Innovation on my Mind

Evolution, Revolution and 2012

2012-01-06T14:06:00.002-06:00

As we make our way into 2012--the year some believe will be mark the end of the world or a worldwide spiritual transformation--I'm thinking about the markers of evolution and revolution we saw in 2011.

In the world of business innovation we distinguish between incremental and breakthrough innovation. The holy grail is the breakthrough, the game changer, some new invention or idea that fundamentally shifts or creates an industry or changes the way we think or interact.

But the truth is most innovations are incremental, a small adjustment, a change in design, a few new technological improvements. We shouldn't poo-poo the incremental. Embracing any kind of change and being proactive are the hallmarks of innovation. But I think this year we may be ready for some real breakthroughs, globally, nationally, locally, personally and internally. Don't you think?

In 2011 we saw the birth of the seven billionth person and the passing of great innovators like Apple founder Steve Jobs, breakthrough political candidate Geraldine Ferraro, Peace Corps founder Sargent Shriver, and civil rights leader Fred Shuttlesworth.

We saw sclerotic gridlock in the U.S. Congress--where incremental evolution would be a godsend--contrasted with a revitalized form of revolution on the streets of Egypt and the Middle East spreading all over the world, including Occupy Chicago in my own city.

For ongoing readers of this blog, you might remember I took on a personal quest for reinvention in 2011. While I haven't reported on it in a while, I'm still actively engaged in reinvention, challenging myself to think differently, let go of the way-I-thought-it-was-supposed-to-be, and follow my true callings and passions. I did make breakthroughs in 2011 in addition to my ongoing speaking/consulting practice, which included the groundbreaking nonprofit I now direct (Poetry Pals) and writing a full script and developing a musical/theatrical project (Malaise County Fair). More to come.

What are some breakthroughs you'd like to make in 2012? Let's all take this distinctive leap year as an opportunity for both evolution and revolution, both culturally and personally, so that we can engage in the world most fully ourselves and most fully alive. I'm starting the year off by shedding my hair and heading off for some travel.

Poetry Pals interfaith creativity program featured in Chicago Tribune

2011-12-23T13:03:00.006-06:00

Poetry Pals--our interfaith, intercultural creativity kids program I've described previously--made it in the Chicago Tribune this week. I think it's a fitting way to reflect the holiday season, amidst all the bad news of conflict and partisanship, to once again share our story of interfaith cooperation and celebration of diversity through creativity.

Right now Poetry Pals is in search of Board Members, volunteers, funding and donations to help with our mission--thank you for spreading the word. Please like us on Facebook and email us to be put on the regular Poetry Pals email list. I've reposted the story and provided a video link below. Adam

CLICK HERE FOR THE TRIBUNE VIDEO

Kids learn the rhyme and reason of religious differences
Poetry program brings together Christian, Jewish and Muslim students for a day of sharing Chicago Tribune

By Susan Berger, Special to the Tribune 7:09 p.m. CST, December 19, 2011

The fourth-grader from Chicago's Sacred Heart Schools said he was happy he got to visit a synagogue.

"I didn't know what was in it," said Luke Penner.

Amin Wahdam, a student at Muslim Community Center Full Time School in Morton Grove, didn't know that Jews light candles for the eight nights ofHanukkah to commemorate the ancient story of one night's worth of oil lasting eight nights.

And Noah Srulovitz, a student at Solomon Schechter Day School's Northbrook campus, said he never knew that Christians are celebrating Jesus' birthday on Christmas.

Catholic, Jewish and Muslim fourth-graders are learning all kinds of things about one another as they explore different religions and dabble in the world of poetry through Poetry Pals, an interfaith effort started by a Jewish educator who realized that her life was too homogenous....CLICK HERE FOR REST OF ARTICLE.

Wishing you a happy holiday season! Adam

Miracle Innovations--Come on, Humans!

2011-12-07T18:22:00.012-06:00

Creative insights from top business innovators: Click here. Is there a dark side to creativity? Click here. For more on creativity from Adam, use search field (top left) or click on keywords (bottom right) on his Innovation on my Mind blog.

I just remembered that I forgot to lock my car, so I look out my window, press a button, and almost a block away I see my car flash and automatically lock itself. For a moment I don't take this now-commonplace act for granted and acknowledge what it is: a miracle. Human-created, technological magic. Something a decade ago I would not have considered to be in the realm of possibility.

The mesmerizing clocks and gears in 3-D Hugo

Breakthrough innovations--miracles of mind (and nowadays usually technology) that redefine how we do things and often could not be predicted by what occurred before--are the elusive dream of many current businesses and the catalyst for new industries and economic growth. We also need breakthroughs right now to solve the challenges of an America that has forgotten how to collectively solve problems, dream together and invent a new future.

Perhaps like you I have been feeling pessimistic about the state of our culture--despite my creative rabble-rousing I am in many ways a very practical person--but something about watching Hugo, Martin Scorcese's new 3D movie, shook up some optimism in me. Movies in many ways are the ultimate manifestation of current human creativity, requiring hundreds of talented people coming together to create as engaging an experience we can have while seated. And I finally understood that 3D movies are a breakthrough--that my experience watching Hugo was qualitatively different from any movie experience I'd had before (I have not been an avid 3D goer) and that movies now were being reinvented in a way I hadn't really thought possible.

Artificial Leaf that can store solar energy

Add to that the truly amazing innovations featured in the recent Time Magazine "Invention Issue" (You may have to be a subscriber but worth picking up a copy) and suddenly I'm finding myself believing that humans can make miracles. Perhaps you've already met Siri, the iPhone digital assistant who can respond to your verbal requests like never before. There is also DRACO, a new virus killer that may change the length of colds forever, as well as an artificial leaf that can effectively convert and store solar energy. Not to mention 3-D chips, virtual textures, laser headlights, mind reading software and solar airplanes and so many others proving that miracle inventions will continue to change our world. Undoubtedly we'll soon adapt to them and take them for granted but they will continue to mesmerizingly come at us.

So for a moment, as this year ends, I'm embracing these miracles and believing that breakthroughs don't have to be only technological. We are ready to change our politics, our economic paradigms, our distractions, our materialism, our stress--how we solve problems, get along and care about each other. It only takes a small shift, a bold idea, a different way of seeing or communicating or being. That may be a miracle but we humans can indeed do miracles.

Spotlight on interfaith creativity project: Poetry Pals

2011-11-22T12:59:00.001-06:00

I wanted to share more about Poetry Pals, an interfaith non-profit creativity program building bridges between diverse communities through children, that I am directing here in Chicago. This article and pictures come from our first fall session (written by Tami Warshawsky of our Jewish school partner, Solomon Schechter). Adam

Building Bridges Through Poetry

Among Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Students

We are green, red, and dark blue.

We are mocha fudge ice cream, hot chicken tenders, and pizza.

We are soccer, hockey, and basketball.

We are Poland and Russia, Germany, and the USA.

We are Jewish, Catholic, and Muslim.

We are Jeremy, Noah, and Mustafa.

Jeremy, Noah, and Mustafa are three of the 110 fourth graders from Solomon Schechter Day School of Metropolitan Chicago, Sacred Heart Schools in Chicago, and MCC Full-time School in Morton Grove, who attended an extraordinary program called Poetry Pals on Wednesday. Poetry Pals unites students from different faith traditions to further their appreciation of their own and each other's faiths, and to begin to form bonds of understanding and friendship through the art of poetry.

Adam Shames, Program and Creative Director (above), is the dynamic and spirited facilitator of Poetry Pals. "We have several goals today," he explained to the group of students and teachers who gathered in the gym at Solomon Schechter Day School's Skokie Campus. "Our first goal is to get together as friends and get to know a bit about different cultures in America," he said. "We are also here to learn how to express ourselves better and to use poetry to describe the world and our feelings. We want you to become really good at expressing yourself through words. And, most of all, we want you to have FUN!"

After Adam and the Poetry Pals staff led the large group in a series of ice-breakers, the students were invited to visit the school's sanctuary or Beit Knesset, where they saw where Schechter students pray each day. Then they reunited in the gym where Rabbi Daniel Rosenberg, Director of Jewish Life and Learning at Solomon Schechter, provided a brief overview of the Jewish faith. During the question and answer session one boy asked: "Why do you keep your holy scroll in that cabinet?" A Schechter student quickly explained, "Because it's holy to us, it has God's name in it, and we want to keep it safe."

