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Book Review

The Accidental Creative

Summary

The Accidental Creative is about implementing practices that stimulate creative ideas and solutions to my business and project challenges.  Although the title suggests otherwise, the book was not written solely for those in visual jobs (like graphic designers).  Henry was careful to include suggestions and practices for more “traditional” business types like project managers, software programmers, consultants.  I immensely enjoyed the book and finished with a large number of great ideas that I am applying immediately.

The book is divided into two sections.  The first one-deals with reviewing the pressures felt by “creatives” (a term he uses to describe those who are tasked with solving problems, developing strategies or new ideas) and how common practices in the business world work against them.  The remaining sections of the book are practices and techniques one can implement to help overcome the impediments and output quality work.

The real power in Henry's work for project managers and IT professionals is in the second part.  Chapters 4 to 10 are devoted to techniques and tips for better focus of tasks, leveraging and building relationships, managing energy.  All are relevant and contain great ideas that can be implemented immediately.  One particular passage that I found relevant was what Henry calls “The Ping” - that constant urge to check email, blogs and social media accounts, surf the web for the topic of the minute.  All this activity robs us of focus and ability to be deeply engaged in work.  Recognizing “The Ping” is half the battle and Henry gives some concrete examples to fight back. Todd Henry provides a step by step program for creating and implementing a constant stream of innovative ideas at any time and under any circumstances. Todd Henry recognizes that everyone is creative in both small and large ways, in all areas of their lives. For most people, they are not even aware of their creative and idea generating abilities. For the author, creative thinking is simply another aspect of being human. Todd Henry provides advice and structure for people in traditionally creative positions and industries. At the same time, the author shares strategies for people in supposedly non-creative roles and industries to demonstrate innovative brilliance any time that the need arises in their jobs. For Todd Henry, people are very often called upon to create fresh ideas on very short notice. To achieve this creativity on demand skill, the author offers techniques to be trained and prepared for the purpose of creative thinking and innovation. The aim of this paper is to present a summary of 'The Accidental Creative' by Todd Henry and then apply the knowledge gained of the Safety Management from the book to a company. The book highlighted some ideas such as:

To help maintain creativity try to focus on one thing at a time. Trying to multitask only serves to distract my attention from one thing to the next. Try to complete one task instead of jumping back and forth between them. This way your mind is ...