Creative teams—creative individuals: learning to succeed in the Conceptual Age
(c) Alan Hancock 2018
'Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing
but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else,
and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of
reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any
service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own
children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these
children. Stick to Facts, sir!'
Charles Dickens: ‘Hard Times’
The limits of knowledge
We live in an age of information and knowledge. This is the message we get from the mass media; it seems like a given when we try to sum up how our culture is changing in the 21st century. There is more knowledge available to us all now than ever before. Knowledge is valuable—it can be bought, sold and stolen; it drives whole areas of our economies. As Waldo Emerson pointed out, ‘There is no knowledge that is not power’. Our education systems operate on this premise, with the transmission and acquisition of knowledge as their first priority and raison d’être. Knowledge, it seems, is a commodity that we all need to trade in.
But if look a little closer at the concept of knowledge, we will see that all is not that simple. We will see that the people who we admire for their creative and innovative application of knowledge do not see things this way. Because knowledge exists in a field of ignorance, in an environment of all the things we do not know. And it follows that as knowledge expands, so does our ignorance, as we become aware of more that we need to know. This boundary of knowledge and ignorance is where learning and creativity arise, and this does not proceed in an orderly or logical process. The more we learn, the more we look back on what we used to know and see much of it as incomplete or incorrect. The dean of Harvard Medical School warns incoming students that in ten years time 50% of what they have learned will prove to be wrong. The problem is that they do not know which 50%. (Kerwin, 2011) Knowledge is never fixed, stable or certain – it is a process, always in flux, and always provisional. Philosopher and academic consultant Dr Ann Kerwin (2011) puts it bluntly:
If you plan on living on this planet, I opine, you had better get good at learning. You had better prepare for ambiguity, complexity, and uncertainty. You had better get used to not knowing what to do yet having to find your way through unfamiliar, threatening, and exhilarating territory.
Creativity is a risky business
Learning is an uncertain business – it is wise for all of us to question assumptions, to test ‘knowledge’ for its truth and value. We need to ask continually whether what we are doing is the best or only way to proceed. We will do well to take the advice of Reik (cited in Townley & Beech , 2010, p. 3): ‘I suggest that the seeker forget what he has learned, neglect what he has read, and listen to his own experience.’ If we seek to find creative, innovative solutions, we will have to give up any claim of certainty. We will have to take risks.
Kerwin taught the philosophy of ignorance to students at Arizona State Medical School, people who expected certainty from their teachers, not an admission of knowing nothing, for sure. When she invited famous speakers as guest lecturers she told them to leave their books at the door. They could only talk about what they did not know, the mistakes they had made, and the things they had published that turned out to be wrong. Discussions suddenly took on a new energy: students adopted a much more pro-active and creative role in their learning. They learned to develop a trust in their tacit knowledge, and to adopt a questioning attitude to anything presented to them as fact. Kerwin sees her subject as ignorance, as opposed to knowledge, and champions the pursuit of learning, rather than knowing:
And what is true for science is true for all learning. It is messy, enticing, provisional, unending. It is a chase, a quest, a human avocation. This is one reason why experienced learners do not collapse when their "solutions" do. We, too, have what it takes to learn boldly: creativity and ignorance—two abundant, selfrenewing natural resources. Moreover, ignorance is a growth industry. Its inventory encompasses much of what we now claim to know; all we will discover; all we will recant; and everything to be puzzled at. For an inquiring mind with limited powers and propulsive curiosity, this means that nearly something about nearly everything is fair game for an active ignoramus. Learning—that dynamic interplay of questions and hypotheses, wonder, mystery, failure, invention, revelation, and frustration—finds in ignorance a powerful, unacknowledged muse. (2011)
I apply her ideas in my own undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. One exercise I give my students is to write a letter to an expert in their field of study, asking for answers to their questions. I then ask them to write the reply – as if they were taking the role of the expert. The results are often surprising, and reveal the students’ intuitive knowledge that had no outlet in a rational, logical form. They learn to be creative thinkers and learners. They learn to question the validity of always referring to ‘experts’ in their field of study, and expecting to advance their studies by simply cramming as much second-hand expertise as possible into their minds. As Kerwin (2011) puts it so eloquently:
I’m not against talking and I’m not opposed to listening. I don’t mind note-taking and I love a good lecture. But sheer knowledge acquisition—especially of short-term, hastily stuffed, undigested, unsought, unconnected, and unwanted factlets of dubious relevance—is not learning. Nor is it likely to promote learning. Worse, mindless knowledge acquisition may prevent learning just because so many students think they are learning when they binge and purge unabsorbed material.
