The other day I read in the newspaper about the booming business of creativity. Creativity gurus having a field day with people striving to exercise their imagination muscles with workshops devoted to it. I cringed as I read about people walking around with little dots on their foreheads trying to find their “group”, or having to do something silly to get their meal at lunch time. Its stuff like that gives training workshops a bad name.
It reminded me of a creativity workshop I attended years ago, where I found myself, before even greeting anyone, being asked to do a free-form dance expression of myself. I did it, we all did. It was excruciatingly uncomfortable. And I felt myself about as far away from feeling creative as I ever have – it was more like being straight-jacketed in a role I was supposed to play.
Far from getting closer to creativity, this sort of thing sets up a new group norm to confirm to. The norm is a powerful unspoken group agreement that, despite the discomfort it may cause because of its deviation from what is acceptable outside the workshop, will cause people to behave in a way that is similar to others. Of course some people may be having the time of their lives, some may be feeling playful, others going along with it. But how many, when they got back to their lives, to their work, were able to apply that experience in any practical way? Or were more creative in their approach to things? Or could better solve problems or find solutions they were looking for? How many of the participants, I wonder, experienced creativity boot-camp hangover?
For creativity is not the same as play, not the same as being silly and outrageous. It may or may not include these ingredients. It does, however include discipline, mastery of a practice area and developing habits conducive to it. Creativity also comes in many mediums. Creativity exists in various art forms, in approaches to life, in business, in science. The creativity of a scientist may be a flash of insight that arrives after years of study and experimentation, like the dream August Kekule had in 1865 that lead to his correct model of the molecular formation of Benzene.
No matter what the field, there is an opportunity to improve upon it in some way. Creativity is the trying things out phase and innovation is the result of creative experimentation. Let’s say you have a practice area – an area of expertise, a profession or a hobby that you have devoted some time to developing ability in. You have developed mastery and upon that platform you can try out and ultimately incorporate new ways of thinking or acting. Or let’s say you are a manager in an organization and you need the many perspectives of your team to find a new way to achieve results and save resources. You can engage your team in creative thinking and trying new things until you find an innovation that fits.
Creativity involves a change of perception to uncollar the mind from the routine. The route to changing perceptions (thinking “out of the box”) is manifold and play is just one of many routes to that end.
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