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All it takes for anyone to experience true, unapologetically unbridled creativity is to observe kids, say under the age of 8, in a state of deeply-focused play. The world around them ceases to exist as they build incredibly inventive and intricate narratives in their heads, all the while telling their ideas in great detail to whomever is willing to listen. They have no fear, no shame, even though these ideas, can sometimes be very, very silly. Socializing for the first 18 years of our lives takes care of making us feel ashamed for having crazy ideas, develop self-censorship and worst of all, make us believe that being unendingly creative is at best a waste of good ol’ productive time.
On top of that, 12 years of mandatory, conventional schooling, beats creativity out of many of us. In other words, we’re taught to become uncreative in favour of other so-called more desirable attributes that help us play well with others. Those that are rebellious enough to not let that creativity be sucked out of them, find themselves labeled “creative” later in life, in this instance the epithet carrying a negative connotation, as if creativity was an undesirable quality.
My opinion is that the people who forgot how to be creative, label those who remained so as idle daydreamers purely and simply out of creative envy, as they were tricked into adopting someone else’s vision of success and achievement, which involved fitting a mould of societal expectations. Don’t get me wrong, I completely understand that, to live in a peaceful and productive society, some social norms are required, as unbridled creativity can become a hindrance if not tempered by a need to live harmoniously. But, the world we currently live in has seen the pendulum swing too far the other way and we are now submerged by a sea of milquetoast, bland sameness, because we are too afraid to stand out.
Case in point: all the houses in my neighbourhood look the same, I can find the same chain retail outlets coast to coast and most new hospitality projects in my hometown surf on that popular scandinavian-muted-pastels-simple-geometric-forms aesthetic that makes me want to puke my guts out. When creativity is considered a dispensable luxury, I truly believe that we are missing a tremendous opportunity.
Why is it important?
While some people are able to be more readily creative than others, the truth is that we are all creative at all times, every day of the week. It’s just that a lot of those creative acts go unnoticed and uncelebrated. Finding a way to prevent that pesky raccoon into your trash is a creative act. Negotiating peace for good with your asshole neighbour over who should clear that shared driveway - close to home for many of us - is another. Substituting that missing ingredient for something else in that favourite recipe of yours after the local grocery store has closed, yet another. What happens in the public’s perception is that the celebrated acts of creativity are the big, obvious ones. Just the same way we revere the biggest Hollywood stars without paying attention to the extremely talented local comedian, while forgetting that the big star was once a starving, unknown comedian.
However, it’s these little creative achievements that we rarely take the time to acknowledge and celebrate, because they don’t appear to be significant in the grand scheme of things, that are the foundation of a truly creative mind. The reality is that a lot of small creative achievements often lead to major breakthroughs over time.
Because of that cultural misperception of creativity - the notion that creativity is a nice luxury better left to artists, us creative professionals can be very easily suckered into embracing that point of view. By letting other people define what we do and how we’re being creative, we relinquish the opportunity to fully express creativity by allowing the inherently messy, convoluted and sometimes lengthy creative process to be whittled down to the idea of a black box, out of which great ideas are thought to magically come out of. In the real world, creative professions have a critical need, to give themselves the time to be creative when facing a new problem that requires an innovative solution.
I personally battle with this every day. In my role as a photographer of the built environment, people often assume that I can just show up and snap pictures of their latest creation and voila, their desired money shots magically appears. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn’t, but the reality isn’t that clear-cut or even easy to understand. I can mitigate a lot of the random factors in the process of shooting architecture, by codifying some of the steps I need to take in order to document a project, but I also have to constantly ensure that I make room for serendipity and allow for random disruptions, thoughts, situations and interactions to affect the process so that I can come up with the money shots that my clients have come to expect.
In other words, I have to make room for creativity by not constraining the process too much, in order to avoid making every single one of my shoots look the same. Invariably, a handful of shots, sometimes the best ones, are the ones that weren’t planned, noticed after I’ve packed all my gear and I am on my way out. Sometimes, what appeared to be a dud during the photoshoot, turns into a money shot with some clever editing.
Ultimately, creativity is important because it is the mechanism by which we solve puzzles and contributes to the progress of mankind. Granted, some creative ideas are literally and figuratively destined for the toilet, but Dude Wipes can’t be faulted for being uncreative, especially if you look into the way they market themselves. I would go as far as arguing that ass wipes are almost as important to the progress of mankind as the design of the Apollo space program was, as they both require liberal amounts of creativity, in the form of original ideas that were never thought of before. Granted, the impact of these two creative extremes is clearly not going to be the same and history will judge them accordingly, but creativity is the fuel to innovation’s rocket. There is no innovation without creativity and unexploited creativity is wasted potential.