The easy dialogue that began in the gym continued as students were divided into groups and led into five classrooms. Once there, they broke into smaller groups consisting of three or four students of different faiths. They took a few minutes to get to know each other and then they completed a worksheet together that asked for their favorite colors, foods, and sports; their favorite place to be; the part of nature they feel is most beautiful; something they are good at; a favorite holiday tradition; their country of origin; their religion; and their name.

There were smiles and laughter as students realized they had so much in common. They continued to ask questions while working together including, "Why do Jewish boys wear "hats" on their head?" "Can the hats come off? "What is the meaning of the Cross?" "Why do girls wear the head scarves (called hijabs)?" and more. They were eager to explain their faith and share the answers to each other's questions.

"We try to create a warm and fun environment where children can learn to express themselves and listen with respect to others, strengthen their own pride and self-esteem, and gain an appreciation for each other's culture," said Donna Yates, Chicago Poetry Pals Founder and Poet-educator. The program originated in Philadelphia, and when Mrs. Yates relocated to Chicago she asked the founder if she could replicate it here. "It's been very successful in helping children break down stereotypes and build positive relationships," she said. "The children feel so proud as they describe their faith to each other, and they enjoy the activities that help them express themselves through poetry."

Click here for the rest of the article...

Honoring Innovation and Losing Inhibitions

2011-11-11T11:37:00.003-06:00

Mingling with the suits at the 2011 Innovation Awards

I entered early through the underground door of the Harris Theater in Millennium Park for this Tuesday night's Chicago Innovation Awards to find an already packed room and a ridiculously long open bar line (My thirst would have to wait; can you see why, right?) -- and three other floors just like it on my way up to get my name tag. But I didn't mind. The largest crowd ever in its 10-year history had gathered to honor innovation in Chicago, and we were entertained and inspired by the Academy-awards-like evening of comedy bits, video overviews, cool new products and grateful CEOs.

As founders and emcees Tom Kuczmarski and Dan Miller emphasized, the crowd had come together to give kudos to "Chicago-style innovators" and support what they called the "innovation ecosystem" that has had a huge impact on our region. Long-time Chicago companies were rewarded for their innovation chops, including 90+-year-old Elkay with its newfangled water fountain/bottle filler and century-old Illinois Tool Works with its cap-less gas cap on cars. And new start-ups also made their mark, including Narrative Science's software that can turn any data into human-seeming written stories (goodbye journalists?) and Fresh Moves, a much-needed non-profit converting CTA busses into mobile veggie produce providers to underserved neighborhoods. Click here or on the banner below to read more about all the winners.

While I applaud this outstanding event tribute to innovation, we can't can't forget that creativity is the great engine of innovation, and that we in Chicago still have a ways to go to truly reflect on ecosystem that supports the originality and subversiveness that make up the creative DNA. I was a bit itchy sitting in my seat too long as a passive spectator listening to more corporate sponsor thank you's and seeing more men in dark suits per capita than I can stomach without rebellion stirring in my solar plexus.

Luckily I've had a chance these last couple weeks to get some ga-ga's out as creative participator, and not just spectator, around town. Formal awards of innovation need to be balanced by unpredictable episodes of losing inhibition or innovation ain't never gonna emerge, Serge. So I made my way last Saturday night to a remarkable lakefront party featuring Near Hemisphere, a drumming ensemble that can transform any space into a rhythmic rocket ship. A living room became a full participation boogie palace and I had a chance to pound my own drums and move my body to the inner beat we all share. No dark suits in attendance this time.

Near Hemisphere banging it out at house party

Of course, Halloween is also a time for creative experimentation and the weekend previous I consulted my imagination and found an inner nomad, transforming myself into Panos, a Greek wanderer of the woods and son of Hermes, in search of my long lost love Gosia of the Forest (there is a longer story of kidnapping and nymphs...some other time), with whom I was finally reunited with at a party (right).

Most often innovation--and I'm talking the business-type now--happens by bringing together different perspectives and even polar opposites to discover new combinations that lead to creative services and products that can impact our lives. That's what the Innovation Awards is celebrating. In the same way we cultivate our own creativity by embracing our polarities, taking risks in engaging more fully in our different sides and interests. This means making time not just for our dark suits and business pursuits, but also boogie balloons and Halloween costumes. What inhibitions might you give up next to liberate your inner innovation?

"Inner Work Life" and the impact of Amabile

2011-10-25T08:37:00.000-05:00

After years of painstaking research on the "inner work lives" of employees of several organizations, world-renowned creativity researcher Teresa Amabile offers valuable insights in her new book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work. If you're a manager, she argues, then understanding and nourishing your staff's "inner" life is key to productivity and success--and specifically supporting progress and meaningful accomplishments, even in small steps, can make the greatest difference. Check out her video here, as she explains what helps people get more deeply engaged and satisfied with their work.

Amabile personally made a great difference in my life by introducing me to the field of creativity (who knew there was a field?) when I was still a teenage sophomore at Brandeis. Her pioneering research and writing (her Creativity in Context broke new ground as a comprehensive review of decades of key creativity studies) was so impressive that Harvard Business School soon snatched her up as one of their own. Before they did, though, I decided to take her "Psychology of Creativity" course, which changed my life. If you'll indulge me for a paragraph...

I still remember the feeling of the state Amabile would call "intrinsic motivation," as a class assignment led me to spend nights roaming the library, highly stimulated by ideas for perhaps the first time in my life. For my final paper and class speech, I felt so compelled to make an ambitiously-wide-ranging case about work and creativity that I sought out writers in different domains to see where they would lead me. I read social theorists and philosophers who had something to say about conditions for creativity--there was Dewey and Weber and Marx and others--and started to make direct connections between their conclusions and the findings of the psychological studies we were reading about in class. My wordy masterpiece, "The Stifling of Creativity in Work in Our Society" (yes, I still remember), was pretty good, but the speech I gave was, I believe, my best work as an academic, delivered with no-notes-needed passion and breaking the rules of academia (When I finished my diatribe, with smoke still coming out of my ears, I remember the stunned and lengthy silence in the room until the sole graduate student asked, "Do you have statistical evidence for this?"). When years later I learned that Amabile did not remember this greatest-student-speech-of-all-time, I realized the impact was made primarily on me, but it was, indeed, a lasting one. In any case, thank you, Teresa.

Amabile's The Progress Principle (written with her husband Steven Kramer) is distinguished by what she does best--unparalleled research, clear-eyed analysis and cogent writing full of evidence-based and practical human-centered principles. For the last several years, Amabile has been focusing on the workplace, using research findings to help guide leadership in organizations in ways that best leverages the talents, motivations and creativity of the humans who work there. This book is a culmination of reviewing, coding and making sense of more than 12,000 journal entries from the work trenches.

"Of all the events that can deeply engage people in their work," she says, "the single most important is simply making progress on meaningful work." Managers can best boost positive inner work life, she explains, by reviewing and supporting people's progress everyday--which might sound simple but is more often ignored. Even small wins can yield "significant work life benefits," and the book reviews other influencers, catalysts and inhibitors that impact inner work life. Just like she did for me personally years ago, Amabile once again convincingly makes the case for how best to engage and inspire, and foster the conditions for optimal creativity and productivity in ourselves and others.

Stirring up Live Creativity

2011-10-11T14:01:00.000-05:00

During the past few weeks, I've had the honor and challenge and pleasure of stirring up creativity with large groups in a range of settings. Check it out:

A few minutes before "Who's Got the Biggest Fed Head?"

Last week, I designed and hosted a game show for a 100 Federal Reserve employees, which we called "Who's Got the Biggest Fed Head?" (email me for an audio clip of our theme song!), testing the knowledge and collaborative abilities of teams in an interactive format. As I've written previously, most people would be shocked to learn that our too-often maligned Federal Reserve embraces creative thinking and new approaches in service of innovation, learning and improving. For the game show, I brought a percussionist, and we couldn't help wink at the irony of walking through the crowd of Chicago protesters, beating on their little drums, as we carted in two large congas to play for the actual Fed employees, most of whom, from what I can tell and from what Bernanke himself said recently, sympathize with the protesters. By the way, that's a $100 bill tie I'm wearing (left).

I just got back from West Virginia, where I facilitated an innovation session for an energy consulting firm (Leonardo Technologies; check out the cool stuff they're working on). In addition to exploring innovation and creativity through interactive exercises, we also discussed the importance of passion--how to empower employees to pursue their own creative talents and interests--and brainstormed possibilities for new clients and areas to expand their worthwhile work of shifting the energy paradigm in our country.

Stirring it up with kids and parents

I also had a chance to stir it up with younger groups recently, as a speaker for 750 kids at a middle school assembly and as part of the Malaise County Fair project I've been developing with a creative cast this past year. For Malaise, we had our first public performance with families as part of a fall festival here in Chicago, where we tested out new ways for an audience to participate musically and otherwise. As those of you who know me know, I'm dedicated to helping all of us be creators and not just spectators, and Malaise County Fair continues to experiment with breaking down the wall between performers and audiences in new ways.

Next week, I'll be at it with another innovative program for kids, Poetry Pals, which brings together children of different faiths (in this case, kids from Muslim, Catholic and Jewish schools) to learn from each other and write poetry together. We're always looking for volunteers to help us with this program, so please email me if you're interested in fostering interfaith relations with us.

Malaise County Fair performs

Innovation Hobnob and Articles

2011-09-20T18:30:00.014-05:00

"In one way or another the American is an improvisation, the character in a play of his or her own invention, hoping that the audience--fortunately consisting of actors as makeshift as oneself--will accept the performance at par, believe the instructions." ~Lewis Lapham

It's been a while since I hobnobbed with the innovation crowd here in Chicago, so I wandered into the House of Blues on Monday night to check out the 500+ attendees of the Chicago Innovation Awards' annual Nominee Reception. With more than 400 organizations nominated for their new products and services this year, the Chicago Innovation Awards, now in its 10th year, does a yeoman's job shining a spotlight on creativity in Chicagoland industries.

While Chicago may or may not be the innovation hub it desires to be, I enjoyed speaker John Barron, publisher of the Chicago Sun-Times, wax eloquent about the grand innovations of this midwestern home of mine, pointing to our brave history of reversing the flow of our river, inventing public conversation and public sobbing (Oprah), with a brisk wind chill to focus our thoughts.

The truth is, innovation continues to be a leading conversation topic in cities, within companies and among politicians and writers throughout this country. And the innovation imperative remains strong--we must continue to change and invent, as we always have. As Lewis Lapham wrote in Harper's earlier this year, what truly unites Americans is not their pride or armies or GDP or common ancestry "but rather their complicity in a shared work of the imagination...If America is about nothing else, it is about making it up as one goes along."

Here are some recent articles from thinkers and improvisers trying to steer us through a bumpy ride of needed innovation:

*Tom Friedman is back with a new book, That Used To Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back. Click here for a link to a free chapter, interviews and more.

*Harvard Business School's Teresa Amabile (one of the leading researchers on creativity and one of my mentors) recently published a book, The Progress Principle: Using Small Wins to Ignite Joy, Engagement, and Creativity at Work--read more about it here. More from me on it in the near future.

*Did you miss Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business issue? Check out the list here and a great guide to creativity by Conan O'Brien here.

*How did 9/11 spawn creativity and innovation? Read this Inc. article here.

*Innovation is dead, say PayPal founders. Check out this Forbes article here.

*Can innovation be part of a small company's every day routine? Read this Crain's Chicago Business article. And check out the video below--can songwriting techniques help business?

On Breakdowns and Breakthroughs

2011-08-31T21:25:00.001-05:00

As we watch the recent floods from Hurricane Irene and start to recall memories of 9/11, I'm thinking about that feeling when the power goes out, or something unexpected and important breaks down, and you have have no choice but to adjust to a new reality until your old one is restored. If it can be.

I definitely see breakdowns as an opportunity--to reboot, to unblock, to be reminded of other ways of assuming, and, if I'm conscious about it, to help me break out of a pattern that is not serving me. Crisis of some sort is often required for real change, even though some systems are so sclerotic (e.g., U.S. politics) that even crises don't appear to work. I'm wondering, though, might breakdowns actually be prerequisites to breakthroughs?

Okay, I ask because even though I've held it together pretty damn well, I've recently been experiencing my own flood of technological and other breakdowns--no kidding, my computer, land line, cell phone, scooter, car and body have all recently blown a gasket of some sort. I'm generally thrilled to say I have finally crossed back over and am now writing this on a brand new iMac. I'm more hesitant to admit that I'm going in tomorrow to be knocked out and cut up and returned home to heal and soon, God- and universe-willing, be softball-swinging even better than before.

So right now I'm trying to make sense of it all by concluding that I've been breaking down so I can continue to break out, that when the power goes out and my phone is dead the next thing I know I am enjoying the company of the too-long-avoided neighbors and planning a block party. Yes. I'm going to conclude that these breakdowns will soon be followed by breakthroughs that even now I have yet to imagine.

"The cocoon of middle age habit"

2011-08-11T08:18:00.007-05:00

I'm still thinking about the reactions I got last night at a networking event when I asked for folks who wanted to join in on an impromptu musical jam (There was a stage with sundry instruments ready to go--how could I resist?). Simple questions ("Do you play any musical instrument? Sing a little? Want to join us?") were met with such revulsion, such instant "No Way"s and "You don't want me to"s that you would have thought I was inviting them to commit a heinous crime.

Despite our amazing expansion of personal freedom and choices, I often wonder if the permission we give ourselves to experiment creatively has changed much in the past 100 years. Let me dip into the archive for a little 20th century inspiration still relevant today.

"A childlike man is not a man whose development has been arrested; on the contrary, he is a man who has given himself a chance of continuing to develop long after most adults have muffled themselves in the cocoon of middle age habit and convention." ~Aldous Huxley

"This creative power should be kept alive in all people for all their lives. Why? Because it is life itself. It is the Spirit. In fact it is the only important thing about us. The rest of us is legs and stomach, materialistic cravings and fears.
How can we keep it alive? By using it, by letting it out, by giving some time to it. But if we are women we think it is more important to wipe noses and carry doilies than to write or two play the piano. And men spend their lives adding and subtracting and dictating letters when they secretly long to write sonnets and burst into tears at the sunset.
They do not know that this is a fearful sin against themselves. They would be much greater now, more full of light and power, if they had really written the sonnets and played the fiddle and wept over sunsets, as they wanted to." ~Brenda Ueland, "If You Want to Write" (1938)

If June and July were a Single Day...

2011-07-26T16:30:00.009-05:00

I woke up early this morning intent on inspiring creativity outside and in, first by facilitating two days of innovation exercises at an educators conference at a farm-camp in mid-state New York, and then by walking dozens of miles through NYC and Philly, climbing the Statue of Liberty* and ringing the Liberty Bell, couple-clutching through Times Square and Washington Square Park, watching kids play baseball in Brooklyn and dance a recital in Upper Dublin, PA, navigating and negotiating my way through Canal St., Port Authority, deer crossings* and crossing the Delaware, mixing it up with family, old friends, rude people with East-coast accents, and my girl.

I got back in Chicago just in time for exploring leadership with new MBA students and seasoned risk managers and then hitting a homer over the left fielder's softball glove before I celebrated at a party featuring the largest pink penis pinata* ever seen. Then we ate and swayed with the rain and heat along with several bands at Chicago street festivals before heading north to Summerfest in Milwaukee, taking a view from the sky* before dancing dangerously on benches to Michael Franti (video below or here) and his frantic love vibe, and then as the heat souffled us we were better off leaving the beach where alewives had flooded the shore and drove back down to the Chicago lakefront for late night swimming and a thousand-person, fire-twirling full moon celebration.

By afternoon I shared the sorrow and joy of a death and a bris, took moped rides to interfaith program meetings, and watched fireworks lighting the sky. I officially finished my own musical script, packed my car with musical instruments and chairs, held auditions* and am now ready for our first Malaise County Fair rehearsal, taking the next step with my most personal creative project, guitar polished and ready to strum into the unknown.

As evening began to roll around, I facilitated an "idea jam"* for a super-smart group of engineers whose buildings can swivel, and this past weekend I swiveled my way out to Ravinia to listen to Five f or Fighting under the stars and then took in the ultimate theater-on-steroids show--30 "plays" in 60 minutes by the Neo-Futurists. Now I sit at a cafe, typing this, reminded that there is no better place to spend the summer than Chicago (with a little travel thrown in) and wondering what is in store for the remainder of these simmering months.

