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Notes On Creativity

Author: Kim James, PhD, Partner, Iconcius Ltd, (formerly Psi International)
First published: 2000

The climate in which business is done has changed, is changing and will continue to change, at incredible speed, driven by technology. It is this speed of change that has resulted in putting creativity high on the list of desirable features for business. However, there are different levels of creativity and it is necessary to be clear on what a company needs if disappointment is to be avoided.

Most of today's senior executives are people who owe their present positions to their fact-analysis abilities and to their competence in adjusting structures and events within a framework that altered slowly over some ten or twenty years. This is the climate of business as it was up to two or three years ago.

In the beginning small organizations grow and develop more or less by chance with few explicit rules, since the number of participants tends to render lists of rules unnecessary. Lists of aims to be achieved are more common. Over time, a consensus of opinion grows up, based on the success of the organization's activities; habits and customs are acquired which mayor may not be written down as rules. With further development these practices are observed but no longer in the spirit of their origins. Gradually, changes in the environment of the organization take place without corresponding changes within. Re-organization, usually at the instigation of a single leader, takes on the character of a new institution. Leaps of creative re-structuring were not often needed until very recently. There was plenty of re-ordering of priorities and rules but the technologies available were at the service of industry and not its driving force. It is at the dangerous moment when change is imposed on the organization that the person who directs the organization through the process should be a person who recognises the need for creative thinking. In the absence of this recognition arbitrary systems of thought are often imposed, in spite of the evident natural facts, to solve problems of overwhelming complexity.

Models of development that lay down too strict guidelines may change the definition of the problem and thus the kind of solution sought in the wider context. Large organizations have, by their structure and operations, a tendency to minimize risk. The aims are to maximize precision, reliability and efficiency; there is generally a push to achieve method, prudence and discipline. Establishing too formal constraints may eventually force the system into a disastrous way of functioning, particularly when definitions of progress are in terms of maximization or minimization. An analytical approach that presents reassuring representations of reality as an all-powerful and rational calculator and history as coherent and characterized by global progress is manifestly incorrect. These systems of thought are dogmatic and irrational in character, composed of simplistic logical and intellectual patterns. They lead inevitably to failure within a short time-frame. Creative thinking is an imperative for survival, not a bolt-on accessory.

It is as well to know what creativity is. What is it? Who has it? How can it be used? And what is necessary to use it?

Creativity is not problem solving, even when 'problem solving' has the word 'creative' put in front of it. Problem solving is contained within creativity but there are significant differences between problem solvers and creative innovators. Problem solving and creativity lie on a continuum, which goes from mere re-arrangements of existing known elements up to leaps into completely new areas. Well-run companies and organizations have many good problem solvers, almost as a matter of course. Problem solving does not rock the boat; it trims the sails and shifts the ballast to maintain an even progress.

Creative thinkers are more inclined to demand a new boat. Most managers of any calibre are problem solvers by definition. Problem solving generates new ways of working but within a well-known area, within the accepted paradigm. Creative people and creative solutions are so easily dealt with. Organizations flourish when problem solving is a matter of course, but to have too many creative people is extremely difficult to cope with.

Only individuals are creative. It is not possible to achieve creativity by reading books or taking courses. There are a number of factors which have to be present for creativity to occur.

The definition of creativity in the Shorter Oxford Dictionary is given as derived from: the verb to create, to bring into existence, give rise to; make by one's actions; inventiveness, accompanied by imagination as well as routine skill, novelty. Creativity is a problem in itself when it demands totally new ways of acting which extend or demolish existing boundaries. At this level novelty is generated by definition - this is seen as threatening. What is proposed is so new that it involves people thinking and acting outside their present mode.

All creativity takes place within structure. In order for change to take place it has to occur in a surrounding of non-change. Creativity cannot be constrained by rules and regulations or didactic instruction on 'how to do it'. There is a line which runs from a constrained amount of freedom to act in solving problems - a position which demands that one adapts to the existing system - up to a total freedom to act, even if this means making an entirely new system. The arena within which acts can take place defines creative acts. In a company that is tightly constructed and where roles are defined and kept as rules, creativity will not take place. In a company, such as the present start-up dot.coms, the rules for problem solving are almost restricted to one single rule. 'If there is a problem - solve it'. The amount of structure in these new companies is almost negligible and hence easily changed to accommodate new creative ideas. As companies grow, creative thinking within an agreed climate becomes more of an issue since structure becomes a necessary feature to control processes. In this growth situation there is a problem since each individual has a preferred way of approaching problems.

