admin Posted on 5:44 pm

The winning mindset for creative solutions under pressure

For fifteen years, part of my job was to brainstorm creative ideas every week, under extreme time pressure, with about a million people watching.

I was good at it.

Really good.

But I didn’t start out being good at coming up with creative ideas under pressure. I had to learn.

In my case, the creative ideas were necessary because I was the executive producer of a hit comedy television show. In your case, creative ideas are necessary because the outcome of your situation may depend on them.

Sure, there are some high-pressure situations that don’t require creativity, particularly those that involve repeated physical actions. Shooting the free kick that determines the game, for example, doesn’t require much creativity. It’s definitely a lot of pressure, but it’s done more or less from memory.

Same with landing a plane. Take it from me, a private pilot. I’ve done hundreds of landings, and apart from the first few when I was learning, they’re pretty routine. And they are even more routine for an airplane pilot, who has made thousands and thousands of landings. They do not require much creativity.

Until something goes wrong.

On July 19, 1989, United Flight 232, en route from Denver to Chicago, lost all three hydraulic systems at 37,000 feet above the ground. What this means, in layman’s terms, is that all flight controls were instantly rendered useless. Imagine if you were driving down a highway and suddenly neither the steering wheel nor the brakes did anything. Now imagine that you are seven miles in the air, traveling at 500 miles per hour, with almost 300 people in your car.

That is pressure. And it required creativity.

Together, the crew found that they could maneuver the plane, albeit roughly, by manipulating the throttles on the multiple engines. It wasn’t perfect. The right wing skimmed the runway on landing and the plane caught fire. Almost half of the people on board died. But more than half survived. Why?

Because the team came up with a creative solution, in the midst of one of the most pressure-filled situations imaginable.

Your high-pressure situations may not be so dire; in fact, I feel pretty safe in predicting that they never will be. But, unless you’re shooting that free throw out of muscle memory, they likely require the same kind of creativity.

So here’s the key mindset to have in that situation: Don’t rule anything out.

“That’s crazy, let’s get back to reality!”

“I’m not going to listen to an idea that comes from a humble intern!”

“That won’t work, because the engines aren’t made to turn the plane!”

When the pressure is on, does it matter how crazy the idea may seem or who came up with it?

Of course not. All that matters, at that point, is a successful outcome.

So put your ego aside. Listen to all the ideas.

Because that idea you’re about to throw away… could be the one that saves the day.

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