Some time ago (I couldn’t say exactly how long), in a conversation with an IT development specialist, I came across the following statement: “I no longer know how to provide my clients with sufficiently creative solutions, how to satisfy their thirst for differentiation, how to maintain my leadership.” I confess, I was stunned.
Speaking with a renowned expert from an industry that seems to have been socially assigned the talisman of creativity and innovation, and eliciting from him a poignant confession about a brain hard drive nearly maxed out for generating new ideas, produced a strange feeling of unease in me. The person who had been searching for the talisman of different solutions found himself in the role of a kind of therapist.
Let’s look around us for a moment: public policy announcements that seek to solve old structural problems based on historically identical situational definitions, advances on public or private spaces that seem to produce reactive emotional effects in the vast majority of society, scientific, artistic and sporting disciplines burdened by the inability to transform their “adaptive DNA” into sustainable long-term development projects, work environments beset by the need to combine creative solutions with short-termism and the excess of reporting fostered by insecure leaders who only seem committed to their role as Terence Fletcher (that famous psychotic and authoritarian music teacher from the multi-award-winning film “Whiplash”).
In the acceleration of our daily routine, these news stories, anecdotes, and experiences typical of these turbulent times tend to numb us and, at best, awaken isolated reflections within us that take on a survivalist tone (“What a country!”, “It is what it is!”, “I’ll hold out until I get a new job!”). Now, as a great challenge to stop our frantic daily clock for a few seconds: what if we try to think, just for a little while, a bit more carefully about this particular flow of daily overstimulation? What if we simply try to be a little more “awake”?
For those of us with a certain integrative conceptual tendency (sociologists are creatures that carry this kind of non-pathogenic agent), these daily sources of data collection often provide valuable information about how we interact with the need to generate different solutions and, in fact, how difficult it is for us to articulate such thinking and institutionalize disruptive ways of solving problems. Is there something in our cultural and value matrix (a crucial question to ask ourselves within our particular societies) that might not be compatible with the possibility of accumulating value through creativity, confining it to an isolated, longed-for, but poorly understood value? Are we even facing additional neuro-psychological components in each person? Why, in our societies, has the search for different solutions become almost like the discovery of a mythological “unicorn”?
The conversation with my friend in the software industry, which led to his heartfelt statement, almost instinctively brought to mind a book by Charles Duhigg, which I had recently read at a seminar: “The Power of Habit.” Frankly, I don’t think it could have happened any other way.
Duhigg coined the term “habit loop” to refer to the neurological pattern that governs habit. This loop consists of three elements: a cue, a routine, and a reward. Understanding these elements allows us to change bad habits or form good ones. The habit loop always begins with a cue (a trigger that shifts the brain into a mode that automatically determines which habit to use), then continues with a mental, emotional, or physical routine to develop, and finally includes a reward (which helps the brain determine whether it’s worth remembering this particular cycle for the future).
Duhigg argues that the cue and the reward are neurologically intertwined until a sense of craving arises, which drives all habits and is essential for starting a new habit or breaking an old one. (The author describes, as an example, how Procter & Gamble used research on the habit loop and its connection to cravings to develop the market for Febreze, a product that eliminates bad odors.) According to Duhigg, habit change is achieved if we maintain the initial cue, replace the routine, and maintain the reward. Only then will effective change eventually occur.
Culture, neuroscience, specific beliefs regarding what it means to be disruptive when developing a solution (the latter strongly connected to the first two points and to what it means in certain group settings to be an innovator or not), even the availability of time in a daily dynamic shaped by excessive demands (and self-imposed demands), all seem to converge when seeking tools to analyze the famous “outside-the-box” solutions.
And how do companies deal with creativity? An uncomfortable question.
