Creativity = Connecting Two Unconnected Ideas
A new year means new possibilities, new possibilities require new ideas...especially this year, when the headlines in USA Today (January 6, 2010) announce that children are leaving private schools and are being enrolled in public schools.
There's two things you can do - acquiesce or fight.
If you're ready to fight, you're going to have to be creative. Creativity is simply a connection - taking something out of the ordinary to create interest, and then connecting it to what you want to accomplish.
Several years ago, at a meeting of principals, I walked in to the budget discussion meeting carrying a hammer. Some people asked what it was for, others felt fearful, others were probably wondering. That was the whole point (heck, I could have found it outside....)
When it was my turn to present, I held it up. The idea was that we were going to "hammer out" some new ways of using the "announced tuition" as a marketing "tool." It also related to the fact that sometimes, you have to keep repeating the message over and over again, "hammering at it" until people "get it."
Remember that it takes at least - let me say that again with emphasis - at least nine exposures to a concept in order to simply begin a change in mindset. Recall that the Gospels follow a three-year cycle. The same gospel reading is presented every third year. Since we need at least nine exposures to the same message, perhaps that's why it takes some people to come to a "logical" realization of Christ during their 30's or 40's. An emotional experience, however, can start that process much faster.
There's an exercise that couples use to share their feelings. It's one thing for a wife to tell her husband that she's angry, for instance, but the husband really can't relate to the degree of feeling. After all, his definition of anger could be completely different than hers. One has to relate the experienced emotion to an experience that the other has had. Then, the other spouse can know what the one is truly feeling. Take this same situation. If the angry wife knows that her husband was tremendously upset when the neighbor's dog dug up his landscaping that he had worked on for several weeks, buying new plants and shrubs, meticulously trimming and edging the surrounding grass, then she could say, "Remember when the Smith's dog wrecked your landscaping? Remember how angry you were? Well, that's how I'm feeling right now." Now, he can more fully understand her feelings.
Students are leaving. Costs are increasing. Donations are down. Is your school still the best place for their educational experience? If you said "Yes," then try connecting a seemingly unconnected idea to create a creative connection to get your school recognized for its "remarkability."
© Michael V. Ziemski, SchoolAdvancement, 2010 (Original publication date: 20050110)
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