" Although we, as creative minds, would rather not think about it, the sad truth is that most of our ideas will never see the light of day. Indeed, brilliant breakthroughs are conceived and plundered in the hands of creative geniuses all the time. But why?

Creativity, it seems, is not only the catalyst for new ideas. Creativity is also the greatest obstacle to seeing our ideas through to the finish.

So, what is this darker side of creativity that obstructs progress?

It is the series of negative tendencies and challenges that accompany the creative psyche: The self-doubts; The distaste for negative feedback; The tendency to use idea-generation as a way to escape the pain of self-discipline and execution; The rampant disorganization that (supposedly) fosters creative thinking.

It turns out that ideas don’t happen because they’re great—or by accident. Ideas are made to happen through a series of other forces. And And the most neglected among them is organization. Great execution starts with supreme organization. 

Ultimately, organization comes down to howyou manage your energy. Contrary to popular belief, organization is not about “neatness,” it is about efficiency and allowing yourself to take action as swiftly as possible."

Thank you Scott Belsky for writing this.

2 years ago my assistant, La Toya, sent a press release to a young reporter at one of the daily newspapers.

Our client, the Managing Director  of a  new  hotel,  said that the reporter had called several times for an interview that they had developed a rapport and she would be the best person to whom we should send the release. 

Typically, I would have cautioned against going with anyone new (this particular reporter had just finished her internship with the newspaper)  but this was a press release announcement  giving facts on the hotel’s progress. There were questions about its late  opening and budget overruns. 

Should have been simple enough,

Except that on the day we opened the newspaper, the press release became an article with  every single quote   ascribed to my assistant, La Toya, whose only role  was to press the send button with her email signature at the bottom for inquires.

 We were mad. The client, well, he was livid.

When we called and asked for  ( and yes after 2 days passed, demanded )  a corrected version we were told  by an obviously embarrassed reporter that the editor  said no.  La Toya’s  email address was at the bottom of the release,  this particular editor assumed (incorrectly) that  the quotes had come  from her. "Next time don’t do that," we were told.

 Everything between the client and my firm went downhill from there. I would go so far to say we lost a valuable contract  because an editor refused to admit that she got it wrong.

It’s unfortunate, but I have several  stories like that. Stories where  reporters and editors  neglect correction requests with little consequence. Where the buck stops with one person and you have little or no recourse to appeal. 

I know that minor errors  in the news  are part and parcel of  journalism with its rushed deadlines, understaffed newsrooms and sometimes an over zealous need to create a headline with more sizzle then substance.  But what happens when what is being reported is so wrong, (and I am not talking about a typo in a name or a puntuation mistake ) and the the “oh oh we blew it” is so serious that the small  square retraction box buried under the weather box  on Page 3  does not quite seem to suffice.

Scott Maier, associate professor of journalism at the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communication writes  on the Poynter website" that a  better rule of thumb is needed for reporters who get  the big picture and the small facts wrong.

Here’s some  statistics from Maier’s  research  on corrections by the media.

“Industry and scholarly research have documented time and time again that errors in the news media are disturbingly common. The largest accuracy audit, a recent study that Philip Meyer and I conducted of 22 newspapers, found an error rate among the highest in seven decades of accuracy research: over 59 percent of local news and feature stories were found by news sources to have at least one error. 

"In nearly the same proportion, news sources identified 'subjective errors' -- information considered technically correct but misleading," Maier said. 

"But these errors of meaning were what news sources found most egregious -- and measurably damaging to media credibility.”

Of the people Maier  surveyed, only one in 10 informed newspapers about errors. 

“Many said they thought the inaccuracies were inconsequential. But some wondered why they should bother reporting errors and assumed newspapers wouldn't respond. When asked to review stories for accuracy, news sources found factual errors in about every other news and feature story.”

I am not sure what the answers are:  opportunities for the wronged party to  give another view of the story, a corrected headline that circumvents the wrong one, deleting an article  if published on the web, tying correction rates to performance evaluations of reporters. Or may be it really lies in taking the time to recheck  the work sentence by sentence, and thereafter  hold reporters and editors accountable for mistakes. 

 We hold  journalists to a higher standard than most other professionals.  We are told, and know it is human to err but I think when newsrooms refuse to admit error, when they set themselves up to be the ultimate arbiter of what is right and wrong, true or false, that’s when the very foundation of  begins to crumble.

When we trained Angostura’s  corporate  communications team last week on the value and impact of social media to their brand, we mentioned how effective it would be if they developed some of their products into virtual gifts allowing their fans (who in Trinidad and Tobago does not feel  proud that  Bitters or 1919 was made here; both products also enjoy worldwide recognition) to pass it on as a non physical, albeit important objects in the social world. 

