Business Problems are Your Creative Besties
How problems lead to better outcomes
The printer won’t print, the parcel you needed by today has been delayed, you left customers waiting a long time, the thing you planned to use is out of stock, your idea is too expensive to produce, the photo you took is bad quality, your video file went missing and of course its a dark rainy day and you needed to do a photo shoot.
It can feel like a disaster in the moment. All your plans and vision aren’t working the way you had envisioned. I’m someone who can get really hung up on a plan and completely crushed when things like this happen. I remember as a child planning to buy a specific ice-cream at the canteen at school, and when they didn’t have any left I decided to just go without. The poor canteen lady was trying hard to suggest other things I could get. But it wasn’t my plan so I walked away with nothing instead.
Over the years I have come to realise something that makes me no longer fear the problems. Problems are actually your creative besties. When you see a problem as a challenge to overcome instead of the ‘end of the world’, you actually end up being more creative and come up with even more amazing ideas than if the problem never happened.
Turning Problems into Ideas
Start seeing problems as opportunities for creativity. Treat it like a creative bestie who just walked in presenting you with a fun creative challenge.
STEP ONE- Define the actual challenge, not just the disaster.
For example I was trying the design a Youtube thumbnail the other day. The photo that would be the perfect screen grab was a bit grainy, blurry and the colour was dull. Despite my photoshop resuscitation attempts, it just wasn’t working out. So you might think the problem is ‘how do I fix this photo?’ but the actual challenge was ‘how do I make a good thumbnail?’.
So I took that challenge and instead of trying to make that terrible photo work, I made a collage mash up of shots that were vibrant and colourful and put them together to tell the full story I had been trying to show in that one not so great photo.
It turned out way better than imagined and inspired a whole new approach to the thumbnails for that channel that now look incredible.
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