Audition Call in Chicago

2011-06-30T10:40:00.005-05:00

July 7 addendum: According to this week's Time Magazine, a new poll suggests we are at another "malaise moment," with more Americans pessimistic about our country's decline and their own future. I happen to think we have our best bet of getting out of our malaise the more we engage creatively with our own lives.

So we're taking the next step with Malaise County Fair, an interactive musical that breaks the wall between performer and audience in new ways, and are having auditions next week here in Chicago. Please spread the word to actor-singer-improvisers or other local creative friends who might want to be part of an exciting new project:

CALL FOR AUDITIONS…
— — — — — — — — —
Malaise County Fair
An Interactive Musical Experience
about relationships, choices and getting out of our malaise
— — — — — — — — —
Audition Dates: July 13 and July 16

Overview: Unlike any theater show you have been part of, the Malaise County Fair is a love story, musical and community experience that breaks down the wall between performer and spectator, offering numerous opportunities for audience members to participate. Elements and exercises from Malaise have been successfully featured in teambuilding and innovation sessions by the Kreativity Network (www.kreativity.net) and “Creativity Jams” hosted by founder Adam Shames at Old Town School of Music and elsewhere. Our current goal is to workshop this original musical with a performance team over the next few months, leading to public performance(s) in late September. While the script is already written, roles will be tailored to individual performers, and we embrace a collaborative process to improve the show.

Roles: We’re looking for 4-5 male and female performers of different ages—particularly actor-singer-improvisers who are also comfortable as facilitators helping audience-participants get involved. We love those who play a musical instrument (percussion included) or have a special talent (we can integrate).

Auditions: Come meet us, learn more about Malaise, and be ready to sing, act, improvise and jam from selections of songs and scenes from our script. Bring your standard HS/resume or an appropriately creative substitute. Dates:

>>Wednesday, July 13^th at 7:00pm at Arts at Large Studio, 3318 N. Lake Shore Drive, on the inner drive just north of Belmont; and
>>Saturday, July 16^th at 3:30pm location TBA.

Please RSVP to info@kreativity.net to let us know you’re coming and for further instructions. Phone: 773-388-2880.

Malaise County Fair is created and directed by Adam Shames, accomplished singer-songwriter and founder of the Kreativity Network (www.kreativity.net) who brings experiential learning and leadership programs into organizations. Learn more on the Malaise website or visit/like the Malaise County Fair Page on Facebook.

Reinvention Month 3: Moving with Chatter

2011-06-26T17:07:00.002-05:00

For a sampling of recent blog articles on business innovation, click here or here or here or here. For more on creativity from Adam, use search field (top left) or click on keywords (bottom right) on his Innovation on my Mind blog.

I'm keeping up the fight to overcome what Stephen Pressfield calls "resistance." How do I keep moving forward? How can you move forward on the urge to create, build something, change something?

*Don't listen to the chatter. Pay no attention to the those rambling, disjointed images and notions that drift across the movie screen of your mind. THOSE ARE NOT YOUR THOUGHTS. THEY ARE CHATTER. THEY ARE RESISTANCE.

Chatter is your mother and father's well-intentioned expressions of caution, seeking to shield you from hurting yourself. Chatter is your teachers' equally well-meaning attempts at socialization, training you to follow the rules. Chatter is your friends' regular-Joe buddy-talk, trying to make you like them and follow the rules of the pack.

Okay, I'm getting better about the chatter. I'm letting it come and go like wind. Sometimes my hair gets in my eyes. Sometimes I have to sit down. But I'm moving forward. Now what?

*COVER THE CANVAS. ONE RULE FOR FIRST FULL WORKING DRAFTS: GET THEM DONE ASAP. Don't worry about quality. Act, don't reflect. Momentum is everything. Get to THE END as if the devil himself were breathing down your neck and poking you in the butt with his pitchfork.

DON'T STOP. DON'T LOOK DOWN. DON'T THINK. SUSPEND ALL SELF-JUDGMENT. THE INNER CRITIC? HIS ASS IS NOT PERMITTED IN THE BUILDING.

*from Pressfield's new book, Do the Work.

Summer Creative Plunge

2011-06-15T15:39:00.006-05:00

There is a cool rain pounding the streets once again out my window, as Chicagoans like me continue to wonder when summer will fully arrive. But no matter. The days are long, the trees are green, and it's time once again for me to urge you to let your creativity bloom.

With the extra daylight and outdoor opportunities, what might you be able to bring into the world this summer that only can come from you?

Perhaps you need a spark or a support group to take a summer creative plunge? Like-minded creativity rabble-rouser John Dillon--he is also a radio host, author, and Albuquerque-based speaker and singer-songwriter--has put together a free video series to inspire your creativity. Below is the first of his four free videos:

John has several websites and resources for you if you'd like help engaging your creativity. And if you like his mellow and passionate style, I encourage you not only to watch his four free videos (and listen to his "Art of the Song" radio show and get his book, left), but make a commitment for real creative change by taking a leap and signing up for his 7-week Creativity, Passion and Purpose TeleCourse. Watch the 4th video for more information and sign up using this link so he knows I referred you. Deadline to sign up is this Sunday.

Here in Chicago, I continue to develop Malaise County Fair, an audience-interactive musical and show dedicated to helping us all get out of whatever malaise we are in and creating a space to jam together as a community. We welcome more creativity rabble-rousers to join us--please like us on Facebook, and contact me directly if you'd like to be involved as a performer or behind the scenes.

Let this be the summer you become a musician--let me help you make that happen with my music coaching and you'll be jamming to songs in 6 weeks or less.

Whatever you choose to do, I want to encourage to move from being just a spectator to more of a creator in your life. As John Dillon and I agree, creativity can change lives--and it is just what our society needs right now. It starts with you.

"Everyone Agrees" about Innovation (Whatever it is)

2011-06-08T13:42:00.011-05:00

In an article this week in Time, Fareed Zakaria succinctly captures our national conversation about innovation: "Everyone agrees it's key to America's future" but "we don't really have a good fix on the concept."

Zakaria, the omnipresent commentator who works for both CNN and Time, has emerged as one of the most lucid and sane advocates for this buzzword we call innovation. He points out the ways the U.S. as a country is falling behind--and argues convincingly that innovation is "the only durable stength we have" in these troubling economic times. Both novel business ideas and new technology are crucial to innovation, he writes, and what's most important is the "ecosystem that encourages technological breakthroughs and their application."

Click on his picture above to see an interview last night for the Daily Show as he explains that while corporations are doing fine right now, the American labor force is not.

As the political game between two parties begins to pick up steam with Republican candidate debates, we find that "innovation," as Zakaria points out, is one of the few unifying forces in American culture right now. While researchers define innovation as "the implementation of creative ideas," national commentators tend to refer to it in terms of money--for research and development, for capital to invest in businesses, and for government programs that lead to new companies and products. Zakaria is particularly good at describing that ecosystem that fosters innovation, which includes the need for government investment (that fueled great breakthroughs like the Internet, the microchip and GPS)--and which Republicans are often less thrilled to publicly admit supporting.

Zakaria's new CNN series, Restoring the American Dream: How to Innovate, debuted last Sunday, and you can find great resources on CNN for better understanding the innovation conversation, including interviews with distinguished innovators, including John Kao, whose Innovation Nation is also a must-read on the subject, and author Steven Johnson in the video below.

I've previously referred to this conversation as the innovation imperative--the urgent need we have as a country and a culture, as organizations and individuals, to better learn how to be more creative and foster innovation. One imperative is a national and economic one, which includes creating the ecosystem and investments necessary to bring innovation here at home. Another is our own as individuals and in our organizations. I define innovation in that context as improving what's now and creating what's next. For our own innovation to flourish, we have to be constantly working on improving our current state of being--questioning assumptions, proactively seeking out better ways of doing things--and be constantly visioning and creating new strategies and possibilities for the future.

What have you been doing lately to improve what's now and create what's next for your own life, career or organization?

Reinvention at 2 Months: Warrior in Hiding

2011-05-23T15:03:00.001-05:00

Can imagination be taught? Click here. For more on creativity from Adam, use search field (top left) or click on keywords (bottom right) on his Innovation on my Mind blog.