Creativity is a process
The aforementioned little creative acts that we perform everyday and that we often don’t acknowledge are great to practice one’s creative muscle, simply by remembering that we can come up with new ideas to solve old problems pretty much all the time. If one improves their creative output by 1% every day, after a year, it amounts to a 3700% improvement! By building a creative muscle and deliberately practicing a little creativity every day, one can train that muscle to flex on a regular basis. In short order, this skill can be leveraged to solve increasingly complex problems. It certainly requires discipline but the upside of doing this for a significant amount of time can be huge.
The creative discipline can be codified, through empirical experimentation, as it will be different for everyone. As an experiment of one, it needs to be nurtured and improved over time. However, it is challenging to teach it to others and share as everyone has different thinking and learning styles. Therefore, it becomes about finding out what works for oneself while being very aware of what constitutes a creative act in order to train our minds to identify and amplify creative thinking, a positive reinforcement of good behaviour. For example, one of the ways I train my creative muscles, is to answer a question every day and come up with 10 different answers to that question. The question can be anything and the answers don’t have to be good. After doing this for more than 5 years, I can confidently say that my ability to come up with ideas is far ahead of what it used to be before I started this daily practice.
How to make room for creativity?
Often, though not always, the workplace, much like K-12 schooling can be very stifling for creativity, as it aims to conform the workforce to set schedules, spaces and work processes. Some structure is necessary to run a lean, mean business, but one has to be careful to strike a balance between giving workers enough space and freedom to be creative while at the same time keeping the essential structures in place that don’t make a workplace total chaos. I’ve seen very positive improvements in workplace design of the last few years, where the environment is designed to create the space for serendipity and chance encounters, which are fuel for fostering a creative environment.
I recently came up on this quote by Simon Sinek that is the perfect aphorism to describe this issue in the workplace:
“Rule books tell people what to do. Frameworks guide people how to act. Rule books insist on discipline. Frameworks allow for creativity.”
The same way the creative process is unique to each and everyone of us, a workplace culture that makes room for creativity will be different for each business, as a big part of that environment will come from what the company is about and how it operates.
While ultimately each person has a different way of being creative and expressing it, there are some near-universal principles that can get us started on the path to creativity. First of all, a lot of creative ideas come from random connections that our brains make. That’s one of the reasons why more and more people live in cities, all over the world. Cities have the unique ability to create the possibility of random encounters and serendipitous connections that enable us to have creative breakthroughs. By the same token, it is well documented that a lot of major discoveries have been made completely by accident, such as penicillin.
Second, happy accidents being the fertile ground for creative ideas, it is always helpful to make more room for serendipity in our lives. Talking to random strangers at a party, daydreaming while bare feet in the grass (the skin to ground connection is said to enable certain thought patterns to emerge), taking long showers, going on a trip to an unfamiliar location or merely wandering aimlessly around your neighbourhood are all things that contribute to the emergence of creative thoughts.
How that translates in the workplace is both in the physical and cultural realms. In the physical world, it’s important to create literal spaces for random encounters to happen. There is a reason why the water cooler is so well known for facilitating these interactions, as it creates a social space for people to mingle and engage in small talk, which can lead to new and innovative ideas, we’ve all had that eureka moment that happens when someone says something seemingly innocuous.
In the cultural realm, it means that the organizational culture recognizes and encourages employees to experience different work environments that are suited for different tasks and that they be given freedom to play around and find what works best for them. Maybe that local cafe is where your top employee is the most productive. If that’s the case, why stifle them by making this impossible instead of seeing the potential of increased productivity and give them the freedom to work as they see fit, where they see fit?
In practical terms, what you need to do to foster creativity will look very different from what the next guy needs to do, but being aware of those issues and willing to do something is a great first step. As for developing a culture and implementing policies encouraging creativity and innovation, it requires you to take a deep look at the current state of affairs and find out which are the gaps in creativity that need to be filled.
Parting words on trust.
Being creative requires us to be in an environment where we feel safe to unleash our potential. To do so, we need to be able to trust the people around us that our expression of vulnerability, which is what creativity essentially is, isn’t going to come back to bite us in the ass. It’s up to leaders to create a trusting and trustworthy environment where we can fully express ourselves. It also begs the question: why are we still largely operating on a model where employees have to come into work everyday, to sit at a tiny cubicle and punch in the clock, when the work could just as easily be done from a jungle villa in Nicaragua?
Perhaps it’s time to apply a little creativity in the way we work and develop our own idiosyncratic ways of working that make us more creative and innovative, instead of copying what everybody else is doing?
Special thanks to Pete VonDeLinde for bringing the joy of Dude Wipes into my world.
Arnaud Marthouret is the founder of rvltr and leads their strategy, visual communications and media efforts. He has helped numerous architects and interior designers promote themselves in their best light - pun intended - in order to help them run more effective practices and grow in a meaningful way.
If you have questions about this article or rvltr, or want to chat about your strategy and communications, you can leave a comment, share with a friend, or reach him at arnaud{at}rvltr.studio.
