Danger Surfing

In a recent Entrepreneur article, management columnist Scott Halford introduced a new phrase to my vocabulary: danger surfing. As the term sounds, it involves the brain searching situations for danger. If danger is picked up, the brain will stop us from continuing, keeping us out of harm's way. The upside is that it's a perfectly fine survival technique. The downside is that danger surfing in an innate tendency. It's just happens; and because of this, it can also hamper our creativity and prevent us from implementing new ideas within our businesses.

In the retail design world, creativity and problem-solving are two key ingredients for a project's success. Often new ideas are thrown out on the table, and our brain's danger surfing will cause us to find all the things that are wrong with the new ideas instead of seeing all the possibility they possess.

Fortunately, danger surfing can be overridden (as evidenced by all the creative design solutions that have made it to the retail environment). To do it, Halford suggests we:

• Play the "Yes and..." game - Instead of shooting down an idea, add to it and let the creativity fly.
• Hold separate meetings for creating and evaluating - Being creative uses one brain process and critiquing uses another. Once you enter the critical frame of mind, it's hard to revert back to the creative side.
• Take a moment - Halford writes that it "takes approximately six seconds from the time a negative emotion is felt (i.e., disgust or disdain) and the dissipation of the hormones that make you want to blurt out a nasty remark." He suggests counting to 10 before responding. This should help you be more productive instead of hurting the creative process.