try to put the technology in the vehicle. And it's very, very different because the culture and the mindset in California is very different to the culture and the mindset you're in Detroit. So it's, it's the merging together of these two worlds that we see [00:44:00] happening. It's unfolding in front of our eyes right now.

[00:44:03] But I have to say, I love it. When I go to, um, Amsterdam in my last job, we had a UN supply chain office in Amsterdam, and I loved going to Amsterdam because there's a, there's a, a vibe, a feeling that's much more open, much more high-tech. And then you come out of the airport and you get picked up in a Tesla taxi, right.

[00:44:23] There was a Tesla cab. I think it was right there. Yeah. Yeah. They're hugely subsidized by the Amsterdam. I'm going to spandexy and I liked your example there about these, these, um, sort of tech startups who are, you know, doing cars that are all about the tech, not so much about the car, um, because it also brings to mind another classic example in the music industry.

[00:44:45] One of the biggest things that broke the major labels, which completely destroyed the business model of the music industry was the iPod. It was Apple bunch of tickets and Steve jobs closed the deal with the major labels to [00:45:00] get as much music on those I-pads as possible, which w which was obscene, you know, the record company executives, just so didn't understand what was going on, that they signed away stuff at rates that they should never, ever have agreed to.

[00:45:17] And as a result, Apple was able to. Pole vault into the lead on the whole digital music front, and actually have more power than all the major labels combined because the record labels just kind of on purpose, remained ignorant and fought against this thing. And again, you know, that's, that's the risk that any industry faces, I mean, consider 3d printers pretty soon.

[00:45:45] You know, you're going to have a bunch of carbon fiber in a big box on the corner of your house and then a carbon printer. You know, when you, when you want a new pair of shoes, you're going to go online and you're going to buy the pattern and you're gonna open that file up and you gotta [00:46:00] press print and you'll get your new pair of running shoes here on your printer next year.

[00:46:04] What then for delivery services? What for shopping malls? What for sales reps, blah, blah, blah, blah. Okay. I don't think anyone's going to carbon print a car anytime soon, but all it requires is an Apple to make an electronic vehicle. That catches the imagination of the current public in a way that a normal car doesn't and the whole industry is screwed.

[00:46:28] Yes. Yes. So why isn't the industry exploring this in the most aggressive way imaginable? Well, let's, let's talk about that. Let's talk about timing. Right? So creativity and innovation has been on every agenda for decades. Okay. We're in a pandemic. I think we, we both believe that this pandemic is indeed an accelerator for change.

[00:46:55] It is, it is a catalyst, I mean, for transformation because [00:47:00] people people's minds are more open now than ever before. To change because their whole lives of everything they've ever known has been torn apart. They couldn't even get toilet, paper and groceries. So, you know, they're working from home that in some cases that was never heard of in some companies now they're embracing it.

[00:47:20] So I think people, people are ready for change. It's like, it's like, they're right there. This transformation of work is happening right now. So now is the time. So for these companies that don't want to get left behind to really understand your subject area, to understand creativity, innovation, and more importantly, do something about it now, because a year from now it's going to be too late.

[00:47:48] Right. I mean, and it takes us straight back to Toyota, um, you know, lean. Okay, great. But the other great thing that came out of Toyota was Kaizen incremental change, you know, every day do [00:48:00] one thing slightly better and, you know, Yeah, incremental change. Doesn't lead to massive innovation, except if you do one little thing and your entire workforce is doing one little thing better every single day it does because innovation is a bit like evolution.

[00:48:20] You know, it kind of tickles along and not much changes and you have some aberrations and then suddenly it's off the charts because it all comes together. But if you, if you're not on the bus, it's just not going to happen to you. You can have as many innovation teams and factories and specialists and consultants as you like, but until you harness the intellectual capital of your entire workforce, who, especially in the automotive industry is incredibly diverse.

[00:48:50] You know, at least half of your workforce is your target market. So if you don't know what the audience wants, ask your workforce. [00:49:00] Yeah, that's so true. That's so true. Do you believe that? I'm sorry. And start doing it, you know, start working on it now. Who cares? If it's all a complete disaster you're hemorrhaging money.

