Creativity is a muscle that needs to be exercised at work. Otherwise it withers away.
If a business doesn’t encourage its people to exercise this muscle, the business stops performing. Ideas dry up. And ideas don’t ever come from the ‘corporate body’, they come from the individuals who make up that body. So if you really want your business to be healthy you have to make sure your business is creatively fit. This applies to every kind of business not just to those in the ‘creative industry’.
Writing goes to the heart of this. It’s the most readily available means most of us have to exercise creativity. If you encourage people to be more creative at work with words, they will write better. They will also think better and have better ideas about other areas of the business.
I can’t offer you scientific proof of this. There are companies giving a lot of attention to measuring the direct financial benefits of better writing, and that’s interesting to know. But I’m convinced that a more creative approach to business writing delivers this extra benefit on a broader front.
I see it happening through many different kinds of workshop that I run, just over the past week. For the staff of an agency dealing with pensions and having to explain pensions with greater clarity and compassion. For visual communication students at two universities where I’ve been teaching. For members of 26 www.26.org.uk eager to join in with writing projects to stretch them beyond their usual limits in the world of business writing. For the freelancers, consultants, communication experts and marketing managers who come on any of the Dark Angels courses www.dark-angels.org.uk.
For all these people there’s a change, a before and after effect, that’s not easily measurable but clearly visible. You can see people emerging feeling fitter – creatively fitter. But I guess that’s why our training uses writing ‘exercises’. It’s all good, healthy stuff.