When we are able to question received wisdom we open up our creativity, in business as in education and training, in science as in art. Inventor and philanthropist Trevor Baylis (2011) was able to solve a major social and economic problem by applying to his work just this kind of creative thinking:
In 1993, Trevor watched a program about the spread of AIDS in Africa, which observed that in many regions radio was the only available means of communication, but the need for batteries or electricity made them too expensive or too difficult to access. There was a need for an educational tool that did not rely on electricity. Trevor picked up on the word 'need'. Need is the catalyst for an inventor's 'raison d'être' and Trevor rose to the occasion.
Other companies had pushed on with developing better or rechargeable batteries —electric power in these villages was absent or unreliable. Batteries were expensive and difficult to obtain. No matter how much research they put into this the problem remained: the batteries eventually died, villagers could not afford new batteries, and mains power was not available. But Baylis questioned the assumption—the knowledge—that radios must have batteries. He remembered the clockwork alarm clock he had owned many years before. Why not make a clockwork radio? The idea was illogical—but it worked. A simple winding mechanism drives a dynamo that can supply power to the radio: his invention was a world-first. These radios are now in use all over rural Africa, and in many other parts of the world. They need only to be wound up for a few minutes to create the electric power to operate for a day or more. His was a truly creative solution.
The creative workplace
So how do the world’s top creative organisations engender a climate of learning, creativity and innovation at work? Coming in at number two in the 2007 Business Week survey of creative companies was Google. The company’s website (Google, 2011) notes a few things that a visitor might expect to see in a Google workplace:
• Bicycles or scooters for efficient travel between meetings; dogs; lava lamps; massage chairs; large inflatable balls.
• Googlers sharing cubes, yurts and huddle rooms – and very few solo offices.
• Laptops everywhere – standard issue for mobile coding, email on the go and note-taking.
• Foosball, pool tables, volleyball courts, assorted video games, pianos, ping pong tables, and gyms that offer yoga and dance classes.
If you go to the web and take a look at pictures of their offices and at the way people are encouraged to work there, you may be surprised. There are hammocks and bean-bags, an upturned row-boat, a room full of plastic toys and puzzles, table-tennis, basket-ball hoops, swings. Google encourages its employees to take time out from daily work to simply sit, contemplate, or play. Its leaders understand how people create new ideas. They should—their organisation survives and thrives purely by the application of this collective creativity. Things have moved on from the bleak grad-grind office spaces of the smoke-stack era, with their rows of grey identical cubicles. Things have got creative.
Google emphasises teams rather than isolated individuals. It knows that innovation arises in an environment where there is a high level of exchange of ideas, and the trust needed to make these exchanges free and open. So how does an organisation establish and maintain this kind of climate for work? Volvo has long been associated with innovative ways of managing work. Göran Ekvall (in Prather 2010, p. 39) provides these guidelines, based on the Volvo approach:
• Challenge: How are people challenged at work?
• Freedom: How free are they to decide how they work?
• Idea time: Is there time to think and reflect?
• Dynamic organisation: Is it a lively place to work?
• Support for new ideas : How much support is there?
• Trust – openness
• Playfulness and humour
• Risk-taking: Is it okay to fail?
• Conflicts: How are conflicts handled?
One thing that this kind of environment allows for is the proposal of ‘crazy’ and unexpected ideas. Innovations that would never otherwise see the light of day can be put forward, discussed and implemented. People can question any rule or assumption that might limit thinking, can bring together seemingly unconnected ideas in ways that may appear to common sense to be unworkable. Again, we are encouraging team members to value not so much what they think, but how they think. I believe that we should encourage our students, colleagues and fellow employees to do likewise.
Improvisation guru and theatre director Keith Johnstone notes the intense competition that is built into most business and education organisations. He argues (1983, p. 29) that this is not conducive to the nurturing of individual or collective creativity:
If I explain to a group that they’re to work for the other members, that each individual is to be interested in the progress of other group members, they’re amazed, yet obviously if a group supports its own members strongly, it’ll be a better group to work in.
This is echoed by Ibbotson (2008, p. 67) who outlines the three fears that he claims inhibit creativity: ‘Fear of being wrong. Fear of being rude. Fear of seeming mad.’ He goes on to explain how in an average working environment these stop creative thought dead in its tracks: ‘To appear offensive, insane and/or factually incorrect could safely be described as most employees’ worst possible nightmare. So we keep our crazy ideas to ourselves and they remain half-baked, never getting out into the group where they might finish cooking.’
Johnstone (1983, p. 31) argues a similar point about education and training when he states that, ‘Instead of seeing people as untalented, we can see them as phobic, and this completely changes the teacher’s relationship with them.’ His point is that what makes people seem uncreative, untalented, or poor learners, is in fact their fear of being exposed as a failure. If the teacher, or manager, or group leader, identifies this as the underlying issue to be addressed, then relationships within the group will be transformed. They will open up individuals to collective creativity. Putting this into practice might involve a simple step such as restructuring the way we run a brainstorming session. I will discuss this later.
