GUEST POST from Mitch Ditkoff

1. “If you can dream it, you can do it.” – Walt Disney
2. “Whatever you can do or dream you can, begin it. Boldness has genius, and magic and power in it. Begin it now.” – Goethe
3. “The greatest danger for most of us is not that our aim is too high and we miss it, but that it is too low and we reach it.” – Michelangelo
4. “It’s not enough to be busy, so are the ants. The question is, what are we busy about?” – Henry David Thoreau
5. “You don’t lead by pointing and telling people some place to go. You lead by going to that place and making a case.” – Ken Kesey
6. “Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside awakens.” – Carl Jung
7. “The empires of the future are empires of the mind.” – Winston Churchill
8. “If you want to build a ship, don’t herd people together to collect wood and don’t assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea.” – Antoine de Saint-Exupery
9. “Vision is the art of seeing things invisible.” – Jonathan Swift
10. “Management has a lot to do with answers. Leadership is a function of questions. And the first question for a leader always is: ‘Who do we intend to be?’ Not ‘What are we going to do?’ but ‘Who do we intend to be?’ – Max DePree
11. “Vision without action is a daydream. Action with without vision is a nightmare.” – Japanese Proverb
12. “The best way to predict the future is to create it.” – Alan Kay
13. “Where there is no vision the people perish.” – Proverbs 29:18
14. “Vision without execution is hallucination.” – Thomas Edison
15. “Leadership is the capacity to translate vision into reality.” – Warren Bennis
16. “If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and all that is left is a compromise.” – Robert Fritz
17. “Create your future from your future, not your past.” – Werner Erhard
18. “To the person who does not know where he wants to go there is no favorable wind.” – Seneca
19. “You’ve got to think about big things while you’re doing small things, so that all the small things go in the right direction.” – Alvin Toffler
20. “To accomplish great things we must dream as well as act.: – Anatole France
21. “A possibility is a hint from God. One must follow it.” – Soren Kierkegaard
22. “A leader’s role is to raise people’s aspirations for what they can become and to release their energies so they will try to get there.” – David Gergen
23. “The very essence of leadership is that you have a vision. It’s got to be a vision you articulate clearly and forcefully on every occasion. You can’t blow an uncertain trumpet.” – Theodore Hesburgh
24. “Determine that the thing can and shall be done and then we shall find the way.” – Abraham Lincoln
25. “Dreams are extremely important. You can’t do it unless you can imagine it.” –George Lucas
26. “Cherish your visions and your dreams as they are the children of your soul, the blueprints of your ultimate achievements.” – Napoleon Hill
27. “Pain pushes until vision pulls.” – Michael Beckwith
28. “Vision animates, inspires, transforms purpose into action.” – Warren Bennis
29. “The master of the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his education and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which; he simply pursues his vision of excellence in whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he is always doing both.” – Buddha
30. “Rowing harder doesn’t help if the boat is headed in the wrong direction.” – Kenichi Ohmae
31. “It’s not what the vision is, it’s what the vision does.” – Peter Senge
32. “In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.” – Warren Buffett
33. “A leader will find it difficult to articulate a coherent vision unless it expresses his core values, his basic identity. One must first embark on the formidable journey of self-discovery in order to create a vision with authentic soul.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
34. “The best vision is insight.” – Malcolm Forbes
35. “You have to know what you want. And if it seems to take you off the track, don’t hold back, because perhaps that is instinctively where you want to be. And if you hold back and try to be always where you have been before, you will go dry.” – Gertrude Stein
36. “The gift of fantasy has meant more to me than my talent for absorbing positive knowledge.” – Albert Einstein
37. “I try to learn from the past, but I plan for the future by focusing exclusively on the present. That’s were the fun is.” – Donald Trump
38. “Every man takes the limits of his own field of vision for the limits of the world.” – Arthur Schopenhauer
39. “People only see what they are prepared to see.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson
40. “The most pathetic person in the world is someone who has sight, but has no vision.” – Helen Keller
41. “Good business leaders create a vision, articulate the vision, passionately own the vision, and relentlessly drive it to completion.” – Jack Welsh
42. “A vision is not just a picture of what could be; it is an appeal to our better selves, a call to become something more.” – Rosabeth Moss Kanter
43. “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.” – Isaac Newton
44. “The future belongs to those who see possibilities before they become obvious.” – John Scully
45. “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.” – Henry David Thoreau
46. “Keep your eyes on the stars and your feet on the ground.” – Franklin D. Roosevelt
47. “Looking up gives light, although at first it makes you dizzy.” – Rumi
48. “You cannot depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” – Mark Twain
49. “In order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles.” – David Ben-Gurion
50. “The real voyage of discovery consists of not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes.” – Marcel Proust

Big thanks to Val Vadeboncoeur for locating most of these quotes.