As Spring began, I took on the task of reinvention--of seeing if I could consciously change from the inside out and operate out of a new identity more in alignment with the life of creative purpose I want to live.

I created a new identity to embrace--that of a Warrior of Aliveness--and set out to activate that Warrior within. I sought out power sources and consciously adjusted my inner dialogue to think differently and then act out of that new thinking.

From the start I met with an internal saboteur, what Stephen Pressfield calls "resistance," somehow infusing me with unwarrior-like complaints and excuses. Each time I thought I was making progress, a part of me revolted and went into hiding. Each time I attempted to gird my Warrior loins I looked to see my fly open on my couch potato's boxer shorts. I avoided my blog. I avoided life more often than usual. I felt stalled, stuck.

Yes, I admit it, after two months I just have not made the reinvention progress I had hoped for. I'm not proud. But I am also not done. I'm not giving up the battle. I may not yet be that Warrior I want to be but I am in small steps getting to know him better. I will talk to him directly in the next blog entry. For now, I am left with this from Pressfield's new book, Do the Work, as he describes "resistance," the force that stops us from doing the creative work and making changes in habits that we want:

Resistance is Insidious. Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. It will perjure, fabricate, falsify; seduce, bully, cajole. Resistance is protean. It will assume any form, if that's what it takes to deceive you.
Resistance will reason with you like a lawyer or jam a nine-millimeter in your face like a stickup man. Resistance has no conscience. It will pledge anything to get a deal, then double-cross you as soon as your back is turned.
Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.

Reinvention Week 6: Remembering the Burn

2011-04-29T14:51:00.009-05:00

As I continue my process of working from within to reinvent, I am thinking back to Burning Man, a carnival of experience that can't help but activate one's Warrior of Aliveness. Drawing 50,000 or so people now each Labor Day week in the desert of Nevada, Burning Man is an experiment in living--and creativity--unmatched on the planet right now. What do you need to burn that will help you feel more alive?

Let me share a piece of my experience a few years back, in a story I call...

Letting It Burn

It was Sunday, the last official night of the week-long festival in the desert known as Burning Man, and rumor had it that they were going to burn down the Mausoleum.

Aaron, Jess, Bea and I headed out from our camp on our miraculously still functioning bicycles. The Mausoleum was one of the most beautiful structures I had ever seen on earth, and attending its destruction would be the perfect ending to a week of unprecedented experiences for me and my friends.

Darkness was descending as we pedaled toward the great desert Playa. A sandstorm kicked up out of nowhere, and we put on our goggles and masks and headlamps, as we had done several times in the past few days. But the airborne sand thickened to such an intensity that we soon had to abandon our bikes and set out by foot. Unable to see more than a few inches in front of our faces, our hands on each other's shoulders so not to separate, we slowly walked in what we hoped was the general direction of the Mausoleum.

Now, the truth was, even during daylight, the Mausoleum had been extremely difficult to find in the vast desert. We kept walking, assuming we would run into some of the thousands of other Burning Man participants we believed to be nearby. But minutes turned into miles. The sand was unrelenting, and we came across no one. I drank my last sandy swallow from my water flask. We had lost all bearing of where we came from and where we were heading.

“Do you think we should turn around?” Aaron asked, slight panic creeping into his voice. It was hard for us to hear each other, both because of the sand muffling all sound except its own blowing and because we spoke through surgical masks or bandanas over our mouths.

“Does anyone even know how to get back?” asked Bea. We would have looked at each other for the answer but we could see nothing and already knew the answer was no.

“Let's keep going,” I said. “What choice do we have?” So we kept moving, four voyagers making our way through what felt like a cave in the middle of the earth, somewhere in the great expanse of the Nevada desert.

* * *

The adventure began a few days before: We were lucky to find perhaps the last available RV in all of Northern California, and six of us first-timers packed up and headed out from San Francisco to Burning Man, the week-long festival-carnival in the otherwise uninhabitable desert of northern Nevada. Read the rest of the story here.

Reinvention Week 5: Poetic Interlude

2011-04-21T10:56:00.002-05:00

For a vault of audio to stimulate innovation, click here. For more on creativity from Adam, use search field (top left) or click on keywords (bottom right) on his Innovation on my Mind blog.

Let Me Tell You Something

What if I lifted both of my arms
up from the sides of my body
dug my elbows into the wall
and catapulted myself forward, feet first
toward you?
Would that lure you from the whirl?

What if you were distracted by a fly near your eye
and you turned to see my body falling on its spine
my body crawling one vertebra at a time
toward you?
Would that disturb your pattern of chatter?

Let me tell you something:

I would like to tear the colors off my skin
and spread their yolk over my face
until I spit rainbows

I would like to turn to the wall,
arch my body
and throw back my head,
until you see the spidery reflections of my lashes on the ceiling,
until they fall like warm sugar into your eyes
and become questions you already know
the answers to

I would like
to love you

~Adam Shames

Reinvention Week 4: Mission Mantras

2011-04-14T09:12:00.003-05:00

For current creativity insights, click here or here. For more on creativity from Adam, use search field (top left) or click on keywords (bottom right) on his Innovation on my Mind blog.

I'm in the process of reinvention and I'm asking the question: What does it take to change my internal identity in such a way that sustained change--real reinvention--can happen? I went inward and Eastward last week to yoga and a yogi, and was left with the message to create my own mantras.

Now when I just write the word "Mantra"--which simply is a repeated, often sacred phrase or sound used by meditators for thousands of years to create transformation--an automatic thought is activated in me. Actually several. That I am risking embarrassment by sharing this. That I live in Chicago and no longer Northern California, and I shouldn't make people here cringe. That I should worry about my reputation as a professional consultant. That I should give up this "reinvention" idea because as much as it sounds good and is what "all innovators are doing" it requires changing something within, which is hard to talk about or admit to or do at all without worrying about a whole host of implications.

You see, I have many automatic thoughts whose goals appear to be to keep me in a life of safety, resist any risk and change, and shut out any ideas of living a more impactful life.

And I know you do too. So I'm asking you--yes, you, reading this right now--what automatic thoughts do you have that are keeping you small and safe? And more importantly, if you could silence those thoughts and live from an identity that would be closer to your real calling, what identity would that be?

Despite my automatic thoughts shaming me for weakness at having to resort to mantras, those thoughts are full of crap. My goal is to be a Warrior--not Worrier--of Aliveness. A warrior must use whatever can work to achieve his mission. And I just don't see how I can change my internal chatter without the proactive, creative act of re-wiring my messages to myself. Think about it--what is stopping you from being more of the YOU-you-want-to-be in the world? In large part it's our internal mantras, our repeated phrases born of protection and fear. So my goal is to change them.

Here's my challenge to you: Send me some of the mantras befitting the identity you want to live out of. You can share them anonymously (or not) via comment or by email to me. I want to hear them. And I need to create and hear mine, again and again, to myself, every day, in order for transformation to happen.

While historically a mantra can be anything from a simple sound or phrase or a more detailed affirmation, right now I need my mantras to reflect my mission. What does it mean to me to take on this identity I'm calling a Warrior of Aliveness? I need to be reminded, again and again, of who I am and what I am up to in this world. So here are some of my mission mantras that I am repeating again and again, morning and night, to rewire my automatic thoughts. What are yours?

To live as my most awakened self To help others live more as their true selves To discover and follow my passions To feel more alive and be in the moment To eviscerate the needless negative To stretch others and myself to actively make a difference in the world To say yes to that which enlivens To take out my sword and slice the saboteur who keeps me closed and small To be and help others to be a creator and not just a spectator To open my heart and feel more, rather than numb myself To be excited about life To bring more love into the world To experience the world and try new things rather than hide To release the negative and embrace positive To get off the leash of my monkey mind To be in the now rather than escape and distract myself To speak the truth and help others speak their own truth To take bigger risks To be a model for possibility To embrace change To stop pleasing others at the cost of my own principles and passions To express myself boldly, creatively and confidently...

Reinvention, Week 3: Seeking the Power Source

2011-04-04T19:49:00.016-05:00

For recent cultural creativity news and views, click here or here. For more on creativity from Adam, use search field (top left) or click on keywords (bottom right) on his Innovation on my Mind blog.