Top-down and bottom-up order
Creative organisations use bottom-up ordering to structure the way their staff interact and work. We can learn a lot from this, by examining how this kind of system operates in ways that are superior to traditional top-down organisational hierarchies. I once worked for an English language school that maintained a strict control over teachers’ classroom activities. This school gave its staff a short introductory training where they learned how to use the school’s own text-books. Once in the classroom, the teacher simply had to turn to the relevant chapter and follow the various exercises in the sequence that was set out. This may seem like a common-sense way to ensure quality of teaching and learning. But it didn’t work. There was no place for the teachers’ creativity, for any collaborative effort that might generate new materials and approaches.
By way of contrast, another school I worked at gave teachers a more lengthy training. It showed them how to create their own teaching materials and lesson plans, and how to use a variety of texts. Teachers in this school were placed in a system that generated order and meaning from the bottom up through interaction. They were placed in a network that relied on and was driven by their creativity and collaboration. It was a network that could adapt and develop, that could generate solutions to unexpected problems and challenges. You can guess which school had the happier staff and students.
The illusion of control
Rigid military-style organisational structures may create the illusion of control. But it is always just that – an illusion. In the real world there is no such control over the ways that innovation takes place. What we observe is a continual improvisation as different elements in a field interact and transform the system as a whole. Take the example of mobile phones. Text message applications were introduced originally to allow technicians to check and communicate how well the phone network functioned. Users discovered the facility, liked using it, and changed the way phones were used. In turn the phones themselves were adapted to facilitate this use further. Users then adapted their use of the new technological changes, and so and so on until we now have something as sophisticated as a Blackberry or i-phone. The scientists who developed the world wide web as a tool for the military and NAASA had no idea that it would transform the way that the general public uses computers. Not only did this transform computers, it transformed many aspects of social life.
These kind of feedback loops are unpredictable, uncontrollable, and never stable. As Edward de Bono (2011) reminds us: ‘If you cannot accurately predict the future, then you must flexibly be prepared to deal with various possible futures.’ You will need to engage in the risky, and exciting, business of improvisation. The future is largely unknown and uncertain, but we have to act. If we are going to stay in touch with change, if we are to make full use of our creativity, we will have to give up certainty and the tried and tested methods of the past. Many commentators think that we are entering a new age of work, that the old paradigm of factory and office has been replaced by something less easy to define and describe. Like Henry Ford, we cannot rely on what was yesterday’s common-sense. Speaking in the early 1900s, at the dawn of the automobile age, he said: ‘If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.’ In the computer age customers, and workers, may be surprised at the mismatch between what they think they want, and what they will get. For artist and business training consultant Linda Naiman (2011) the changes in the way work is organised will put at risk many traditionally secure jobs:
Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age. Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion. What does this mean for future jobs? Winners are designers, inventors, counsellors, ethnographers, social psychologists, and other right-brain folks, while lawyers, engineers, accountants, and other left-brainers will see their jobs evaporate from outsourcing.
And not just out-sourcing. Automation is also cutting a swathe through many traditional areas of employment. And as the machines get smarter, so does the sophistication of the jobs they can replace. Ibbotson (2008, p. 15) agrees that many people in developed and developing economies ‘are no longer doing work that has anything to do with engineering. We are not making money from manufactures. We are generating wealth by making relationships, doing deals, advising; by delivering experiences, visions, pleasures, reassurance.’ All of this requires a new way of looking at work, training, and management—it will ‘require us to behave very differently in the way we lead and organise.’
One aspect of the new digital media that power this economic and social change is their promotion of many-to-many interactions in entertainment and cultural exchange, in what we might loosely call the creative economy. A few decades ago the field was dominated by one-to-many networks of transmission. An author or journalist wrote a book or newspaper article, and many people read it. A television or radio producer made a show, and the finished product was received by a large passive audience. Things have changed: more people are now engaged in creating material that is shared with others. There are millions of blogs, users of Facebook and Twitter, contributors to email forums and internet chat sites. Consumers expect more and more to be actively engaged in these media; they want an experience as participants. By setting up systems that encourage this kind of co-creativity we can make use of such interactivity, rather than attempt to maintain the status quo of the old media. It may seem obvious, but again it involves giving up direct control, working with uncertainty, and adapting to unexpected changes in the cultural environment.
A company like the UK based Blast Theory (2011) combine theatre, interactive computer gaming, hand-held mini-computers and team-sports to create new entertainment forms. They are successful world-wide, and are backed by top-drawer organisations like the BBC and British Telecom. If you put ‘Rider Spoke’ into Google you will find a fascinating YouTube video that documents one of their projects. Once again, the company relies entirely on the collaborative creativity of its members, coupled with the public’s appetite for real-time experience and participation. They do not try to control the way each user interacts with the system they have set up: they merely provide a structure through which people can collaborate and co-create. They are a good example of business in the Creative Economy, in the Conceptual Age.
