School Leader Soundbites

Where Great Ideas Come From- Hacking Into a More Ingenius Mindset with S.D. "Stan" Sehested

• Veronica V Sopher

Share episode

Welcome to S.D. "Stan" Sehested, Author & Advisor.

Stan will be talking about Where Great Ideas Come From- 
Hacking Into A More Ingenius Mindset.

Stan is a former executive communication director at several great American companies (three in Houston), an independent publisher and now a public affairs author and advisor. He is skilled at building brands, protecting reputations, and inspiring action. He joins SATURDAY SOUNDBITES to share his insights about how to unlock more imaginative possibilities and make your inner creative voice louder...AKA How creativity can help PR pros break through the noise. 

You can follow Stan on:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stan-sehested-54727414a

Check out Stan's books-
HATCH MORE GOLDEN IDEAS a.k.a. Push-Button Ingenuity(TM): https://a.co/d/hsGQJbQ
PUSH-BUTTON INGENUITY: https://a.co/d/6ZGZXee

Veronica Sopher:

Hello, hello, and welcome to Saturday sound bites. I'm your host, Veronica V Sofer. And I have the wonderful opportunity to bring to you phenomenal guests, where we talk about all things visibility strategy that includes marketing, branding, advertising, public relations, mindset, networking, all of those important things, you need to make sure that you are visible to your target audience. And today's episode is going to be a great one, we've got mindset. That's what we're talking about today, and how to make sure we're making those connections with our audience. But before we get started and bring on our guest, I want to make sure to remind you to hit subscribe if you are listening on the podcast. And if you are watching on YouTube or Facebook, drop us some comments in the comment section, my guests and I will be sure to connect with you. So with that, we'll go ahead and get this episode started. I have Stan Husted sounds like requested does that sound right?

Stan Hested:

That's good. So how should you got it? Right?

Veronica Sopher:

That sounds like Well, I gotta tell you, that is a great way to connect with people. And it's a great opener. So thank you so much for joining us, Dan. We appreciate it.

Stan Hested:

My pleasure. Let me just say that I really think your Houston colleagues owe you a big thank you for creating this intellectual forum. Way to go, Veronica,

Veronica Sopher:

thank you so very much. I appreciate it. It's a pleasure. And I get to learn so many new things from so many smart people. So it's a joy for me as well. Very good. So, Sam, let's go ahead and get started. Let's talk about all the important things that people need to be tuning into when they're trying to connect with people, building genuine connections with folks and all of those things that sometimes we're not super mindful of how do we start that conversation?

Stan Hested:

Well, you know, talking about creative thinking, one of the things I think that is misunderstood is, we hear a lot about creativity and marketing and advertising. But creativity and PR is every bit as important. I mean, it's how you cut through the noise is how you create affinity with your target audiences and your stakeholders. So it's really how you package messages and make them more memorable and more insightful. It's really key to being successful.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah, absolutely. And how do you go about making strategic connections with people, you know, used to be when we were in journalism school, or studying business and marketing classes, they would say you need so many good impressions to counter a negative impression. But now we know, with the type of feeds and the type of information that we're getting inundated with, that formula doesn't work anymore. And it's all about the connection, the emotional connection, how do we go about being strategic and making that happen?

Stan Hested:

But that's a big question, probably with a lot of different answers. You know, I think creativity really starts with asking yourself, How can I create more value? And you have to look at what you do when you do when you do it, where you do it, how you do it, why you do it. So it's really about asking those kinds of probing, equip probity questions, which sometimes in big organizations can be difficult.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And as the communications leader, how does one start to dive into that, especially if you are getting maybe resistance from from the top, or maybe the Leadership isn't quite clear on that, because oftentimes, I think we might have our creative brief, ready to go, and we've got a formula that's worked well for us or a blueprint. And then we start trying to ask those probing questions and Leadership isn't quite ready to answer them, because they don't know themselves.

Stan Hested:

But you know, my experience after 30 plus years in the creative hot seat with a big energy company, a big chemical company, I was a creative director for an ad agency. You know, my experience is usually the people at the top get it, they recognize how important innovation and creativity is, the struggle is usually middle management, middle management kind of thinks that creativity can get in the way of efficiency, and take people off into the weeds. So you really have to start, you know, if you're ideally you could start in the right place, I think you'd start with your HR department. And you would ask them to add creative thinking and problem solving to everyone's job description. that would that would be a big step forward, then I think you go see your IT department. And you explain that you'd like to create a sharing network, an online network so people can contribute, when they have the time to do so. And then you go back to leadership and say we need to have a cultural event that celebrates people who are taking the risk to do innovative thinking. I think if you do those three things, you can go a long ways towards reinventing your culture.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah, that's so true. And I hadn't thought about some of those tactical things that you can do. And one of the things that you reminded me of is from an organizational perspective, what you put in the job description is really going to dictate the type of applicants you attract. And so I think that that's an easy fast win for a comms person to start making some internal changes to, and how, how do you think that could change the, you know, some of the collaborative opportunities that you have, especially if maybe you're working with engineers, or tech folks that aren't quite used to working with creatives.

