Chaordic Columns | Blog
| PopCo & A Paradox of Creativity - maandag 15 augustus 2011 |
PopCo & A Paradox of Creativity
I tend to spend my summer holidays reading (pulp) fiction books, listening to music and playing with my children. Already last summer I discovered that being in this playful state of mind actually helps to bring clarity to questions and dilemmas that I experience in my work.
And again this summer, innocently surrendering myself to a book titled PopCo, written by Scarlett Thomas, I was amazed and surprised by the insights that reading this book in a mode of relaxation triggered. In fact, reading this book helped me to answer at least one question that I was already puzzled by for years...
Somewhere in 2006 I was working with a team of division managers in a large, multinational company. The subject of the process that we were in was the incredible amount of stress that they were experiencing, the lack of motivation and inspiration and the worisome decline in employee satisfaction with the management team. We spent different sessions on mapping and understanding the context, profiling the different needs and behavioural patterns in the organisation, sensing into the individual's as well as the team's pain and sorrows, before putting our attention to co-creating solutions for and approaches to their current reality. We applied a large variety of creative thinking methods, we elaborated on the ideas that excited us the most and started to prototype them in the organisation.
Of all the ideas that we came up with, the one that turned out to have the greatest impact was 'resetting the default time of their Outlook calendar'!? We changed the standard meeting time from 1 hour to 45 minutes to allow for enough time for chit-chat, running slightly over time and getting to the next room for the next meeting. The feedback on this prototype was overwhelming, and actually mostly unforeseen: people felt more relaxed during the day, their employees appreciated the personal contact with their managers before and after meetings, the managers picked up more information from the informal organisation and they appreciated the little walk between buildings, which also allowed for a sniff of fresh air and a calm shift of mindset into the next meeting.
Ever since, I've been contemplating if we had really needed that whole process to get to a solution that simple. Even though it was not the only solution we created, it proved to be the most effective and impactful one. Had it really required such an investment of time, money and energy in order to see this simplicity on the other side of complexity? The answer, after reading PopCo is: Yes! In my opinion it was worth every second and every euro that we spent on this process.
Reading PopCo helped to elicit my most recent Chaordic Essence: "Practising Integral Creativity". In my experience, an integral practice of creativity is possible, when:
% We are ready and willing to overcome our limiting beliefs and fears, and to postpone our judgements
# We are part of an inspired and purposeful community
& Our brains are sufficiently wired to a balanced practice of Saying Yes and Saying No
@ We make use of relevant tools and methods for creative thinking in a thoroughly designed process with good rhythm
A paradox of creativity though is that sometimes the exact opposite, also of the list above, is what we actually really need to accept or do. Learning about the 'time travel paradox' explained me how 'conscious creativity' can cause paralysis: confusing "knowing what might happen if we don't create anything" with "not creating anything because we already know what will happen anyways".
Let's create something!
Responses:
| Nobody has responded to this message yet. |
Respond:
