How To Be Creative is a theme that surfaces again and again when I sit down to write. Not because people flock to me asking, “Oh Beth, you creative wizard, will you please publish your wisdom?!” Nope, that’s not the spark that lights my blog-posting flame. Most of the time, my creativity-focused posts begin from a [...]
Lucky you! You get to speak at an industry event, corporate conference, or team meeting. No doubt, your presentation will include a set of slides. Slides are a de facto requirement for most business presentations. You gotta have ‘em, right? Incidentally, Jill and I have decided we don’t gotta have ‘em. In Story Mode, we avoid [...]
As 2022 drew to a close, several of my friends announced that they were stepping away from social media, at least until January. To detox from the digital noise, they chose to disconnect. Stepping away can be good practice for analog conversations, too. In tense situations, sometimes the best response is no response at all. Step [...]
So much workplace communication is just crap. Big words trying to sound smart and important. Vague words trying to obscure the specifics. Jargon trying to belong with the insiders’ club. And OMG the acronyms. Several years ago, I invented an acronym to illustrate just how senseless and confusing the vocabulary of business can be: C.R.A.P. = [...]
As the holidays approach, I’m refining a new party trick. Let me try it on you, right now. “I bet I can guess the slide headlines on your most recent presentation.” “No way,” you say. “You don’t even know what I do for a living. You don’t know who was in my audience, and you have [...]
When people ask me what I do for a living, I say I’m a creativity consultant. The obvious comeback is, “Huh?” And for that, I have an answer: “I show business people how to use creativity and storytelling to communicate and get things done at work.” This explanation generally elicits one of two comments, one I [...]
When Jill and I started our Story Mode program, we easily landed on our motto/tagline/hashtag: Refuse To Be Boring. This phrase is our “way.” It’s our constant reminder and also an apt description of how we think, act, talk, create, work, relate. It’s how we live. We spend so much time refusing to be boring, we [...]
A decade ago, I accidentally invented a brainstorming rule. Scratch that. The only “rule” in brainstorming is that no idea is a bad idea. Otherwise, no rules. So, what should we call this thing that isn’t a rule? Is it a concept? A theory? A principle? A technique? A strategy? ^^^ That right there is exactly [...]
“I thought it would be easy.” When Jill and I use this prompt as a warm-up exercise in our Story Mode workshops, the result is always a fascinating variety of struggle stories. After just three minutes of writing, participants share vivid scenes that range from heart-wrenching to hilarious. The loss of an aged pet. A first [...]
When it comes to creative communication, I am not fond of rules—unless I’m breaking them. I tweak templates, bust boundaries, and write wrong. Perhaps this is why I’m self-employed; I take serious pleasure in challenging “the way we’ve always done it” and going against the grain. But in our Story Mode workshops, Jill and I enforce [...]