Creativity depends upon a match between the amount of structure that each individual prefers and how this is placed within an over arching structure of what is consensually agreed to be permissible as a minimum or maximum of freedom. Kirton (1989) names people who prefer to accommodate problem solving within the existing structures as Adaptors. Those whose preferred starting point is to look anew at whether the problem needs to be within the existing system in the first place, he calls Innovators. Adaptors prefer more structure; innovators prefer and can manage comfortably with much less. There are times when the structure is too tight or too loose for anyone's needs. There has to be some structure; the ease of fit is what determines success.

Creativity is also dependent upon the context within which it may occur. The creativity in military thinking of Napoleon was a disaster when translated into the socio-political domain. The creativity of a painter like Picasso or Francis Bacon is different in its individual raison d'etre and yet similar in its social context. Both these painters, like most artists, were free from the pressures to conform to social norms and their vision could take them wherever they wished in its expression. Although the rewards for their creativity were great, the driving force was personal and monetary rewards would not have altered their course. At the other end of the artistic scale, Van Gogh endured poverty as the price of his creative drive.

The creativity of scientists such as Steven Weinberg or Stephen Hawking is just as individual in its personal drive but it is constrained by the discipline within which they work - the academic fields of mathematics and theoretical physics, which demand from the outset an ability to communicate through their work.

The Enigma project at Bletchley Park in the UK (1940s) contained not merely many creative minds but at least one genius in the person of Alan Turing. It functioned with great efficiency and its success cannot be contested. The creative minds concerned were frequently bizarre in their external expression. The mathematician who, finishing his coffee, every lunch time threw his empty cup into the lake; the bearded man who, in cold weather, wore a baby's blue bonnet on his ginger beard; Turing with his haunted look, his crab-like sideways walk and his pathological fear of women. However, not everyone was creative all the time. Some had their brief hour of fame but the total system demonstrated the highest creativity in conditions where individualism was subjected to self-imposed discipline in the observation of the security rules, in pursuit of a high-order belief in what they were doing.

In general creative people have fewer social skills, not because they cannot be charming and attractive persons but because they question the accepted order of things. Where the disciplined adapter will not question the current framework of thinking, the innovatory, creative person will start by questioning the structure of the system itself as a vital necessity for solving major problems. They will regard solutions to problems that consist of re-arrangements of the existing structure as mildly interesting but irrelevant in the long run. The creative person will be motivated by a vision of how things could be and will be deeply unsatisfied with any hint of remaining in the present mode. They frequently find it difficult to communicate a vision, since detail is not their first concern. He or she does not present a clear vision since they are unsure as to how time may alter this. Typically such a person who has permission to start a project will alter that project as alternative paths present themselves. None of which is guaranteed to endear creative projects to the ordinary person.

These elements do not make for easy assimilation into the traditional organizations using the engineering paradigm with their order, hierarchy and discipline. Because each person is an individual and hence unique, it would be impossible for there not to be acute contradictions, at some time, between the efforts of the individual to solve their unique problem and the effort of society to reward previously tried and tested methods of so doing. If problems were merely arithmetic exercises, life would be easy; one would feed the data into the computer and wait for the results to appear. Nothing is so simple. Every problem belongs to an individual with all the emotional investments that surround the problem. If these are not taken into account then disaster occurs, probably sooner rather than later.

