CREATIVITY COURSES UNTOLD

Creative acts like writing and drawing has always been a romantic activity, linked closely in the popular imagination with a hard life, substance abuse and myriad odd but interesting forms of hard living, most of which are preferable to the kind of jobs most people do and are stuck in over a lifetime. Visual artists will always point out that drawing is work too. So will writers, performers, and poets. But for the most part people don’t believe us, and it’s not a point we often feel like pressing because we often have day jobs facilitating, bartending, waiting on tables, driving cabs, working construction, and for the most part, our creative activities are far more personally rewarding than lifting heavy pieces of wood or driving singles back and forth to “clubs” or mixing Tequila sunrises or listening to another sadistically sanctioned executive speak; what most of us fear more than death itself is a life filled with nothing more than activities like these.

Working as an artist for a living isn’t the scam most people imagine, still, compared with the kind of work that puts bread and butter on the table without enriching the soul, it’s pretty damn close. People who are not artists sense this, and they wonder if we’d mind sharing our secrets.

I’ve facilitated hundreds of creativity sessions and people have a zillion different questions about creativity, but most of those questions can be boiled down to two: did we learn this stuff or were we born with it. Which is simply another way of asking if we are like them or are we a different kind of being? If we’re a different kind of being, then it’s silly for them trying to be like us. It’s like asking a car to be a dog. However, if we’re basically the same as everyone else, then where does our inspiration come? Why does it come to us and not to them? Did they miss the memo? Did we save our copy? The unsatisfactory answer to all of this is, the truth is that we’re both the same and different.

If we’re basically the same as everyone else, if we’re not a whole different order of being with special abilities that common folk can’t possible aspire to, then we should be able to teach what we know and how we do it to others. As you will see, the ice is starting to get very thin. Artists who believe that art can not be taught and people who believe them share a very special relationship that is satisfying to the both of them. The artist gets to believe that h/she are special and the other people get to believe they are special too, though in a different way. They, at least know “the Truth” that writing, for example, is gift and the people who can appreciate that claim can live a life as an undeceived believer. It’s like the relationship of a fundamentalist believer in God. They accept the truth of their own fallen self, and by their acceptance the born-again believer can take comfort that their faith has raised them above the common unbeliever. It’s a tiered, hierarchical structure: God at the top, believers, or the few chosen one who have received faith and understanding next, and everyone else. If you’re a believer you’re closer to the top than the bottom, so you feel better about yourself.

Artists aren’t gods, and saying you can’t teach people to be an artist is as silly as saying you can’t teach someone to screw in a light bulb. Of course you can. What can’t be taught is great art, or that genius can’t be taught. The only thing that can be taught is competence, and competence for a serious artist, simply isn’t enough. Salieri never would be Mozart, even if Mozart were his teacher, first because he wasn’t sufficiently talented – in art, you can learn all the rules and still never be any good – and second because there are a lot of things Mozart didn’t understand about his process. The same is true with inventors like DiVinci, Edison, Ford, Bell and Totman. Most artists and inventors actually start getting good before they’re entirely competent, which means that what can and can not be taught are proceeding along parallel tracks.

I think that’s why I’ve always felt Business Creativity and Innovation courses deceive more than they enlighten. Often they implicitly promise something they can not deliver: talent. What they can deliver and what can be taught and shared is craft and experience.

In truth there is no really right method or wrong method for learning how to infuse creativity into your life or your organization. But try to avoid those people and courses that say, “Do this,” or “Do it this way,” or “Never make the mistake of doing this.” Instead, lean towards those who simply suggest, “Here’s what I did. Here’s what went right or wrong. Here’s what I discovered. Next time, in a different situation, and by the way the situation will be different next time, I might do it differently and I’ll have good reasons then too.”

VOTING

Amid all the debate about the presidential election, I’ve been surprised that few people have said anything about the vote itself, as a way or process of expressing the will of the people. Our political system in The United States has encouraged the expansion of suffrage almost from the day the nation was created. That means that as many voters as possible should be counted in the election as possible, even if they are cast by people who make a mistake about where they should go to the poles. In many states, if a voter turns up at the wrong pole, they will be directed to another poling place, and hopefully it will be the right location. Under this system, some people, turned away once, may decide that voting is not worth the trouble and go home. I think this is wrong, but it is not the topic I wish to explore today.

I’ve found it odd, especially with so many engineers, statisticians, and computer specialists in the country that no one has offered a “new” voting style. Maybe there is a larger point to be made here, that since the last election we still do not have unified voting system. We still do not have in every city, village, town or hamlet in the country a voting machine or process that is consistent and similar, if not exactly the same as every other. That we do not have a secured, collection of laptop computers and other hardware is criminal, and both parties, Democrat and Republican are to blame. That we can put landing vehicles on Mars, the Strategic Air Command in our skies and buckets of money in the coffers of questionable enterprises “who need our help” eliminates from my mind any reasonable excuse as to why we can not address and solve this national embarrassment, but I’ll restrain myself.

