Creative / Not Creative

I can understand how Robert Fritz uses purpose and tension to describe creativity, but they still feel at odds with my understanding of the process (supposedly from the other side of the creative fence!). To me, purpose sounds too clear and concrete a vision. I can be purposeful – my vision grows organically out of my past and present experience and there is usually a clear connection to be seen. To me, being creative is where the vision springs into life apparently from nowhere. For me A + B probably = C, for a creative A + B could = pretty well anything. And I am sometimes baffled as to how the idea was born. Tension also seems to me to be at odds with creativity. Fritz’s elastic band image conjures up a very direct, straight line connection between now and the purpose. That sounds like me. I have always imagined creatives as having a relaxed, playful approach that means the connection betwen now and the purpose is anything but direct. It is the rambling lines of connection that enable a creative to stumble across amazing new possibilities and solutions.

And having looked at my brainstormed list again, I am wondering how on earth I managed to put Bach under not creative!!! I think I was straying into the contrast between structured and unstructured. But I think I can admit that Bach is supremely structured and supremely creative at the same time! But interesting that his music appeals to me much more than Jazz. For me, the structure of Bach is very comforting while the chaos of jazz is unsettling.

So do those who see themselves as creative find Bach unsettling because he is too structured and Jazz comforting because it is the opposite?

I thought I’d offer the opening of a post-grad Diploma paper written by my partner, as it just feels so apposite to your explorations. If you’d like the full thesis as a link, I’ll ask for permission for you to have it. Here is the first page and a half:

Logic and Creativity

I have spent part of my working life to date as a composer, and then part as a manager. The move from one to the other was voluntary and deliberate. I could have continued with what many thought of as a charmed and enviable life, earning a decent living by writing music for television and radio, working every day with glamorous and imaginative people. Yet I moved on because I believed that working in management was more participative and more creative. I want to explore why that is.
It is a charged, value-full word, creativity. It is a Good Thing, to be encouraged in the employees of well-adjusted learning organisations. There are ‘how to’ books about promoting it. Linking artistic endeavour with business is fashionable. A training intervention is currently available in which manager-delegates can sit with specific instruments within an orchestra as it performs, and so realise in a practical sense truths about, for example, what it feels like to try to perform one’s line without being able to hear other critical instruments, or what performers really need of their conductors, or what transformations can occur when the entire orchestra/organisation is in good alignment—and how it feels to be playing out of tune. Business literature examines creativity as invention—emphasising newness and something-from-nothing; or looks at it only within imagination-oriented businesses such as media, graphic design, or marketing agencies; or focuses on creativity as if it were a tool, to be deployed in certain sessions and techniques like brainstorming or mind-mapping, which will solve problems or discover new insights. Creative thought is about inspiration and flashes of insight, good ideas, a knack for lateral thinking, the opposite of the traditional.
Or creativity is at the heart of new, post-Newtonian visions of how organisations might work in the future. It is the fellow of magical chaos, the outcome of explosive phase changes as organisations oscillate uncomfortably between order and disintegration. It promotes singularly gushing accounts of its coming into being:
“Any moment now the earth will crack open and we will stare into its dark centre. Into that smoking caldera, we will be asked to throw most of what we have treasured, most of the techniques and tools that have made us feel competent. We know what we must do. And when we finally step forward to do it, when we have made our sacrificial offerings to the gods of understanding, then the ruptures will cease. Healing waters will cover the land, giving birth to new life, burying forever the ancient, rusting machines of our past understandings. And on these waters we will set sail to places we now can only imagine. There we will be blessed with new visions and new magic. We will feel once again like creative participants in this mysterious world.”
These are part of my personal understanding of what creativity is, too, but they seem to be either essentially limited and limiting, or so breathless as to be without substance. They attempt to smooth the edges, contain, understand and, by understanding, tame; or they deny understanding. They attempt to apply risk analysis to something which is quintessentially risk itself, or they place it on a pedestal and worship without attempting comprehension. It can be all of these things, but it can also be their opposites. Creativity can mean innovation, but it can also mean the rediscovery of old truths that have become mouldy and moss-covered. A dissection of creativity into components or examples seems to me to kill it dead; I want to find other ways of thinking and writing about it. There is no untruth in any of these lines of inquiry, but there is not much rich truth, either.
When I stare inward and concentrate on what creativity means I sense a set of feelings, a breathed atmosphere, a scent, that is common both to a sensation of going well in a composition and going well in a meeting, a conversation, a project. There is a smell of danger, too, of disturbance and lack of control, of being outside the comfort zone. Questions, as opposed to statements, come into it; as do enthusiasm and passion, sensitivity and empathy, and the deliberate giving away of agendas. Euphoria can be there, but often as a problem, because creativity in the workplace can be cliquey and exclusive. There can be arrogance, vanity, and lack of humility, but also insecurity and loneliness. Authenticity, both real and manipulated, is there too.
What is this creativity? How does it work? If it is good and valuable, how can I encourage it, both in myself and in those with whom I work and associate? Why do I instinctively feel that there are interesting inter-penetrations between the world of the creative artist and the world of the manager? What might they be; what is their nature, do they cast a useful light on either discipline? Can one manage better—whatever that means—through thinking about composing or painting; can one compose better, by understanding how collections of people behave in the context of an organisation?

The complete paper is stunning and right now I can’t add to it, although I do have my own views and regard my own consultancy as a creatve business!

Diana