[00:49:11] Anyway, you might as well write some of it off to R and D do you believe that now is the time? No, uh, not as in the pandemic is the time I believe. Yes. Now is the time, because now it's always the time. Um, what I've come to realize is that it's not about being more creative or about innovation or about motivation or about leadership or about skills.

[00:49:38] It's about starting. It's always about starting because once you started things change and once you've started changing, things will continue to change and you'll be forced to play catch up. So the fundamental principle is to take the first step and then to keep showing up. And then the rest of the stuff kind of takes care of [00:50:00] itself, but you got to have someone keeping you honest, keeping on showing up and making sure that those steps actually taken.

[00:50:08] Hmm. Yeah. That's true. Do you believe that people are more receptive to change now that we've been through the shared struggle of the pandemic and therefore perhaps more open to creativity and allowing that creative side out, or do you think there's no, no relationship there difficult to say? Um, the cynical side of me says, no, it's purely a response to the necessity.

[00:50:32] Um, and that once we're back in some form of a comfort zone, a lot of people will revert to type and, um, and go back into their shells because the people around them will revert to type and it'll become too dangerous to be creative and to express yourself, you know, socially, uh, dangerous rather than physically.

[00:50:50] Um, however it would appear that. A significant proportion of the population has suddenly discovered the [00:51:00] power of creativity, the power it has to, um, connect you with purpose, to give you a sense of control over your own destiny, to give you choices and options that you didn't realize you had. Um, and that is like opium.

[00:51:19] You know, I think there is. And so massive change has never precipitated by the majority just requires a tipping point. So the optimist in me says maybe enough people have been turned on for us to be approaching a tipping point. I feel years ago, I discovered we work. I'm sure you're familiar with WeWork.

[00:51:40] It's a global chain. And I went there and I would go there a couple of times a month away from my corporate job, just because, you know, we work, it's a creative environment. It's different, it's a different vibe. It was in the city. It's in Detroit. And I loved going there because my, my head was [00:52:00] in a different place.

[00:52:01] You know, my energy was different and I loved it. And I remember that my boss at the time really had. Trouble understanding, you know, why, why I would want to leave the so-called comfort of the corporate office to go down to this environment where all these youngsters, where, and, and who knows, you know, what he thought was actually going on there.

[00:52:22] I mean, there's a, a beer tap that you can have a beer anytime of the day and night. And I think that sometimes these corporate leaders think, Oh my gosh, if I unleash all these creative types, it's just going to be this chaos and people are going to be running round, you know, and there's going to be no control.

[00:52:39] And, and then how am I going to run a business? So what do you say to the leaders that, that may have some of those concerns? Yeah. Well, they've often also fallen victim to one of the major myths about creativity. I'm. An extraordinarily creative human being. You know, I sculpted stone, I draw, I make music, I write poetry.

[00:52:59] I consult, [00:53:00] I do all sorts of weird and wonderful things, but I get up at the same time every single day. And I have a very structurally color-coded diary, which I use to coordinate everything that I do according to quite strict milestones. And, uh, uh, one of those things deadlines, right? You know, creative people don't come in one shape and size and variety.

[00:53:25] There are all sorts of types of creative people. There's big picture detail. There's um, high detail people. There's people who are only really interested in the end goal. There's people who interested in the process. There's people interested in the tools is people interested people. So on that, first of all, there's no guarantee that just because you've activated your entire staff to not be creative, that the all going to turn into Jimmy Hendrix and start throwing TVs out of hotel windows and taking heroin.

[00:53:57] The other thing is that

[00:54:02] [00:54:00] yeah, I've said it a few times during the course of this conversation, creativity's about joining the dots. In other words, in order to be creative, you need to spend a fair amount of time obtaining dots. And that involves working, reading, studying, researching, and experimenting, you know, all credible business activities basically.

[00:54:26] Um, and it's not like it's an always on black or white kind of a thing. Um, you know, becoming creatively activated is a bit like. A bit like taking these neurotrophic vitamins. The idea is that you kind of just throws everything into a slightly different sharp of focus, where instead of like doing your nuts and having hallucinations and being wildly uncontrollable, it's just giving you overall better insights into what you're doing and seeing the connections between things better, making you more [00:55:00] effective, not necessarily more efficient, but more effective.

