I
have been fortunate to know and work with a number of
exquisitely creative people. In addition, I have studied
numerous biographies with the intent of understanding
specifically what creative people actually do,
in contrast to what they say they do, or how
others report the process. |
There
are many competing models and explainations of creativity;
most are, in my mind, too simple in their structure
to account for the true nature and scope of the
topic.
It has been my obsevation, however, that the habits of
creative people are remarkably simple and uniform
across
time and cultures. Bringing these habits to an environment
of work is a systematic and rigorous process that
can,
if performed well, result in a high incident rate of
individual and group genius. I have done this by translating
these “habits” into rules of the environment
and process which generates what we have come to call
the Zone
of Emergence. These rules and the application
of the rules evolved, interactively and through multiple
iterations of Design/Build/Use, to the point where
today they constitute a reliable knowledge base regarding
human creativity and the practice of it. |
Part
one of this
article outlines these habits. Part two,
suggests ways to make them operational in work environments
of many kinds. This is the process of moving an individual
work strategy to a group scale practice - what
we designate as the rL4
level
of recursion in the Taylor System and Method. |
At
present, there are two “meta-threading”
processes of the Taylor System that have been transferred
into selected, licensed MG Taylor environments. These
processes can be used at all recursion levels above
the base level rL1
of
the system and can be applied directly to a broad range
of circumstances and design opportunities. |
These processes are direct translations of observed
phenomena to the creation of a rule-based system of
work. One is how memory
works in a dynamic system and the other is this
topic of creative habits. Most of the techniques and
means of this translation of phenomena to practice
are proprietary; the focus here is on the broader philosophical
implications and insights. |
The
design method of translation is an intrinsic
foundational processes of organic
architecture. This is the act of observing how something
functions and making that an embedded RULE
in a specific design (application). This rule-making
is the translation process from PROGRAM to
SCHEMATIC DESIGN in the Design Formation Model.
It is a key way
that IDEA manifests in concrete form. It is
important that the rule does not get expressed and concretized
on too “high” a level and become a fixed
aspect of the system. Doing so can lead to dogma and
the abuse of style. The Program Statement of a design
project identifies the basic ideas that are “chosen,”
in the first iteration of design, to become embedded
in the next iteration of work. Two examples of a program
statement in the realm of architecture are seen in the
Bay
Area Studio and Gail’s
Nest projects. The Program Statement phase is important
in projects of all types though it is seen mostly used
in architectural projects. This step has great utility
and would improve work in other fields. Even in architecture,
the program phase has degenerated into a list of requirements
(mistakenly called functions) to the oversight of much
that is important, especially at that time in the project. |
|
The
Design Formation Model describes discrete and
useful stages that an idea FORMS in a
document and/or work process (as expression).
|
|
It
should be remarked that this is why we classify our
methods and processes as DESIGN processes,
for this is what they are. Much of what goes on in the
name of design is hardly that. Above all else, design
is a discipline. It is a means; at heart, a transformational
process. Through Design (and Build/Use), ideas take
form and therefore can change form. This can
manifest in a DesignShop, in a work of architecture,
in a product, in a work process, etc. There is no limit
of application or form. Whatever the form, design embodies
ideas into structure and processes, making those ideas
operative in the pursuit of some objective. |
Creative
Habits, translated into rules, properly encoded, can
be a key aspect of a functional operational system
(OS) for an individual, team or
group in the execution of creative work. Meta-threads
are important because they are direct means by which
a system can be improved, transparently, with minimal
effort and intervention-generated risk. |
In
recent years, “Biomimicry” has been proposed in the
pursuit of science. The idea is to study nature and
to apply Her solutions directly to science and technology.
How does a spider produce a thread that, considering
weight and strength, is stronger than steel and is
produced on demand and at “room temperature?” Compare
this to a steel plant and or technology is revealed
as the crude thing that it is. Biomimicry [rbtfBook] is
much like what I mean when I discuss the process
of organic architecture. |
|
Not
all “creative” people practice all of these
habits all the time. Across time and cultures, however,
the majority of those recognized as creative manifested
the majority of these habits as tacit or conscious “rules”
no matter how they described their process or how others
viewed it. These primary habits are stated below as
rules and supplemented with comments rendered on the
descriptive level of the System and Method; in addition,
a quote and glyph are added. These three elements: comment,
quote and glyph, do not define the rule; they inform
thinking about it. The glyph is linked to a Taylor Model
which provides an appropriate “voice” to
the commentary. While reviewing these rules, it may
be useful to recall your own creative successes and
failures and think about what rule-set you were running
in both circumstances. |
1
Use
feedback
with skepticism, craft and deliberation
It
is often necessary for us to know whether
a whole policy of conduct, a strategy
so to say, has proved successful or not.