What I would like to offer you today are a few alternatives to the system of voting I found interesting since the last election. To my mind, they are a collection of voting alternatives that would make any market researcher, engineer, statistician or mathematician salivate. The rest of us will just break out in a rash.

Robert Shimmer, associate professor of economics at Princeton University, suggests the use of a Single Transferable Vote. Simply stated, “You make your first-choice but in the event that your first-choice candidate was not one of the leaders, you would have a second choice, and your vote would be allocated instead to your second choice. This would allow,” Shimmer says, “people to vote for a candidate (or an option) that they believed in but don’t not really have a chance of winning.” If no candidate or option receives the majority of votes, there’d be another election.

An egalitarian idea comes from Steven J. Brams, professor of politics at New York University. Brams advocates an Approval System, in which “you vote for as many candidates (or selection criteria) as you like. Each candidate you approve of gets one vote, and you simply add the votes to determine a winner.” Let’s say, for example that someone likes six out of the seven selection elements, “instead of making an arbitrary choice for one of the seven, you choose the six that you think are best.

This process is my favorite – lots of numbers, check marks, and dots – all kinds of stuff that will allow no real winner to emerge without a recount!

Being first on the list is always an advantage, so market researchers often use a monadic sequential approach that randomizes the order in which options are presented. For example, if you have three concepts you want to test, the first person sees concepts in the following order: ABC, the second person sees the concepts in this order: BAC, and third person sees the concepts in this order: CAB. You randomize the order throughout the voting process. It’s very fair minded but in case you weren’t really interesting in that, just put your favorite item on the top of the list and you can be assured that more people will vote for it.

Whichever process you choose (if only we could), you’ll want to eliminate butterflies, chads, dimples, and most of all, irregularities from the voting process. You’ll want to keep the Supreme Court focused on other ho-button issues such as the death penalty and the balance of power between the federal government and the states, and keep them out of our voting booths. Kaopectate might help!

WHY IS CREATIVITY SO IMPORTANT?

As the summer comes to an end, and we begin to ask ourselves what are we going to do with the rest of the year, I thought it was important to revisit a topic I have explored with you earlier.

With creativity we are able to reach beyond our own boundaries.

For those with aesthetic sensibilities this may sound familiar. Creativity can often be focused towards our inner world of fantasy and illusion, and not towards the outward task of creating a real life in relationship with others. The artist expresses the general conditions of the culture through symbol and embodies the greatest kind of courage. Insofar as the artist explores creative life through symbol and imagination, they perform an existential task: to create in the face of non-creation, or death.

To the extent that we as individuals who work in businesses struggle to just not create any product, program, processes or service, but experientially coherent authentic ideas that are imbued with self-subjectivity and business growth, it is a necessary aspect of our creative function to create with an understanding of ourselves-being-in-the-world. Our confrontation between growth and limitation, freedom and helplessness, expansion and contraction, good and evil, even life and death, rests in our courage to create in the face of our own fears and anxieties, and the authenticity of our subjective self to be organized into a paradoxical model.

In the light of a yellow, an orange or red terror alert, to deny the paradox is to deny or live in fantasy in the real world. We all face it; it is why creativity is so important.

If we have any chance to create in the face of terror we need to create with our anxieties, if we have any chance of survival. You may ask, how can we create? What part of us is creating? Are we erecting a “false self” filled false promises and role expectations, or are we creating an authentic self and authentic lives?

In these troubling times, growth, or the potential for growth, may be found beneath the reigning rationalism, in the individual creation of an authentic and subjective self in the world? “Truth exists,” wrote Kierkegaard, “only as the individual himself produces it in action.” Like others in his day, Kierkegaard, fought against the tendency to treat man as an object to be calculated and controlled, exemplified in almost overwhelming tendencies in the Western world to make human beings into anonymous units to fit like robots into the vast collectivisms of the day.

Our subjectivity is our true home, our natural state, and our necessary place of refuge and renewal. It is the font of creativity, the stage of imagination, the drafting table for planning, and the ultimate heart of our fears and hopes, our sorrows and satisfactions.

To think in existence, to stand out, to literally emerge, is to become. To embrace our continual becoming is to participate in dynamic existence. Genuine joy and creativity come out of dynamic paradox.

The paradoxical model is described as a continuum between constrictive and expansive possibilities. The dread of constriction and expansion promotes dysfunctional polarization, whereas confrontation with or integration of the poles promotes optimal living and growth.

What I see lacking in our corporate-wide innovation crusades in American business is journey towards individual independence and interdependence modeled after the heroic journey toward consciousness. Most innovation programs do not adequately cover the pull towards unconsciousness and the need for nurturance and interdependence as a viable, long-term condition of sustainable business growth.

To my mind, our present journey is unique to us.

We need to invite each other to stay present to our anxiety, our distortions, and the denied and projected parts of ourselves. We need to stay present to our own familiarity with our personal and business issues, and feel our way into the issues, problems and priorities of others. We need to allow the emotional resonance of our empathy speak for itself. We need to contain the pain of others, when it becomes too great, with humor. We need to be purveyors of hope. Presence is a critical part, as we listen to each other’s silences, to their presence and give them immediate, kinesthetic and profound attention. We need to invoke the actual when we attempt to help to contain and accompany our friends, our colleagues and our clients. Finally, we need to use an aesthetic perspective to enable us to see our lives as a composition, to bring extremes into a more integrated whole, and apply our creativity to our actual lives. The growth engine of business lies within the context and contrasts of lives of the people with whom we work and serve.

