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Jon Henderson, an executive at Hallmark, said, "You can't just order up a good idea or spend money to find one. You have to build a climate and give people the freedom to create things."3 The central idea here is radical. It says you can't make creativity happen, no matter how much you reward or punish folks. Instead, the best you can do is allow creativity to happen. That is a major frustration for two-fisted executives, but it is completely in line with the stream of reports that comes from "creatives" (those who create) from as far back as Michelangelo. The dominant theme from those sources is one of release, not imposition.
Michelangelo said he'd never really created a statue. He only got the gravel out of the way so that the statue inside could be released. Bach said much the same thing about music. Authors report the same phenomena, citing the muse within. Even inventors echo this message, from Thomas Edison to Paul MacCready, inventor of the first practical man-powered airplane and electric car. In fact, MacCready credited daydreaming as his major tool. It let him get underneath what he was supposed to think and find out what he really thought down deep in the shadows.4 Now that was a man talking about vaulting the wall of rationality. But since he never read this blog, he had to come up with a different term --- letting go.
So, How Do You Let Go?
Relax. In essence, that is the essence. The creativity is locked inside and you have to relax and let it out, you can't snatch it out. Terrific, you say. We're losing market share. The competition's come out with yet another new model. My job's on the line because I can't think of anything to do. And some jerk from the ivory tower is screaming in my ear "RELAX! RELAX! RELAX!".
Yet the jerk keeps murmuring "relax" as though slumber is the secret of competitiveness. I'm the jerk. And the problem is that our vocabulary doesn't really have a better word for the desired state of being.
Ø Maybe it would help to think of a jogger. The body pumps, sweat cascades from pores, and there is a constant jarring of the body with every hoof beat. Yet the mind is relaxed, wafting languidly through the surroundings or in some intellectual playground.
Ø Or think about Oral Hirscheiser, the Dodger's pitching ace, who blissfully sang hymns to himself while he fanned one batter after another to win the World Series. That's "relax" ... the mind at peace in the midst of tremendous physical or intellectual exertion.
There is a difference, you see, between functional stress and emotional stress. Functional stress can actually invigorate us. Emotional stress wipes us out. Exercise puts tremendous stress on the body. But after a brief shower, most people feel alive and spunky for the rest of the day. Watching a fatal car accident requires little movement or thought. But afterwards we're so wiped out we need to lie down for a while.
One of the great all-time examples of relaxing in the eye of the storm has to be the 2004 Boston Red Sox - the ones that finally beat the Bambino’s curse and won the World Series. The World Series itself was no big deal. They sailed through that in about 2 days time, obliterating whoever it was that represented the National League that year.
The storm was their playoff series with the fearsome New York Yankees – the bane of their existence and the crux of the Bambino’s curse. For eighty years the Yanks had stood between Boston and the series. For eighty years the Sox had found a way to fold and die. And 2004 was no different. The Yankees had them on the ropes. The Sox were two games behind and one out from death.
And then it happened. One of those tipping point moments, when Fortune shifts her weight and everything starts going the other way. The New York fans went berserk. Cops in riot gear lined the foul lines to keep Hell in its bottle. And as the camera panned the Sox dug out you noticed that they were in a separate realm. They were having fun. In fact, they’d been having fun during the whole playoff series.
Oral Hershheiser may have been in communion with the most high during his triumph. The Red Sox were in a more earthy communion with the beast of the clubhouse. And then Curt Shilling got out there on the mound, bleeding through his sock for 6 innings because --- well, gee whiz --- because that’s what a guy does. It’s fun to give one up for the gipper. These guys weren’t playing baseball, they were acting in a Jimmy Stewart movie. It was fun. They were relaxed. All they had to do was go out there and the director would make sure it all had a happy ending.
Meanwhile, the New York players were stressing out about doing things right. As a result, they wore themselves out and crashed and burned. And just to prove it wasn’t a fluke, Boston repeated as world champs in 2007 – in the exact same fashion.
WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Look at what you've learned already.
Ø First, creativity is simply vaulting the wall of rationality.
Ø Second, creativity comes from individuals, not groups.
Ø Third, you are responsible for your own creativity.
Ø And finally, all you have to do is relax.
That's the purpose of this blog. We're going to de-mystify creativity, starting with the very next chapter.
Ø We're going to make creativity seem so normal that it's no longer frightening.
Ø We're also going to hold up a mirror so you can see your own creative potential, which will boost your confidence.
Ø And we're going to give things names so you've got some hooks to hang ideas on.
We're going to take a carving knife to creativity and dissect it, and the people who pursue it. By the time we're done we'll know what creativity smells like, not just how to spell it. So, as my good friend Bill Shakespeare said, "Lay on McDuff, and damned be him that first cries, 'Hold! Enough!'"
End Notes
1. The report of the blue-ribbon Commission on Competitiveness was carried on the UPI wire service on
February 14, 1985.
2. Akio Morita and Shintaro Ishihara, The Japan That Can Say No, Kobunsha Publishers, Tokyo, 1989. You can read an English review and excerpt in "A Japanese View: Why America Has Fallen Behind", Fortune, September 25, 1989, p. 52
3. Jay Cocks, "Let's Get Crazy", Time, June 11, 1990, p. 41
4. Leon Jaroff, "He Gives Wings to Dreams", Time, June 11, 1990, p. 52
© 2009 Joe Anderson
