The inspiration for this SCAB came from a brilliant and timed comment that was made from my fellow student Gwen.

Gwen, Nabeel and I were in the midst of a creative storm this afternoon. Gwen was sat in a cafe in Amsterdam for better Wi-Fi connection, Nabeel found a quiet(ish) space at SCA2.0 HQ and I was sat in my living room in the Cotswolds.

Birth rates were up and babies were being killed like childbirth was going out of fashion. You know when you can get away of killing other people’s babies quick versus when you have to take a more delicate nurturing approach – you’ve just killed a load of siblings from the same family! You don’t want to stop those ideas from coming before your team member loses the will for any kind of participation for fear that any idea they come up with will be shot to pieces before they’ve finished their sentence (we’ve all been on both sides of this scenario). But we only had 20 mins before the next brilliant masterclass which happened to be about ‘Time Management’. We are in the Emergency Room, rapid-fire, judgement, precise decision, prompt action, every second counts.

It was getting to that stage when Gwen just said, let’s put that baby up for adoption. Just brilliant!
We all agreed that the baby will be used in another campaign and we laughed it off.

Seven days earlier…

Mark Palmer gave us a brilliant Masterclass about Greenhousing from the book Sticky Wisdom. I absolutely loved this masterclass, in part because I introduced Sticky Wisdom in my workplace nearly 20 years ago and I’ve always sworn by it, especially Greenhousing. I’ve bought about 5 copies of the book over the years because I keep lending it to people and when you lend someone a book, well, let’s face it, you never get it back, especially if it’s a good’n!

An opportunity for a reminder of Greenhousing when storming creative ideas:

Give it some sun, try these:

‘Tell me more’
‘How did you get that idea’
‘What would it look like?’
‘How do you see that coming to life?”
‘How would I tell someone else the good things about this idea?’
‘What would the most positive consequences be?’

And take a rain check with these:
‘Yes, but’

‘That won’t work because…’
‘We don’t have time for thus right now’
‘We’ve tried this before’
‘That won’t work because…’
‘Have you really thought about the consequences?’

Anyways, I’m connecting dots here with chucking baba’s in the bin versus nurturing them in a
Greenhouse but Greenhousing can sometimes feel like too much of an ordeal when you just don’t
have the time, but of course you have to take into account people’s feelings. We creatives are a
sensitive bunch.

As the book declares, the Emergency Room and the Greenhouse don’t mix, so, putting your baby
up for adoption, an idea by Gwen, appears to me to be a very happy medium and one that seems
so much easier to live with.

@pascaline_smith