The perfect brainstorm
One way of harnessing collaborative creativity is through a process such as brainstorming. The problem with the traditional brainstorm procedure is that it shuts down much of the creative potential of the group. If we want to encourage thinking that is truly ‘outside the box’, we will have to make sure that everyone involved can follow the guidelines for creative thinking. What we should not do is to:
• Judge ideas quickly / instantly
• Stop at the first ‘good’ idea
• Obey all the rules - and assume they exist
• Criticise ideas early in the process
• Discourage or dismiss any outrageous/crazy ideas
• Expect to find one ‘right’ answer/solution.
We want to ensure that everyone in the group, whether introvert or extravert, high or low status, confident or shy, can open up all their ideas. My experience is that if the leader runs the session by getting people to shout out suggestions as s/he notes them on a whiteboard, then this will produce the exact opposite of what we want. So how can we avoid the kind of self-censoring and risk-avoidance that shuts down any real creativity in this situation? What I suggest is as follows (adapted from Prather, 2010, pp. 75-78):
1. Run a warm-up session first to free up thinking and improvisation.
2. Start by working individually - not the whole team.
3. Each individual uses a pad of stickers (Post-it notes) to note down 10 ideas: words, drawings, diagrams.
4. In pairs – go through the 20 ideas: use these to create 5 ideas together, building on the individual work – put these on new stickers.
5. Each pair reads out their 5 ideas and stick these notes on the walls.
6. The whole group can then overview ideas and group them by type.
The key is for the group to stay playful and open, to avoid critiquing or dismissing ideas before they have a chance to be heard. This will not happen if the climate of the organisation as a whole is not conducive to risk-taking, openness and free-thinking.
After this kind of divergent thinking, the group will need to select an idea or ideas for implementation. The Delphi process is a well-documented procedure for reaching a consensus on the utility of ideas. (British Council, 2005) In brief, the group first research and build up a list of experts who might be able to help in this area. These experts are contacted and asked if they think the chosen solutions are likely to work. Each expert contributes, and is then is sent the opinions of the others—all of this kept anonymous. The aim is to get them to think about and respond to the ideas and comments of the other experts, and eventually reach some kind of consensus that will help the group decide what action to take.
So, by way of conclusion, let’s look at what characterises creative, innovative people and the teams they work in. In general, creative thinkers and innovators focus on how to think not what to think: they put ideas first, not knowledge:
Great artists, scientists or thinkers have a will to innovate, a will to make change happen. They are perhaps unusually tolerant of, or even addicted to, the restless anxiety of the creative space. And this is not a linear process. It cannot be simplified or laid out in a series of less difficult steps. It needs you to throw yourself at it for it to work. And you need to begin before you can see the way ahead. (Ibbotson, p. 8)
They are playfully serious and seriously playful. They are able to tolerate ambiguity, failure, looking foolish, and making mistakes. (Remember that penicillin was discovered through a mistake in a medical research lab.) They value unstructured time to reflect and think, and are able to share their ideas. They tend to treat the virtual as real, and vice-versa. In all this they have fun, following the dictum ‘Don’t worry, be happy’. And finally, and by no means least importantly—they are kind to others. People who show kindness work better together, and as we have seen, the image of the isolated genius creating the solo masterpiece does not apply to the real world. (Howkins, 2002, pp. 155-158) I will end with another quotation from Anne Kerwin (2011):
After years of killing perfectionism, I slowly loosed my need to find the absolute truth, to claim it for myself. I dared to wonder if my "bug"—ignorance—were not humans' proper sphere; almost a philosophical necessity. And I marvelled, as I still do, at how well humans function in the face of massive unknowns, we who must learn to survive. We learn, not infallibly, but astoundingly well.
Have confidence in your ability, and that of your team, to learn, create and innovate. And don’t take it all too seriously.
References:
Baylis, T. (2011). http://windupradio.com/trevor.htm
Blast Theory (2011). http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_rider_spoke.html
de Bono, E. (2011). http://www.edwdebono.com/
British Council (2005). www.britishcouncil.org/eltons-delphi_technique.pdf
Google Inc. (2011). http://www.google.com/about/corporate/company/culture.html
Howkins, J. (2002). The Creative Economy: How people make money from ideas. London: Penguin
Ibbotson, P. (2008). The Illusion of Leadership: Directing Creativity in Business and the Arts. London: Palgrave Macmillan
Johnstone, K. (1983). Impro: Improvisation and the Theatre. London: Methuen
Kerwin, A. (2011). http://www.annkerwin.com/pdfs/2essays.pdf
Naiman, L. (2011.) http://www.creativityatwork.com/CWServices/arts-in-business-context.html
Prather, C. 2010. A Manager’s Guide to Fostering Innovation and Creativity in Teams. New York: McGraw Hill
Townley, B. & Beech, N. 2010. Managing Creativity: Exploring the paradox. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Creative teams—creative individuals: learning to succeed in the Conceptual Age
(c) Alan Hancock 2018
'Now, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing
but Facts. Facts alone are wanted in life. Plant nothing else,
and root out everything else. You can only form the minds of
reasoning animals upon Facts: nothing else will ever be of any
service to them. This is the principle on which I bring up my own
children, and this is the principle on which I bring up these
children. Stick to Facts, sir!'
