When disaster strikes and a crisis thrusts itself upon your otherwise pleasant day, will you be ready to conquer it with creativity?
This past week was, well, interesting. Let me rephrase that– this past week was almost disastrous on a few occasions. Had it not been for my creative instinct, it would have been a complete disaster. However, by the grace of God and the creativity he’s given me, I managed to conquer the crisis’ that were thrust upon me.
A perfect example
It began Sunday afternoon. I had just published a new tutorial over at GPlusTuts and was getting ready to take the rest of the day to, uh… rest. Â I posted the link to my Google+ circles and was preparing to get some good conversation within the comments as usual.
Boy was I in for a surprise.
A few commenters began informing me that when they went to click on the link, their browser was warning them that the site had been flagged as malware.
Malware? What? Surely their browsers must be mistaken. I assured them they should just go try again.
Well, sure enough, more and more comments began to come in and before I knew it, the site was blocked by Google.
In case you didn’t know, I co-founded this site with my good friend James Brooks. We have big plans for it to become the number 1 source for Google+ tips, tricks, and tutorials. So this malware attack was quite a crisis for us.
How we responded to this crisis would make or break us. I chose to respond creatively.
Instead of saying, “How can we fix this immediately?” and burying our heads in solutions, I responded with “How can we make the most of this?“
That simple switch in my thinking forced me to engage the creative side of my brain instead of the protocol/fix-it/logic side of my brain. It allowed me to take the situation by the horns and make it work for us, rather than against us.
It allowed me to come up with a great strategy in delivering more value to our subscribers, and even gain a few more! Furthermore, I came up with a great rendition of the old adage, “When life hands you lemons…“:
When life hands you lemons, squeeze them suckers into a blender with some Red Bull and ice then make something awesome out of it!
Instead of letting the fact that our site was being blocked stop our ability to deliver value, we decided to deliver the value right to our subscribers inbox with our newsletter. This crisis was going to propel our dedication to delivering value by innovating how we do it.
All in all, it was a success. People were receptive with the action that we took, and we got some great responses from it.
I’m happy to say that our site has been cleaned of all malware, and GPlusTuts.com is back in business thanks to my fellow co-founder James getting things done! While I handled the creative response strategy, he handled the behind-the-scenes cleanup.
Let your creativity conquer
The lesson I hope you take from this is that your creativity is the key to conquering any crisis that comes your way. The next time you’re faced with adversity, let your creativity take the situation by the horns and use it to your advantage.
When was the last time you were faced with a crisis? How did you go about handling it?
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