Archive for Creativity

Vision and Limits: Creating a Space for Learning and Innovation

January 17, 2009 / / One comment

Carman writes: Hi Lisa,  I’ll try to paraphrase your questions:

1. Is emergent (bottom-up) organization compatible with goals and direction (top-down)?

2. When is the imposition of limits appropriate?

Morgan explains that “the intelligence of the human brain is not predetermined, predesigned, or  preplanned. Indeed, it is not centrally driven in any way. It is a decentralized emergent phenomenon. Intelligence evolves.” (p.94)

Morgan calls vision, norms, values or limits “cybernetic reference points.” Though they guide behavior and prevent complete randomness they also create a valuable space “in which learning and innovation can occur.”

To return to the example of the trainees:

Managers seem to have slain the goose to get the golden egg (forgive the worn-out analogy). Conversely, by referring to the philosophy (vision and values) of the organization they might have avoided short-term thinking (and the tyranny of targets!) and encouraged the emergence of new behaviours.

For example, might trainees eventually have fostered more effective ways of serving clients (and accomplishing goals)? Might such behaviour have enabled new insights and learning for managers? In short, could managers have learned from learners?

Tomorrow we can discuss single-loop versus double-loop learning if you like Lisa. Once we have beggared the brain metaphor perhaps you would like to select the Morgan metaphor that especially interests you.

Well, I’m off to the Stanley Park seawall, which I love to walk each weekend. Sometimes I see seals and sometimes they see me. Heavy fog in Vancouver today. Reminds me of a Conan Doyle novel. Sweet symphony from KUWY (on computer) without and Starbucks coffee within–the Lark is ascending!

Bye for now!

Carman,  It’s such a treat to read your posts!  Yes, I look forward to your thoughts on single-loop and double-loop learning.  Are you familiar with Robert Hargrove’s triple-loop learning model?  It heavily inspired my (current) transformative-holistic learning model: 

http://creativeleadercoach.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/model.gif

Your day sounds very pleasant! We’ve had a taste of summer-like weather here the past few days in Southern California, and it makes me look forward to the long, warm days, again.

Talk soon, Lisa

Category: All Posts, Change, Creativity, Culture, Design, Innovation, Organization, Partnership, Teams, Vision /

Organization as brain, intelligent creative energy

January 7, 2009 / / One comment

Carman, regarding: your post: http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2009/01/07/metaphors-of-organization-organization-as-brain/ I completely agree.

This is a good example of how our metaphors can limit our thinking. The mind-body dichotomy, in which mind is usually seen as separate from and superior to the body, has been a fundamental cultural metaphor. Related metaphors include: God-World, spirit-flesh, and the misogynist male-female dichotomy in which men were considered rational and transcendent, and women more “bodily” and immanent. According to this pattern (or guiding metaphors), the World, the organization, the body … are all viewed as machines, controlled by an intelligent external force. These ideas were also applied to social organization.

Although the machine analogy has some uses, the metaphor is based on the faulty assumption that the world (including our bodies) are machine like. To the degree that we operate with this assumption, we behave in ways that actually suppress organizational intelligence and creativity. (For an example of how perception can create reality, see Jane Elliott’s social experiment http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2008/07/08/how-perspective-draws-out-or-diminishes-human-potential/)

In addition to the one you mentioned, a great source on the intelligent body is Dr. Candace Pert’s, Your Body is Your Subconscious Mind. It also supports somatic approaches to psychology.

I like your proposal to consider the entire organization as “brain”; it is more realistic and as a guiding assumption would tend to lead us towards behaving in ways that cultivate organizational intelligence and creativity.  Or a related analogy might be “body-mind.” 

