In This Bloutcher; Where Art, Life and Leadership Collide
- The Virtuous Illusion
- Announcements
- Caine's Arcade
The Virtuous Illusion
In the not too distant past, while still working for a Fortune 100 company, I received a message from The Boss. He had set aside three precious hours to bring in an outside facilitator to challenge "the team" in a brainstorming session to come up with as many ideas as possible to solve one of the company's intractable challenges. With this raw material in hand we would prioritize "the best" ideas and put together a work plan to implement them. He was confident that the "natural creativity" of team members would yield "a cornucopia of innovative options." Our Boss was a good boss. He was smart, ethical and well intentioned.
So I, along with other executives, met at the designated time and place. In order to get from my office to the brainstorming location in our finely designed, comfortable corporate headquarters, I, along with other executives, walked past rows of other offices and cubicles that were populated with similarly styled mahogany furniture, the floors coated with the same handsome earth toned carpeting, the walls punctuated with corporate purchased art. We entered the same elevator we rode every day to our underground parking garage and landed in a large conference room, not surprisingly furnished in the same styled mahogany furniture and coated with the same earth toned carpeting. On the conference room table sat platters of fresh fruit, cookies, bottled water and lots of little toys that could be manipulated by our restless, mostly type A fingers. And so began our well facilitated brainstorming meeting seeking "a cornucopia of innovative options."
Everything about this experience was professionally done, well intended and resulted in "options" that were as uniform and bland as the furniture and carpeting. The ideas we came up with, and there were many of them, were an extension of ideas which in one form or another already lived in the airspace of our corporate offices. "A cornucopia" of ideas we had collected. "Innovative options?" Not so much.
This is why I call traditional brainstorming "The Virtuous Illusion." Because we feel like we are
doing something important but we are not. We simply get more of the same. Even among well intentioned, capable executives.
The question is: What is the purpose of brainstorming in the first place? And have leaders been barking up the wrong tree to get it?
As I understand it the purpose of brainstorming is to generate "a cornucopia of innovative options" which can be used to breakthrough organizational challenges. Brainstorming is thought to get at that by generating lots of ideas, mining those ideas for creative gems and then burnishing them through our efforts to implement them.
The irony is that traditional brainstorming is:
- done under the very conditions which lead to the extension of ideas rather than their breakthroughs
- is a lazy way of fostering creativity because it allows us off the hook the rest of the time which is almost all the time
- leads to an atrophy of the very creative skills we need to promote organic and sustained creativity in ourselves and our organizations
A different perspective:
- Creativity is not an event. Not even a facilitated event. It's an investment. It is an investment in the development of the creative skills of people. True, this might take longer than a two or three hour brainstorming session, but the results are more long lasting and lead to an organic creativity that keeps giving back to the organization.
- Creative engagement is NOT, not working. It is working in a different way. Many leaders think that spending time on "creativity" is frivolous and diverts focus from productivity and the tasks at hand. The evidence is quite different.
- It is time to do what the great masters of art have done for centuries. Look at the subject from a different perspective. The great artists became masters because they mastered the creative skill of seeing in new ways. They truly came up with "a cornucopia of innovative options" with this fresh perspective.
- Organizational leaders now have the opportunity to do the same by investing in the development of their peoples' creative skills. If leaders wish to generate innovative options they can bring in the masters of art and be open to what they can teach us. That would be virtuous.
- As Adolphe Menjou said to Humphrey Bogart at the end of Casablanca: "I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship." And that was no illusion.
Announcements:
- Reminder to check out Clicking by Karen Mandell. It's getting a lot of buzz. One of the best parts about the stories is that the quirky characters are so recognizable and endearing! To order from Amazon click here.
- This week we are finishing the Winter Session of The Coach's Studio; Where Outrageously Creative Coaching Happens. We have had a remarkable group of participants go through the program and join our community. It has been uplifting to watch everyone take wing! We are grateful to all who participated in our first program. We continue to work with participants in our Spring Session as they begin to spread their wings. We are planning to begin our Fall Session the first week in October. We are learning that participants seek and thrive in community. Personal growth and positive change accelerate when the journey is made with like minded spirits. And creativity is the energy which grows life in its many forms.
Caine's Arcade
My business partner Kathy Jordan brought this short video to my attention. It is a truly remarkable, inspiring story of a 9 year old with imagination who had a dream he would not let go of. It brought tears to my eyes! It is definitely worth the time to view:
Caine's Arcade
