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OUT OF OUR MINDS

“When people say to me that they are not creative, I assume that they haven’t yet learnt what is involved.”

CREATING THE FUTURE

HOW CREATIVE ARE YOU? How creative are the people you work with? How about your friends? Next time you are at a social event, ask them. You may be surprised by what they say. I’ve worked with people and organizations all over the world. Everywhere I go, I find the same paradox. Most children think they’re creative; many adults think they are not. This is a bigger issue than it may seem.

We are living in a world that is changing faster than ever and face challenges that are unprecedented. How the complexities of the present will play out in future is all but unknowable. Cultural change is never linear and rarely predictable. If it were, the legions of pundits and forecasters would be out of a job. It was probably with this in mind that the economist J.K. Galbraith said, “The primary purpose of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable.” As the world spins faster, organizations everywhere need people who can think creatively, communicate and work in teams: people who are flexible and quick to adapt. Too often they can’t find them. Why not? My aim in this book is to answer three questions.

• Why is it essential to promote creativity? Business leaders, politicians and educators emphasize the vital importance of promoting creativity and innovation. Why does this matter so much?
• What is the problem? Why do people need help to be creative? Young children are buzzing with ideas. What happens as we grow up to make us think we are not creative?
• What is involved? What is creativity? Is everyone creative or just a select few? Can creativity be developed and, if so, how?

Everyone occasionally has new ideas, but how can creativity be encouraged as a regular part of everyday life? If you are running a company or an organization or a school, how do you make innovation systematic? How do you lead a culture of innovation?

RETHINKING CREATIVITY

To answer these questions, it’s important to be clear about what creativity is and how it works. There are three related ideas, which I’ll elaborate as we go on. They are imagination, which is the process of bringing to mind things that are not present to our senses; creativity, which is the process of developing original ideas that have value; and innovation, which is the process of putting new ideas into practice. There are various misconceptions about creativity in particular.

“My starting point is that everyone has huge creative capacities as a natural result of being a human being. The challenge is to develop them. A culture of creativity has to involve everybody, not just a select few.”

Special people?

One misconception is that only special people are creative. This idea is reinforced by histories of creative icons like Martha Graham, Pablo Picasso, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison, Virginia Wolf, Maya Angelou and Steve Jobs. Companies seem to think this too. They often divide the workforce into two groups: the “creatives” and the “suits.” You can normally tell who the creatives are because they don’t wear suits. They wear jeans and they come in late because they’ve been struggling with an idea. I don’t mean that the creatives are not creative. They can be highly creative, but so can anybody if the conditions are right – including the suits. Everyone has creative capacities. The challenge is to develop them. A culture of innovation has to involve everybody, not just a select few.

Special activities?

A second misconception is that creativity is about special activities, like the arts, or advertising, design or marketing. All of these can be creative, but so can anything, including science, mathematics, teaching, medicine, running a sports team or a restaurant. Some schools have “creative arts” departments. I am an uncompromising advocate of better provision for the arts in schools but creativity is not confined to the arts. Other disciplines, including science and mathematics, can be just as creative. Creativity is possible in any activity that engages our intelligence.

Companies are creative in different areas. Apple is famously good at creating new products. Wal-Mart’s creative strength is in systems, such as supply chain management and pricing. Starbucks did not invent coffee; it created a particular service culture around coffee. Actually, it did invent the $8 cup of coffee, which was a breakthrough, I thought. A culture of innovation should embrace all areas of the organization.

Letting go?

Creativity is sometimes associated with free expression, which is why some people worry about encouraging too much creativity in schools. They think of children running wild and knocking the furniture over rather than getting on with serious work. Being creative often does involve playing with ideas and having fun and enjoyment. It is also about working hard on ideas and projects, crafting them into their best forms and making critical judgments along the way about which ones work best and why. In every discipline, creativity draws on skill, knowledge and control. It’s not only about letting go, it’s about holding on.

Learning to be creative

It is often thought that people are either born creative or not, just as they may have blue or brown eyes, and there’s not much anyone can do about it. The fact is, there is a lot you can do to help yourself, and other people, become more creative. If someone tells you they can’t read or write, you don’t assume they are not capable of it, just that they haven’t learnt how. It is the same with creativity. When people say they are not creative, I just assume they have not learnt how. I also assume that they can. Why are these issues important anyway?

THREE THEMES

There are three core themes in this book.

• We are living in times of revolutionary change

  No matter where you are or what you do, if you live on earth you are caught up in a global revolution. I mean this literally not metaphorically. There are forces at work now for which there are no precedents. Human affairs have always been turbulent. What is distinctive now is the rate and scale of change. Two of the driving forces are technological innovation and population growth. Together they’re transforming how we live and work, changing the nature of politics and culture and putting perilous strains on the earth’s natural resources. The outcomes are unpredictable. What is certain is that we and our children are confronting challenges that are unique in human history.1

• We have to think differently about our talents and abilities

  Given the challenges we face, the most profound shift has to be in how we think about our abilities and those of our children. In my experience, many people have little idea of their real talents. Too many think they have no special talents at all. My premise is that we are all born with immense talents but that too few people discover or develop them. Ironically, one of the reasons is education. The waste of talent is not deliberate. Most educators have a deep commitment to helping students do their best. Politicians make impassioned speeches about making the most of every student’s abilities. The waste of talent may not be deliberate but it is systemic. Dominant approaches to education and training are preoccupied with certain types of ability that systematically overlook the talents and stifle the creative confidence of untold numbers of people.

• We have to run schools, companies and communities differently

  Leading a culture of innovation has radical implications for how institutions are organized, whether they are schools or corporations, and for styles of leadership. Business and public sector leaders commonly share three perspectives. They know that one of the biggest challenges they face is the increasing complexity of the global environment, which they expect to accelerate in the coming years. They are concerned that their organizations are not equipped to cope with this complexity. They agree that the most important leadership skill for dealing with this growing complexity is creativity. Many organizations put on occasional training days to encourage their staff to think creatively; but, like the rituals of rain dancing, I believe they may misunderstand the problems they’re trying to solve. The problems they face are immediate and there are some immediate things they can do to tackle them, but the long-term solutions lie upstream in the education system.

I’ve worked with national education systems, with school districts, principals, teachers and students from kindergarten to university and beyond, including community colleges and adult education associations. I’ve directed national research projects, taught in universities and trained teachers. I also work now with every type of business, including Fortune 500 companies, major banks and insurance houses, design companies, media corporations, information technology organizations, and with retail, manufacturing, engineering and service companies. I’ve worked with cultural centers in the arts and the sciences; with museums, orchestras, and with dance and theater companies...