I wonder what it would do for us to consider organizations as creative, intelligent energy?  Might it lead us to open up to these qualities, to the creative intelligent energy of others? (Thinking about it, this is a process view of organizations …)

Lisa
Some related posts:
http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2008/05/01/the-brain-as-a-metaphor-for-organization/
http://www.creativeleadercoach.com/2008/05/09/organization-as-organism-machine/

Category: All Posts, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Organization, Philosophy, Science /

Success is a verb

December 18, 2008 / / No comments

In Western culture, we tend to be inclined to believe in and aim towards static and desireable future. In myths and fairy tailes, our heroes’ and heroines’ journies end in a static, experientially eternal state of bliss or pain. This is also a theme of monotheistic religions, which have shaped our worldview over the past several thousand years: life is often viewed as a journey to an eternity which is often painted as either homogenously wonderful or awful.

Such stories often shape our deepest and oldest beliefs and expectations of life. For example, I’ve known never-married women and men who believe that, if they find and marry the right person, that their lives will be happy and fulfilled ever after. Similarly, many Americans dream of a good retirement in which we will be passed all of the travails of our lives, and live our golden years in health, safety and fulfillment. Heaven is a place where we can lean back, wipe our brow, and finally exclaim, “We made it!”

As a result, we may be tempted to live for and in the future — for “someday.”

Intellectually, however, we know that it is never “someday”; it is always today. When we reach the top of the mountain, there is a new vista, and from that vista we set new goals. Life, in other words, is an ongoing process.  Myths and fairy tales are only able to maintain the illusion of future permanence by drawing a curtain at the end of the tale. If they continued to follow the characters through the remainder of their lives, we would find that life is characterized by change. When a biological organism stops changing, we can be sure that it is dead. Similarly, in the bigger picture, our cosmos also continues to change and evolve.

Along the same lines, we might observe that life isn’t composed of two parts, non-eternity and eternity: Logically, infinity plus 100 years (a nice, long human lifespan) still equals infinity. Therefore, to the degree that we acknowledge eternity, we might notice that eternity doesn’t start “later”; rather, here we are ….

It is human nature (and no doubt the nature of life in general) to move towards greater fulfillment. Studies have shown that the happiest people are those who feel they are making progress towards a goal. Imagining and living in the present, towards a desireable future is a necessary and fulfilling part of life.

However, our old, deep rooted belief in “ever after” can lead us, instead, to live “for the future,” effectively postponing our lives and preventing us from living fully in the present.

One manifestation of living for the future is an over-reliance on “left-brain” intellectual busyness and/or will power. Aside from draining the joy and vitality from life, this posture makes us less effective in the present. For example, we may become less aware of opportunities in the here and now, and also less creative.

Therefore, I submit that it would be a lot more fruitful if we began to think of success as a verb. Certainly there are goals to achieve, but if we think of success as a process, we open up more possibilities for effectiveness, creativity and enjoyment in the now. And, if as leaders, we can create environments in which success is a verb, we will increase intrinsic motivation (which we know is far superior than extrinsic motivation) for  ourselves and others.

Our cultural belief in “ever after” is an example of a subterranean belief — a belief that tends to exist and operate below that level of our conscious awareness. These beliefs can either support us in living towards our desireable future or they may block us. Because, as a coach, I’m interested in helping people achieve their fulfilling success, we will talk in much greater depth in this blog about these subterranian beliefs and how they shape our present (including how they can keep us on our “wheel of fear”).

For today, we might ask consider the question, what is our idea of success? Is it a static place defined by certain accomplishments or acquisitions, at which we hope to someday arrive (only to notice that that line and place keeps moving)? Or is it an attitude of living fully in the present, while continually moving in the direction of our heart’s desire?

Reflection

* Imagine success as a destination in the future. What emotions does that concept bring up for you? How present do you feel in your body? How present are you to your immediate surroundings and possibilities?

* Now imagine success as an orientation, a way of being in the present towards fulfilling goals. How would you live differently? How would your quality of life differ?

Category: All Posts, Change, Coaching, Creativity, Culture, Leadership, Partnership, Philosophy, Rewards, Vision / Tags: , ,

Creativity, Dreaming, and Shaping the Future

December 12, 2008 / / No comments

“Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively. I hear them all at once. What a delight this is! All this inventing, this producing, takes place in a pleasing, lively, dream.” –Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

Good morning, readers! It’s been a very intense time for me on the career coaching side of my practice, and I’ve been longing to spend more time with you here.  Mozart’s quote is a great reminder for us to recall the source and nature of our creativity. It’s not sequential analytical thought (though that has its own place in our lives and organizations); rather, our creativity seems to emerge from our wholistic right brains.

Is creativity important in your life and work?  Do you have problems to solve, or opportunities to meet? Would you like a better quality of experience?  If so, where and when do you take the time to nuture your playful, visionary, creative nature?

Category: All Posts, Change, Creativity, Innovation, Science, Vision /

Working with interruptions? Not smart!

October 20, 2008 / / No comments

As a brief departure from our current discussion, I recently heard that when we are regularly interrupted by ringing telephones, email announcements, and visitors, that our IQ drops by about 10% – the same level of impairment found in people who are under the influence of marijuana. The colleague who shared this information with me joked, “All of the impairment, none of the benefits.”   

Most of us who have worked in an environment with frequent interruptions know that it materially affects our productivity, as well as our stress levels. It is the oppositive of the flow state, in which we tend to be extraordinarily effective. 

In our current age, which has been called the information or innovation age, the success of our organizations depends on the intelligence, creativity and effectiveness of people, who are many times also the biggest investment of the firm.  How can we make sure that our organizational members are as creative and effective as possible?

Some time and activity management experts recommend that we cultivate the habit of setting aside uninterrupted work time on a regular basis, to make progress on our most important projects — that we schedule appointments with ourselves in the same way that we schedule them with others.  The key is to let people know when you will be responding to email and phone calls.

Yet, some corporate cultures do not support this practice, prefering that its members always be available for questions at any time.  (It would be interesting to compare their results with organizations that manage this issue more strategically!) 

What is your experience?  What practices work well for you?

Category: All Posts, Creativity, Culture, Design, Innovation, Leadership /

Cultivating strength

October 10, 2008 / / One comment

Especially given the turmoil in the markets in recent days, it seems to be good timing to return to the subject of how we can leap off the “hamster wheel of fear” — a self-perpetuating negative cycle — and onto our wheel of creative freedom.  Recently, I had the privilege to watch a presentation by certified hypnotherapist, Monica Justus, CHt.  Ms. Justus invited a volunteer from the audience, a local business owner with a technical background whom I would consider a skeptical person, and demonstrated the effect of thoughts and words on our physical and mental strength.

For the demonstration, she asked him to extend his arm straight out to the side, which he did. She then asked him his name, which he answered truthfully. She pressed down strongly on his extended arm, but it remained strong and in place, demonstrating strength. She then asked him to respond to the question in a way that was not true.  Strikingly, his arm weakened, and she was easily able to push it down.  I’ve since used this demonstration in a training situation — it works.

It appears that when we speak our truth, we are, in fact, stronger.

Ms. Justus went on to test the effect of positive and negative words and concepts. The words “love” and “peace” tested “strong.” The word “war” caused his arm to go weak.

We spend most of our days thinking and communicating with others. What is the quality of our thoughts? Do we think self-defeating and fearful thoughts that weaken us, or do we look for the positive in ourselves and our situation? Do we see problems or opportunities? 

And, are we living and speaking our truth or supressing our true thoughts out of fear?  (On this note, I don’t advocate reckless, controlling, or inconsiderate speech. However, if your situation does not safely permit you to express your perspective, it may be worthwhile to consider how you might alter your situation).

Choosing what makes us stronger, including our truth, and a constructive perspective is a key to shifting off the wheel of fear, and onto our wheel of creative freedom.  More on this later!

Category: All Posts, Coaching, Collaboration, Communication, Creativity, Culture, Leadership, Partnership, Vision /

Want to be more creative? Reduce stress.

September 13, 2008 / / No comments

In our last post, we talked about working harder and longer as a mainstream cultural approach to dealing with a threat (or challenging environment). Those who have been reading this blog for a while may recognize this pattern as a common “wheel of fear.” This response is so common as to appear commonsensical. When the going gets tough, the tough don’t slough off, right?

