“It’s not where you take things from – it’s where you take them to”
- Jean-Luc Godard.
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Tag Archives: creativity
The book that never was
Not all of my books make it. This is the introduction from a book that’s been junked….
Introduction
“The other day I was thinking, “I just over think things.” And then I thought. “Do I though?” – Demetri Martin, Comedian.
This book is a gentle plea for more thinking. Specifically, it’s an appeal for a calmer, slower, deeper, more reflective, more deliberate and longer-term mind-set in everything from business and politics to holidays and household chores.
I initially thought of calling this book How to Think, but then I instinctively thought that perhaps people don’t want to be told how to think. Surely thinking is an instinctive skill that doesn’t need thinking about. But is this true? Have you ever thought about this?
We aren’t generally taught how to think at school and we don’t think deeply about our thinking very much thereafter. This is a great shame, because our thinking, and especially our imagination, is perhaps the most precious natural resource we’ve got on earth. But it’s being polluted by everything from endless streams of interruption to the unsustainable demands of narrow and numerically-based financial markets. Our liberty to think openly and freely is also being eroded, both by universities supporting ‘no platform’ policies and by the visceral hatred endemic in much of our polarising political culture.
This hasn’t always been the case, and it’s not true everywhere either. But our fixation with doing everything as quickly as possible is making us, our institutions and society infirm. Even weekends and holidays, which were once times for relaxation and reflection, have been invaded by digital devices that demand our constant attention and disconnect us from our true selves. I might be wrong, but the collateral damage of our hyper-connected world might be people that are less connected, both to themselves, and the wider world around them. Our mental focus, like our education systems, is shrinking when it should be expanding. We need to bring back breadth, depth, lifelong wonder and curiosity.
There have been a number of books about the neuroscience of thinking, especially how our sly subconscious gets us into so much trouble. We are surrounded by the debris of this on a daily basis. We rush into roles, responsibilities and relationships without properly thinking, or we think about things in a singular, linear and unconnected manner. We ignore the layered lessons of history, the cyclical nature fashion and the counter-forces that often emerge in response to any significant innovation or event.
Books about creativity and innovation abound too, but these tend to exist within a sterile vacuum divorced from real world pressures, organisational psychologies and institutional pathologies. Have you tried really thinking at work? Without permission? For a whole day? Without getting reprimanded? Or what of the impact of mood on thinking? Why don’t we think about this more often? Why are we so careless with the physical environments in which we expect our co-workers to think and our children to learn? Why is our obsession with external architecture so often to the exclusion of the other sensory elements, for example the architecture of touch, sound and smell?
On all counts, the result is thinking that’s becoming increasingly timid, lazy, sterile and one-dimensional, which is making us open to unmanageable surprises.
I would like to address all these issues and more, but from a positive perspective. I am less concerned about why things go wrong and more interested in how to put them right. How can we manipulate our meddlesome minds to make them more attuned to emerging opportunities and risks? How can we become more sensitive to the faint murmurs that are so often the forerunners of change? How should we embolden individuals and organisations alike to filter out utter nonsense, spot valuable anomalies or realise the significance of an overheard anecdote? How, for instance, might an organisation use smell to increase productivity?
Most importantly, we are possibly on the cusp of a radical revolution in artificial intelligence and advanced machine learning. How might we educate our minds – and those of our children and our children’s children – to be open, adaptive and resilient in disruptive environments? How should we think when machines can do this for us? How can we ensure that one of the major consequences of machines that can think isn’t people that don’t or needn’t? How do we guard against a situation where human complacency or disenfranchisement means we no longer ask questions like these?
I think the answer to this is to become very good at the things these machines are very bad at. In short, we must work tirelessly to unleash our unique ability to think imaginatively, ethically and empathetically and inspire others to do the same. And to do all this, and much more besides, I believe we need a moderate level of disconnection and a significant amount of time. Without this no stable sense of self can emerge. Only when we are firmly anchored in ourselves can we hold conversations from which new ideas and insights will emerge. Only when we achieve a graceful, joyous, lightness of being can we float above our everyday existence and correctly perceive, and solve, the global challenges that lie ahead.