[00:55:05] And if you're interested in outcomes rather than just efficiency, isn't that what you want? So I think unfortunately, and this is a common reaction that people are like, well, you know, I don't want a massive unmanageable people on my hands. It's a massive generalization informed by a huge ignorance about what creativity actually is and, and, you know, rooted in a stereotype about creatives that is actually about artists.

[00:55:36] You know, and in particular rock and roll stars, you know, not about creative human beings. I mean, no one would really have a problem with Elon Musk types, working for them, you know, workaholics who just never stop in, uh, always coming up with amazing stuff. But that man is insanely creative and he's a scatter gun.

[00:55:57] He's all over the place and all sorts of [00:56:00] interesting things, but he's brutally effective. I mean, you know, not withstanding whatever shortcomings might be packaged into that on other areas, but you know what it is, it's a polarization, it's a classic empty creative response. It's basically saying this is the rule of order.

[00:56:23] And if it's not the rule of order, well, it must be chaos. And creativity is about the grays in between the complexity, the ambiguity. It's not about chaos. That's just an unfortunate effect of our social media environment. If you're not with me, you gotta be against me. You can't possibly be just interested in something else.

[00:56:48] And it extends in so many directions and creativity is a big victim of that kind of black and white polarized thinking. Yeah. That's beautifully said beautifully said [00:57:00] yes. Wow. You've you've really pushed me in my thinking. Today you, you really have you've stretched me and made me think deeper. And that's the reason I wanted you on the podcast, because this is your field.

[00:57:17] This is what you understand better than anybody else I've ever come across. Um, that even, you know, can even talk about creativity for more than 10 seconds. You, you know, it, you, you just know it, it's ingrained in you, it's in your DNA. You believe that you practice it. Um, you touched on something about how you start your day and I'm always interested in how successful people start their day.

[00:57:41] So would you tell us a little bit more about how you start your day? I like to get up really early. Um, I'm at a terribly early bed, uh, whether that's nature or nurture. I'm not sure. My father was an early bird, but I found if I'm on my computer at 5:00 AM, by the time 9:00 AM [00:58:00] rolls around, I've done four hours work.

[00:58:03] But that's not true. I spent four hours working. I've done eight hours work. Um, and then when everyone else is starting their working day, I've done my work and now I'm available to do all sorts of other interesting stuff, you know? So it's, it's a beautiful way of clearing the decks of my obligations and setting me free to then go on adventures.

[00:58:25] Um, and I find if I do not get a running start to my morning, I've just gotten so used to having a running start to my morning that if I don't get one, the rest of my day in big danger of falling apart. Yeah. Well, I, I agree wholeheartedly. And how you start your day is everything. Either you set it up for success, so you set it up for failure.

[00:58:46] And, uh, I run an accountability lab. Uh, every morning I run two of them. No, one's at six 30 in the morning. One's at seven Oh seven and we talk every day about a commitment for the day. And one thing that we've learned is [00:59:00] that we need to get the big thing that we're going to do that day done right away.

[00:59:04] Because otherwise, you know, you, you, you, you never get to it. You get distracted. So we focus on getting that done right away, and then you've got the rest of the day. Yeah to do, you know, maybe other things, if you want to spend time on social media, that's okay. If you want to walk the dog or whatever you want to do, you know, you can do it right.

[00:59:23] And you don't have that, that thing hanging over you. Um, so yeah, it's, I just think it's fascinating how people start their days. What time do you get up? I get up at five. What time did you get up? No. More like five 30. Cause I've still got two pretty small kids. So my sleep isn't always what I'd like it to be, but there's one thing I've added to that, which is that if I don't get it done, I forgive myself.

[00:59:48] You know, because first of all, just spending the rest of the day, beating yourself up about not having gotten up early enough to do X, Y, and Z is just counterproductive. But more importantly, because I [01:00:00] know that tomorrow. I'm going to get up at the same time and I'm going to go at it again because I've been doing it my entire adult life, and I know it's going to happen.

[01:00:09] So even if I've missed it three days in a row, I still take it easy on myself because I know I will. Yes. I think we, you know, we chase this elusive to-do list, right? Because we want that dopamine hit. Right. We want it, we want to be able to, to check things off the task list. And so it's much easier to get all the little stuff off the list.

[01:00:31] Uh, so we can get that dopamine hit that we love so much instead of going to the big things first and that's, and then you, if you don't finish everything on your list, then you feel bad and it's like, why do you chase these lists? I seriously don't have a to-do list. I don't have a task list. I have it. I mean, a lot of it's in my head, which is typical entrepreneur.

