JournoNews chats with Chris Grif­fiths, CEO of ThinkBuzan and author of ‘GRASP The Solu­tion’, a refresh­ingly prag­matic approach to mak­ing deci­sions and solv­ing prob­lems creatively.

What prompted you to write ‘GRASP The Solution’?

Essen­tially, it was a life­long study into mod­ern brain based strate­gies that, bit by bit, led to my desire to write the book. Over the years, I’ve applied strate­gies based on how the brain works in all the com­pa­nies I’ve been involved in.

For instance, at Birch­field, where our edu­ca­tional prod­ucts were in 80% of UK sec­ondary schools, we didn’t focus just on the con­tent, we focused on the deliv­ery of the con­tent to stu­dents and the impact it had on the brain.

The more I delved into the sub­ject and tried out dif­fer­ent strate­gies, the more I came to realise that, while there are lots of tools out there that can help you be more cre­ative and pro­duc­tive, if you hap­pen to use them in the wrong con­text or frame of mind, they aren’t any­where near as effec­tive as they should be.

I liken it to a world-class chef. A great chef can have all the best uten­sils and equip­ment in the kitchen but with­out the right ingre­di­ents, they aren’t going to be able to cre­ate some­thing spe­cial. So ‘GRASP The Solu­tion’ came about as a way of putting things into a con­text and look­ing at what stops peo­ple being cre­ative as well as what makes peo­ple be creative.

Unfor­tu­nately, a lot of peo­ple don’t realise it’s the bar­ri­ers they impose on them­selves that pre­vent them from com­ing up with really great ideas and no mat­ter how many tools they use, if they’re using them in the wrong way, in the wrong mind­set, they aren’t going to work!

Describe the essence of the book. 

The whole spirit of this book is about pro­vid­ing both the con­text and appli­ca­tion for think­ing cre­atively. You need both ele­ments to solve prob­lems and make deci­sions inno­v­a­tively using opti­mal brain processes.

In brief, the book is there to help you deliver what I call ‘prac­ti­cal cre­ativ­ity’. It’s about putting a sys­tem and process behind cre­ativ­ity so you can come up with the right ideas and solu­tions to your chal­lenges, and actu­ally make them hap­pen in the real world.

Give us some exam­ples of how a com­pany can sadly be left behind by ‘insist­ing on doing things the way they’ve always done them’.

Well, if you do things the way you’ve always done them, peo­ple say you’ll get what you’ve always got. But today this no longer counts. I believe if you con­tinue to do what you’ve always done, you’ll actu­ally get left way behind. The fact is — inno­va­tion doesn’t come from doing things the same way.

When peo­ple and com­pa­nies base their for­ward direc­tion on pre­vi­ous expe­ri­ence, and expe­ri­ence that’s worked well, they’re not nec­es­sar­ily inno­vat­ing. If they solve a prob­lem in the same way that they solved it before – that’s great, they’ve solved the prob­lem. But have they moved for­ward? Have they inno­vated? Have they cre­ated some­thing new?

Real suc­cess in busi­ness relies on you doing things dif­fer­ently in a way that cus­tomers like and respect. A new design, a new prod­uct, a new ini­tia­tive doesn’t come from doing things the same way. Look at how Apple was able to use its cre­ativ­ity and design to become the largest cap­i­talised tech­nol­ogy com­pany in the world. Apple didn’t fol­low the norm, it went after the ‘new and dif­fer­ent’ with spec­tac­u­lar results.

In your engage­ments with busi­ness own­ers around the world, what are the main chal­lenges they face in suc­cess­fully get­ting their mes­sage about their prod­ucts and ser­vices ‘out there’, espe­cially now that soci­ety is sat­u­rated with multi-channel media – online, in print and TV.

Cre­ativ­ity is fun­da­men­tally about doing things dif­fer­ently so that you stand out from the crowd. I believe the main chal­lenge that com­pa­nies face today is a stan­dard­i­s­a­tion in pric­ing and prod­uct worldwide.

