Slow Down to Speed Up

This guest post comes from one of my innovation heroes, Lorraine Sarayeldin (she was prominently featured in Look Out for Problems). Lorraine is Founder and CEO of PomPom Paddock, an Australian start-up that’s revolutionizing the gluten-free cooking experience.

***

When was the last time you pressed ‘pause’ on the day to day running of your business to reflect, recalibrate and re-energise? Did you find yourself doing it in response to a lack of ideas, need for inspiration or a specific challenge you were facing? Or did you plan it, so that your ‘pause’ was calibrated with the intent to seek inspiration?

Initially, I had a reactive approach to facing challenges, where I would ‘stop everything’ and ‘start discovering’. Nowadays, I plan this ‘pause’, because I’ve realised that the benefits of regularly practising this method puts me in an open mindset to discover, be inspired and consequently generate ideas.

I came across an interesting article by Annie Mueller, What’s Blocking Your Creative Output. It identifies reasons why you may be having a creative block and provides tools to overcome them. Some of the reasons identified in the article are likely to resonate with you, however I find the tools you ultimately end up choosing will come down to what resonates with you most.

After a couple of years of trial and error, I have found the following tools work for me best during my moments of ‘pause’.

1.     Immerse yourself in another industry

Immersing myself in another industry is something that I really enjoy. I find it can be free flowing and exploratory or in response to a challenge I am facing.  ‘Immersing’ for me involves attending expos, visiting venues, talking to people in the industry, desktop research, listening to podcasts and talking to users, just to name a few activities. You need to focus on an industry or a certain aspect of it and take any opportunity to experience it and learn about their challenges and how they’ve overcome them. Find out about their latest developments and scan the reviews. This so-called ‘analogous research’ entails looking for inspiration or solutions in a different context and in my case, a different industry.

Having started my own business in the food and beverage industry in 2000, I was recently tackling the challenge of how to achieve wider product awareness through meaningful experiences. I wanted to go beyond the mainstream approach of testimonials and user generated content ads, so I decided to seek inspiration in the hospitality industry, specifically hotels, where creating memorable experiences is in their DNA.

During a conversation I was having with someone who consults to the hotel industry, I learnt about a US based business, Minoan Experience, who curate retail experiences within hotels and short stays. It’s called ‘contextual commerce’ whereby everything you experience during your stay – and I mean everything - furniture, cutlery and even artwork, could be purchased, all from the convenience of your room.

My key takeaway from this is the opportunistic way a brand connected seamlessly and naturally with a customer in a meaningful and authentic way. This finding inspired me to seek out opportunities to collaborate with Department stores and Homewares stores, where we could curate an experience that showcases our product alongside theirs, resulting in a more meaningful retail display, connecting the products with an experience.

Immersion in other industries can take many forms, and in this instance a conversation with someone who consults to the industry lead me on the path to discover a fresh approach to retail marketing that I hadn’t considered before.

2.     Break the routine & take a new path

Another principle I like to practice is breaking the routine & taking a new path, literally. I find when I am in autopilot mode & doing what I do most days, my senses are not as heightened, and that’s fine as I choose to be in the mode of just getting on with things. Autopilot mode for me is doing something I do every day that doesn’t require much thought or effort. This could be taking the same walking route through the park or visiting the same cafe.

When I break the routine, I like to shake things up a little and really get out of my comfort zone. I set out to awaken my senses by setting aside my normal routine and replacing it with a different approach.

I recently discovered in a Business Insider article that Betty Liu, Executive Vice Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, changes her daily commute to work almost every day. Liu says, "It's the idea that change is OK and change actually helps you grow. It's easy to continue to do the same thing over and over again and get in a rut. Seeing different faces and being in a different place just gives you a different perspective."

How did I recently apply ‘breaking the routine’? Well, I decided to take a different walking trail in a local park. I ordinarily kept to the familiar trails because I knew what to expect & how long it would take.  This time around, I purposely changed my route and happened to notice wayfinding signage, guiding you on a Nature Wellness Trail that linked to Rejuvenation/Mediation Stations, showing you how to make the most out of your park visit.

This observation helped me immediately make a connection between the benefits of the wayfinding signage and how I could apply this to my business. At the time, I wanted to demonstrate to our audience just how simple it was to use our products. In response to my experience, I decided to create short ‘guided’ recipe videos showcasing each of our products. We featured a local chef in the video and called it our ‘How To’ video series, which now has a permanent place on our website.

The simple action of breaking the routine and taking a new path heightened my senses, where I noticed the wayfinding signage and then made an immediate connection with how I could overlay this on to a challenge I was facing.

3.     Explore

Going out to seek inspiration from your local grocers isn’t the first thing that comes to mind for most people. For me, I find talking to store owners and shoppers, seeing what’s new, walking the aisles and observing people’s behaviours as they interact with products on the shelf very fascinating. It may have something to do with having a business in this industry! What people say they want versus what they purchase is often two different things.

On my recent ‘exploration’ I set out to understand what the most popular baking products were and why, given our planned expansion of the range. I spoke with store owners and discovered that, ‘tasty, better for you’ baking mixes flew off the shelves. I decided to ‘explore’ further and spent time in the baking aisles observing shoppers and products on the shelves. I would also speak with shoppers and ask for their recommendations, as I played the role of the undecided shopper looking for something new. The most common responses were, ‘we love the taste’, ‘it’s so easy to make’, ‘I know what the ingredients are’.

I could also see the popular mixes were chocolate flavoured just by doing a quick count of products remaining on the shelf. I did this across several stores and had consistent findings.

Getting out there and exploring made me realize we were missing a popular flavour in our range, which is now in development and due for launch in mid 2022. Exploring can take many forms. For me it’s getting away from screens and out of the office and into the action. Put yourself in a place where you can see & feel for yourself what is really happening on the floor. You never know what else you will learn.

There are many techniques for seeking inspiration to drive creative outputs. I hope you find these tools of use to you.

Related: Look Out for Problems
Related: Explore Analogies
Related: The Inspiration Discipline

Join over 10,947 creators & leaders who read Paint & Pipette each week