Stan Hested:

But, you know, in my experience, you know, creative thinkers are looked upon as a special skill that not everybody has. And I think you've got to start by saying, Actually, creativity is a skill we all have, it just gets suppressed by social pressures, organizational pressures. So I think you have to start there and say, you know, creativity is vital. You know, go back I there was a Gallup poll not too long ago, and the Gallup poll said that leadership at the top 90% of leadership at the top thinks critical thinking is vital. So you start with that fact, with with HR, and then you say, you know, even an IBM study says that creative thinking today, post pandemic, is maybe the most vital skill, creative thinking right now is really the need for creative thinking is really peaking. And how you go about that. There's lots of roadblocks roadblocks, and it, you know, it either takes a great deal of naivety, or it takes a great deal of courage, or maybe both. I always felt like some of the supervisors and managers I had in my career Early on, challenged me to always approach them with at least three ideas for whatever problem I was trying to solve. It became a game with me and three ideas turned into how about five? How about six? And then I got ambitious? And how about 12. So when you get yourself in the habit that one idea is not enough, that you have to create more than you can go do some of the creative thinking, tactics and techniques that I talked about. I'm not too long ago, written a book that's now available on Amazon called hatching more great ideas. And my objective with that was not to be philosophical, but to be very, very practical, and to give people actual techniques and tips that they can apply, regardless of what kind of career you have.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah, no, that's wonderful. I love it. And we will definitely be sure to include the link in the show notes to that book. What are some of the tips that you suggest in the book specifically around generating ideas, because one of the things we've learned is that when people were working, were working remotely, they lost that watercooler collaborative time when sometimes we just walk up to someone's cubicle or into their office with your cup of coffee, and then all of a sudden, these wonderful ideas start to hatch, if you will. And then now we're, some of us are on zooms, working remote, the company decided not to renew the lease. But we're still expected to create these really great ideas and how do you? How do you put all that together when some of the nuances of our office dynamics have changed?

Stan Hested:

Veronica, you know, the first thing that I would do is say, let's not even call it creative thinking, let's call it problem solving. Because that gets you out of a lot of the baggage that sometimes comes with creativity or the word creativity. But here's the technique, and I call it four corner thinking, four corner thinking says, approach the problem from four different perspectives. For instance, how would a logical person solve this, after you've thought about that, then move to how would a very expressive or artistic person solve it, then there's this practical person. And then there's an empathetic person who is very concerning, if you can adopt those four different perspectives, it usually will give you a point of view that you wouldn't have had otherwise. So that's, that's a good tactic. There's another tactic that I talked about in my book on page 45. And that's trigger words. I've composed a number of value words that you would like to have accomplished and whatever problem you're solving, and then you randomly choose one of those words and apply it. That randomness usually helps you jump over what would otherwise be some roadblocks. That works. There's a number there's about a dozen different tactics in my book, but one of my favorite tools is adaptation. When you start trying to solve a problem, what is out there that you could adapt, subtract from modify, exaggerate or do the opposite. So if you start looking for ways to adapt an idea from the outside, that can lead you to a very Are you novel or unusual? And hopefully better approach?

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah, those are great. I love that. And I love the idea of creating it, reframing it into a problem solving opportunity. Because oftentimes, in my mind, at least for me, I want to get on it lickety split, you know, I want to be able to solve that problem and be able to move on to the next. And so there's maybe an impetus of desire to get it done more quickly, because you're inspired to do so. And I love that. What do you think some of the challenges are? When we get that block? Sometimes we call it a writer's block, maybe we're working on a speech or we're working on something that is pretty high level, and we're just stuck and we can't get past it. What are some ideas to get past those blocks?

Stan Hested:

But let's talk about brainstorming for just a second, because sometimes that's the way you will, you're stuck, you will put together a brainstorm. So let me give you a couple of tips that from experience have worked for me, great. And the first one has to do with following what I call the pizza rule. And the pizza rule is your audience or your participants have about six or about the number of people that you could feed with a large pizza. Six is a very manageable kinda kind of group. The next thing is you set up an agenda that I call level headed thinking, and level headed thinking says, Start with purpose, then go with facts, then go with assumptions, because we all have assumptions about something. And then you go to what are the pros about the wait, what are the positives about the way we do it now? Then you switch to one of the negatives, what are the negatives about we do it at that point, you're ready to start talking about alternatives. The last two steps are prototyping or testing and implementation. If you read a lot of books from some academics, they usually leave out to those two steps, which tells me these are people who don't actually have to, if you teach creativity, it's one thing if you do it, you have to test it, and you have to implement it. So go through those levelheaded things. And then one other small tip about brainstorming insists that the participants respond to their colleagues suggestions and ideas by using the phrase interesting. And this keeps criticism from getting out of hand. So every time they respond, insists that they respond with interesting and and then if you're using a whiteboard or a flip chart, use colored markers. Sounds simple, but our brains respond to color. Yeah, and that's a very big thing. So using different colors makes a difference. And then don't expect your group to work longer than about two hours. Yeah, but and I believe in caffeine. Caffeine does a lot of things that are good for your body, and good for ideation and creative thinking. Mm hmm.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah, those are great tips. Absolutely. And I'm so glad to hear you say that about colors. Because I too, when I'm organizing my thoughts, especially I call it a brain dump on my legal pad, I will use different colored pins to just put everything down and someone asked me one time, is there a rhyme or reason to the colors? And I'm like, Nope, I just like them in different colors. But I think you're right, my brain just kind of picks up on that different the different elements of it. You know,