Organizations, generally and especially large corporations, often tend to view “the new” through the lens of “the old,” and ignore the kinds of ideas and concepts that can be truly transformative, even if those concepts originate within their own organizations. The examples are perhaps endless, and the most famous: the Xerox PARC personal computer, with a mouse and graphical user interface (eventually launched by, at that time, the very young Apple); Steven Sasson’s first digital camera for Kodak (finally launched by Sony); the world’s first “smartphone”, developed by IBM (although that same world will always say that Nokia was the first to launch it).
Joshua Gans, economist and author of “The Disruption Dilemma,” and professor at the Rotman School of Management, points out that companies fail because they keep making the same decisions that made them successful, remaining stuck in the strategies and thinking that led to their past triumphs. And, according to Maxwell Wessel, former Executive Vice President of SAP, this happens because the vast majority of companies are simply designed to be ineffective when it comes to innovation: when companies reach maturity, the measure of success becomes profit, not innovation.
Sonia Abadi, whom I often quote because her book, “Network Thinking,” changed my perspective on the concept of creativity, argues that we unlock our creativity when we are able to draw inspiration from others, when our thinking truly functions in a network with others. Based on her ideas, network thinking unfolds an intermediate space between people; it is connective thinking (neither individual nor collective), a space for creative cooperation, innovation, communication, and trust.
Creating an intermediate, connective, cooperative space… is it truly understood in its real clarity?
Psychologists, educators, and neurolinguists have long agreed that creativity is not the exclusive domain of manic, isolated, hypersensitive, and obscenely disruptive individuals (like witches, who do exist, but this is not the mechanism from which the flow of creative thought is generated). Creativity is the fruit of social interaction, of peer exchange based on undeniably unique perspectives, just as each person is unique.
This view of creativity is firmly rooted in what I would call a “democratization of thought” within the organization, in the notion that knowledge about reality is constructed collectively, in a social way. The more collaboratively this construction occurs, the more genuine and open the spaces created for this collaboration, and the less punitive the responses to initially unexpected results, the more exponentially the quality of individual contributions will increase. Creativity will flow as a consequence of the joint creation of knowledge that did not exist until that moment.
Understanding creative contributions in this way renders the search for those magical unicorns (disruptive solutions provided by immensely creative individuals that can change the course of our organization) utterly pointless. It’s not about arguing that our world lacks exceptional talent, but rather that our approach to different solutions must be much more focused on generating genuine opportunities for collaborative thinking than on searching for a talisman in a vast haystack. Believe me: it’s cheaper, it’s more efficient, and the power of commitment it generates among our employees is absolutely exponential.
Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, created what he called the “two-pizza rule” over ten years ago, promoting small, highly collaborative teams (teams whose size doesn’t require more than two pizzas to feed them).
Collaboration is crucial in the software industry, given the rapid pace of releases and the fact that a team’s ability to deliver development can be a differentiating factor for its organization against the competition. A slow transformation process is not desirable; instead, an agile approach is needed where waves of change have an impact. Furthermore, communication between teams also fosters a model of shared responsibility and moves away from the isolated development approach.
Empowering employees in the collaborative construction of knowledge is a smart move for organizations, which in turn requires a significant effort: escaping the trap of individualism. This virus is hidden in leadership models centered on the leader’s one-way, inspirational vision; in the apathy of those who fail to clearly define objectives; in the incorrect establishment of timelines for results and, even worse, the poor communication of those expectations; and finally, in the low tolerance for error.
Connective thinking is a concept that is not only restorative for us as individuals (to manage daily overstimulation positively and constructively, as well as to transform our negative habits), but also for organizations (which constantly struggle with environmental stimuli and long-established organizational habits). Connecting ideas, people, and projects (as Abadi points out) allows for greater flexibility in structures and the dynamics of relationships, enabling us to be more productive.
As cartoonist Scott Adams, creator of the famous comic strip character Dilbert, once wrote: “Keep your people fresh, happy, and efficient; set a goal, then get out of their way… let the art happen.”
Fernando Sierra
Founder & Executive Partner
Salesciology