Creativity in management (and research)
Creativity + Research = MAP?
First, a list of ingredients:
Space to get away from the pressures and demands of your regular life.
Time away from the noise of your day-to-day work activities. (Watching ants, for example.)
Time (again) to be sure you can stick with a problem and come up with new approaches, not just the first solution that arrives.
Confidence to make mistakes, to pursue illogical paths, and to stray from what may seem “right”
Humor to move you from the closed to the open mode.
John Cleese says these are the five ingredients you need to screw in a lightbulb get yourself into the open mode of working in the video below.
Cleese explains what he means by the open mode 5m50s into the video — but it’s enough to say that in the open mode we are curious and, well, open to unexpected outcomes. We’re able to pursue alternatives and see possibilities in the open mode. The closed mode is more evaluative.
In moving my blog this month, I stumbled upon an old letter that linked to this video. Rather than repost the article to the archive, I thought I’d share it anew.
Since I last wrote about this talk on creativity, this newsletter has spawned a community, and one of the goals of that community is to support creative inquiry — research + creativity.
I haven’t figured out how to mesh the two. In fact, I’ve only just started to see people successfully launch some research projects in the community and a few others tackle some creative projects — There’s still a ways to go before we have real momentum with either research or creative projects, much less both.
Still, here comes this John Cleese video again. It pops up in the periphery just as I’m thinking hard about how to best help community members embark on creative challenges. (If you’d like a sneak peek at the end-of-season series of events, visit this page — just know that the events are still drafts.)
I’ve watched the video at least a dozen times over the years. I hope you find it as interesting as I do.
As always, reply to this email to let me know your thoughts and feelings or share them on the blog.
Kyle