This kind of response is very appropriate in certain kinds of situations. Our body-minds respond to perceived threats to life and limb by firing up adrenaline that can be used for “fight or flight” — a physical response. We draw upon our reserves to deal with the immediate threat. Organizations and nations do this as well. Of course, this is not sustainable, and if overused, can lead to personal and collective burnout. In burnout, our ability to respond becomes drastically reduced. Using the common analogy, a stress response can help a sprint and hurt a marathon.

A second distinction that becomes important is whether we are dealing with a simple task or with complex problems, which require a creative response. Our present age has been referred to as the “innovation age” in that innovation has become the engine of growth. Innovation — creative problem solving — is also crucial in an age of continous change. Under these conditions, the stress response can actual impair a creative and effective response to complex problems.

A study by David Beversdorf and Jessa Alexander in the department of neurology at Ohio State University demonstrated that people under stress perform slightly better on memory tests; however, they performed more poorly on complex problems requiring flexible thinking: “When individuals [under stress] are faced with a challenging task, they are less likely to perform well in complex situations.” (Graham qtd. in Brown, 2004)

If our “commonsensical” response to a stressor is to engage in behaviors that decrease our effectiveness, we are on our self-perpetuating “wheel of fear.” Clearly, the only way out is “counter-intuitive” behavior — our “wheel of creative freedom.” So, continuing to build our toolkit for our wheel of freedom, when under stress, we might consider and experiment with some of the following counter-intuitive suggestions:

* Make haste by not being in a hurry.
* The more we take it easy, the more we accomplish.
* The more overwhelmed we are, the more we need to take a break.

I’d love to hear your experiences …

References
Brown, Steve. “Stress Stifles Creativity, Study Shows.” The Latern (Online). 11/10/04. Retrieved from:
http://media.www.thelantern.com/media/storage/paper333/news/2004/11/10/Campus/Stress.Stifles.Creativity.Study.Shows-799647.shtml

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Becoming a “human being” takes time

September 7, 2008 / / No comments

Time has flown, as it does when our schedules are full.  For me, the past three weeks have been filled with a lot of work and a some necessary relaxation, or as some call it, “human being.”  Given that, in this blog, we have been in the midst of constructing our “wheel of creative freedom” and that I’m just now returning from taking a few weeks away from my blog, it seems timely to talk about the relationship between being and creativity.

Mainstream American culture has always valued industry, and this value is reflected in the process and culture of our organizations. As Americans, we tend to link our prosperity to hard work; further, we tend to think of work as a good in itself. Work is seen as virtuous. This value is rooted in religion: The Protestant work ethic, sometimes called the Puritan work ethic, is based on the Calvinist sensibility that hard work is godly and that success is a sign of design favor. On the other hand, sloth is considered one of the seven deadly sins.

We are a workaholic culture and proud of it. And so, when we are under threat, when we have an urgent problem to solve, we tend to work all the harder. The rational ego and will override our needs for rest, for play, for relaxation, and depending on our field, we might work 50, 60, 80, 100 hours a week.

This strategy can work well in the machine age, and it can work well in sprints; but how well does this strategy work in the innovation age? in a marathon? As it turns out, it works less well. We’ll talk more about this and its counter-intuitive implications in upcoming posts…

Category: All Posts, Creativity, Culture, Leadership, Values /

How perception creates reality

June 27, 2008 / / No comments

In my last post, I described how our perspective can shape the very conditions that reinforce our perspective; in this sense, we tend to create our realities. In that post, I used the example of how my fear of being unsafe on cliffy moutain roads actually caused me to become a more unsafe driver; the more afraid I was, the less safe I became. Becoming a safer driver did not involve forgetting that the lanes were narrow and that the drop off steep; on the contrary, being aware of these conditions rationally constrained my driving. For example, I didn’t speed or try to pass. However, by keeping my focus on what I wanted rather than I didn’t want, I materially improved the odds of my achieving my objective.