The animal we teach to transverse the
maze in order to find food or to avoid
electric shocks, must be able to record
whether the general plan of running through
the maze has been on the whole successful
or not, and it must be able to change
this plan in order to run the maze efficiently.
This form of learning is most certainly
a feedback, but a feedback on a higher
level, a feedback of policies and not
of simple actions. It differs from more
elementary feedback in what Bertrand Russell
would call its logical type.
Nobert
Weiner
1950
The
Human Use of Human Beings
|
|
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
“Although
modern technology has given us new materials
and new tools, Japanese carpenters still
use a very special term for their instruments,
even their electric tools. No Japanese
carpenter refers to his instruments as
mere ‘tools,’ but instead
calls them Dogu, which really has no equivalent
in another language but roughly means
the ‘instruments of the way’
(of carpentry...
“Carpenter’s
tools came to be called Dogu because for
carpenters there is a carpentry Do, or
way of carpentry; and carpenters... considered
their implements Dogu, or instruments
of their way. To a Japanese carpenter,
his Dogu have a significance far removed
from that of mere tools that craftsman
might use. Nowadays, however, the carpenter’s
Dogu are not so highly respected and valued
as they once were, perhaps because the
most highly skilled traditional carpenters
are quite aged and so many younger carpenters
lack the spirit and devotion that are
the bedrock of fine workmanship. In the
old days, for example, if an apprentice
stepped over a saw, it was only natural
for his master to strike him soundly for
showing such disrespect for his Dogu.
The apprentice would accept his punishment
without complaint, knowing how gravely
he has erred. Perhaps we could even say
that formerly the carpenter’s Dogu
were invested with a degree of divinity.”
Kiyosi
Seike
1977
The Art of Japanese Joinery |
|
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
“Consensus
is rare in psychology, but there is one
area of general agreement: the characteristics
of the creative thinker.
“The
creative person is playful. He entertains
wild ideas and feels no need to pass immediate
judgment on them. He is a one-man brainstorming
session. He asks questions unceasingly.
He is not satisfied with pat answers and
has minimal respect for ‘established
facts.’ Offered two alternatives,
neither of which seems quite satisfying,
he may devise a third. Even if he is a
painter, poet, or composer, he does not
think of his work as invention but rater
as discovery. Drawing indiscriminately
from chance observation and from outside
his field, he is eclectic, always synthesizing
and integrating.
“His
sensory perception is unusually keen.
He spends a lot of time in reverie and
is inclined to be somewhat mystical. Often,
he says ideas come to him in dreams or
idle fantasy. He enjoys surprises and
challenges.
In
the light of the great value placed upon
creativity, a stranger to our planet might
infer that it is rare indeed. Yet nearly
all the characteristics of the creative
mind are present in young children! the
child explores the environment, coins
words, synthesizes phrases. He relishes
surprises and cope with challenge. He
daydreams, discovers, asks questions unceasingly.
His perceptions are fresh, strictly his
own.
Marilyn
Ferguson
1973
The Brain Revolution
|
|
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
“The
philosopher should be a man willing to
listen to every suggestion, but determined
to judge for himself. He should not be
biased by appearances; have no favorite
hypothesis; be of no school (of thought);
and in doctrine have not master, He should
not be a respecter of persons, but of
things. Truth should be his primary object.
If to these qualities be added industry,
he may indeed hope to walk within the
veil of the temple of nature.”
Mikhael
Faraday
1870
The life and letters of Faraday |
|
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
Real
art creates myths a society can live instead
of die by, and clearly our society is
in need of such myths. What I claim is
that such myths are not mere hopeful fairy
tales but the products of careful and
disciplined thought; that a properly built
myth is worthy of belief, at least tentatively;
that working art is a moral act; that
a work of art is a moral example; and
that false art can be know for what it
is if one remembers the rules.”
John
Gardner
1977
on Moral Fiction |
|
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
“The
best thing for being sad, replied Merlyn,
beginning to puff and blow, is to lean
something. This is the only thing that
never fails. You may grow old and trembling
in your anatomies, you may lie awake at
night listening to the disorder of your
veins, you may miss your only love, you
may see the world about you devastated
by evil lunatics, or know your honor trampled
in the sewer of baser minds. There is
only one thing for it then - to learn.