Charles Dickens: ‘Hard Times’
The limits of knowledge
We live in an age of information and knowledge. This is the message we get from the mass media; it seems like a given when we try to sum up how our culture is changing in the 21st century. There is more knowledge available to us all now than ever before. Knowledge is valuable—it can be bought, sold and stolen; it drives whole areas of our economies. As Waldo Emerson pointed out, ‘There is no knowledge that is not power’. Our education systems operate on this premise, with the transmission and acquisition of knowledge as their first priority and raison d’être. Knowledge, it seems, is a commodity that we all need to trade in.
But if look a little closer at the concept of knowledge, we will see that all is not that simple. We will see that the people who we admire for their creative and innovative application of knowledge do not see things this way. Because knowledge exists in a field of ignorance, in an environment of all the things we do not know. And it follows that as knowledge expands, so does our ignorance, as we become aware of more that we need to know. This boundary of knowledge and ignorance is where learning and creativity arise, and this does not proceed in an orderly or logical process. The more we learn, the more we look back on what we used to know and see much of it as incomplete or incorrect. The dean of Harvard Medical School warns incoming students that in ten years time 50% of what they have learned will prove to be wrong. The problem is that they do not know which 50%. (Kerwin, 2011) Knowledge is never fixed, stable or certain – it is a process, always in flux, and always provisional. Philosopher and academic consultant Dr Ann Kerwin (2011) puts it bluntly:
If you plan on living on this planet, I opine, you had better get good at learning. You had better prepare for ambiguity, complexity, and uncertainty. You had better get used to not knowing what to do yet having to find your way through unfamiliar, threatening, and exhilarating territory.
Creativity is a risky business
Learning is an uncertain business – it is wise for all of us to question assumptions, to test ‘knowledge’ for its truth and value. We need to ask continually whether what we are doing is the best or only way to proceed. We will do well to take the advice of Reik (cited in Townley & Beech , 2010, p. 3): ‘I suggest that the seeker forget what he has learned, neglect what he has read, and listen to his own experience.’ If we seek to find creative, innovative solutions, we will have to give up any claim of certainty. We will have to take risks.
Kerwin taught the philosophy of ignorance to students at Arizona State Medical School, people who expected certainty from their teachers, not an admission of knowing nothing, for sure. When she invited famous speakers as guest lecturers she told them to leave their books at the door. They could only talk about what they did not know, the mistakes they had made, and the things they had published that turned out to be wrong. Discussions suddenly took on a new energy: students adopted a much more pro-active and creative role in their learning. They learned to develop a trust in their tacit knowledge, and to adopt a questioning attitude to anything presented to them as fact. Kerwin sees her subject as ignorance, as opposed to knowledge, and champions the pursuit of learning, rather than knowing:
And what is true for science is true for all learning. It is messy, enticing, provisional, unending. It is a chase, a quest, a human avocation. This is one reason why experienced learners do not collapse when their "solutions" do. We, too, have what it takes to learn boldly: creativity and ignorance—two abundant, selfrenewing natural resources. Moreover, ignorance is a growth industry. Its inventory encompasses much of what we now claim to know; all we will discover; all we will recant; and everything to be puzzled at. For an inquiring mind with limited powers and propulsive curiosity, this means that nearly something about nearly everything is fair game for an active ignoramus. Learning—that dynamic interplay of questions and hypotheses, wonder, mystery, failure, invention, revelation, and frustration—finds in ignorance a powerful, unacknowledged muse. (2011)
I apply her ideas in my own undergraduate and postgraduate teaching. One exercise I give my students is to write a letter to an expert in their field of study, asking for answers to their questions. I then ask them to write the reply – as if they were taking the role of the expert. The results are often surprising, and reveal the students’ intuitive knowledge that had no outlet in a rational, logical form. They learn to be creative thinkers and learners. They learn to question the validity of always referring to ‘experts’ in their field of study, and expecting to advance their studies by simply cramming as much second-hand expertise as possible into their minds. As Kerwin (2011) puts it so eloquently:
I’m not against talking and I’m not opposed to listening. I don’t mind note-taking and I love a good lecture. But sheer knowledge acquisition—especially of short-term, hastily stuffed, undigested, unsought, unconnected, and unwanted factlets of dubious relevance—is not learning. Nor is it likely to promote learning. Worse, mindless knowledge acquisition may prevent learning just because so many students think they are learning when they binge and purge unabsorbed material.