We cannot construct a long-term strategy for human accomplishment, let alone one for the survival of our species, when we are smothered by busyness, distracted by ephemera or constantly running to keep up with the accelerated present.
Sit down, turn off your phone, switch on your attention and come with me for a gentle stroll down some hidden paths of perception and possibility.
A biological model of innovation
Can biology teach us anything about innovation? The essence of Darwinism is that progress is created by adaptation to changing circumstances. What starts off as a random mutation often spreads throughout a population to eventually become the norm through a process of natural selection. The same is surely true with innovation. New ideas are mutations created through chaos and adaptation, especially when two or more old ideas combine or reproduce in unusual or unexpected ways. In short, innovation = inheritance (history) + variation + selection.
Serendipity clearly plays an important part in this process and the list of things created by accident is certainly impressive; Aspirin, Band-Aids, credit cards, DNA finger printing, dynamite, inoculation, Jell-O, Ferrari, Lamborghini, microwave ovens, penicillin, ink-jet printers, X-rays, nylon, heart pacemakers, Coca-Cola, Teflon, Vulcanised rubber, Nintendo, Lego, Smart Dust, matches, dynamite (yikes), safety glass, Corn Flakes, Super Glue, Viagra and Velcro to name quite a few.
Pursuing experiments – and tolerating the inevitable failures that result – is therefore one practical way to make an organisation more innovative. But is there is another option? Is there a strategy, process or even a culture that will embed innovative thinking at the very core of an organisation’s being? I think there is.
Think about when individuals and institutions are at their most innovative. You might think about the cross-fertilisation of disciplines and experience. This is indeed one way to kick-start innovative thinking and it’s not that difficult to design spaces where diverse people will bump into each other in a random manner. Office kitchens and staircases immediately spring to mind. Lunch is even better. A Harvard Business Review article once claimed that P&G had attempted to “systemise the serendipity” that so often sparks innovation. When the Hollywood producer Brian Grazer heard about this he commented: “that’s what we call lunch.”
Another route is to combine the energy and naivety of youth with the wisdom and cynicism of old age. This can work too. Reverse mentoring is a very practical idea championed by the likes of former GE boss Jack Welsh. Or there’s the thought of recruiting both the newest and the oldest members of staff for brainstorms. Diversity in terms of skills is key, but so too are age and experience.
And, of course, there’s the idea that if you generate enough ideas one will surely be good enough to use. This does occasionally work, although in my experience not very often. I prefer the opposite, which involves thinking inside a small box rather than thinking outside of one. Read, for example, Adam Morgan’s book called A Beautiful Constraint.*
So, what’s my big idea for generating big ideas? What’s my million- dollar idea? Death. That’s right, demise, departure, disappearance, extinction, the grim reaper. Hold on, am I seriously suggesting that we kill companies and organisations just to reinvent them?
Sort of.
It strikes me that true clarity only arrives occasionally and generally it’s when we think we are going to die. If we are looking down the barrel of a gun – or a microscope – we tend to see our death (and with it our entire life) in high definition. This creates a tremendous sense of urgency to put it mildly. This might not be of much use if we have seconds to live, but if we are given weeks or months we’re often able to focus on the things we really want to do and separate what’s merely urgent from what’s actually important. Relationships are rekindled, ideas are hatched, things get reinvented.
Sometimes we are fortunate. We think we are going to die, but we don’t. The tests or the analysis were wrong. The threat failed to materialise. We were lucky. Sometimes the change resulting from serious threats is enduring, although more often than not we revert to our bad old ways once the grim reaper has gone elsewhere. This is true for institutions as much as it’s true for individuals.
One of the reasons that Apple, sometimes cited as the world’s most valuable company, is so innovative might be to do with the fact it was 90 days away from being bankrupt back in 1997. Similar near death experiences abound, ranging from Telsa, SpaceX and KFC to Airbnb, FedEx and IBM.
