Embodied Creativity
A recently released IBM report titled ‘Capitalizing on Complexity,’ which presents findings from interviews of more that 1,500 CEOs around the world, reveals that the top business concern of CEOs today is the ‘complexity gap’—the difference between the emerging business complexity and an organization’s ability to deal with it successfully. To address this challenge, CEOs believe that “creativity is the most important leadership quality” and that practices that encourage experimentation and innovation throughout an organization are of absolute necessity to transform business models, develop innovative strategies, and remain competitive.
In a June 2006 TED Talk, creativity expert Sir Ken Robinson tells the story of a six year old girl fully absorbed in a drawing she is making during a art class. Her teacher, thinking she is not paying attention, comes to her and asks: “What are you drawing?” The little girl replied: “I am drawing a picture of God.” The teacher exclaims: “But nobody knows what God looks like!” To which the smart little girl responds: “They will in a minute!” What a remarkable example of imagination and creativity! Unfortunately, as statistics show, by the age of eight, most children have lost much of their creative capability while most adults are unable to reconnect with the true creative power of their childhood. I won’t go into the analysis of why this is the case; we all know some of the reasons: our western model of education that emphasizes memorization versus experimentation; linear thinking; our business environment that, as Robinson says, stigmatizes mistakes and the possibility of being wrong; and much more. [Note: I am talking about people’s willingness of experiment, fail quickly and learn from their mistakes thereby avoiding the possibility of larger problems down the road. In the aftermath of the Gulf oil spill disaster one might be inclined to reinforce the idea that ‘mistakes’ are not permissible. But recent findings and reports suggest that one must look into BP’s and regulators’ inability to address well-known risks for the causes of the dramatic event rather than people’s ‘mistakes’; one may also argue that the rigidity of the system prevented it to promptly and creatively respond to “obvious signals” that something was not right with the oil rig.]
As CEOs and other professionals have come to realize, creativity has never been so critical in solving today’s complex problems. In particular, creativity is essential to transformative work. The simple creative process is a learning process based on experimentation, testing, and adjustment—a kind of double-loop learning. This is the process that most creativity experts focus on and is, in and of itself, very valuable. However, transformative work requires ‘deep creativity’—a process used by complex adaptive systems and living systems to change their internal structure in order to adapt to environmental change. This process takes place at ‘the edge of chaos’ (the creative space) in a paradoxical environment of simultaneous stability and instability created by balancing and reinforcing feedback loops. For humans and social systems, deep creativity requires a transformation of mental models, beliefs and values. In the domain of art, deep creativity occurs when the artist is able to connect with ‘source,’ the origin of his/her personal creativity; when the artist uses a personal dialogue to create what philosopher Martin Buber called a “I/Thou” relationship (a subject-to-subject relation) versus a “I/It” relationship (a subject-to-object relation) with his/her artistic creation. Deep creativity is based on what anne Starr and Bill Torbert calls “triple-loop learning,”[1] a process that recreates new meaning, identity and vision in the midst of action. The result of deep creativity, in all the different realms, is increased wholeness.
Connecting with ‘source’ is a skill and capacity that can be learned and developed. To that end, I am thrilled to have joined forces with UK artist and facilitator Andrew James Campbell to create an experiential ‘Leadership for Emergence’ course that’s designed to enhance both personal and group-wide transformation. Andrew’s thorough understanding of the process of creativity from an aesthetic perspective and how this process applies to individual and organizational transformative change is unique and invaluable to people who want to embody deep creativity in their leadership style.
Andrew and I plan to co-facilitate leadership for Emergence courses both in Europe and in the U.S. Our first session will take place this summer, first week of September, in South of France. I have posted more information about the course on this site so, please check it out and feel free to contact me if you and/or your organization are interested in registering for a U.S. course next year.
I plan to continue exploring the creativity themes discussed above in future blog posts—how the process of deep creativity operates in living systems, within individuals and in social systems, how it can be facilitated, and how individuals can re-connect with ‘source.’ This is a challenging yet fascinating field of research—one, which I want to become more deeply involved with, as I have come to realize that deep creativity may very well be the ‘Holy Grail’ that will help us ‘save’ our society from the worst that has yet to come.
[1] Starr, A. & Torbert, W. (2005). Timely and Transforming Leadership Inquiry and Action: Toward Triple-loop Awareness. Integral Review 1, 85-97.