The attitude of creative people to detail is interesting. They are uninterested in the detail as something to worry about. They know that they have sufficient knowledge of how the detail has to be worked on; it is subordinate to the over-riding direction of their thought. For a mathematician the theorem only comes after the idea has arrived as a possibility. It is this possibility which carries the momentum through the days of attention to the detail and, at the end, the theorem. The genuinely creative person has two distinct components to their make up. One is their personality, which is interested more in the new than the old. For these people social conformity is distinctly out of key with what ought to be done and they are concerned uniquely with what must be done. The onlooker frequently sees this as arrogance. Arrogance alone, however, is not a mark of creativity; often it is the complete opposite. The second attribute is a mastery of the technique of the discipline in which they are working. Edgar Degas said that the style of an artist represented his personality and the technique represented his past history. Kirton echoes this in his definition of creativity as personal style plus complete mastery of the subject. This definition represents the common factor in the lives of the great creators throughout history in all fields.

Imagination is always present in this personality and it is not that of the anarchist, as many suppose. Imagination is a quest for the new but one that takes into account the necessity to reconcile opposites; to see the link between the global and the particular; to combine the novel with links with the past; a heightened emotion with a steady self-possession; and, above all, a judgement that is always on the alert.

It is the imaginative faculty which ensures that our minds are not satisfied with circumscribed activity but that we desire to create and go beyond the given. Attention to the past is not necessarily the best way. That incredibly successful strategist Horatio Lord Nelson once remarked that in times of peril the safest way is the boldest.

The appeal of the imaginative solution is a very subtle process, taking place below the level of normal conscious life. We talk of 'calling up' images. There is a deep level of cognition where we call up these images, which are formed in our pre-conscious. The tool for using imagination and intuition successfully is the aesthetic drive, which is present in all and capable of development. Aesthetics is an unusual word to find in business. Unusual but not unknown.

'Quality is practical, and factories and airlines and hospital labs must be practical. But it is also moral and aesthetic. ' Tom Peters

'One has to admit. . . that which is beautiful, good, useful etc, is that which is most ordered and most meaningful. Even if, from a dialectical point of view, a period of destruction is ... sometimes necessary for the progression towards order. Aesthetics (must be) understood as a search for structures, that is to say the set of relations existing between the elements of the whole of our knowledge . . . the search for, discovery and the use of relations makes action efficient. '

H. Laborit Biologie et Structure.

Aesthetics is our only way of dealing with that part of a problem not open to measurement. Aesthetic development is an integral part of that perceptual faculty which we call intuition and imagination. It is therefore always present in creative acts, whether in art, science or business. How well an individual solves a problem is largely an aesthetic one. Aesthetic development concerns the way in which the very complicated feelings and emotions, which are bound up with all the variations of personality and character, can be adjusted to the objective world. Aesthetic development concerns the precision with which these very complicated feelings and emotions are adjusted. Recognition of one's own particular aesthetic is a tool which enables the individual to make these fine adjustments. Because aesthetics is a lived experience unique to each individual, the use of aesthetics starts with knowledge of Self and an understanding of one's own aesthetic.

In achieving a general climate of creativity in an organization, the unifying factor that does this is a heightening of the aesthetic sense present in everybody. Aesthetics is about fit, about judgement of balance and harmony in an act. It enables the fruition of all the apparently contradictory elements in imagination. 'The reconciliation of opposites to see the link between the global and the particular, to combine the novel with links with the past, a heightened emotion with a steady self-possession, above all a judgement that is always on the alert'. Which of us does not desire this ability? Yet there is a distrust of anything that cannot be measured and a wilful ignoring of their own capacities for aesthetic judgement among leaders of business. How many good opportunities are missed due to this ignoring of a tool to judge imagination and intuition?

It is not threatening to convince people to work on their imagination and intuition by using means that are safe and in a protected area. Our company has worked for some twelve years now in circumstances where shifts in company culture from top to bottom were vital to ensure maximum efficiency and in some cases survival - in areas where the achievement of a unified strategic vision across disparate interests, both personal and professional, was an integral part of advance. In each case, aesthetic development increased and liberated a latent creativity. When the tool is new and being learnt by everyone at their own speed in a group, the group obtains its own climate of creativity out of the efforts of each individual. Creativity opens to everyone. Respect and curiosity about the new replaces resistance and fear. It is the industries that take this on board that will succeed in the future.

References

Tom Peters. (1998) Thriving on Chaos. Macmillan. London.

Michael Kirton. (1994) Adaptors and Innovators. Routledge. London.

H.Laborit. (1968) Biologie et Structure. Editions Gallimard. Paris.