Since continuous "reinvention" has emerged as a hallmark of innovation in the 21st century (and I'm overdue for one), I'm in the process of attempting an actual reinvention. It's Week 3 with a new identity--which I'm calling the Warrior of Aliveness--and I've quickly realized that to think differently and be guided by a real shift of belief from within, I need fuel. I need to plug into some kind of power source befitting a Warrior to keep the process on track.

In my 20s, I remember reading the 20th century spiritual classic Autobiography of a Yogi, which introduced many westerners to eastern enlightenment through the life of Paramahansa Yogananda, the first yoga master of India to take up permanent residence in the West. Maybe, I thought, I needed to revisit Yogananda's wisdom to find a renewable power source.

I started by going to several yoga classes, which have generally revealed that I am pretty fat and lazy, with an unfocused mind that tends to drift and fall into its default, un-warrior-like patterns of distraction and complaints.

So to up the ante, I visited the local Kriya Yoga center here in Chicago to get some inspiration from Swami Kriyananda, the foremost living disciple of Yogananda. I was witness to a live feed via Skype of the old bearded man himself, who has many thousands of followers throughout the world. I listened intently to him for a message that could fuel me or at least steer me in the right direction. The Warrior within awoke as Kriyananda suggested that a life worth living is one in which you discover and pursue a mission worth dying for. You can't let yourself be limited by the "web of words," he said, referring to the cultural mindset around us. "Instead, create your own mantra."

Create my own mantras. Yes.

My inner guidance flickers and changes its message too often. Becoming a warrior is in large part mental, I know, and right now the natural "mantras" of my monkey mind are not empowering me. They change, they doubt. They point out how ridiculous I am. They sabotage with excuses and grievances that sound legitimate but do nothing to improve the quality of my life.

I know that to be equipped to battle for my own aliveness and the aliveness of others, I must think differently and be fueled by a different mindset. But, as Kriyananda reminded me, I have to create it. I have to choose this mindset. I have to rewrite my mental script in such a way that loose wiring becomes hard, and doubt insists on clarity. My power source must, at least in part, come from newly created mantras of my own design.

All right, Warrior, time to create.

Reinvention, Week 2: Identity Shift

2011-03-28T17:01:00.003-05:00

Last week I discussed "reinvention"--a popular buzzword and new imperative for ongoing success in business and life in a culture of constant change--and decided it's time for me to take it on myself. What will it really take for me to reinvent myself? I ask this question seriously and with an actual lump in my throat.

Lately my ongoing attempts to live a creative life and spark creativity in others have not led to enough satisfaction or sense of purpose for me. I seek sustained changes and new results that only full reinvention can spark. My typical back door methods--perhaps a splash of charm or a well-placed creative quip--are no longer cutting it.

It's time for me to jump into the cold water of reinvention and learn how to swim, even if my flesh has to wrinkle and age and prune and peel.

Okay, so let me repeat from last week: Reinvention cannot happen unless there is a fundamental change in belief about myself. I can't just wear purple clothes and say I have been reinvented. I have to change something within--something that shifts my guiding mindset--and let it work its way out. Maybe it's possible to do that instantly but I've never discovered how. Coming up with new ideas is not my problem. But they lead only to occasional reinvigoration. Not real reinvention.

So I've decided to change a fundamental belief--the belief about my identity itself. I've been stuck in whoever I thought I was and not able to bring about changes I wanted in my life. So forget whatever my identity was two weeks ago. As of last week, I took on another, may the flags be unfurled and words now capitalized.

I am a Warrior of Aliveness.

Yes, you heard me. Warrior. Of Aliveness. That's the new identity I have been working from in order to realize reinvention that sticks. Warrior of Aliveness. WOA.

If you know me, you know that I am not a particularly warmongering man. Yet there is something about the uncompromising mission of a warrior that appeals to me right now. And generally I believe in language grounded in specific, concrete reality. "Aliveness" doesn't really do that. But it works for me. I will explain more in the future.

For now, as I've been settling into this new identity, I've realized that I need an ongoing power source to survive in this world. It's not easy to be a Warrior of Aliveness in the thought-mind I currently own or in the 21st century Chicago culture I am surrounded by. So I must find certain kinds of fuel that enable my warrior-fire to burn within. I now go off to seek it.

Reinvention now!

2011-03-21T14:49:00.011-05:00

"In today’s environment of superacceleration, catch-up is a fool’s game. There is no advantage in keeping up. Forget about trying to compete. Instead, leapfrog the competition by redefining anything and everything about your business. Look at what the competition is doing—and do something entirely different." ~Daniel Burris and John David Mann, "The Reinvention Imperative"

Whether you know it or want it, you are in the process of reinventing yourself. The idea of reinvention--not just once but continuously, not just personally but organizationally--is now part of the 21st century conversation on success. It goes like this: we have to keep changing, keep learning and keep innovating in order to be relevant and in demand in the marketplace.

I mostly agree, and as a passionate advocate for more creativity in our lives and our culture, I enjoy taking part in this forward-thinking conversation from upstarts such as Change This, an online content source whose mission is to spread new ideas from original thinkers. Its latest issue includes "The Reinvention Imperative" by Daniel Burrus & John David Mann, which compellingly makes the case that it is now an imperative to reinvent ourselves and our businesses in order to keep up in a world where "change itself has changed":

There are two kinds of change: change from the outside in, and change from the inside out. The first happens to you. The second is an initiative that you take through conscious intention. Today there is an urgent need to anticipate and take the initiative to change from the inside out, even as all these transformations are coming at us from the outside in.

Burrus and Mann make the point that we have to be both proactive and extraordinary, and that real reinvention means getting closer to our own core, our own unique gifts. "The reinvention imperative," they write, "puts each of us on a quest to be the best me we can be."

Okay. But let's stop here. Talk of reinvention sounds cool. And it fits with my blog articles of these past few years and with my creativity competency principles:

>Fluency: Consider all of my possible options and identities

>Flexibility: Shift some things around and see things with fresh eyes

>Originality: Truly embrace my best and most unique self and offer it to the world.

But how do we really reinvent ourselves so that change is not just temporary and the results are real and different? If I'm going to reinvent myself--which I happen to be in the process of doing quite actively--what does that really mean? Does it mean that I have to change my insides first (umm, how?) or that I have to just embrace the core me and put it out in the world more effectively (oh, is that all)?

I think for personal reinvention to occur there must be a powerful mindset shift, a real change in belief about ourselves. Reinvention must be powered by a belief shift and real differences in behavior that comes from an alternative belief frame.

The truth is, this blogger needs a reinvention, a real one, not just one written on paper or that sounds good. It's time for me to put the creativity principles and rabble-rousing I've recorded here--yes, this blog holds more than 130 articles that can keep you busy reading and linking and viewing for days--to action.

Time to take the advice of the "Reinvention" authors: to stop trying to keep up and do the same as others and instead do something entirely different.

Time to embrace a belief and identity that forces reinvention and risk-taking.

Time to play by different rules.

Time for a new identity and new belief system that befits a warrior of aliveness.

The Current Theater of American Prejudice

2011-03-12T15:50:00.006-06:00

Creativity flowers from the foliage of diversity, whether a diversity of ideas, perspectives, cultures, or, alas, religions. Here is video-food-for-thought from our current theater of American prejudice, starring Stephen Colbert (semi-actual person) and Reza Aslan (an actual Muslim). If you don't see the video below, click here.

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Reza Aslan

http://www.colbertnation.com/

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor & Satire Blog

Video Archive

If you'd like a real opportunity to improve interfaith relations here in Chicago, join me to help with the non-profit Poetry Pals, a kids program bringing Muslim, Catholic, Jewish and other diverse students and their communities together to share in creativity. Check out this video and facebook page for more.

A sampling of Mary Oliver

2011-03-05T09:38:00.009-06:00

Time for a quick dip into the poetic vault of Mary Oliver, the great American poet, starting with one of my favorite poems and then a few excerpts to spur your creative imagination. All of these can be found in her New and Selected Poems. Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad!

The Journey
One day you finally knew

what you had to do, and began,

though the voices around you

kept shouting

their bad advice--

though the whole house

began to tremble

and you felt the old tug

at your ankles.

"Mend my life!"

each voice cried.

But you didn't stop.