Creativity from Tensions: A Thought Experiment
In the past couple of weeks, I was involved in two difficult conversations—one personal and one professional. In both cases, the tension emerged out of the conversations and my realization of a gap arising between what was being said and my own beliefs and principles. I started to feel very uneasy, not quite knowing how I was going to proceed. For a little while, I wondered how I was going to behave and what exactly I was going to say, if anything. While the temptation to “let it go,” “not bother,” and “don’t take any risks” was highly present, in both cases I opted for a completely different strategy—one of abrupt honesty in conveying what I was thinking and how I was feeling. I believe that it is my honesty that created the tensions, as my interlocutors probably did not expect such a direct approach. In doing so, I took a difficult, risky road. I also believe it was the high road of creativity.
My colleague and facilitator Brian Weller says that creativity resides in the resolution of tensions. When a tension develops between two or more conflicting ideas, opinions, or values, three outcomes are possible: the tension may break, in which case one side wins and the other loses or, worst, both sides lose. In these situations, there are no resolution and no emergent creativity. Unfortunately, these first two situations are the most frequent. However, in some more rare circumstances when both sides choose to do the work and stay at it for as long as it is necessary, then something somewhat magical occurs: the tension gets resolved and a new solution emerges that encompasses the seemingly divergent views. This win-win situation generates holistic solutions that neither side would have ever envisioned.
Creatively resolving tensions takes time and requires critical personal skills: courage; letting go of ego; deep listening; the ability to see from the other’s perspective; deep empathy; the ability to dance through complexity* and hold two or more opposite views in the mind while resisting the temptation to choose one over the others; and a generative mind that focuses on creating the possibility for something new as opposed to grabbing to the past.
Key to the creative resolution of tensions is the ability to be aware of our thoughts. My friend Andrew James Campbell, artist and facilitator in the UK, just sent me some of his reflections on David Bohm’s book Thought as a System. Andrew quotes Bohm saying:
“…the general tacit assumption in thought is that it’s just telling you the way things are and that it’s not doing anything—that ‘you’ are inside there, deciding what to do with the info. But you don’t decide what to do with the info. Thought runs you. Thought, however, gives false info that you are running it, that you are the one who controls thought. Whereas actually thought is the one which controls each one of us. Thought is creating divisions out of itself and then saying that they are there naturally. This is another major feature of thought: Thought doesn’t know it is doing something and then it struggles against what it is doing. It doesn’t want to know that it is doing it. And thought struggles against the results, trying to avoid those unpleasant results while keeping on with the way of thinking. That is what I call “sustained incoherence.”**
As I engaged in my conversations, thoughts flooded my mind. Thoughts arose as an immediate reaction to the words and ideas I was hearing—words and ideas, which I of course interpreted with my own internal filters. I became very aware of my own thoughts as they created a feeling of discomfort and of dissonance with my interlocutors. Thoughts are what they are, overwhelming us; it is hard to control them. But by making them explicit as well as the feelings they generate—and doing so in a way that honors and respects ourselves and our interlocutors—we can allow for the thoughts to be examined; for misunderstanding to be corrected; for mutual adjustment to take place; and for a new understanding to develop. Then, true creativity can take place.
It is yet to be proven whether I am able to demonstrate the above skills. This is a learning journey and not an easy one. And each circumstance and encounter presents a different challenge. It is about intention and practice.
*This idea is borrowed from Martin Roger’s book “The Opposable Mind: Winning Through Integrative Thinking.” Harvard Business Press (2009).
** Bohm, David (1994). Thought as a System. Routledge, London.
Painting above by Tony Reid (1998), during a facilitated art session with artist Andrew James Campbell. Courtesy of Andrew James Campbell and permission to use. The painting represents in a spectacular way the creative emergence that took place over the three day workshop.
What is Strategy?
Please take a couple of minutes to answer this question: what is strategy?
How did you do? Was it easy? Difficult? Are you satisfied with your answer? It would not be surprising if each one of you had a very different definition of what strategy is. Strategy is, indeed, a very elusive concept. To paraphrase management guru Henry Mintzberg, strategy is an elephant and someone has yet to see the whole beast!