This is also true in a more subtle sense. For example, earlier we discussed organizations based on Theory X.  Theory X assumes that people don’t really want to work, and that the manager’s job is (essentially) to create the “unnatural” conditions under which “workers” will be productive. Organizations based on on this philosophy rely on supervision and control, rewards and punishments to stimulate productivity. Motivation is driven from the outside, which is another way of expressing the idea of “control.”

Operating within this perspective, it would never occur to us to “enrich” the work environment to make it more intrinsically satisfying, because the possibility that people *may be* self-motivated and want to contribute will not have occurred to us; in fact, that possibility would be eclipsed by our belief that people are inherently lazy.

Not surprisingly, as leadership coach Robert Hargrove (1995) points out, organizations with this perspective, create the very conditions that discourage employee enrollment, and generate passivity (endorsing the assumptions of Theory X).

Now imagine that things aren’t working very well — which given that current conditions require organizations to become more creative, proactive and adaptive, would likely be true for this kind of organization. Given these beliefs, the most likely response of a leadership team influenced by Theory X thinking would be to tighten controls. This would *tend* to further decrease commitment and increase passive compliance — a classic organizational wheel of fear.

In my next post, we will consider the very interesting example of the power of our perceptions in shaping both ourselves and the self-perceptions of others. This can be very subtle, yet it shapes personal, family, community, organizational, national and world histories.  Then, in subsequent posts, we’ll begin to apply these insights to our wheel of freedom and creativity.

Hargrove, Robert. Masterful Coaching: Extraordinary Results by Impacting People and the Way They Think and Work Together. San Francisco: Pfeiffer, 1995.

Category: All Posts, Change, Coaching, Creativity, Culture, Leadership, Organization, Partnership /

“When driving, keep your eyes on where you want to go”

June 20, 2008 / / 2 comments

steering wheelIn earlier posts, we talked about how our “wheel of fear” (Britten 2001) can lead us to take actions that perpetuate the very conditions we are trying to alleviate with our reflexive actions and the wheel of being (Christie 2008) which shows how both our “wheel of fear” and “wheel of freedom” (Britten 2001) are driven by our perspectives.

In today’s post, we’ll begin to explore the wheel of being, and in particular, the role of perspective in shaping our actions and our experience of the results of our actions, in a practical and grounded way.

People who know me well know that I’m not a big fan of cliffy mountain roads. My father was almost killed on a road like this as a child, and he passed his fears on to me. Some people can nonchalantly cruise along the edge of a multi-story drop off without thinking twice, but I’ve always been focused on the edge, the areas where there is little margin for error, and on the drop. Further, I was also aware that being nervous about it made me a less safe driver. As I tightened my grip on the wheel, I became more rigid, and less flexible and responsive to conditions. In general, when we’re in fear, we tend to react rather than respond.

In recent years, I lived in a mountain community where I needed to drive this kind of road on a regular basis. At about this time, I heard a really practical bit of information: When we’re driving, we tend drive towards what we are looking at; therefore, the best way to stay on the road is to keep your eyes on where you want to go. I put this advice into action, and immediately found that it to be very useful. Keeping my attention on where I wanted to go substantially changed my experience: certainly, I was still aware of my surroundings, but the road seemed much more comfortable and drivable. As a result, my confidence increased, and I became a much safer driver.

If you think about, this is also true in the more general sense: we tend to move towards what we are focusing on. For example, it’s often been said that in dealing with their problems, organizations sometimes lose track of their vision, with the result being that their problems multiply.

In upcoming posts, we will continue to explore just how our perspective shapes our realities. It’s more than perceptual in that we respond in both subtle and non-subtle ways that can create or reinforce the realities we perceive.  When we’re really clear on this, our way off the hamster wheel of fear and on to our wheel of freedom — which is also the “wheel” of creativity — becomes obvious.

Britten, Rhonda. Fearless Living: Live Without Excuses and Love Without Regrets. NY: The Berkley Publishing Group,

Category: All Posts, Change, Creativity, Leadership, Organization, Vision /
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