Learn why the world wags and what wags
it. That is the only thing which the mind
can never exhaust, never alienate, never
be tortured by, never fear or distrust,
and never dream of regretting. Look at
what a lot of things there are to learn
- pure science, the only purity there
is. You can learn astronomy in a lifetime,
natural history in three, literature in
six. And then, after you have exhausted
a milliard lifetimes in biology and medicine
and theocriticism and geography and history
and economics - why, you can start to
make a cartwheel out of the appropriate
wood, or spend fifty years learning to
begin to learn to beat your adversary
at fencing. After that you can start again
on mathematics, until it is time to learn
to plough.”
T.H.
White
1958
The Once and Future King |
|
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
“Man
talks carelessly and ignorantly of such
words as chaos.... turbulence.... turmoil
and (the popular modern) pollution....
where nothing but absolute order is subvisibly
maintained by nature and her transformation
arrangements unfamiliar to man. Universe
does not have any pollution. All chemistries
of Universe are always essential to the
integrity of eternal transformation and
eternal self-generation. Physicists invent
nothing.
....They
find out what nature does from time to
time, learn something of what her laws
of rearrangement may be, and fortunate
humans employ those rules to cooperate
consciously with nature’s evolution.”
R.
Buckminster Fuller
1975
Synergetics |
|
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
”I
knew a mechanic who was out of work and
broke in the worst of the depression,
with a family to support. He picked up
from the dumps in Wyoming enough sound
structural iron and good steel cables
to build a suspension bridge across Snake
River, a bridge that the county could
not afford to build at the estimated public
cost of $50,000. He and his nine-year
old son built it, using a dragline-rig
that he made entirely from junk. It more
than satisfied county inspection. The
farmers who needed the bridge gladly paid
$2,500 for it, and my friend, after paying
for cement and gasoline, cleared about
$2,000 for his labor. Who plans the American
economy? American do.”
Rose
Wilder Lane
1943
The
Discovery of Freedom
|
|
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
“Freeman
Dyson has expressed some thoughts on craziness.
In a Scientific American article called
Innovation in Physics,
he began by quoting Niels Bohr. Bohr had
been in attendance at a lecture in which
Wolfgang Pauli proposed a new theory of
elementary particles. Pauli came under
heavy criticism, which Bohr summed up
for him: ‘We are all agreed that
your theory is crazy. The question which
divides us is whether it is crazy enough
to have a chance of being correct. My
own feeling is that is not crazy enough.’
To that Freeman added: ‘When a great
innovation appears, it will almost certainly
be in a muddled, incomplete and confusing
form. To the discoverer, himself, it will
be only half understood; to everyone else,
it will be a mystery. For any speculation
which does not at first glance look crazy,
there is no hope!’”
Kenneth Brower
1979
The Starship and the Canoe
|
|
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
“Exemplary
performers use the constant flow of information
to shape products and services. In contrast,
other performers use only initial information.
They tend to present their initial product
or service as final and often have an
aversion to producing or reproducing the
product or service.
Exemplars, on the other hand, use the
flow of information as inputs to engage
in productive iterations of product development:
the exemplar, given
the time constraints, will repeat the
process as many times as necessary in
order to produce a ‘perfect product.’
For most products or services, the exemplar
engages in six iterations of
production. Each of these iterations emphasizes
further shaping of the
product because of new information feedback.
Each iteration becomes a more and more
efficient resource investment –
perhaps half of the previous phase. In
turn, each iteration doubles the quality
of the product or services. The
exemplar becomes increasingly more efficient
in resource investments and
effective in results outputs.”
Robert Carkhuff
1984
The Exemplar
|
|
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”
“To
hold an unchanging youth is to reach at
the end the vision with which one started.”
Ayn
Rand
1958
Atlas Shrugged |
|
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
“Everyone
seems to be waiting until they know it
all; until the are the world ‘experts’
before they can can speak up or act up
to a situation. Yet no one ever seems
to become that world ‘expert.’
Therefore, we are kept from creativity
by our own pride, fear, jealousy and competitiveness.