In his book “Strategy Safari: Your Complete Guide Through the Wilds of Strategic Management,” Mintzberg identifies 10 different strategy schools, each exemplifying a particular aspect of the strategy-formation process. Each school, in and of itself, provides a limited perspective on strategy. The sum of all the views presented, however, is not sufficient to really understand the “whole.”
Consider the organization your work for and the particular way(s) you go about to developing your strategies:
- Do you have a separate strategy group or department?
- Is your process top-down or decentralized?
- Who do you involve in the strategy-making process?
- Do you have a clearly defined strategic planning process?
- Do you differentiate between strategic planning and strategic thinking? In what way?
- Is your strategy-making process deliberate—that is, does the process supports the development of strategies that achieve the specific intentions of the individuals that developed them?
- Or, in contrast, are your strategies emergent, organically developed out of the activities taking place in your firm, in the absence of specified intentions?
- How much research and analysis do you perform when developing your strategy?
- Do you have a one-year, five-year or ten-year strategic plan? Or do you simply operate without a strategic plan?
- How often do you revise your business strategy?
- What are the main drivers of your strategy-formation process: your firm’s vision or mission? Or, pressures from the market, the competition, the main stakeholders, the overall business environment?
- How much freedom do you feel you have in developing your strategy?
- How formalized is your strategy implementation process? Do you always implement your strategies? What issues do you encounter when implementing your strategies?
If it occurs to you that you have always taken your strategy-making process for granted and never spent much time reflecting on it, perhaps it is time to step back and re-evaluate it: your process may take a new meaning and dimension if you get a little bit more “strategic” about it.
Words, Language and Meaning
I recently participated to a facilitation workshop where we (the five students) were given a simple exercise by our instructor: we were to take just a few minutes to individually write down on paper any words that came to our minds that we personally associated with the word “Facilitation.” Then, we got together and counted the words we had in common. The result was as indicated below:
4x 3x 2x 1x
0 1 5 63
In summary, there wasn’t a single word that was common to the five of us while there were 63 words that had been uniquely identified by any one of us. Note that the reason we did not have more words in common was not because we thought the words did not apply to the idea of facilitation. Indeed, when we heard each other words we often exclaimed “Of course! Nice word! I should have thought of it!” In some rare cases, we said “That is not a word I would have connected to the idea of facilitation!”
While typical, this result is quite astonishing. (You can try this exercise with your team, your family, or a few friends, using another word.) Simply put, this means that words evocate different images and metaphors and have a different meaning for each of us. As an example, you may be surprised to hear that the word “collaboration” has had a very negative connotation for me until I moved to the U.S. 14 years ago. Yet, the reason is simple: in France, the word “collaboration” is associated with French people who collaborated with the Nazis and fought against the French resistance during WW2. If you are French, you don’t want to be called a “collaborateur”!
The theory of embodied cognition sheds some light on why we assign different meanings to the same word or why similar and related words evocate different feelings and images in us. Embodied cognition means that as ideas, thoughts, concepts and so on, are shaped by our education, past experiences and learning—our personal history—they get embodied as metaphorical thoughts within our brain. This phenomenon occurs when the same recurring experience activates the neurons in different brain areas and neural circuits get formed and connections reinforced over time.
In a recent article called “A Good Week for Science—and Insights into Politics,” the linguist George Lakoff points out:
“The meaning of every word is characterized in terms of a brain circuit called a “frame.” Frames are often characterized in terms of the usual apparatus of mental life: metaphors, images, cultural narratives – and neural links to the emotion centers of the brain. The narrow, literal meaning of a word is only one aspect of its frame-semantic meaning.
The second basic result is that this is mostly unconscious, like 98% of human thought.”
Lakoff goes on by explaining that the word “homosexual,” for instance, has a very different connotation for most people (i.e., is defined with a different frame) than the words “gay men and lesbians.” The use of the word “homosexual” in a poll will generate completely different poll results that the use of the words “gay men and lesbians.” (Note: the remaining of Lakoff’s article discusses the different uses of frames by republicans and democrats politicians; the article is worth a read.)