When we are able to question received wisdom we open up our creativity, in business as in education and training, in science as in art. Inventor and philanthropist Trevor Baylis (2011) was able to solve a major social and economic problem by applying to his work just this kind of creative thinking:
In 1993, Trevor watched a program about the spread of AIDS in Africa, which observed that in many regions radio was the only available means of communication, but the need for batteries or electricity made them too expensive or too difficult to access. There was a need for an educational tool that did not rely on electricity. Trevor picked up on the word 'need'. Need is the catalyst for an inventor's 'raison d'être' and Trevor rose to the occasion.
Other companies had pushed on with developing better or rechargeable batteries —electric power in these villages was absent or unreliable. Batteries were expensive and difficult to obtain. No matter how much research they put into this the problem remained: the batteries eventually died, villagers could not afford new batteries, and mains power was not available. But Baylis questioned the assumption—the knowledge—that radios must have batteries. He remembered the clockwork alarm clock he had owned many years before. Why not make a clockwork radio? The idea was illogical—but it worked. A simple winding mechanism drives a dynamo that can supply power to the radio: his invention was a world-first. These radios are now in use all over rural Africa, and in many other parts of the world. They need only to be wound up for a few minutes to create the electric power to operate for a day or more. His was a truly creative solution.
The creative workplace
So how do the world’s top creative organisations engender a climate of learning, creativity and innovation at work? Coming in at number two in the 2007 Business Week survey of creative companies was Google. The company’s website (Google, 2011) notes a few things that a visitor might expect to see in a Google workplace:
• Bicycles or scooters for efficient travel between meetings; dogs; lava lamps; massage chairs; large inflatable balls.
• Googlers sharing cubes, yurts and huddle rooms – and very few solo offices.
• Laptops everywhere – standard issue for mobile coding, email on the go and note-taking.
• Foosball, pool tables, volleyball courts, assorted video games, pianos, ping pong tables, and gyms that offer yoga and dance classes.
If you go to the web and take a look at pictures of their offices and at the way people are encouraged to work there, you may be surprised. There are hammocks and bean-bags, an upturned row-boat, a room full of plastic toys and puzzles, table-tennis, basket-ball hoops, swings. Google encourages its employees to take time out from daily work to simply sit, contemplate, or play. Its leaders understand how people create new ideas. They should—their organisation survives and thrives purely by the application of this collective creativity. Things have moved on from the bleak grad-grind office spaces of the smoke-stack era, with their rows of grey identical cubicles. Things have got creative.
Google emphasises teams rather than isolated individuals. It knows that innovation arises in an environment where there is a high level of exchange of ideas, and the trust needed to make these exchanges free and open. So how does an organisation establish and maintain this kind of climate for work? Volvo has long been associated with innovative ways of managing work. Göran Ekvall (in Prather 2010, p. 39) provides these guidelines, based on the Volvo approach:
• Challenge: How are people challenged at work?
• Freedom: How free are they to decide how they work?
• Idea time: Is there time to think and reflect?
• Dynamic organisation: Is it a lively place to work?
• Support for new ideas : How much support is there?
• Trust – openness
• Playfulness and humour
• Risk-taking: Is it okay to fail?
• Conflicts: How are conflicts handled?
One thing that this kind of environment allows for is the proposal of ‘crazy’ and unexpected ideas. Innovations that would never otherwise see the light of day can be put forward, discussed and implemented. People can question any rule or assumption that might limit thinking, can bring together seemingly unconnected ideas in ways that may appear to common sense to be unworkable. Again, we are encouraging team members to value not so much what they think, but how they think. I believe that we should encourage our students, colleagues and fellow employees to do likewise.
Improvisation guru and theatre director Keith Johnstone notes the intense competition that is built into most business and education organisations. He argues (1983, p. 29) that this is not conducive to the nurturing of individual or collective creativity:
If I explain to a group that they’re to work for the other members, that each individual is to be interested in the progress of other group members, they’re amazed, yet obviously if a group supports its own members strongly, it’ll be a better group to work in.
This is echoed by Ibbotson (2008, p. 67) who outlines the three fears that he claims inhibit creativity: ‘Fear of being wrong. Fear of being rude. Fear of seeming mad.’ He goes on to explain how in an average working environment these stop creative thought dead in its tracks: ‘To appear offensive, insane and/or factually incorrect could safely be described as most employees’ worst possible nightmare. So we keep our crazy ideas to ourselves and they remain half-baked, never getting out into the group where they might finish cooking.’
