1

Use feedback with skepticism, craft and deliberation

More likely than not, the initial feedback on an innovative idea is negative. Specifically, however, the core content is likely to be true or utility buried within.

Technically, the initial message is probably not true feedback. Sorting through noise and extracting value takes discrimination and time.

To be sure, the natural desire to be “right” before one’s peers, and liked, rewarded and promoted (as example) is a block to creativity. Creativity requires the ability to hold to a course against almost total evidence to the contrary and knowing when to change tactics while always evolving the idea/goal.

This requires a sophisticated, albeit often tacit, understanding of feedback and knowledge management.

The trail to new knowledge often leads through realms of dubious veracity. In this case “too much” knowledge (or knowledge improperly applied) can be a liability. “Everyone” knows this is a false path. Yet, the history of invention is strewn with examples where assumptions that turned out to be “wrong” led to new and wonderful discoveries and useful results.

Bringing a new idea into tangible existence requires the ability to know the right voices to listen to at each major phase of actualization. Designing the right feedback loops and using the resulting feedback correctly is but one a requirement for proper stewardship of the burgeoning innovation.

Often, social feedback will change over time (sometimes from from strongly negative to unduly positive); and, that taking either extreme too seriously can destroy the effort, is a mission critical discrimination.

2

Focus intensively during the incubation period of an idea or design to the exclusion of all else

Creativity requires blocking meaningful time periods and the matching of these periods to the intrinsic work and recreation requirements driven by the specific phase of the creative effort.

The 8 to 5, five day a week, 48 week/year work structure with virtually no discrimination among work types is debilitating to creative effort. It forces creative people to make unnecessary, negative tradeoffs in order to even attempt accomplish their innovative work. Today, this appears to be the only social solution-set, and it is being imposed on processes too complex for this simplistic approach. the incubation of an idea, or major phase of its development requires intense focus, uncluttered time and the exclusion of unrelated competitive distractions.

Every phase of the creative process requires a different matrix of time, tools, mental modalities and physical environment. Each “location” along this path has its own language, tool kit and veracity test.

3

Let passion drive you and express it appropriately

Our society, as innovative as it now is, compared to other cultures, and the past, seems to express a deep fear and suspicion of passion and its uninhibited expression in the “serious” world.

Being too passionate is the easiest ways to get thrown out of the club.

Each sector, business, government, non-profit, academic (and so on) has its own “rule-set” in this regard, further defined by each particular organization. This is the “how we do it here” and “who we are” aspects of their culture. These philosophical and cultural identities, over time, become translated into operating rules that “run” in each organization, and hence through each individual working within that organization.

Some of these rule-sets are recognized, and thus liked or disliked. Many become so entrenched as to become invisible; hidden design assumptions in the mind of the organization.

Negative, overreaction to a passionate commitment is one of the more universal constraints to an individual’s - or team’s or organization’s - free cognitive functioning. This is one major reason why work in institutions is rarely fun. And, those institutions where work is fun are the few that allow free cognitive function to flourish.

Thus the creative personality invariably risks censure. Too often, as a consequence, passion becomes bottled and ultimately expressed in an unproductive way, creating the very circumstance that the institutional “policy” was “designed” to prevent.

If passion cannot come out, so will very little else. Passion compels and brings focus to energy; it powers the system.

4

Execute with high
levels of process control and precision

Everything is the result of a process that has been designed. Designing processes is an act of pure engineering. Sequencing matters a great deal. The difference between a well-put-together process and a sloppy one can be orders of magnitude in the resulting value.

Whatever the arena of work, craft in the process is key to success. Of all processes, the creative process, itself, is one of the most critical to get right. The “creative person (or team, group, enterprise, network...) that does not function and work with craft will ultimately lose its creative edge.

Modern perceptions are generally detrimental to the concept of true craftsmanship.

Creativity is a discipline and a way of working; a way of living. It cannot be separated; ends and means are one. Execution is not the afterthought of the “real” creative work - it is creation.

The artist dreams and sees a vision, develops great skill through endless practice with the knife, then the artist’s intent, the knife and wood engage... what emerges is art.

Great effort and practice goes into the prepartion for creativity; the act, itself, is timeless and without effort.

The process is more than just an engineering of the most efficient path through a maze of work. The process is a ritual that embodies the wisdom of the art; it encodes it.

The act of doing good work is discounted in most of our society. Because of this, quality has escaped the everyday workplace which has become flat and devoid of energy and magic; meaning has been lost. In this environment, efficiency is worshiped as a god while we practice processes that, on the system level, are often wasteful and without significant purpose. Sub-optimization reigns while the creative spirit wanes.