[01:00:52] Right. Um, but I scheduled blocks of time for important things and, and that's the only [01:01:00] way that I can do it. You know, that's the space, that's where I'm going to be in the space and the right head space to deal with that issue. And it's usually in the morning, cause that's when I'm at my best in the morning.

[01:01:10] And it just, yeah. So here's a tip prime, um, spend a couple of days a weeks observing yourself, not do during a normal day and take particular note of the times of day when you are doing whatever you're doing almost effortlessly. Now the work is just flowing. You're solving the problems. You're, whatever it is that you're busy with, it just happens with what appears to be the minimal effort.

[01:01:33] And you're doing top quality work and make a mental note of what time of day that is and see if it's more or less the same time every day. Mostly it is then the trick is to show enjoyable the really important work for that time of day. So in other words, I don't have meetings. I don't make phone calls during my golden hours of the morning.

[01:01:55] I do all of that stuff in the afternoon because I don't need to be my [01:02:00] 100% golden optimal self to do that stuff. But when I'm creating content and I'm writing a new book, I'm generating a training program, I need to be as sharp as I possibly can. And so I reserve that time for that act. Yeah, I do much the same.

[01:02:19] I agree with you. I think my time is about eight to 10, you know, that's, that's it. Cause I like to work up a workout in the morning, run the accountability labs. Cause I like that, that connection in the morning and that, that, that gives me a boost in the morning. And then I, then I make a cup of tea cause it got, you know, I'm a Bret.

[01:02:35] Remember I gotta have my tea, so I have a cup of tea and then I'm, I'm in, I'm on, you know, I feel good and I'm ready to, to get into something really meaty. And then meetings then in the rest of the afternoon is whatever, whatever happens, happens in the afternoon. Okay. Um, so I have a question for you. What advice would you give to your [01:03:00] 25 year old self in today's environment?

[01:03:03] Practice your guitar more seriously? The thing I've learned is that. And, you know, don't get me wrong. I'm not a massive acolyte of Malcolm. Gladwell's 10,000 hours of mastery, but the more you do something, as long as you're focused on improving that thing, the better you will get. I started playing guitar in 1987.

[01:03:29] If I just paid 20 minutes, Monday to Friday every week from then till now I'd be wiping the floor with Jimmy Hendrix. But because I didn't, I could still barely string four chords together and I have to practice for weeks to be able to play a song without making mistakes and that I regret. But more importantly, I regret not in, not re rooting that discipline and that notion deeper in my life.

[01:03:55] I've managed to acquire it in other areas, but it's been hard work when actually it could have been a lot [01:04:00] easier work when I was 25. Hmm. Yes. Yeah. That's right. And how do you see your legacy? What are you bringing to this world? How, how do you want to leave this world? What's your legacy? I have no idea at this stage.

[01:04:17] Um, look, I I'm, I've embarked into a field that is littered with neuroscientists and professors of psychology and top end, highly experienced business consultants. And what have you all talking about creativity and innovation, and I'm just this, this, this punk rock poet. Who's combining my hands on experience of working with creativity and creative people for the last 30 years with their written works.

[01:04:48] So I don't hope to leave a legacy of anything special about my insights and creativity, but what I do hope to build to do is to be able to translate a lot of that stuff, which is not always that easily [01:05:00] understandable into deep, be practical adoptable methodologies that have actually changed people's lives.

[01:05:07] That would be cool. Yes. Yes. Well, you're very, you know, you're very authentic. You are who you are, right. You're obviously very comfortable in your own skin. You, you know, your, your subject matter, edit depth and breadth that I have never seen. And I can't wait to see how your business evolves and, and how this, you know, creating this weapon of mass creation, how that evolves over time.

[01:05:36] It's been an absolute pleasure spending time with you today and exploring the subject of creativity and innovation. David Chislett. Thank you. Yeah.

[01:06:32] Thank you for listening to the automotive leaders podcast. Click the Listen link in the show notes to subscribe for free on your platform of choice. And don't forget to download the 21 traits of authentic leadership PDF by clicking on the link below. And remember, stay true to yourself, be you and lead with Gravitas, the hallmark of authentic leadership.