Small Acts, Big Revelations

CREATIVITY

Jun 19

The investment banker started with sticky notes. Not a grand creative vision. Just colourful squares on his home office wall, mapping thoughts that wouldn't fit in spreadsheets.

"It was nothing," he insisted. "Just thinking made visible."

Six months later, those sticky notes had evolved into a visual language for helping founders see their business models differently. His "nothing" became his everything.

The Power of Tiny Rebellions

Creativity doesn't announce itself with trumpets. For executives, it often starts with tiny rebellions against a lifetime of structure:

Writing by hand after decades of typing
Taking photos on the walk to work
Sketching during conference calls
Playing with clay while thinking

"I bought coloured pens," a board director told me, as if confessing a crime. "For years, I used black or blue. Buying purple felt revolutionary."

What Small Reveals

These examples aren't just quirks. They offer data points about who you are beyond your job description.

A pharma executive started photographing shadows during her commute: "I realised I'd been noticing light patterns for years. Just never gave myself permission to capture them."

Those shadow photos led to conversations about perspective, which led to her developing a new approach to team dynamics, all based on how different viewpoints create dimensional understanding.

The Breadcrumb Trail

Arianna Huffington's journey from media proprietor and political author to wellness advocate started with collapse—but continued through small experiments in sleep and meditation. Reid Hoffman's shift from LinkedIn co-founder to podcast philosopher began with casual conversations he decided to record.

The path reveals itself one breadcrumb at a time:

The doodle that becomes a diagram
The journal entry that becomes insight
The hobby that becomes purpose
The experiment that becomes expertise

Starting Where You Are

"I thought creativity meant big gestures," a retiring partner explained. "Turns out it meant paying attention to what I was already drawn to."

She'd been collecting unusual business cards for years. That collection became a study of design and communication. That study became consulting work on brand identity. All from noticing what she was already noticing.

Your Tiny Revolution

What small act keeps calling to you? What tiny rebellion against your professional persona wants to emerge?

The executive who started with sticky notes now runs visual strategy workshops globally. But he didn't start there. He started with one purple square on a wall, holding an idea that didn't fit anywhere else.

What's your sticky note? Sometimes transformation starts with the smallest permission to colour outside the lines.

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