Remove craftsmanship and rigorous process from our work lives and the creative spirit collapses from within like a tiger in a zoo.

5

Employ eclectic learning methods (modes); periodically explore a broad content range; and bring this content to carefully selected subject areas related to your work

The best ideas are often sparked by the intersection of different vantage points and information - even opposing ones. Information and solution patterns that are ubiquitous in one field can be missing entirely from another.

Different fields of study and work promote different models, modes of thinking and work and require special tool-kits. They may have great applicability to other fields but this is not often appreciated.

These are all good reasons for exploring broadly; exposure to variety promotes variety. The compelling reason, however, is much simpler. Creative people and organizations (and cultures) are curious.

Developing (or redicovering, to be more accurate) curiosity is a key step to promoting creativity. Integrating broad learning with a lazar-like focus enhances meaning, provides context and promotes putting knowledge to work.

Learning is enhanced when it is brought to focus by the design process; conversely, design is highly dependent on continuous learning. We say that “learning is design aimed inward at personal development and design is learning aimed outward set to the task of making an object.” They are the same process employed in different ways. Both are what most people mean, usually, when they use the word THINKING.

Somewhere along the way learning became a task and a utility. It became divided into grades and subject areas. It became a way to get somewhere rather than a destination. Intellect suffered and so did creativity.

The way that work is organized today tends to drive even the naturally curious to ever greater degrees of focus in some specialized area. This is necessary, of course, to get things done; however, it should be modulated with periods of scanning and open-ended search. Otherwise, even the brightest become dulled by their mundane existence.

When describing those they consider creative, people will use the terms “youthful,” “child-like” and “energetic.” Why is this? Why is this such a distinction? Are they not, in reality, describing a natural state that so many have somehow lost? How did this happen? Creativity is lost not made. It is restored by doing what creative people do.

6

Sustain high physical energy levels; focus this energy during intense work periods; punctuate work periods with appropriate
re-creation

The creative enterprise on all levels of recursion - individual, team, group, enterprise, network, society, has to be stewarded as a whole.

Creative people insist on doing this on a personal level; they do not accept the social default. This is why they are considered nonconformist and eccentric.

Their issues, as individuals, are no different, in principle, than those working in (the recursion levels of) teams, enterprises and so on. It is just that organizations (to their hurt) provide less freedom to protest and change the existing conditions of work.

Energy has to be managed, focused brought to bear at appropriate times, the mind left free to wander at others. Some individuals realize this and develop conventions and ritual to keep their creative energy high. Groups rarely do.

Recreation is as important to creativity as “work” is; in fact, there is no real distinction between the two. However, most of our societies’ recreational habits tend to take creative energy “off track.” This is one reason why many creative people do not engage in many forms of social play.

The facilitation of physical, emotional and spiritual energy, the modulation between keen focus and open-ended exploration and play; the narrowing to topic-based content and the expansion to non-directed search for new information and stimulus - all these have to be carefully facilitated else the creative moment passes by and fades away.

When lightning strikes, you have to be there to catch it.

7

Practice a technical discipline at state-of-the-art levels

I have said that I do not believe that one can become fully developed without having a MASTER as guide.

I also believe that mastering at least one disciple is a requirement for the full development of creativity. Creativity requires the knowledge and practice of CRAFT. This has to be learned. It has to be practiced. It has to be loved, for itself, by the practitioner. A craft is a means to an end that has to be practiced as an end in itself.

This practice grounds experience which otherwise can get lost in layers of mental abstractions.

THE creative practice is fundamental to all crafts, disciplines and professions; the methodology of each is a variation of it. It is better - even necessary - to learn a craft well and then generalize the experience to the skill of all skills. Neither creativity nor most professions are taught this way.

8

Follow your Intuition

Creativity is a heuristic process; it is fueled from many sources and it is inherently complex. Complex in the sense that many threads lead to its proper practice and execution.

A specific creation is a weaving, a fabric which is made up of many concrete sources. Rational processes and rules are important - they regulate; objectify; provide precise feedback. But they cannot do the job alone.

INTUTION is all that is available to you from the totality of past experience from all the channels reality provides. Creative people know they do not make from nothing - they discover; they work hard and engineer well and practice their craft with dilligence... yes. But what they seek to make... they are given. They, once having “accepted” the assignment, have to discover how to make it.

They study reality and listen to the muses and then grab the fleeting moment; and, they do not let it go.