Don’t discount the power of virtual gifting for though it may take a while for your executives to stop scratching their heads, virtual gifting has become a powerful measure of word of mouth marketing and an important tool for marketers.

Mc Kinsey, one of the world’s most respected firms  to  advise  on issues of strategy, organization, technology, and operations,  reports that these gifts play an important role in facilitating virtual word of mouth. 

 “While the notion of virtual goods—nonphysical objects used in online communities and games—still puzzles many executives, it’s quite apparent that consumers love them.”  People acquire or compete for virtual items obsessively on Foursquare, Zynga, facebook and it is estimated that virtual goods have become a very real $5 billion industry worldwide.

To read more about how brands can unlock the potential of social networks this article  is a must read. 

...At least that’s what I felt like when the Request for Proposal (RFP) from a fairly large company landed on my desk.  

Here was what the letter said.

You are required to write and edit our supplement that will be inserted to the 2 daily newspapers. Mango Media Caribbean is required to raise funding through  advertising. Let us know the cost and how you  intend to the achieve our objectives. Note that should Mango Media Caribbean not raise enough money from advertising, the firm will not be paid for writing and editing the supplement

Hmmmmm.

Needless to say I asked a few questions, just to be sure I got the RFP right.

“Are you saying that if the  company does not raise the required advertising dollars,  we will not be paid for the editorial work ?”

It sounded more incredulous once it was in black and white. And wouldn’t you know it I never heard from that company again.

Maybe as service providers we have the word fool  (or worse) seared into our heads. I guess some large firms  figure that  in a tough economy small companies  may be hungry and/or  desperate for work and willing to accept all kinds of conditions and demands.

For sure, some other consultant took that firm up  on their  offer. That their strategy was  to see if they could throw an outrageous request onto the wall and like pasta see which noodle  would  stick.

I’m not paranoid. 

Over the past last year in particular I’ve come across  a number  of firms who if you ask them about budget, you’d  get no response. Inquire  on  the timing of a  decision after a proposal is written and they don’t know. Ask them about payment and it's a trade secret.

In fact their perfect service provider  is small, eager, and not quite  aware fact that there still a lot of  valuable business to be   from respectful clients if only for the patience and the gumption to find them.

Thankfully as tough as the business climate may be, we’re not one of them.

This week my friend Nikola Lashley returns from a sojourn, heart sore yet revived.

Nikola has spent the last 5 weeks traveling through the Caribbean recording the magic, erasing the  myths and capturing  the mystery of the islands for a series of publications which she is writing.

From her brief teases on facebook, this was not a physical journey as much as it was a spiritual one.  And I could tell that in the time away my  friend  found a  space to make decisions long overdue.

We all need that, don’t we?  

Room to breathe. 

Time away from the clutter and the noise. 

 A space to stretch something other  than our  busy fingers across static computer keyboards.

That what I told my colleague, Reinaldo Novoa, a web developer, who is currently working   on giving this  blog better functionality and along with  web designer Ryan Olton,  a new look.

 “ It’s too cluttered I said, the design needs room to breathe.” What I was really asking for was more space. 

I know this is something  most  of my clients hate seeing. More space represents a waste of money,  so logos  must be bigger,  every nook and cranny of a page filled  to the hilt with text and pictures and  more text.

But doing so crowds the message. And really that's applicable to everything.  Crowded letters, crowded ads, crowded 60-second spots drown out the meaning and you  can’t hear anything.  Certainly not the meaning or purpose of the communication. 

Certainly  not the rhythm of  life.

I am with Nikola on this journey. With everything, MORE SPACE PLEASE.

Someone asked me this yesterday. This wasn't about saying “No Comment”  but rather about being quoted on a situation about their industry but  not directly related to their organisation.

 There maybe lots of good reasons to stay silent, but one simple question to ask is  whether anyone will miss you (your organisation’s voice) if you don't provide a comment.

 Plenty of reporters will call for comment on issues or events that are tangential to your business. If the story is not about your organisation, stay out of it unless you have a clear message that you know will make it into the story and you are comfortable that the story won't turn into something you don't want to be part of. 

Here are some other reasons by Ragan contributor Jim Cameron

1) When you have history with a reporter / publication that misquotes you and always gets the story wrong.

2)When you are asked for confidential, proprietary or personal info not relevant to the topic. 

3) When you don't have a message and therefore end up in what feels like a deposition.

Are there any other reasons I have missed?

1) Get strategic about your time. First, ask yourself what you’d like to be doing during the hours you have each week. What activities could create happy memories for you and your family? How can you spend your hours nurturing your own soul – praying, reading, exercising. When you find the answers, act on them.

2) Log your hours, do this  at least for a week. Chances are you’ll find you have more than enough time in a day to take the dance class you’ve been talking about or  to meet up with friends.