The above has great consequences for communication in general, and for facilitation, visioning, or conflict resolution, in particular. Indeed, how do we know if the words we use are being interpreted with the meanings we intended? Or, conversely, how do we know if we interpret words we hear with the meaning our interlocutors wished to convey? If we don’t check and ask, we can’t know for sure. And most often, we don’t take the time to do so. For the majority of our common daily activities, our interpretations are close enough to the intended meaning and sufficiently accurate to help us make simple decisions and coordinate actions. Life would be impossible if it were otherwise! But in situations where we are dealing with politically, ethically, or morally-charged issues such as climate changes, sustainability, poverty or healthcare, which generate very different emotional feelings in different people, clarification of content and meaning is key to a successful resolution of the issues at hand.
A facilitator’s important role is one of content clarifier. A skilled facilitator asks clarifying questions to draw out valuable information and get insights about the true meaning of what is being said. In addition, a facilitator must also ensure that the frames and mental models of the participants are made transparent to the entire group so that each participant can fully understand the diverse assumptions, rationale, viewpoints and perspectives behind what is being said.
There is an art to asking probing questions, but an art that can be learned. Next time you are in a conversation with someone you disagree with, do not argue and take a position. Instead, remember to inquire into the other person’s frames and mental models so that you can expand your own horizon of understanding of the issue you are discussing. You may end-up completely changing your perspective. At a minimum, you may gain a greater understanding of the gap between your interlocutor’s standpoint and yours. It is worth the effort!
A Living Systems Approach to Community Economic Development
I was recently asked to write a brief summary on the benefits of the application of living systems theory to Community Economic Development. What I am sharing below gives only a glimpse at the potentials and opportunities in this field; this topic deserves much more in-depth research. Please forgive me for the rather formal tone of the essay, which was not written for the purpose of a blog.
I appreciate any comments or feedback you may have.
Warmly,
Beatrice
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Community Economic Development (CED) approaches that aim at developing sustainable and regenerative communities should be holistic and integrative and must consider the communities’ challenges and strategies from an economic, social, and environmental perspectives, simultaneously. We believe that CED approaches benefit from the insights of Complexity Science, Systems Thinking, and Living Systems theory.
Communities are Complex Adaptive Systems (CAS) or Living Systems (LS) whose components (the individuals, organizations, institutions, and all the diverse social-technical-political-ecological systems that are present within the community) continuously interact with one another to exchange information and resources; collaborate; compete; self-organize; and adapt under the influence of diverse economic, social and environmental pressures.
An LS approach to CED embraces the complexity of the community ecosystem. Understanding of the issues faced by a community can be gained by considering the complex interrelationships that exist between the community and its environment. An ecosystem map is a useful tool to visualize the diverse interactions within the community and between the community and its environment. This map can also be used to assess the level of diversity within the community—diversity that is critical for the system to thrive—and to determine what entities need to be added to rebalance the system.
LS theory provides insights on how to improve the adaptive capacity of communities by designing communities structures that facilitate the flow of information and the development of communication networks; connect diverse assets and resources to one another; support the development of collaboration; decentralize power and decision-making; and increase resilience in times of economic stress, hardship, or downturn.
A living community is a learning system, continuously searching for creative and innovative solutions to its problems and ways to generate value. In the process, the community develops and grows. Innovation is an emergent process that takes place when individuals, organizations and institutions self-organize while engaging in collaborative activities and collective actions. Consequently, an LS approach to CED focuses on designing structures that facilitate the collective coordination of action and the development of mutually beneficial relationships.
Finally, the design of living communities is an adaptive challenge—a challenge that requires individuals, organizations, and the community as a whole to redefine long-held values, beliefs, and mental models and to embrace a new world view. The role of the adaptive leader(s) is to mobilize and empower the community to do “adaptive work.” This means engaging the community members in dialogue that supports the development of shared-understanding of the issues to be addressed; the development of relationship based on trust; and the co-creation of shared meaning and purposes from which a new vision can emerge and new strategies can be designed.
Open dialogue, transparency, accountability, and constant evaluation of the process and its outcome—the qualities of reflective systems—are essential to the development of purposeful and conscious living communities.
Yet, we must remember that living systems cannot be directed but only influenced. There are no single prescriptions for success. Strategies must be context-specific and their implementation carefully monitored using feedback loops and other evaluation systems so that to continuously adjust and improve the system.
The Charlie Schultz Philosophy
Last Wednesday, I was seating on a bench at the Portland Amtrak Station, waiting for my train to Seattle, on my way to teaching my Systems Thinking class and completely absorbed in the reading of one chapter of Donella Meadows’ book Thinking in Systems, when a man who was seating on the same bench not too far from me, approached me and asked me if I could watch for his bags for a few minutes. Of course, I accepted.
