How can I say this gracefully? You aren't distinctive enough!

Knowing the value of taking field trips to see what is going on at other companies, I visited the busiest store in Colorado, the local Apple Store. It's the middle of summer and in the middle of the recession, and this store is wall-to-wall with shoppers.

I did a little research on this phenomenon. As the story goes, five years ago, Ron Johnson of Apple did something revolutionary. He took the very essence of the bars at the Ritz-Carlton hotels, purportedly the No. 1 hotel in the country, and put it inside of a brand-new Apple Store. This Genius Bar doesn't sell drinks. Instead, the "geniuses" (yes, they call the employees "geniuses," and truly the ones at Flatirons Mall and 29th Street Mall in Boulder are just that smart) provide tech support-for free.

Can you imagine anyone in our industry taking the risks to hire hundreds of experts, pay them a salary, put them behind a bar and dispense advice for free? What if Apple was charging for this like Best Buy does? Or, what if they deliberately understaffed it, using it as a gimmick instead of a predictable, great service? Or, what if they hired the cheapest people they could find and didn't train them well enough to engage with us? That would have made for a mediocre service and certain failure.

Instead, this simply creative, novel approach has changed everything for Apple. More than a million people a week visit one of Apple's retail stores. Switching from the focus of barraging people with too many iPod or Mac ads, they chose an intimate, powerful conversation that you and I can have with wonderfully smart, helpful professionals. They were so effective as ambassadors for their product that they made my wife and I feel as Mac-competent as our two daughters ... well, almost. The Apple experience has us hooked.

Can you pull off your own Genius Bar for your store, offering elements of buying the right Bible, providing proper grief recovery, helping a community cope with teenage suicide? This idea may sound extreme and radical, but Johnson understood that extremism for the sake of retail survival was necessary. That unto itself is genius.

Take a field trip this week to a successful business and learn what they are doing. The Gracefully Yours team is touring a company called Noodles, which is singularly focused on being the very best pasta restaurant. Perhaps we will come back with a renewed creative edge to make our company the very best at everyday boxed greeting cards with scripture.

Remember, organizations don't get stuck because their employees aren't creative. Most of the time what messes us up is self-censorship and organizations' naysayers that put the brakes on someone's idea that actually is remarkable.

The next time you want to criticize your company for being dull and lacking imagination, stop. Rather, criticize yourself and your colleagues for being scared.

Get your Creative Thinking started now.

Rick Tocuigny is CEO of Artbeat of America.

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