You knew what you had to do,

though the wind pried

with its stiff fingers

at the very foundations,

though their melancholy

was terrible.

It was already late

enough, and a wild night,

and the road full of fallen

branches and stones.

But little by little,

as you left their voices behind,

the stars began to burn

through the sheets of clouds,

and there was a new voice

which you slowly

recognized as your own,

that kept you company

as you strode deeper and deeper

into the world,

determined to do

the only thing you could do--

determined to save

the only life you could save.

from Rice

I don't want you just to sit down at the table.

I don't want you just to eat, and be content.

I want you to walk out into the fields

where the water is shining, and the rice has risen.

I want you to stand there, far from the white tablecloth.

I want you to fill your hands with the mud, like a blessing.

from When Death Comes

When it's over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement.

I was the bridegroom, taking the world into my arms.

When it's over, I don't want to wonder

if I have made of my life something particular, and real.

I don't want to find myself sighing and frightened,

or full of argument.

I don't want to end up simply having visited this world.

from In Blackwater Woods

To live in this world

you must be able to

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it go,

to let it go.

from Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Creativity: #1 Skill of 21st Century

2011-02-25T09:08:00.007-06:00

I'm taking a break in South Florida, on the beach surrounded by the scariest looking Portuguese men-of-war I've ever seen (see below), sampling an eclectic variety of new songs thanks to downloads from Paste Magazine streaming from my ear buds. Paste offers about 20 new songs a month from up and coming musicians for an incredibly low price. I never know what kind of song will emerge from the shuffle, which I particularly enjoy.

I wanted to share a recent article from Psychology Today, once again attesting to creativity as a top 21st century skill--needed by all at every age:

Is Creativity the Number 1 Skill for the 21st Century?
Creativity is the essential skillset for the future by Mark Batey, Ph.D.

Against a backdrop of uncertainty, economic turmoil and unprecedented change a new picture is emerging of the skills and traits for success (and perhaps even simply survival) in the modern era. At the heart of this essential skillset for the future lies... creativity.

A raft of recent research studies demonstrates that creativity is vital from the shopfloor to the boardroom and at the level of the individual to the organization as a whole. What is more... our economic fortunes at a societal level probably rest on creativity too.

{Here are Batey's 7 main themes--to read the full article, click here}:

1 - Creativity and innovation are the number 1 strategic priorities for organizations the world over.

2 - Creativity is part of all our day jobs

3 - Organizational profitability rests on individual creativity

4 - Creative teams perform better and are more efficient

5 - Creative organizations are more profitable

6. Creative Leadership is fundamental

7. Successful economies and societies will need to be creative

The Groupon Phenomenon

2011-02-17T13:38:00.003-06:00

Everyone is talking about Groupon, the Chicago-based start-up that has somehow taken an old idea of clipping coupons and leveraged into a company that has become the unrivalled new paragon of business innovation. Innovation fandom began quickly, with Groupon winning a Chicago innovation award in late 2009 when it was less than a year old and expanding throughout the country so meteorically and so successfully that Fast Company magazine has just selected it as the No. 5 "most innovative company" in the world. Yes, in the world. The magazine describes Groupon as "a savior for small businesses" and "the most exciting thing to happen to retail since eBay."

This week Illinois Governor Pat Quinn has selected Groupon co-founder Brad Keywell to be part of a new Innovation Council, dedicated to find creative ways to boost the economy. Primary founder Andrew Mason (left) has become the poster boy for innovation, quoted often, pictured playfully and suddenly a high priest of all that's creative.

Groupon is everywhere, not just in my inbox every morning and beeping me with its latest update thanks to an app on my smartphone (yes, I'm a user), but referred to constantly throughout the culture. Last night on the Daily Show, Jon Stewart examined Obama's latest budget cutting attempts: "From now on when we buy office supplies," he mock-quoted the President, "we will join up with Canada and Mexico to look for deals on Groupon." The viral rise of copycat companies has reached absurdity levels, not just limited to those offering local deals of the day. "It's like Groupon, but with a twist," explains WeedMaps founder Justin Hartfield, offering deals, I kid you not, on medical marijuana. Check it out, as reported in Fast Company. National articles about Groupon are written everyday, including this one in this week's Time magazine.

The hype indicates how desperate we are here in Chicago and in our country to embrace, understand and promote innovation. Groupon has become the start-up model of the kind of innovation political and business leaders refer to: a creative idea with real value, in this case leading to impressive money-making, job creation and investment hunger so great that Groupon recently resisted Google's attempt to buy it for $6 billion. Yes, $6 billion for a company barely two years old.

Groupon does have a creative business model, which is primarily based on getting a large group of people to buy a discounted voucher (You have to pay for it, more like a gift certificate than a coupon from the paper) to various restaurants and local attractions. But there is some real question about its future--given that many businesses suffer real losses and have other problems. Check out this Chicago PBS television segment airing yesterday, entitled "Losing money with Groupon," which describes some issues. As customers, we like the deals but many of us are already at a saturation point, annoyed by expiration dates and too many offers we can't keep up with. So to call it one of the most innovative companies in the world seems a bit hasty.

I have found Groupon's technology to be top-notch, which is no small secret to its success. But overall I do have to give it real credit for brimming with creativity, from the wacky improvised descriptions of offers to its attempts to take risks and playfully try new things. Groupon originally came out of an altruistic attempt to bring people together for social causes and according to founder Mason, "There was a kind of freedom that came with not caring if it failed." And fail it has, included the offensive Superbowl ad campaign (video above or click here) which pissed a lot of people off and Mason later apologized for.

From its visuals to its relationships with customers and companies, Groupon embraces creativity in a way that bodes ongoing success. It's playful, snappy and engaging, and working on personalizing the experience more and more. And Mason, who acknowledges his own and the company's immaturity on different levels, seems to have the right attitude for innovation going forward. "One of the challenges of innovation is figuring out how to wipe your mind clean about what you should be doing at any given moment," he says, "and not having a religious attachment to what's gotten you there thus far."

How do we Clear so that we can Create?

2011-02-11T08:49:00.011-06:00

Perhaps like me, you are constantly working to clear--your physical space, your head, your email inbox, your to-do list--so that you have an uncluttered springboard from which to leap creatively forward. I call it trying to get current. It's hard to invent something new when you feel cluttered with unfinished business. It's hard to drive if you haven't scraped that ice off your windshield.

But the snow keeps falling, the digital distractions (or are they now requirements?) beckon and I find myself creating less while engaging in the sisyphean pursuit of always trying to get current. Are you too waiting for your to-do list to be handled before you finally move forward with the things you've been wanting to do? What to do if you want to be a creator and not just a clearing-upper?

Time magazine humorist Joel Stein recently captured this dilemma well, as he examined the great 21st century contributor to our never-can-clear state--the digital mess--in a column called the Mess Manifesto:

In the past few years I've become a compulsive organizer...I have been sucked into hours of deleting pictures on iPhoto, then organizing the rest into little titled folders...I've lost days fiddling with the bottom of my Netflix queue, which is the section that should be labeled 'movies I will never see.' I could have read a Tolstoy novel in the time I've spent managing my songs on iTunes, putting old e-mails into folders, watching TV shows I don't really care about just to get them off my DVR and moving the downloaded Tolstoy novel from my computer to my iPhone and then to my iPad.
We are all OCD now. We do these things not just because digital filing gives us the satisfaction of cleaning without the unpleasant feeling of getting up from our chairs. It's because we're constantly confronting the onslaught of information, and our brains are trying to make patterns out of the randomness.

In order to create something new, we need to move out of our OCD state and clear the mental decks in some way. In the classic creative process model, new insight (the "Aha!") is preceded by a period "preparation" and "incubation"--we need to first prepare our mind for a new solution and then let it stew for a bit before an answer will appear. But I'm not sure we do good stewing when our minds are so overloaded. It's usually during an incubation period of uncluttering--the most common being in the shower or while driving--that a great insight comes to us.

In more psychological and spiritual circles, the process of change leading to authentic creativity might be said to follow this process: 1. Clearing, during which you cast out blocks and worries that are keeping you stuck, 2. Connecting, during which you get in touch more deeply with your genuine wishes, desires and passion, and 3. Creating, during which you activate those desires in a form of expression.