A few minutes later, the man came back (his name is Dennis), thanked me and asked me what I was reading. My answer drew another question and another and we started a conversation about what I was teaching and where, what I was doing for a living and so on and so forth. When time came to board the train, I gave Dennis my business card and said goodbye. But a while later, as the train was already on his way, Dennis came to find me in my car and asked if we could continue our discussion. We talked about things that matter to me: adaptive work and leadership; transformative work; living systems; sustainability; consulting; personal development. It seemed as if Dennis was drinking my words. He told me that he had been retired for a few years but was looking for something to do. Considering his interest in my “stories” and all the questions he asked, it occurred to me that he was ready to move on to his next challenge and start a new career—one that would truly make a difference in his life and in the life of others. I greatly encouraged him to find his new life purpose.
Meeting Dennis was like one of these serendipitous encounters that leave you with the feeling that you’ve made a difference in someone else life. After we had said goodbye and agreed to stay in touch, I felt a deep sense of joy and connection. Strangely, I also felt that this encounter had not happened purely by chance—that it was meant to have happened.
Yesterday, I received an email from Dennis who sent a little story and cartoon called: The Charlie Schultz Philosophy. I am happy to share it with you. Enjoy!
Let’s Not Jump To Conclusions Too Quickly
Let’s say I am a coffee shop owner. I want you to tell me what is better for the environment: using paper cups, hence increasing deforestation or, using ceramic cups, which I now have to wash using energy and lots of water? (Of course, much energy and water were used to make the paper cups as well.)
Perhaps you know the answer to this question but more likely you are like me and you don’t. Perhaps there are some experts out there who have done a comparative life cycle analysis of both solutions and who know the answer. Perhaps the answer depends on where the coffee shop is located—I would suspect the answer would be different in India or Africa than it is in the U.S. Perhaps ceramic cups are a better choice today while paper cups might be better in 5 or 10 years when we experience a major water shortage. Perhaps in 20 years neither solution will be a good one because we won’t have enough water to make our coffee, anyway. There may not be any coffee growing, by the way.
I may be over-dramatizing but you get the point. We all mean well and we are all trying to do the right thing and we truly care. Yet, driven by our mental models (yes, I know, I have been focusing quite a bit on them lately but they seem to me so critical if one wants to move to the next stage), we love to find easy technical answers to our complex problems and we love jumping to conclusions quickly. We also love to point fingers and blame others for their unsustainable behaviors. We bad-mouth our neighbors for not recycling; we complain about our employees who do not embrace our latest corporate sustainable initiative; we get upset with the grocery store that is raving about its sustainability strategy yet carries Chilean grapes in the winter; and while they may be making their baby steps toward transforming their business operation, we still blame large corporations for their unsustainable business models and for greenwashing.
Listen, I am not saying there is no greenwashing: it’s everywhere. I am not saying there aren’t people who do not care: there are still too many. I am not saying that all businesses getting involved with their Corporate Social Responsibility initiative are doing it for the sake of the environment, their local community and social justice: many are still doing it only for the bottom line and in many cases simply because they are forced to do so by stakeholders’ demand, regulatory constraints, and NGO pressures.
What I am trying to say is that we, the well-meaning people, have to rise above the pack and start asking the right and smart questions. If we want to lead, then we must lead in such a way that the results of our actions are truly making a positive impact on the world. We must acknowledge that problems are complex and that oversimplification is a very risky business. We must be aware of our own filters and mental models and make them explicit and open to the scrutiny of others. We must take a rigorous and scientific approach when investigating our problems and the strategies we are developing to solve them. And, at the same time and in the same way that we are using our rational brains for analysis, we must also open our hearts, use our intuition, and practice love and compassion because the use of soft skills and our ability to connect to emotional intelligence are critical to our ability to adapt, transform ourselves and ultimately impact the world around us.
More than anything else, we should not jump to conclusions too quickly. Is it difficult? Hell, yes! But by rolling up our sleeves and accepting the hard work; by acknowledging that we are both rational and emotional people and by honoring both reason and emotion as valuable human assets; and by learning how to mesh these in our personal and professional lives, all together we will be able to achieve our highest aspirations for a better world.