9

Document your progress

“If it ain’t documented, it ain’t science” is an often repeated Robert heinlein quote.

Documentation is like “dead reckoning” navigation; the whole process falls apart if accurate real-time notations are not kept.

Documentation is a means of bringing consciousness - self awareness - to ones heuristic search. Without documentation, you will get lost; without documentation, those joining the journey will have no means to history and context; without documentation, iteration is impossible and products made along the they way fail to make it to future value.

Without documentation it is beyond difficult to switch to the observer role and self-monitor your progress. Without it, writing history in the future is made nearly impossible and society looses the learning opportunity.

The act of documentation is a step out of self; an act of making internal mind objective “outside” so it can become feedback to an internal process too complex to hold. Documentation promotes self-awareness. It is the mirror of the self and the raw data for others.

10

Practice work-living integration and 24/7/365 work-flow

Continuity is the great challenge to creativity in the modern era. How did Bach write so much music in a time of candles, quill pens and paper? This is answered by looking at his habits of productivity and understanding what he did not do. There is no question that Bach lived music. And, because he did, his music lives today as it is replayed by dedicated musicians. It is a profound thought to realize that Bach can reach down through the centuries and touch your soul; an example of re-creation.

Everybody and every work grouping has to solve this problem of life-work style. There are no easy answers. The step cannot be avoided and the “social default” of the work form-factor prevalent in our culture today will not do. Until recently, the industrial model of work was to take variety out of the equation and this effort was outstandingly successful. Unfortunately, variety was also taken out of people.

Our modern life is packed with choices and this is a good thing; lots of variety on this level of the system. Each of us, however, has to carve out our own social reality and choose those things which lead to happiness and productivity for us - individually. This selection process is perhaps the most creative act each of us will make; the rest follows. Of course it is not as simple as a one time selection - it is a feedback driven process over time that is always in adjustment. What is “one time” is the realization that this act is of supreme importance. Many go through life never having been aware of the choice.

As we combine our efforts with others - to make and employ organizations that are meant to augment our personal capacities - this life-work style issue becomes even more complex. It is interesting to note that little about organizational theory starts with this issue which in my mind is the primary issue of organization. When it is realized that organizations need to work for people instead of visa versa then we may begin to make progress. Creative people, traditionally, deal with this by getting out of organizations or dominating the ones they are in - both poor options.

11

Rule out failure as an option; know when to retire from the field; keep the long view

An idea, innovation or project that is OK to fail at is not worth doing. It fails the worthy-test.

The first step of the process (Identity) is intended to find out what is important and needs doing. Steps may fail; specific ideas and approaches may fail; the thing itself may fail commercially or even prove to have inherent flaws.

These, however, are not necessarily FAILURE. Failure is to not complete; failures is to do a sloppy job; or to quit. True creativity does not fail; it learns, moves on and preserves value; it grows, even mutates - it prevails.

The creative act is not provisional; it is not tentative; it is not faint-hearted; it does not play in the margins.

Creativity is the act of making new values manifest; it is enterprise making and universe disturbing. You do not control - or even understand - a great idea.

It plays you.

Any great idea, anything worth doing, has generations of precepts and will play out for millennia to come. You and I get to steward things along for awhile. What we do - or not - is important; it matters in time and space; in flesh and blood. The IDEA has a life of its own.

The creative life integrates the “do or die” intensity of the moment with the perspective of a thousand years; both are true, both have to be felt; both inform the moment.

The creative act is mind-less; after years of preparation, you disappear into a fusion of what surrounds you; you, the object, the means, the “problem” that brought you to the party, all the other players - protagonist and antagonist - MERGE. What happens is creation. What happens is different because you where present.

12

Develop and use your “reset” button

In the process of bringing an idea to market - be it the marketplace of ideas or goods - many things will go wrong.

In fact, most things will go wrong.

Many false paths will be followed. Error is where the most intense learning is experienced.

The ability to RESET is key both to psychological sanity and organizational health. “When to hold them and when to fold them” is the great discrimination in any entrepreneurial venture.

Creativity is emergent; is entrepreneurial; it is the management of risk. It brings forth strong emotions and requires high levels of commitment. Abrupt changes in strategy or approach are often necessary. Defeat has to be turned into opportunity.

In the creative enterprise, vision has to see across decades, tactics have to adjust with the moment. True values persist, ideas must turn on a dime.

This cannot happen if the mind of the individual or the mind of the organization cannot reset to certain stable KEEPS from which new iterations can sally forth. There is an art and science to knowing these places and being able to return to them with certainty.

