History lessons reveal eight habits to unleash creativity: Ogilvy CCO

Cheong told his audience at Spikes Asia 2012 that from Newton to Einstein, St Paul, Mandela, Picasso and David Ogilvy, creative people have always espoused courage, idealism, curiosity, playfulness, candour, intuition, free-spiritedness and persistence.

He pointed out that excellence takes training and habituation. Creative people need to act rightly to gain virtue or excellence, just as Aristotle said: “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act but a habit.”

“To be creative, there is no alternative," Cheong said. "We have to be brave and fearless.” While there’s no shortage of brains in an advertising agency, it’s the vertebral column that tends to be missing. Fear is the mortal enemy of creativity, he added.

Also, creative people are idealists, but sometimes creativity is limited by what clients want. “Our aspiration is to meet the target without losing the account,” he said.

People need to be curious enough to discover all kinds of possibilities and ideas. “Curiosity is the pre-cursur of creativity,” Cheong said.

Playfulness is about the mood of the workplace. A working environment needs to be fun and inspiring. Cheong mentioned author Kurt Vonnegut, who said that we are here on earth to fart around, and don’t let anybody tell you different.

Creative people should also be honest and straightforward. People are afraid of speaking their minds because they don’t want to alienate other people, but lack of candour is the ultimate form of alienation and is what actually destroys trust, Cheong said.

“Intuition is led by the heart,” he said. The unconscious mind takes up 95 per cent of our mind. “The best ideas come from the unconscious mind.”

Creativity also requires free spiritedness and persistence. Experience and knowledge are important, but sometimes they make people sensible, predictable and dull. Creative people should keep their minds open and ditch self-doubt, he concluded.