So, the second million-dollar question must surely be this…can you fake your own death in order to think straight or to become more innovative? Believe it or not a company in South Korea once tried to do precisely this, although it backfired somewhat.
Back in 2008 there was a South Korean craze called ‘well-dying’ in which employees would write and then read out their last words in fake funeral services. Organisations such as Samsung and Hyundai sent their employees on courses organised by Korea Life Consulting in order to question their life paths and priorities. The idea got a lot of bad press at the time, partly because people were required to get inside a real coffin, but it wasn’t a wholly bad idea.
Asking people what they’d do if they had a day, a week or a year left to live can be a good way to reveal what they really think about things, including themselves. Asking a leadership team inside a large organisation to do the same is a similarly good way to reveal not only priorities, but potentially to revaluate strategies too. What might you do differently if you didn’t have to worry about regulation, unions, governments, quarterly earnings and so forth?
After all, if you have absolutely nothing to lose you will behave very differently than if you do. You will try things that are riskier and be far less concerned with what others might think of you. In short, you will be brave and be led by your heart as much as your head. You’ll dream big and be less inclined to get stuck on practicalities.And, of course, we only truly appreciate what we have been given when there’s a real chance that these same things will be taken away. It is only through death that we really learn to live.
As Charles Darwin said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Try using a narrative of rapidly changing circumstances and ultimately the imminent extinction of your organisation to radically revaluate where you are going and how you might get there.Or write an obituary for your organisation and then treat it as a strategy for reincarnation.
Carpe diem.
* A Beautiful Constraint: How to transfer your limitations into advantages, and why it’s everyone’s business by Adam Morgan
A Darwinian model of innovation
Can biology teach us anything about innovation? The essence of Darwinism is that progress is created by adaptation to changing circumstances. What starts off as a random mutation often spreads throughout a population to eventually become the norm through a process of natural selection. The same is surely true with innovation. New ideas are mutations created through chaos and adaptation, especially when two or more old ideas combine or reproduce in unusual or unexpected ways.
Serendipity clearly plays an important part in this process and the list of things created by accident is certainly impressive; Aspirin, Band-Aids, credit cards, DNA finger printing, dynamite, inoculation, Jell-O, Ferrari, Lamborghini, microwave ovens, penicillin, ink-jet printers, X-rays, nylon, heart pacemakers, Coca-Cola, Teflon, Vulcanised rubber, Nintendo, Lego, Smart Dust, matches, dynamite (yikes), safety glass, Corn Flakes, Super Glue, Viagra and Velcro to name quite a few.
Pursuing experiments – and tolerating the inevitable failures that result – is therefore one practical way to make an organisation more innovative. But is there is another option? Is there a strategy, process or even a culture that will embed innovative thinking at the very core of an organisation’s being? I think there is.
Think about when individuals and institutions are at their most innovative. You might think about the cross-fertilisation of disciplines and experience. This is indeed one way to kick-start innovative thinking and it’s not that difficult to design spaces where diverse people will bump into each other in a random manner. Office kitchens and staircases immediately spring to mind. Lunch is even better. A Harvard Business Review article once claimed that P&G had attempted to “systemise the serendipity” that so often sparks innovation. When the Hollywood producer Brian Grazer heard about this he commented: “that’s what we call lunch.”
Another route is to combine the energy and naivety of youth with the wisdom and cynicism of old age. This can work too. Reverse mentoring is a very practical idea championed by the likes of former GE boss Jack Welsh. Or there’s the thought of recruiting both the newest and the oldest members of staff for brainstorms. Diversity in terms of skills is key, but so too are age and experience.
And, of course, there’s the idea that if you generate enough ideas one will surely be good enough to use. This does occasionally work, although in my experience not very often. I prefer the opposite, which involves thinking inside a small box rather than thinking outside of one. Read, for example, Adam Morgan’s book called A Beautiful Constraint.*
So, what’s my big idea for generating big ideas? What’s my million- dollar idea? Death. That’s right, demise, departure, disappearance, extinction, the grim reaper. Hold on, am I seriously suggesting that we kill companies and organisations just to reinvent them?