Finding the bad in good, and the good in bad helps us to integrate three important sentiments: to be safe, to be heard, to be understood. In turn, this helps us feel safer and more accessible to ourselves and to the risk of contact with the world.

This is why creativity is so important.

DIVERSITY

Most of us struggle with diversity in the best way we can. But it’s an enormous task and an even greater complexity.

A fuller understanding of what we do with diversity—of what we do with differences such as color, gender, ethnicity, age, sexual orientation, religious beliefs, political affiliations and other variables—require that we examine the intersection of at least three currents. One of these is the current of power and access to resources. We humans struggle fiercely for power, which includes the ability to access and control material, social and emotional resources such as food, shelter, opportunity, recognition, affection and love. The fierceness of our struggle has many roots including an enduring belief that there is “not enough” to meet the needs of all. The related but often unstated belief is that if everyone could access and control these resources—if everyone had power—no one’s needs could be met adequately. Paradoxically, the fierceness of our struggle is also rooted in a preferred view of self that makes it difficult to acknowledge, let alone manage, our very human self-interest.

When we work and act in diverse groups, organizations and social systems, a second current shaping what we do with diversity is the current of group and system dynamics. Such dynamics, which sometimes are readily apparent and other times are outside our immediate awareness, heavily influence the ability of a group to accomplish its tasks. A third current is the variety of meanings we attach to our differences, including our examined and unexamined beliefs about them.

In diverse settings then, it is the interaction of the struggle for power and resources, of systemic dynamics, and of the meanings we attach to our differences, that plays a large part in determining who is authorized to act, who is authorized to congregate, who can lead, who can edit history, and indeed, who can define reality. It is this interaction that plays a large part in determining the colors, genders, ages and other characteristics of those authorized and of those authorizing. By attending to concepts such as task, role, authority and boundaries, you will be able to learn more, both experientially and intellectually, about this interaction in organizations and communities.

On June 25th at Howard University, the Washington Center of the A.K. Rice Institute, an institute of which I am a member, is offering an interactive conference on diversity. They can be reached at www.wbcgrouprelations.irg/Diversity2004/index.html

TWICHERS

Did you leave the lights on? What about the coffee pot? The iron? How about the security alarm?

Aside from the definitive, “no,” basically, there are two replies to any one of those questions: a very confident “yes” or a tentative “I think so.” The “yes” people will absolutely answer quickly, throwing in an “absolutely,” for emphasis and move on to more pressing matters. The “I think so” people are far more curious, for they are capable of chewing on the problem and their answer to it for hours. They can fret, prance, stutter and drive themselves into indecision with an anguished “Why did you have to ask me that?” which can lead to a trip home for confirmation that the lights, coffee pot, and iron were indeed off while the alarm was triggered as they hurriedly entered the house and answered the fourth question.

It’s strange how the mind stumbles along while we try to answer these nagging, and one might suggest trite, everyday questions. People with towering executive jobs, who pride themselves on being able to answer the myriad compound, complex problems that plague government, business and cultural relations with black and white assurance, can experience the profound uncertainty that generates fear and doubt, at what might be called “the dripping faucet syndrome” as easily as any absent-minded college professor, toll booth operator or writer sitting in his silent third floor office.

I think it’s primarily a matter of synapses and how, on a particular day or moment, the brain happens to be doing with the retrieval of data and information. Psychology plays a role, because the confident ones among us can talk themselves from strong or profound doubt to a reasonable doubt, even if they are only fifty or sixty percent sure they have the right answer.

For those among us who can not lay idle or relax with a margin of error and have been known to drive home on what starts out with a ninety percent certainty but quickly dwindles to almost nothing as the imagination goes wild with power surges, playful dogs, melting heating elements, clogged drains or the entire contents of the house being loaded onto a truck.

The obsessive personality type, or as I like to refer to them, “twitchers” have also been seen pacing around the mailbox or inner-office mail slots waiting for the mailman to show up to solve the conundrum of the stamp – it is, or isn’t it on the envelop? Usually the stamp is in place, but the “twitchers” must also, while that are at it, simultaneously check the hold of the glue.

On those particularly busy days when the mind is lost in thought with other things – the lights, the coffee pot, the iron, or the security alarm – clarity is lost, on fears the mail might be lost as well. In the electronic world, “twitchers” are easy to spot; they will call you - on your cell phone, pager, Blackberry, and office line - after they send you an email, just to see if you received it.

At such moments it would be helpful for a "twicher” to remember the philosophy of Alfred E. Newman and not worry, or perhaps remember the thought of Franklin D. Roosevelt that fear is often a bigger problem than the problem.

There is also peace of mind in knowing and accepting who one is – either “twicher” or confident and knowing there is no wrong answer to the question of exactly how many devils might reside in those details.