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GUEST POST from Mitch Ditkoff

1. “If at first, the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.” – Albert Einstein
2. “If you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself.” – Rollo May
3. “An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” – Oscar Wilde
4. “Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple and learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a dozen.” – John Steinbeck
5. “The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.” – Linus Pauling
6. “There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come.” – Victor Hugo
7. “Ideas won’t keep. Something must be done about them.” – Alfred North Whitehead
8. “A new idea is delicate. It can be killed by a sneer or a yawn; it can be stabbed to death by a quip and worried to death by a frown on the right man’s brow.” – Ovid
9. “All achievements, all earned riches, have their beginning in an idea.” – Napoleon Hill
10. “You can have brilliant ideas, but if you can’t get them across, your ideas won’t get you anywhere.” – Lee Iacocca
11. “No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.” – F. Scott Fitzgerald
12. “Nearly every man who develops an idea works it up to the point where it looks impossible, and then he gets discouraged. That’s not the place to become discouraged.” – Thomas Edison
13. “It is the essence of genius to make use of the simplest ideas. – Charles Peguy
14. “Nothing is more dangerous than an idea when it is the only one you have.” – Emile Chartier
15. “I had a monumental idea this morning, but I didn’t like it.” – Samuel Goldwyn
16. “An idea, like a ghost, must be spoken to a little before it will explain itself.” – Charles Dickens
17. “Everyone is in love with their own ideas.” – Carl Jung
18. “Why is it I always get my best ideas while shaving?” – Albert Einstein
19. “One’s mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.” – Oliver Wendell Holmes
20. “The air is full of ideas. They are knocking you in the head all the time. You only have to know what you want, then forget it, and go about your business. Suddenly, the idea will come through. It was there all the time.” – Henry Ford
21. “Everything begins with an idea.” – Earl Nightengale
22. “Capital isn’t that important in business. Experience isn’t that important. You can get both of these things. What is important is ideas.” – Harvey Firestone
23. “A mediocre idea that generates enthusiasm will go further than a great idea that inspires no one.” – Mary Kay Ash
24. “We often refuse to accept an idea merely because the tone of voice in which it has been expressed is unsympathetic to us.”- Friedrich Nietzche
25. “I know quite certainly that I myself have no special talent. Curiosity, obsession and dogged endurance, combined with self-criticism, have brought me to my ideas.” – Albert Einstein
26. “A pile of rocks ceases to be a rock when somebody contemplates it with the idea of a cathedral in mind.” – Antoine St. Exupery
27. “If you want to kill any idea in the world, get a committee working on it.” – Charles Kettering
28. “Right now it’s only a notion, but I think I can get the money to make it into a concept, and later turn it into an idea.” – Woody Allen
29. “Just because you’re a musician doesn’t mean all your ideas are about music. So every once in a while I get an idea about plumbing, I get an idea about city government, and they come the way they come.” – Jerry Garcia
30. “I begin with an idea and then it becomes something else.” – Pablo Picasso
31. “New ideas pass through three periods: 1) It can’t be done; 2) It probably can be done, but it’s not worth doing; 3) I knew it was a good idea all along!” – Arthur C. Clarke
32. “Almost all really new ideas have a certain aspect of foolishness when they are just produced.” – Alfred North Whitehead
33. “Adults are always asking little kids what they want to be when they grow up because they’re looking for ideas.” – Paula Poundstone
34. “You do things when the opportunities come along. I’ve had periods in my life when I’ve had a bundle of ideas come along, and I’ve had long dry spells. If I get an idea next week, I’ll do something. If not, I won’t do a damn thing.” – Warren Buffet
35. “If I have a thousand ideas and only one turns out to be good, I am satisfied.” – Alfred Noble
36. “Take up one idea. Make that one idea your life. Think of it, dream of it, live on that idea. Let the brain, muscles, nerves, every part of your body, be full of that idea, and just leave every other idea alone. This is the way to success. That is way great spiritual giants are produced.” – Swami Vivekananda
37. “Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money.” – William J. Cameron
38. “No idea is so outlandish that it should not be considered.” – Winston Churchill
39. “If you are possessed by an idea, you find it expressed everywhere, you even smell it.” – Thomas Mann
40. “The ability to express an idea is well nigh as important as the idea itself.” – Bernard Baruch
41. “You can kill a man, but you can’t kill an idea.” – Medgar Evers
42. “After years of telling corporate citizens to ‘trust the system’, many companies must relearn instead to trust their people and encourage them to use neglected creative capacities in order to tap the most potent economic stimulus of all: idea power.” – Rosabeth Moss Kanter
43. “The man with a new idea is a crank — until the idea succeeds.” – Mark Twain
44. “To turn really interesting ideas and fledgling technologies into a company that can continue to innovate for years, requires a lot of discipline.” – Steve Jobs
45. “An idea is salvation by imagination.” – Frank Lloyd Wright
46. “I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones.” – John Cage
47. “The great accomplishments of man have resulted from the transmission of ideas of enthusiasm.” – Thomas Watson
48. “The new idea either finds a champion or it dies. No ordinary involvement with a new idea provides the energy required to cope with the indifference and resistance that change provokes.” – Tom Peters
49. “Our best ideas come from clerks and stockboys.” – Sam Walton
50. “Daring ideas are like chessmen moved forward: they may be beaten, but they may start a winning game.” – Goethe

