This pre-conference breakout was led by Jennifer Tamborello who served on the original kid stuf team at North Point and at one time directed Kid Stuff. Here are some of the notes I took from this excellent breakout.

If we are not creative, we are not effective. It is imperative that we infuse our meetings with creativity.

Leaders need to be creative:

  • to design relevant environments.
  • to find effective solutions.
  • to communicate a bottom line (what do we want people to know when they walk away).

Six stages of the creative process:

  • Define: Establish a written brief (clearly define what you want to create).
  • Acquire: Random brainstorm ideas (no rules and no bad ideas).
  • Framework: Creativity happens in a sequential order… form helps clarify. Structure enhances creativity.
  • Compress: Reduce to the best ideas (this is the time where we throw out ideas).
  • Pause: Sleep on it. Allow ideas to incubate… allow time to process.
  • Solidify: Add detail and action steps (creativity needs an administrative step).

Good ideas never happen without leadership. Somebody has to have the final say.

Jennifer shared that in a creative meeting, there needs to be 6-10 participants. Everyone needs to know where you are in the process (what problem, event or series are we being creative about). Invite the people who know the audience best (Jennifer talked about how as they created for family production, they realized that their target were 4th grade boys, so she invited 2 mothers of 4th grade boys to be in the creative meeting).