Creativity is blocked by:
of
being misused or ‘raped’ |
of
disturbing traditions and making changes
|
of
being associated with taboos |
of
losing the security of habit |
of
losing the love of the group |
Koberg
and Bagnall
1974
The
Universal Traveler
|
|
The
creative ACT is total. It is not qualified
by those things we too often consider to be
the practical aspects of living.
It is necessary to leap from existing solid
ground to find a new place that is fundamentally
different. You cannot leap the abyss and hold
on at the same time.
The
mental attention required to discover and make
a great idea real is total.
It
can be worked and put a side, from time to time,
as the natural phases play out, but there is
a piece of the mind that can never let it go
until the work is done.
There
are often times in the maturation of an idea
when all has to be bet to advance its cause.
These times have to be approached carefully
and the appropriate response executed quickly;
the risk, then, being framed and minimized.
The
real investment, of course, is the investment
of self. All that that you are and all that
you summon up becomes the the creative effort.
Living a creative life means moving beyond a
single effort to a sustained one. Our society,
as much as it worships creativity after the
fact is not, yet, designed to support this way
of being.
These
are the facts of the matter. It is a choice
that everyone faces when they confront their
own genius and the implications of it to the
world they live in. It is equally faced by every
team, every organization, every society at large;
for group genius is not the simple extension
of individual genius; nor, does it scale.
These
issues have to be grappled with time and again
at every level of social organization.
Every
new team has to deal with it. Every new project
raises the issues.
There
are systems that support the creative process;
it is, however, a choice to employ them - or
not. Each iteration of work, a conscious decision
has to be made to “work a new way”
else the default system-in-place will prevail.
Creative
people have always set their own rules and employed
their own work processes. Unfortunately, this
has tended to set them further apart from the
rest of humanity. What is needed is a way of
working based on creative principles that a
large population can embrace.
|
19
Message
broadly; communicate intensely with peers; build
functional networks
|
By
definition, the resources required for any significant
innovation do not exist where needed “ready-to-go.”
A
worthy idea or project is alway bigger than
anyone.
Broad
messaging is required to get the word out; to
recruit energy to the project. This is equally
true in a community, and organization and on
the broader scale of a civilization.
At
the same time, this messaging can create high
levels of noise. Both an attractor and a filter
are necessary. These have to be modulated and
tuned as conditions change. In time, a community
of practice emerges.
This
community, by definition is made up of peer-relationships
between, perhaps, otherwise divergent groups.
Intensive communication/learning and collaborative
design leads to the formation of purpose-focused
networks. It is at this point a new level and
cycle of creativity begins.
|
20
Serve
a higher cause
|
To
be creative requires getting
out of self.
It
requires context and a super-ordinate mission.
In
the value-web of the mind cause is
the integrating vision that compels action.
On the scale of a work-team, community of practice
or ValueWeb, it is the integration function
that holds an effort, extended by time and place,
together.
A
CAUSE can also be the seed of self-destruction;
great care has to exercised in its stewardship.
Finding the true mission-within is a primary
step in the development of creativity and, indeed,
the creation of a human life.
It
takes strong convictions and will to bring a
cause to reality; it takes submission to accept
a cause. Causes are discovered not made; they
are accepted not invented.
|
21
Create
a community
|
The
hidden story of creativity is the story of community.
Innovation
does not occur in a vacuum - it never has; it
is the result of intense dialog within a single
mind, between individuals and among carefully
chosen (filtered) communities of practice.
This
dialog leaps centuries as documentation from
the past (books, art, architecture, media) continue
to impact the present.
Human
society as a whole sets a context and forms
the environment of all creative efforts. While
creative people are not always the most gregarious
and usually work diligently to protect their
time, history shows creatives have an uncanny
ability to know each other and be where the
action is.
They
both find and follow the Weak
Signals and create them. This bouncing back
and forth of ideas in rapid iterations is the
single most important practice of the
creative process.
|
22
Organize
your workplace so that it works for
you
It
is the birthright of every human being
to live in a world of beauty: a world
that is concordant with the needs and
aspirations of the innermost and highest
elemental powers in humankind and is expressive
of the supreme intelligence and spiritual
powers manifest in nature.”
Eugene
Tsui
1999
Evolutionary
Architecture
Nature As a Basis For Design
|
|
Most
workplaces are not
designed to promote creativity; they reflect
20th century
accountancy far more than 21st century
creativity.
A
sense of PLACE
promotes creativity; employees symbol and
promotes ritual; it augments work processes;
and, provides an effective arrangement of
space and tools to facilitate productive work.