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GUEST POST from Mitch Ditkoff

1. “The things we fear most in organizations — fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances — are the primary sources of creativity.” – Alfred North Whitehead
2. “The chief enemy of creativity is ‘good” sense.'” – Pablo Picasso
3. “Everyone who’s ever taken a shower has had an idea. It’s the person who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it who makes a difference.” – Nolan Bushnell
4. “As competition intensifies, the need for creative thinking increases. It is no longer enough to do the same thing better . . . no longer enough to be efficient and solve problems.” – Edward de Bono
5. “I make more mistakes than anyone else I know, and sooner or later, I patent most of them.” – Thomas Edison
6. “Creativity is thinking up new things. Innovation is doing new things.” – Theodore Levitt
7. “The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources.” – Albert Einstein
8. “Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep.” – Scott Adams
9. “Don’t think. Thinking is the enemy of creativity. It’s self-conscious, and anything self-conscious is lousy. You can’t try to do things. You simply must do things.” – Ray Bradbury
10. “Creativity is the sudden cessation of stupidity.” – Edwin Land
11. “There’s room for everybody on the planet to be creative and conscious if you are your own person. If you’re trying to be like somebody else, then there isn’t.” – Tori Amos
12. “The key question isn’t ‘What fosters creativity?’ But it is why in God’s name isn’t everyone creative? Where was the human potential lost? How was it crippled? I think therefore a good question might be not why do people create, but why do people not create.” – Abraham Maslow
13. “To live a creative life, we must lose our fear of being wrong.” – Joseph Chilton Pierce
14. “You can’t use up creativity. The more you use, the more you have.” – Maya Angelou
15. “By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The non-existent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.” – Nikos Kazantzakis
16. “Creativity is discontent translated into arts.” – Eric Hoffer
17. “A truly creative person rids him or herself of all self-imposed limitations.” – Gerald Jampolsky
18. “Things are only impossible until they’re not.” – Jean-Luc Picard
19. “Anxiety is the hand maiden of creativity.” – T.S. Eliot
20. “Creativity is piercing the mundane to find the marvelous.” – Bill Moyers
21. “The new meaning of soul is creativity and mysticism. These will become the foundation of the new psychological type and with him or her will come the new civilization.” – Otto Rank
22. “The more original a discovery, the more obvious it seems afterwards.” – Arthur Koestler
23. “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” – Henry David Thoreau
24. “If you have nothing at all to create, then perhaps you create yourself.” – Carl Jung
25. Add yours below…

Thanks to Val Vadeboncoeur for finding these great quotes.

