The more I think about the new world of work…the need to be Remarkable and the fact that our careers as marketers are going to demand more and more creativity, the more I realize we have to break out of our habits of how we attack problems and challenges in our business.

Whether it is going to an art gallery, interviewing leading social media thinkers, or thinking about Dan Pink’s (disclosure: client) new book: Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, it just becoming more and more clear that the paradigm of how we are creative and innovate needs to change.

Now, I am far from an expert, but I am an active experimenter, so when Jess, the community manager for JackBe’s Mashup Developer Community (the same one that a Forrester Groundswell Award Finalist) said that she wanted to “talk strategy, but out of the office,” I wholeheartedly agreed.

She met me at Brookside Gardens, where we came upon a Labyrinth during our meanderings. The sign said:

Many newly made labyrinths exist today, in churches and parks. Labyrinths are used by modern mystics to help achieve a contemplative state. Walking among the turnings, one loses track of direction and of the outside world, and thus quiets the mind.

Now, I don’t know which came first, but I’ll tell you this…after our walk, we sat down on a bench, devoid of laptops and whiteboards, surrounded by trees in their fall foliage instead of cubicles and brown walls, and you know what?

We accomplished our objective in about 1/3rd of the time that it would have taken in an office…and with much greater clarity.

So, next time you need to think about how to be Remarkable…get yourself out of the office and put away the laptops.

 

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