All
this is essential if the creative impulse
is to find its
way into the everyday workplace.
Most
institutional workplaces are the embodiment
of old work habits attenuated by budget and
imposed on work processes; they fail
to recognize individual requirements, team
functions and new social symbols. They lack
adaptively and individualization.
Contrast
these environments with the environments creative
people have made for themselves when they
have the means and the distinction become
abundantly clear.
|
|
It
should be clear that every one of these habits
can become destructive if taken to an extreme
as a chronic modality; as a fixed habit.
If a system or process is to be stable and
evolving, there must be rules
about the rules that operate from other recursion
levels. |
It
should be equally clear that the major barriers
to individual and group creativity are socially
cultivated habits that are “designed”
to promote conformity and what is considered to
be social/economic stability. We have a social
paradox today. People are being asked “suddenly”
to be “creative” while conforming
to a social landscape that largely promotes and
rewards conformity. The existing pervasiveness
of so-called individually-focused eccentric behavior
should not obscure this fact. The Roman mob was
even more effectively ruled with the Roman Circus
in place. What passes today as individualism is
not the wellspring of true, sustainable and useful
creativity; it is a distortion and distraction. |
The
creative life springs from a lifestyle
practice very different from the consumer
society now dominate and growing globally. This
is true despite the fact that this very consumer
society is providing many avenues for product/service
differentiation and, thus, change and innovation
on a sub-system and products level. This is, in
a way, a liberation from the past; a phase between
two eras; it is practice for what may come. It
is also dangerous and inherently self-destructive;
it will consume itself all on its own. It is OK
to experience it, use it and enjoy it but not
get lost and trapped in it. |
|
When
we started our work it was broadly held that creativity
was rare, group genius non-existent and collaboration
outside of a few unique communities of little utility.
We asked a different question: “what if these
assumptions were not true and creativity was
represented throughout the entire human population?”
“What if this creativity was being blocked by
the architecture of formal ideas, the structure
of the physical workplace, 2nd Wave work processes
and organizational hierarchy?” “What if
people would act differently in an environment deliberately
created for creative people?” So, we created a
different
environment, and in doing so, produced a different
result; the old assumptions were demonstrated to be
inadequate; they were “true” only in their
own limiting paradigm. |
DesignShops,
NavCenters,
PatchWork
Design processes are not the Taylor System and Method;
they are expressions of it. The system is iterative,
recursive and is transferable, as determined by the
users’s condition, by employing many different
levels of language and experience, means and methods.
Each “installation”
of this OS is
different even as it is based on the same principles
and methods. |
How
to translate creative person’s habits into embedded
rules of a system or process - as a system of work
- follows in
part two of this document. |
These
habits are stated as rules in this document for
a reason.
On one level, words
are commands to the human body-mind system (Lilly
[rbtfBook],
Janes [rbtfBook]).
Up to the limits of the system, it will directly respond
to clear declarative statements. It will, as best it
can, sort out contradictory statements by a process
of voting (Minski).
The creative
process is a factor of intention. Intention is
the net-out vector of the mind. Work habits are
learned
processes that are embedded and “automatic;”
they “trigger”
cascades of thought/action (stimulated by appropriate
conditions) and have an increasing returns (positive
feedback loop) tie (meta threading) to this net vector;
each reinforces, expresses and releases the other. Strong
memory is built by the practice of these
habits creating an efficient machine. This capacity
is the outstanding characteristic of creative people
and organizations (communities of practice) capable
of sustained innovation. |
Understanding
the meta-threading aspects of the Taylor System and
Method, and knowing how to apply it, provides a “short
cut” to system design. By simply building
in the characteristics of creative-habits (and
strong-memory) into an agent, process, artifact, or
system level OS, a more flexible, adaptive, learning
system will result. In a transition period, beset by
complexity and the need for time-compression, this is
a useful addition to the Transition
Manager’s tool-kit. |
|
Matt
Taylor
Elsewhere
November 28, 2002
SolutionBox
voice of this document:
INSIGHT POLICY PROGRAM
|
posted
November 28, 2002
revised
June 17, 2005
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• 20021216.387890.mt
• 20021219.333309.mt •
• 20050617.980912.mt •
(note:
this document is about 92% finished)
copyright©
Matt Taylor 1975, 1979, 1998, 2001, 2002, 2005
note: aspects of the processes described in this document
are patented and patent pending by iterations
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