The Creativity Suite. Episode 130: Six degrees of Creativity.

Here is a question for you: If knowing the right person to make your ideas happen is so valuable, and if knowing how to correctly ask them for what you need is crucial for innovation, then why are we not spending more time helping people develop their network and mastering the art of the ask?

I chose to call this text “Six Degrees of Creativity” as a twist on “Six Degrees of Separation,” the idea that everyone is connected to everyone in no more than six connections. The more I interview creative people, the more I understand how important a person’s network is for ideas to happen.

Six Degrees of Creativity implies that every person is a maximum of six degrees of separation away from making their best idea happen if they just use their network in the right way.

The person who inspired me to write this text is the Head of Marketing at a multinational company based in Dublin. When I interviewed their work and how the company works with making ideas happen, they said: “We are really a people business. When we tackle a problem for our clients we look for the best combination of skillsets from within the organisation. It’s almost like a formula where we ask ourselves what kind of minds do we need to solve this problem?”

With way over 500,000 highly skilled people around the world, the company really can pull together a team with the optimal skillsets.

 “It’s when you add the right people (to a group) that the magic happens. There is a power in being collectively clever, original and inventive”, they said.  

But with so many competent people to potentially connect with, the skill becomes knowing who to ask and how.

They told me how, at their company, they have a culture of being able to ask questions.

“I have access to global teams, loads of different content experts in a vast number of areas, but you need to know where to knock.”  

Knowing who to ask and when is like being an air traffic controller of ideas balancing who to ask, about what and when.

But it’s not enough to be able to know who to ask for help/input at the right time, you also need to know how to ask.

Let’s call that “the art of the ask”.

A person who is constantly asking everyone, who is asking for the wrong thing from the wrong person or asking at the wrong time is soon going to shrink their network as well as dilute any credibility they might have.  

Knowing when, who and how to ask is about understanding context, consequences, and communication.

A well phrased question or request at the right time to the right person is a gift. Done wrong it’s an annoyance.

It might just be the difference between your idea becoming a success or never being realized.  

So practice the art of the ask, both how to ask and knowing who to ask. Because the art of asking is a skill that can be taught, and considering how important it is for your ideas to become a reality, it might just be the most important skill you can practice.