Johnstone (1983, p. 31) argues a similar point about education and training when he states that, ‘Instead of seeing people as untalented, we can see them as phobic, and this completely changes the teacher’s relationship with them.’ His point is that what makes people seem uncreative, untalented, or poor learners, is in fact their fear of being exposed as a failure. If the teacher, or manager, or group leader, identifies this as the underlying issue to be addressed, then relationships within the group will be transformed. They will open up individuals to collective creativity. Putting this into practice might involve a simple step such as restructuring the way we run a brainstorming session. I will discuss this later.
Top-down and bottom-up order
Creative organisations use bottom-up ordering to structure the way their staff interact and work. We can learn a lot from this, by examining how this kind of system operates in ways that are superior to traditional top-down organisational hierarchies. I once worked for an English language school that maintained a strict control over teachers’ classroom activities. This school gave its staff a short introductory training where they learned how to use the school’s own text-books. Once in the classroom, the teacher simply had to turn to the relevant chapter and follow the various exercises in the sequence that was set out. This may seem like a common-sense way to ensure quality of teaching and learning. But it didn’t work. There was no place for the teachers’ creativity, for any collaborative effort that might generate new materials and approaches.
By way of contrast, another school I worked at gave teachers a more lengthy training. It showed them how to create their own teaching materials and lesson plans, and how to use a variety of texts. Teachers in this school were placed in a system that generated order and meaning from the bottom up through interaction. They were placed in a network that relied on and was driven by their creativity and collaboration. It was a network that could adapt and develop, that could generate solutions to unexpected problems and challenges. You can guess which school had the happier staff and students.
The illusion of control
Rigid military-style organisational structures may create the illusion of control. But it is always just that – an illusion. In the real world there is no such control over the ways that innovation takes place. What we observe is a continual improvisation as different elements in a field interact and transform the system as a whole. Take the example of mobile phones. Text message applications were introduced originally to allow technicians to check and communicate how well the phone network functioned. Users discovered the facility, liked using it, and changed the way phones were used. In turn the phones themselves were adapted to facilitate this use further. Users then adapted their use of the new technological changes, and so and so on until we now have something as sophisticated as a Blackberry or i-phone. The scientists who developed the world wide web as a tool for the military and NAASA had no idea that it would transform the way that the general public uses computers. Not only did this transform computers, it transformed many aspects of social life.
These kind of feedback loops are unpredictable, uncontrollable, and never stable. As Edward de Bono (2011) reminds us: ‘If you cannot accurately predict the future, then you must flexibly be prepared to deal with various possible futures.’ You will need to engage in the risky, and exciting, business of improvisation. The future is largely unknown and uncertain, but we have to act. If we are going to stay in touch with change, if we are to make full use of our creativity, we will have to give up certainty and the tried and tested methods of the past. Many commentators think that we are entering a new age of work, that the old paradigm of factory and office has been replaced by something less easy to define and describe. Like Henry Ford, we cannot rely on what was yesterday’s common-sense. Speaking in the early 1900s, at the dawn of the automobile age, he said: ‘If I had asked my customers what they wanted they would have said a faster horse.’ In the computer age customers, and workers, may be surprised at the mismatch between what they think they want, and what they will get. For artist and business training consultant Linda Naiman (2011) the changes in the way work is organised will put at risk many traditionally secure jobs:
Logical and precise, left-brain thinking gave us the Information Age. Now comes the Conceptual Age - ruled by artistry, empathy, and emotion. What does this mean for future jobs? Winners are designers, inventors, counsellors, ethnographers, social psychologists, and other right-brain folks, while lawyers, engineers, accountants, and other left-brainers will see their jobs evaporate from outsourcing.
And not just out-sourcing. Automation is also cutting a swathe through many traditional areas of employment. And as the machines get smarter, so does the sophistication of the jobs they can replace. Ibbotson (2008, p. 15) agrees that many people in developed and developing economies ‘are no longer doing work that has anything to do with engineering. We are not making money from manufactures. We are generating wealth by making relationships, doing deals, advising; by delivering experiences, visions, pleasures, reassurance.’ All of this requires a new way of looking at work, training, and management—it will ‘require us to behave very differently in the way we lead and organise.’
One aspect of the new digital media that power this economic and social change is their promotion of many-to-many interactions in entertainment and cultural exchange, in what we might loosely call the creative economy. A few decades ago the field was dominated by one-to-many networks of transmission. An author or journalist wrote a book or newspaper article, and many people read it. A television or radio producer made a show, and the finished product was received by a large passive audience. Things have changed: more people are now engaged in creating material that is shared with others. There are millions of blogs, users of Facebook and Twitter, contributors to email forums and internet chat sites. Consumers expect more and more to be actively engaged in these media; they want an experience as participants. By setting up systems that encourage this kind of co-creativity we can make use of such interactivity, rather than attempt to maintain the status quo of the old media. It may seem obvious, but again it involves giving up direct control, working with uncertainty, and adapting to unexpected changes in the cultural environment.