Stan Hested:

I would always say, you know, I tried to stay away from using the term brainstorm. Because some of my colleagues who said our brainstorm was not a brainstorm, you know, it was a drought. So I use the term idea fest. Because the other thing about brainstorming, you don't want to come out of a brainstorm or an idea fest with one, two or three ideas. You want to come out with a bucket of ideas. I mean, if you need one idea, ask for 100.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah, yeah, that's great advice. And, Stan, what would what kind of guidance would you suggest in thinking about young communication professionals that are exploring jobs out there? What are some of the suggestions or advice you would give to young professionals coming into this space?

Stan Hested:

Really, really good question and kind of a difficult one to answer. But I would say to prepare yourself to be more creative. First, work on expanding your vocabulary. Even the US military, one of the tests they do based on the amount of words you know, has to do with the kind of training they give you. So the expanding your vocabulary is huge. The second thing is don't overlook humor. Humor has a very powerful impact. It lets us be more open to new ideas and helps us create So focus on humor, apply humor, it helps and focus on expanding your vocabulary. You know, after that, you know, I think creativity has a lot to do with. Unfortunately, it has a lot to do with bravery. It takes some courage to not worry about how someone is going to think about your ideas. You know I always felt like it was okay. Because if you don't like my first idea, I'll give you four more because it becomes a challenge for me. I would rather give you 18 ideas than one.

Veronica Sopher:

Yeah, yeah, that's great. That's really good advice. Stan, tell us where people can get your book and how they can connect with you, because you have dropped some fantastic guidance and tips and strategies for us. And I think our audience will want to learn more from me. So how can they learn more from you?

Stan Hested:

Well, you can find the book online, particularly amazon.com books. But basically, it's available everywhere from Walmart to basically any online bookseller, you can find the book there. Now, by the way, it's only 126 to 28 pages. So it's really a fun quick read. In addition to that, for those who have said, You don't understand, I'm so busy, I don't have time to read. on Vimeo, there is a 56 minute video that really summarizes the best takeaways from the book. And you'll find that at hatch more big ideas that the H x.tv. So you don't have time to read, which I think you could make time for. Which brings up another point, people say, Gee, I don't have time. You know what, you will never have time you have to make time. That's right. And I think you need to do that during your Genius Hour, I'm sure that Veronica has Veronica, you have an hour of the day when you're most creative, make use of that Genius Hour, and use that as the time when you go through some of the tactics in my book to create solutions.

Veronica Sopher:

You bet. Oh, thank you for the reminder. Absolutely. And I actually worked with a leader in the organization who built in, he didn't call it creative time, I think he called it creation time. And it was creation time. And everybody was required on our calendar to put at least one hour in the week, on a day that was appropriate for us to do it. And it actually was a great way to take the stress off just letting ideas come and having those really great workflow. So thank you for that reminder, saying I cannot wait to read the book.

Stan Hested:

Let me throw one more thing in the Taptic. There's a lot of psychologists who will tell you that your subconscious is the most powerful tool you have for creative thinking. And the way to use that is before you go to sleep at night, run through the problem you're facing, run through the alternatives. And then as you go to sleep, this will allow your brain to explore memory and other aspects. So sleeping on a problem many times is one of the best creative tactics that you can apply.

Veronica Sopher:

Oh, that's a great reminder. And so true. Yes. So, so true. will stay. Thank you so much for your time today for connecting with our audience. It was a pleasure having you on Saturday, sound bites.

Stan Hested:

Thank you. And again, I think your Houston colleagues should really give a large round of applause to you for creating this intellectual forum. Very, very smart and helpful thing for you to do, Veronica, and I thank you.

Veronica Sopher:

Oh, thank you so much. I appreciate it. We will be sure to connect with Stan online. So thanks so much. Thank you. All right, that wraps up this episode of Saturday, sound bites. As always, you can find me at Veronica v sofer.com. I have the pleasure of connecting our audience with some fantastic guests that give us content that's going to help us grow and our visibility strategies. So make sure you check out the show notes. Go get that book. It sounds like a great read. I think I'm gonna order mine as soon as we wrap up this episode. So with that, I will end this podcast by reminding you to hit subscribe if you are listening on one of the podcast platforms and if you're watching on YouTube or Facebook, drop us some comments and we will be sure to connect. I'm sending you lots of positive energy and light by wrapping up this episode.