3) If money is not an issue, then outsource. Yep, that applies to  housework too. 

4) At the office, don’t ever mistake things that look like work for actual work. 

5) If you hate commuting and the traffic,  ask your boss  for some days where you can  telecommute. Make sure you have a plan of  accountability before requesting to work some days from home,  it will help your case.

This week I've been collecting stories from friends, strangers and the web about time: how we use it, how we spend it and why we waste it.

This response comes from the brilliant Laura Vanderkam author of 168 Hours, You Have More Time Than You Think. 

"I think the answer is that most of us aren't very strategic about our hours. 

We tend to live life as it comes at us, which in our distracted world happens very fast. 

We don't think about how we want to spend our time, and so we spend massive amounts of time on things-television, Web surfing, random conference calls or meetings, housework, errands-that give a slight amount of pleasure or feeling of accomplishment, but do little for our careers, our families, or our personal lives.

We spend very little time on things that require more thought or initiative, like nurturing our kids (not just plopping them in front of the TV), exercising, or engaging in deliberate practice of our professional crafts. We try to squeeze these high-impact activities around the edges of things that are easy, or that seem inevitable merely because we always do them or because we think others expect us to. "

No wonder it is we feel overworked and under-rested, and tend to believe stories that confirm this view. Your thoughts?

I am convinced that what business needs now is quiet.

I mean sweet and deliberate quiet; time away from the constant dictates of the information age, hours far from the mind numbing search for endless stimulation on facebook and twitter, and at least one hour a day where the engagement happens not on line but with the person in the cubicle right next to yours.

I am convinced that all these changes  will not just raise well being and happiness at work, but cut down on the time spent there.

My friend, Natalie Suite, a marketing manager and an adventurer who spends hours on the ocean on a kayak, or jumping from planes in a parachute, or running for miles in solitude would call this detachment essential criteria for living.

“Real thinking,” Natalie said last Saturday during the wee hours of the morning as we, 5 women, sipped wine in an apartment that overlooked a moonlit ocean, “comes in the quiet moments when you can calm your mind and wade through the voices in your head.”

Natalie was right about the value of stillness in the personal context but it seems that at work, the very place where leaders and yes, even employees need to be still in order to create, make decisions, and clear their desks, what we have bought into is the complete opposite.

We receive information faster than we can absorb and react to it. We reply instantly to emails. We seek distraction from the job at hand. We stream World Cup football as we open documents and try to work on them. We surf rather than dive into content. We utilise precious hours in the vast space of the information age but we really don’t have the time or inclination to penetrate its depths.

Yet there is little evidence that our relentless pursuit of information and constant stimulation has helped us make better decisions or live better lives or even be more efficient at work.

I only realised the truth in the sheer beauty of this over the past month as I held two pressure posts and decided to use an altogether different approach to the way I worked.

I switched off my constant love affair with the Internet, decided on the hours I would go online to rspond to emails, stopped working with Twitter and facebook in the background. The result? I produced twice the amount of work in half the time, (I’ve always produced a high volume of work and was very surprised by this  result), was less stressed and had lots more time to connect in less virtual ways.

My experience is borne out by recent research which says that multitaskers are worse at noticing important aspects of their surroundings than those who consume information more deliberately. They also tend to spend more time at work since their focus is largely absent.

What’s the alternative? I agree with Natalie. Calm deliberation has a place and not just in your personal life. I am not talking about lethargy, nor a slow down in getting things done but an approach  to work that avoids the cacophony of modern technology, one that makes our mental lives  look less like an unproductive churn.

How and  when can this happen? That will be  the  subject of a series of posts starting this week.

Our client, Rachel De Gale, of the Barbados Fertility Clinic called me just a couple of hours ago. 

She was thrilled with an article that one of our senior writers, Kathyann, had produced and wanted to  convey her excitement voice-to-voice.  “An email,” she gushed, “would simply not have been enough to say how wonderful she thought the piece was.”

What remarkable words! 

What a remarkable  thing to do! 

Not just because the phone call  celebrated the excellence of one of  our team members  but because Rachel communicated her gratitude  in such a personal way. 

 Of course I called over to Kathyann immediately. Of course she was delighted with the news. And of course I thought “this is what  Mango Media Caribbean is all about; co-creating with a team of exceptional folks  to have a PR practice  that delights clients.

The object isn’t to be perfect. Kathy ann actually wrote the  article in three hours. And Rachel’s  goal wasn’t to hold back  her praise  until we created something beyond reproach. (There were some changes to be made in the piece ). 

But here’s what is  at the core of what we do day-in and day-out

Every day we  try to be true to the firm’s birthright, to go in search of and deliver something bigger than our clients imagine. 

To do anything else is such an awful waste.