For exam­ple, if I’m going to buy a tele­vi­sion, I can choose from hun­dreds at the top range of pric­ing and I can choose from hun­dreds at the bot­tom range of pric­ing. So, pric­ing itself isn’t what will dic­tate what I buy. Even if I’m aim­ing to buy one of the low­est cost TVs, because I’ve got a lot to choose from, I’ll pick the one which stands out, for what­ever rea­son that it hap­pens to stand out.

Pric­ing won’t dif­fer­en­ti­ate you, but good design will. Good design comes through cre­ativ­ity and cre­ativ­ity comes through apply­ing an effec­tive sys­tem and process, such as the one I put for­ward in my book — the GRASP The Solu­tion system.

Which indus­tries, in your opin­ion are using multi-channel media to spread their ideas and mes­sages suc­cess­fully? Why?

The indus­try that imme­di­ately comes to mind is tech­nol­ogy. Tech­nol­ogy com­pa­nies are doing a great job of using multi-channel media, espe­cially the inter­net to get their mes­sages across. Again, Apple stands out as an exam­ple of a com­pany which uses dif­fer­ent forms of mar­ket­ing – TV, web­sites, social media etc – in a sim­ple yet strik­ingly inno­v­a­tive and coor­di­nated way.

Do you reckon most com­pa­nies don’t devote enough time and energy to com­ing up with fresh ideas on how to do things dif­fer­ently? 

There are lots of sur­veys com­ing out that reveal cre­ativ­ity and new ideas as a top pri­or­ity in busi­ness. For instance, in a global IBM study of 1,500 CEOs and senior exec­u­tives in 2010, cre­ativ­ity was iden­ti­fied as the most cru­cial fac­tor for future success.

Another sur­vey by the Boston Con­sult­ing Group in 2009 showed that two-thirds of senior exec­u­tives placed inno­va­tion as one of their top three strate­gic pri­or­i­ties. How­ever, when asked to rank the ini­tia­tives they were most happy with in terms of return on invest­ment, inno­va­tion didn’t fig­ure any­where! It was one of their top pri­or­i­ties but they couldn’t deliver on it.

I think this is because exec­u­tives have this idea that they can just be inno­v­a­tive, they don’t actu­ally have a sys­tem or process in place to struc­ture their inno­va­tion approach. They’re not actively com­mit­ted to it.

Over the years, as you’ve worked with teams from busi­nesses around the world, how much time on aver­age do the suc­cess­ful ones spend brain­storm­ing to come up with that ‘killer idea’?

An inter­est­ing ques­tion and the answer is sim­ply ‘not enough’. In a lot of busi­nesses, peo­ple aren’t allowed the free­dom to think or day­dream. They’re not taught how to be cre­ative. They’re not taught how to get rid of the bar­ri­ers that stop them being creative.

They’re focused on pro­duc­tiv­ity and speed nearly 100% of the time. It’s all reac­tive think­ing. Many busi­ness strate­gies at the moment are about speed, react­ing to events, fix­ing prob­lems and not actu­ally strate­gis­ing. I don’t think this is right.

Is busi­ness a sprint or a marathon? I per­son­ally think it’s more of a marathon. You’ve got to pace your­self and think things through, fig­ure out where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. Most peo­ple in busi­ness spend their time sprint­ing, yet one thing’s for sure — you’ll cer­tainly never win a marathon by sprinting!

Give us an exam­ple of a group of peo­ple you know who totally trans­formed their think­ing to come up with a totally dif­fer­ent way of doing things – what did they do before that wasn’t work­ing and what steps did they take to change things?

A while ago, we con­sulted for a really suc­cess­ful PR and Mar­ket­ing com­pany, one of the larger ones based in Lon­don.  I found it fas­ci­nat­ing to observe how a group of very dif­fer­ent kinds of peo­ple actu­ally oper­ated. You had some peo­ple who could come up with ideas really quickly – they wouldn’t do any analy­sis, they would just go with their gut feel and in the end they spent a lot of time backtracking.

There were oth­ers who strug­gled to gen­er­ate any ideas. And there were still oth­ers who were mis-matchers, all they could see were prob­lems and obsta­cles. It was a very var­ied group but by putting together a sys­tem to help them facil­i­tate their cre­ativ­ity based on GRASP prin­ci­ples, they were able to suc­cess­fully and eas­ily cre­ate new strate­gies, not just for them­selves, but for their clients and customers.