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GUEST POST from Mitch Ditkoff

I knew I was in trouble the moment he smiled.

All I could see were four metal teeth — the front ones — the ones people use to bite things. Like an apple. Or the head of an outside consultant teaching a class on creativity to 24 managers at AT&T.

His nametag said “John Andrews,” but when it was his turn to introduce himself, it was “Master Staff Sergeant John Andrews, Fourth Battalion.”

Apparently, the man was still fighting the Vietnam war — and, by the look in his eye, it was clear he couldn’t quite tell what side I was on.

Unlike the other participants, John was wearing a suit and a tie — a tie tied so tight it seemed as if the veins in his neck would explode.

With great respect, I invited John to remove his tie, explaining that relaxation was one of the pre-conditions for creativity.

John declined.

The man was not the first tough cookie I’d encountered in my tour of corporate America. It came with the territory. Over the years, I’d learned to embrace this kind of moment. John was not the enemy. He was not a problem. He was simply someone I would need to be aware of as the session unfolded.

John was probably the same with me as he was with his wife, children, dog, and dry cleaner. He was, quite simply, a master at making people uncomfortable.

Mother Teresa could have entered the room and John would have found a way to get her walking on eggshells.

At no time during the two days of the creativity training did Master Sergeant John Andrews, Fourth Battalion, ever give me the slightest indication he was receiving any value. Not a smile. Nod a nod. Not a nothing.

When the session ended, the rest of the participants were out the door in a heartbeat. John stayed.

He was still wearing his tie.

“Do you… need any help cleaning up?” he asked.

“Yes, John, I do. Thanks.”

We both got busy picking stuff up off the floor.

Two minutes later, John, now on his hands and knees, looked up at me.

“I… wonder if I can have a few minutes of your time?” he asked. “I need some help.”

Seeing this proud man on his hands and knees, looking up at me with a mix of fear and sadness, was not a picture I’d imagined when he first bared his teeth just two days before.

According to John, his direct reports had just completed their 360 degree evaluations of him and the results were “not good.” His job was on the line and he was frozen with fear.

I have absolutely no memory of what I said to John that day. All I know is whatever came out of my mouth rang true for him.

It had nothing to do with creativity. It had nothing to do with innovation. It had a lot to do with life. John’s life. My life. All of our lives. Not the WHAT of life, but the HOW.

The difference between a life of business and the business of life.

Time stopped for the two of us. We just hung out in that space, saying nothing, doing nothing.

Then, with the barest of smiles, John stood and asked me if it would be alright if he took a second set of juggling balls home to his 14-year old son.

I found myself singing on the way home that day.

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GUEST POST from Mitch Ditkoff

Since 1986, I have asked 10,000 people where and when they get their best ideas.

Less than 2% have said “the workplace.”

Based on my 25 years of working with a ton of innovation-seeking organizations, here’s my interpretation WHY:

Recognize any?