13

Employ a “hands on” approach to product creation

Stuart Kauffman says “the algorithm is incompressible” and that is true of any complex invention.

The operation cannot be performed by supervising from the balcony.

Without a Design/Build/Use fast-tracked process employing rapid prototyping, the feedback to the would-be innovator is rarely rich enough and specific enough to facilitate a full cycle of work. The subtle cues are lost or show up too late to make a difference.

Formal communication cannot compete with real-time dialog and emersion in doing.

Modern organization runs contrary to this reality and imposes hidden costs that largely cancels out the tremendous leverage provided by the concentration of capital, tooling and economies of scale.

Creativity is too often though of as just pertaining to the conceptual phase of an idea or work while the doing of it is considered mundane or only marginal in its demands on intellect and talent. This simply is not true, of course; it is, however, the tacit assumption of most organizational design; a few creating and leading, the many performing rote work.

Creativity lives equally in the mind and the hands.

14

Challenge
Convention

Convention is the creature of what is. Convention represents great value and should be respected. It is, however, the meta-program - the story - by which present values are maintained.

New value requires new paradigms, ideas and actions. These cannot be created from inside the old model.

All aspects of convention have to be challenged; often the tried and true, the “proven,” are based on solutions that were optimal for their time - new models, information, tools processes and social economic conditions can render a totally new solution possible.

This is not always readily apparent as the underlying causes may be long buried. Challenging convention is the act of mental and social archeology.

Finding the hidden design assumptions of any idea, field or project is the fundamental creative challenge. These, of course, will be defended - and legitimately so - by the “keepers” of the bodies of knowledge and practices involved. This sets up a dynamic tension - a dialog - that must play out. How this process is conducted is critical to the outcome as the process, itself, will become embedded in the outcome.

Different fields of study and work, in our society, have different meta-processes for dealing with the conflict between new and old ideas, models and practices. How they do so exercises a heavy influence on their ability to change and innovate. These meta-processes are embedded in the way the field it defined, taught and practiced.

Those learning a field are rarely taught that they are learning one rendering of THE creative process. This can be unfortunate.

15

Work in rapid
iterations - ship a product - again and again; produce a rapid series of working prototypes

Studies have shown that teams that go through multiple rapid iterations of work out perform teams which move slowly, once through the creative process, trying to get each linear step perfect as the go. the difference in performance between these two strategies is not trivial - it can be as much as a 1,000 percent.

The issue, of course is communication, feedback, learning and stimulation. “markets” are extremely efficient at “voting” and sorting through options. When a product is “shipped,” even internally to a tight group, it is subject to these market forces.

Not only is “shipping” useful in making an idea, it also help shape the market itself. New ideas and innovations are rarely perfectly timed right out of the box. A “dialog” is necessary between the new thing and the existing way until understanding and accommodation can be reached. This is often not seen as “part” of the creative process but an obstacle to it - it is, in fact, the most important step. This is equally true in the realm of ideas as it is in the making of products and services.

Not working interactively but trying to get the product done “right” in one extended cycle of work is one of the most common “bad” habits of individuals and teams and often the biggest factor in their failure to reach a level of high performance.

Even in those cases where it looks like the "lone genius” worked years and years in isolation, a close study will reveal time and again great awareness of the state of the art and highly selected dialog going on among a tight but effective group of correspondents.

In today’s world of rapid change and increasing complexity, iterative work habits are essential.

16

Create a language around your field of interest and creative work

“In the beginning was the word.” the history of creativity is the history of changing language. By language, in this context, I mean in the broadest sense of the term. the evolving technology of language - and all the media that support it - establishes the primary tool-kit of thought.

A new idea, technique, artifact, product or service requires new language to make it and “sell” it and to use it. the craft brought to this process is critical to success.

Notice that at the beginning of a process the arguments that prevail around the use of words. Ever wonder why? S/he who controls the words (and sets the agenda) determines the scope and nature of the outcome.

17

Hold context and keep goals intact on a lifetime scale; employ ritual; maintain the “observer”

The creative act is intensely selfish and outrageously giving at the same time.

It is ruthless and unforgiving; it consumes all that is in its path. It is life giving; it breaths life into what is being made.

To survive here you have to be “in the game but not of it.” Perspective is necessary both for good work and survival.

Every specific act has to come from a lifetime perspective. Ritual reminds; it is the meta-program that bring forth the necessary magic.

The observer is your program that views you from a higher recursion level and keeps you from doing stupid things.

18

Invest everything