The indi­vid­u­als who attend our ThinkBuzan Licensed Instruc­tor (TLI) courses often have many real­i­sa­tions as they go through their train­ing. There was one par­tic­u­lar per­son who really wanted to set up his own busi­ness but he was becom­ing frus­trated because he didn’t know what kind of busi­ness to start up. Within two days of work­ing with him, he pretty much cre­ated a whole busi­ness plan and was begin­ning to move it for­ward. 

What keeps your own think­ing fresh and stimulated?

Focused day­dream­ing. And mak­ing sure I’m in the right envi­ron­ment at the right time to do my think­ing. If I want to come up with really good, use­ful ideas I pay close atten­tion to how I’m think­ing, tak­ing care that I’m not being reac­tive or selec­tive in my thoughts.

You travel a lot, con­sult­ing and speak­ing across the globe, what do you do to main­tain a sense of ‘bal­ance’ whilst you’re on the road?

Exer­cise, exer­cise, exer­cise. And I do a lot of think­ing. I like that I get time to think when I’m trav­el­ling. I tend to travel in silence – my phone is always switched off. It doesn’t mat­ter whether I’m on a train, a plane or a car, I like to use that time to think.

As CEO of ThinkBuzan, what do you believe are the cru­cial qual­i­ties required to lead teams effectively?

To lead teams effec­tively you’ve got to have sev­eral dif­fer­ent qual­i­ties. I think the lead­ers of the 21^st cen­tury are those that can really inno­vate, there­fore they can be stronger lead­ers with respect to tak­ing a com­pany for­ward in its strat­egy. I think a good leader has to be a good fol­lower too. How can you lead effec­tively if you don’t know how to follow?

A good leader has to gain the respect of their team. One of the things that many busi­ness own­ers or senior man­agers don’t realise is the pos­i­tive power of think­ing about their team’s think­ing. At ThinkBuzan, we try and make the envi­ron­ment for peo­ple as enjoy­able and relaxed as possible.

We want peo­ple to feel not like they have to come to work but that they want to come to work. The more you do to cre­ate a bet­ter envi­ron­ment for your team, the hap­pier they are, the more pro­duc­tive they are, the more effi­cient they are, and the more suc­cess­ful your com­pany will be. It’s com­mon sense, but sadly com­mon sense isn’t all that common.

As a leader, I like to work with friends and it goes with­out say­ing that peo­ple enjoy work­ing with friends. At times a leader has to be dic­ta­to­r­ial but most of the time I think they shouldn’t be. You get bet­ter results by treat­ing peo­ple like peo­ple and let­ting them run with the ball. 

Things you love about Cardiff Bay, where ThinkBuzan is based?

Being near the water. I like the fact that Scott Har­bour where we’re sit­u­ated is where Cap­tain Scott of the Antarc­tic set off on his expeditions.

Favourite over­seas city to work in or visit?

I love vis­it­ing Sin­ga­pore. It’s a great exam­ple of how a cre­ative and inno­v­a­tive mind­set leads to the suc­cess of a nation.

One thing peo­ple might not know about you is …

That I’ve stud­ied var­i­ous mar­tial arts for 23 years. I find a lot of com­mon­al­ity between the study of mar­tial arts and the study of busi­ness and the mind. 

Work aside, what do you love to do to unwind? 

Fam­ily, food, exer­cise, mar­tial arts and learning.

Favourite restau­rants in Cardiff Bay?

I have two favourite restau­rants in Cardiff Bay – Signor Valentino’s and Gar­con.

Best hol­i­day destination?

The United States. I was born there so I love to visit when­ever I can.

Where next?

My on-going goal is to help mil­lions of peo­ple stop to think about their think­ing and help them become more productive.

We are what we think and if I can do my lit­tle bit to help peo­ple think bet­ter, then they will be bet­ter. The more we can inno­vate, the more we can progress. This is some­thing we need to get across in our schools and to our chil­dren. It upsets me that schools still don’t teach chil­dren how to inno­vate or how to create.

We see cre­ativ­ity con­tin­u­ing to dimin­ish with age and this doesn’t have to hap­pen. I hope to play a part in chang­ing this.

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