1. Too much to do, not enough time.
2. Too many distractions and interruptions.
3. Constantly changing priorities.
4. Sleep deprivation.
5. Mental clutter.
6. Fear that someone will steal your idea.
7. You don’t think of yourself as creative.
8. Boring meetings that put you in a bad mood.
9. You’re not measured for the quantity or quality of ideas you generate.
10. Stultifying routine.
11. You are worried about layoffs and don’t want to draw undue attention to yourself.
12. Poor ventilation — not enough oxygen.
13. The last time you came up with a great idea, you were either ignored or ridiculed.
14. It’s not in your job description.
15. It’s not in the strategic plan.
16. It’s not in the cards.
17. It’s not in the Bible.
18. Your manager has made it clear that he/she does not have the time to consider your ideas.
19. Lack of immersion. Lack of incubation.
20. No one’s ever told you that they want your ideas.
21. You are understaffed and don’t have the time to try an innovative approach.
22. You are angry at the company.
23. You get no input from people outside your department.
24. Your company has just been acquired and you don’t want your new overlord to succeed.
25. You know there’s no one to pitch your new ideas to — and even if there was, it’s a long shot they would listen.
26. You’re concerned that your great idea is so great that it will actually be accepted and then you will be expected to work on it in your spare time (which you don’t have) with no extra resources made available to you.
27. All your great ideas are focused on trying to get Gina or Gary, in Marketing, to give you the time of day.
28. You’re a new parent.
29. You’ve got other projects, outside of work, and have no energy left to think about anything else.
30. They don’t pay you enough to think creatively.
31. You’re expected to leave your mind at the door when you come to work.
32. No incentives or rewards.
33. You don’t have the intrinsic motivation .
34. Actually, you don’t want to be working at all — and you wouldn’t be working if the financial meltdown didn’t happen.
35. You have not identified a challenge or opportunity that inspires you enough to think up new ideas.
36. No timely feedback from others.
37. There’s no one to collaborate with.
38. You work in a risk averse organization.
39. “Work,” for you is synonymous with things you have to do not want to do, thus creating two parallel universes that never intersect.
40. You haven’t read my award winning book yet.
41. It’s too noisy.
42. Endless hustle and bustle.
43. You can’t stop thinking about new ways to improve your Match.com profile.
44. You’re too busy tweeting.
45. You have the attention span of a tse tse fly.
46. Just when a good idea pops into your head, you dismiss it as “not good enough”.
47. Your left brain has become a kind of Attila the Hun in relation to your Pee Wee Herman-like right brain.
48. You didn’t get the memo.
49. You are too busy deleting spam.
50. The brainstorming sessions you attend are pitiful.
51. You believe that new ideas are a dime a dozen.
52. You’re not paid to think. You’re paid to DO.
53. Actually, you don’t have a job.
54. You are hypoglycemic.
55. You’re not allowed to listen to music at your desk.
56. You have no sense of urgency.
57. Your office or cubicle feels like a jail cell.
58. You’re too busy filling out forms.
59. Not enough coffee.
60. Drugs are not allowed in the workplace.
61. Existential despair.
62. There’s a call on Line 2.
63. You have no time to incubate or reflect.
64. You’ve got to show results fast.
65. You know your boss will, eventually, get all the credit for your great ideas.
66. You’ve just been assigned to another project.
67. Brain fatigue.
68. You haven’t tried Free the Genie yet.
69. You don’t feel valued or appreciated.
70. You deciphered a much talked about sighting of a Crop Circle in England as meaning: “Stop coming up with good ideas at work.”
71. Every extra minute you have is spent on Facebook.
72. There’s too much stress and pressure on the job.
73. Naysayers and idea killers surround you.
74. Inability to relax.
75. It’s summertime.
76. You’ve got this weird rash on your leg and you think it might be Lyme’s disease or leprosy.
77. What you think of as a great idea and what your manager thinks of as a great idea are two entirely different things.
78. You know you won’t get the funding, so why bother?
79. You’re just trying to get through the day.
80. Every time you get a great idea, it’s time to go to another meeting.
81. You only get your great ideas in the shower and there are no showers at work.
82. Your head is filled with a thousand things you need to do.
83. Relentless deadlines.
84. Too much input from others.
85. You have to stay focused on the “job at hand”.
86. You’ll only end up making the company richer and that is not what you want to do.
87. Those bright, annoying, overhead fluorescent lights.
88. No one besides you really cares.
89. You’ve just been assigned a project that is boring the hell out of you.
90. There is no one to brainstorm with.
91. Your husband/wife is complaining that all you ever do is work — or talk about work.
92. No alcohol.
93. Your cultural upbringing has taught you that it is not your place to conjure up new ideas.
94. Your job is too structured to think outside the box.
95. People seem to be staring at you and that makes you self-conscious.
96. You’re too busy complaining about the organization.
97. Wait! How come they’re taking so much out of your paycheck?
98. You’re only working there to beef up your resume for the next job.
99. A vast right wing conspiracy.
100. You actually believe the preceding 99 reasons are true.

A big thank you to Jim Aubele, Fran Tyson-Marchino, Nirit Sharon, Cindy Pearce, Robert Fischaleck, Deborah Medenbach, Amy de Boinville, Glenna Dumay, Bert Dromedary, and Sally Kaiser for their contributions to this list.

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