A company like the UK based Blast Theory (2011) combine theatre, interactive computer gaming, hand-held mini-computers and team-sports to create new entertainment forms. They are successful world-wide, and are backed by top-drawer organisations like the BBC and British Telecom. If you put ‘Rider Spoke’ into Google you will find a fascinating YouTube video that documents one of their projects. Once again, the company relies entirely on the collaborative creativity of its members, coupled with the public’s appetite for real-time experience and participation. They do not try to control the way each user interacts with the system they have set up: they merely provide a structure through which people can collaborate and co-create. They are a good example of business in the Creative Economy, in the Conceptual Age.
The perfect brainstorm
One way of harnessing collaborative creativity is through a process such as brainstorming. The problem with the traditional brainstorm procedure is that it shuts down much of the creative potential of the group. If we want to encourage thinking that is truly ‘outside the box’, we will have to make sure that everyone involved can follow the guidelines for creative thinking. What we should not do is to:
• Judge ideas quickly / instantly
• Stop at the first ‘good’ idea
• Obey all the rules - and assume they exist
• Criticise ideas early in the process
• Discourage or dismiss any outrageous/crazy ideas
• Expect to find one ‘right’ answer/solution.
We want to ensure that everyone in the group, whether introvert or extravert, high or low status, confident or shy, can open up all their ideas. My experience is that if the leader runs the session by getting people to shout out suggestions as s/he notes them on a whiteboard, then this will produce the exact opposite of what we want. So how can we avoid the kind of self-censoring and risk-avoidance that shuts down any real creativity in this situation? What I suggest is as follows (adapted from Prather, 2010, pp. 75-78):
1. Run a warm-up session first to free up thinking and improvisation.
2. Start by working individually - not the whole team.
3. Each individual uses a pad of stickers (Post-it notes) to note down 10 ideas: words, drawings, diagrams.
4. In pairs – go through the 20 ideas: use these to create 5 ideas together, building on the individual work – put these on new stickers.
5. Each pair reads out their 5 ideas and stick these notes on the walls.
6. The whole group can then overview ideas and group them by type.
The key is for the group to stay playful and open, to avoid critiquing or dismissing ideas before they have a chance to be heard. This will not happen if the climate of the organisation as a whole is not conducive to risk-taking, openness and free-thinking.
After this kind of divergent thinking, the group will need to select an idea or ideas for implementation. The Delphi process is a well-documented procedure for reaching a consensus on the utility of ideas. (British Council, 2005) In brief, the group first research and build up a list of experts who might be able to help in this area. These experts are contacted and asked if they think the chosen solutions are likely to work. Each expert contributes, and is then is sent the opinions of the others—all of this kept anonymous. The aim is to get them to think about and respond to the ideas and comments of the other experts, and eventually reach some kind of consensus that will help the group decide what action to take.
So, by way of conclusion, let’s look at what characterises creative, innovative people and the teams they work in. In general, creative thinkers and innovators focus on how to think not what to think: they put ideas first, not knowledge:
Great artists, scientists or thinkers have a will to innovate, a will to make change happen. They are perhaps unusually tolerant of, or even addicted to, the restless anxiety of the creative space. And this is not a linear process. It cannot be simplified or laid out in a series of less difficult steps. It needs you to throw yourself at it for it to work. And you need to begin before you can see the way ahead. (Ibbotson, p. 8)
They are playfully serious and seriously playful. They are able to tolerate ambiguity, failure, looking foolish, and making mistakes. (Remember that penicillin was discovered through a mistake in a medical research lab.) They value unstructured time to reflect and think, and are able to share their ideas. They tend to treat the virtual as real, and vice-versa. In all this they have fun, following the dictum ‘Don’t worry, be happy’. And finally, and by no means least importantly—they are kind to others. People who show kindness work better together, and as we have seen, the image of the isolated genius creating the solo masterpiece does not apply to the real world. (Howkins, 2002, pp. 155-158) I will end with another quotation from Anne Kerwin (2011):
After years of killing perfectionism, I slowly loosed my need to find the absolute truth, to claim it for myself. I dared to wonder if my "bug"—ignorance—were not humans' proper sphere; almost a philosophical necessity. And I marvelled, as I still do, at how well humans function in the face of massive unknowns, we who must learn to survive. We learn, not infallibly, but astoundingly well.
Have confidence in your ability, and that of your team, to learn, create and innovate. And don’t take it all too seriously.
References:
Baylis, T. (2011). http://windupradio.com/trevor.htm
Blast Theory (2011). http://www.blasttheory.co.uk/bt/work_rider_spoke.html
de Bono, E. (2011). http://www.edwdebono.com/
British Council (2005). www.britishcouncil.org/eltons-delphi_technique.pdf