Sort of.
It strikes me that true clarity only arrives occasionally and generally it’s when we think we are going to die. If we are looking down the barrel of a gun – or a microscope – we tend to see our death (and with it our entire life) in high definition. This creates a tremendous sense of urgency to put it mildly. This might not be of much use if we have seconds to live, but if we are given weeks or months we’re often able to focus on the things we really want to do and separate what’s merely urgent from what’s actually important. Relationships are rekindled, ideas are hatched, things get reinvented.
Sometimes we are fortunate. We think we are going to die, but we don’t. The tests or the analysis were wrong. The threat failed to materialise. We were lucky. Sometimes the change resulting from serious threats is enduring, although more often than not we revert to our bad old ways once the grim reaper has gone elsewhere. This is true for institutions as much as it’s true for individuals.
One of the reasons that Apple, sometimes cited as the world’s most valuable company, is so innovative might be to do with the fact it was 90 days away from being bankrupt back in 1997. Similar near death experiences abound, ranging from Telsa, SpaceX and KFC to Airbnb, FedEx and IBM.
So, the second million-dollar question must surely be this…can you fake your own death in order to think straight or to become more innovative? Believe it or not a company in South Korea once tried to do precisely this, although it backfired somewhat.
Back in 2008 there was a South Korean craze called ‘well-dying’ in which employees would write and then read out their last words in fake funeral services. Organisations such as Samsung and Hyundai sent their employees on courses organised by Korea Life Consulting in order to question their life paths and priorities. The idea got a lot of bad press at the time, partly because people were required to get inside a real coffin, but it wasn’t a wholly bad idea.
Asking people what they’d do if they had a day, a week or a year left to live can be a good way to reveal what they really think about things, including themselves. Asking a leadership team inside a large organisation to do the same is a similarly good way to reveal not only priorities, but potentially to revaluate strategies too. What might you do differently if you didn’t have to worry about regulation, unions, governments, quarterly earnings and so forth?
After all, if you have absolutely nothing to lose you will behave very differently than if you do. You will try things that are riskier and be far less concerned with what others might think of you. In short, you will be brave and be led by your heart as much as your head. You’ll dream big and be less inclined to get stuck on practicalities.And, of course, we only truly appreciate what we have been given when there’s a real chance that these same things will be taken away. It is only through death that we really learn to live.
As Charles Darwin said: “It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.” Try using a narrative of rapidly changing circumstances and ultimately the imminent extinction of your organisation to radically revaluate where you are going and how you might get there.
Write an obituary for your organisation and then treat it as a strategy for reincarnation.
Carpe diem.
* A Beautiful Constraint: How to transfer your limitations into advantages, and why it’s everyone’s business by Adam Morgan
Thought for Thursday
“And what was the true object of this superstitious stuff? A final clue came from “Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention” (1996), in which Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi acknowledges that, far from being an act of individual inspiration, what we call creativity is simply an expression of professional consensus. Using Vincent van Gogh as an example, the author declares that the artist’s “creativity came into being when a sufficient number of art experts felt that his paintings had something important to contribute to the domain of art.” Innovation, that is, exists only when the correctly credentialed hivemind agrees that it does. And “without such a response,” the author continues, “van Gogh would have remained what he was, a disturbed man who painted strange canvases.” What determines “creativity,” in other words, is the very faction it’s supposedly rebelling against: established expertise.”
Taken from Salon, ‘TED talks are lying to you’ by Thomas Frank
(Article originally published in Harper’s)
Thinking… about thinking.
I’m starting to think about my next book and although the illusion of progress is a fairly tempting title there’s the danger of it being mistaken for a negative position (actually the positive impact of negative thinking is interesting theme in itself). So, alternatively, I’ve been thinking again about thinking. What influences it? How can we increase the quantity and, more importantly, the quality of our thinking?
I’ve been thinking about this sitting in my favourite chair, in my greenhouse, drinking red wine and smoking a cigar.