The Art of Creating Something by Divyank Shukla
Creativity is a virtue that I am passionate about. I don’t think that I have mastered the art of creation, yet. Nevertheless, I have been successful in creating few things. Incubating interest of my elder son, in a subject of my choice is one such instance of creation. Another example of a successful creation, is a product that solves Data availability problem in Data Centre. This is when I spotted a pattern in my creation process. The Seven Steps of Creation outlined below is the result of thought crystallization of the process involved during the creation.
Step 1: Prepare yourself (your mind) as if the ‘THING’ is created. This is usually self talk where you try to explain or enumerate or answer the below questions:
A) How would the creation look like? How would it interact with other already created members and objects? How would it interact with you?
B) How do other creations interact and essentially behave in different circumstances?
C) What is the trail of thoughts of the creators of these objects? Can you reason the behavioral changes in object due to the seed thought process of its creators.
D) What are the essential pre-requisites of the created object?
E) What are the most important properties of the object? How can the properties of the objects be classified into ‘must have’ and ‘nice to have’ components?
F) What is the simplest property of the object?
G) If you wish to milestone your creation, then you must imagine what would be the first milestone and what could be the subsequent milestones?
Note that in this step, you are trying to create the THING in our mind. It’s a situation where the mind and the body are assessing and trying to create the thing virtually. Your situation is quite similar to like a mother who is expecting a baby. It’s common in the folklore that expecting mothers view pictures of babies around to imagine their ultimate creation.
Step 2: Pick any existing object that seemingly matches the object you want to create. Experiment with it. Tailor it according to your needs. Make a list of the needs it satisfies. If one is creating a Group or a Team of individuals then the First Person you are working with becomes the minimalist entity, am talking about.
Step 3: Perform Step 2 till you have created or altered your first simple version. The first version should have the minimal essential features that the object must have.
Step 4: Introspect on the piece you just created. This step is like a plateau, and is a time for your system to take stock of what has just happened. Look back from where you started. Collect some sense of achievement for your efforts; motivate/reward your components for the work ahead. This is the time when you can look back with a bit of criticism and form a To-Do list. Take a stock of Pros/Cons of approach. Adjust your goals/milestones. Make sure your creation is self-sustainable.
Step 5: Create an environment where you can test the creation against the pre-determined standards for what you think will let you know its pitfalls against new additions. This is a critical step and aspect of any creation. This will help in comparing what is created to what we intended to create.
Step 6: This is another important and possibly the penultimate step to your creation process and is the last chance to give it your touch. Re-Look at the things to see if you could fasten the whole creation process by re-arranging. This is essentially to enhance the “change management capability” in your creation. Use the framework in Step 5 to periodically check the changes against intended changes. Both the intention and expectation of creation and effort must match, if it does not match, repeat this step.
Step 7: Viola!!! You have created something. It could be small/big/simple/complex Product/Team/ Company/Dish. See if you can enhance Step 1 by adding more abilities and start to think to create more.