Okay. But that doesn't help if we get stuck in the constantly clearing mode, does it? Stein, though, does offer us a possible solution. The subtitle for his column: "Why we need to stop worrying and learn to love digital disorder."

We need a digital Zoloft, something that will force us to allow messiness into our digital lives...We need an app--I'm calling it 1-Year-Old Boy--that grabs stuff out of our folders and throws it around, possibly while laughing, possibly while pooping, probably both. It will hide a few episodes of 30 Rock from us when we have more than five to watch, and it will hide them in its mouth. And it will remind us that anarchy is the best way to actually enjoy things: it's the newness of watching a movie we didn't know about, of hearing a song we didn't set up on a mix, of seeing a cat do something stupid right in front of us instead of on YouTube.

Ahh. I think there is something here--more than just tongue in cheek. Let me leave you with some questions: Can you find a way to clear your mind despite the messiness, despite the unfiled emails and unfinished business? Can you accept the clutter in such a way so that it can be ignored at certain times and you can feel clear and able to move on to new pursuits? Can you dare to insert creative time during your day, periods where you are able to instantly melt the ice that you thought needed to be chipped first simply by deciding so?

Can we learn to love the disorder and overload so that we can ignore it and create anyway?

An Innovation Blizzard hits the U.S.?

2011-02-02T13:47:00.001-06:00

As a blizzard swirls outside my window here in Chicago, I wanted to reflect on Obama's State of the Union speech last week, during which he unleashed his own storm for innovation. "The first step in winning the future is encouraging American innovation," he hailed. Speaking of our response to Sputnik a generation ago, he said, "We didn't just surpass the Soviets; we unleashed a wave of innovation that created new industries and millions of new jobs." He summarized his theme of "winning the future" through innovation in his weekly address video (below or click here if you don't see the video) by "out-innovating, out-educating and out-building our competitors."

Now, I'm not a big fan of "we must win" (and others must be crushed in defeat) language that is quite popular in business world these days, but it's good to see Obama thunder about innovation, which he hasn't dramatically done since 2009. This innovation imperative is exactly what has to be center stage right now. And because innovation does not just come from tax breaks or federal investment--but creativity throughout a culture--I particularly enjoy him saying, "What America does better than anyone else is spark the creativity and imagination of our people."

But is it true? Are we the best at sparking the creativity and imagination of our people today? Anand Giridharadas, whose book India Calling examines emerging India, recently made the point that America's culture, compared to India, is more destructive than creative:

When we talk about India and China in this country, we talk about an economic threat….[but] I think the real thing America needs to think about is that these countries pose a challenge of culture and spirit”…Here in America “we are all pulling each other down, we’re creating a culture of destruction…India and China, for all of the work that lies ahead for them, are starting to create cultures of hope and cultures of creation, where there is a consensus on saying, ‘How do we create something extraordinary’; we need to be worried not about an economic threat but the threat of that spirit in about two and half billion people.”

He may have a point, but there are plenty of ways that we can nurture a more creative spirit, and Obama's leadership can make a difference, in both business and education. But we also need new leaders to emerge, and a few fascinating signs have recently surfaced from members of our creative industries--those advertising, marketing and branding innovators who could play a greater role in raising the creative IQ of the nation. February's Harper's magazine challenged advertising leaders to reinvent Uncle Sam's debilitating reputation by creating a Superbowl-style ad campaign. How could we reframe government in a way that would inspire possibilities and positive change? Pick up a copy (or creatively scour the Internet) and see what they came up with. And check out this new initiative called No Right Brain Left Behind, supported by leaders in creative fields, to foster more creativity in education. No Right Brain Left Behind describes itself as "a speed innovation challenge, calling on the creative industries to concept ideas that can help the creativity crisis happening in U.S. schools today." Can't wait to see what they come up with.

Stressed out childhood and squelched out imaginations

2011-01-24T06:08:00.015-06:00

Students are so overscheduled they can't think straight in Race to Nowhere, a recent documentary I screened with a community group of questioning parents and frustrated educators this weekend. Between the pressure for kids, earlier-than-ever, to compete to get into the "right" college and on educators to teach to the tests that may or may not measure "achievement," we now have an education culture that more often than not squelches the imagination of its best students--the ones whose creativity we need more than ever.

The film examines mostly high-achieving communities, and uncovers what Stanford professor Denise Pope captured almost a decade ago in a study turned book called Doing School: How We Are Creating a Generation of Stressed-Out, Materialistic, and Miseducated Students. The way we are doing school and the cost to our students, she revealed, is out of wack from our real goals of education. Race to Nowhere (click for trailer here if you don't see it below) reveals what too many parents know--the demands on our kids to succeed have led to grueling routines, sacrificed sleep, cheating and stress, depression and anxiety. The result is that students "do school," chase grades and college application impressiveness, going from one activity, homework assignment and memorized-before-forgotten information gulp to another. The question is, what are our students actually "learning" about how to live their lives? "Things that actually get our students to think are pushed aside," says one dedicated teacher from the film, who left her job as a teacher because she could no longer abide by her own district's test-taking demands.

This last week has seen related conversations percolate about how parents and kids deal with competition, discipline and being the best, thanks to Amy Chua's Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, which makes the case that our "weak-willed" and "indulgent" culture, compared perhaps to China or at least the demands of some Chinese-American moms like Chua, has our kids growing up ill equipped to compete in a fierce global marketplace. While Chua's arguments for "tenacious practice" and no excuses are worth being reminded of, Race to Nowhere shows how out of balance we've become. And keep in mind, as this week's TIME cover story about Tiger Moms points out, that many educated Chinese are seeking out the more "relaxed" American style of education--wanting to move away from rote memorization to more right-brained learning "because they know they must produce more creative and innovative graduates to power the high-end economy they want to develop."

Just like our too-busy adult culture today, a too-busy, overscheduled, and digitally addicted childhood ends up squelching creativity, indviduality and passion. We need an education system that inspires and engages and allows families to spend time together. Kids need downtime and free time to process and to imagine and to play, for social and emotional health, as well as the creative future of our culture.

Right now it's a race that is running us. It reminds me of the time I was in Japan and met up with a top English teacher there. She laboriously tutored kids into the night, almost every night, after their full day of classes. Turns out she could not communicate with me in English at all! Japanese kids were memorizing and studying a faux-English language that didn't really exist just so they could pass a test! More and more American kids are doing six hours of homework a night and forgetting everything they learn by the next week.

Every teacher and administrator I know is overwhelmed with standards and testing. Every parent fears their kid isn't doing enough to make it to the next school or threshold. Watch Race to Nowhere to remind you of other truths: that elementary kids don't need to do homework to thrive, that there is honor and smarts in kids who don't excel academically, and you can be successful if you don't go to the best college. The filmmakers describe the film as a call "to mobilize families, educators, and policy makers to challenge current assumptions on how to best prepare the youth of America to become healthy, bright, contributing and leading citizens." I call it a sanity check.

A couple of thoughts for MLK Day

2011-01-17T17:44:00.010-06:00

"Almost always, the creative dedicated minority
has made the world better."
~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

"Human Salvation lies in the hands
of the creatively maladjusted."

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Click here for video if you don't see it below

New Year, New Call: for United States of Innovation

2011-01-10T11:28:00.001-06:00

As we start a new year (and, some would say, a new decade) as an already reeling country now reeling even more from the shooting of a Congresswoman, I'm grappling with the state of the United States. There is no question that we are poorer than we were when I grew up, and there is much evidence that we are more divided and pessimistic than we've ever been. We need something (as opposed to "someone," which hasn't seemed to work) to rally behind. And I'm going to vote, once again, for "Innovation." Hear me out.

If there is anything that we've learned as Americans in this past decade it's that there are many versions of "America," and plenty of other Americans who don't see it the way you do. Red state-Blue state-Tea Party-Who's-the-smarty?-Obama-Drama, Hey! Our politics and media--which feed our sense of country and confidence--are so far out of wack that we don't know what is true or what to believe. We do know that from healthcare to housing, we've lost a lot of our wealth lately, and that as a culture and as individuals, we have more challenges than ever before. Some say that we are seeing the irrevocable fall of the American empire. Some say technology can save us, empowering us to write blogs like this that lead to less alienation than in previous years. Not all of us believe that though. What can really unite us?

It's "Innovation." I put it in quotes because we still need to collectively define what that means and to better understand creativity, the engine of innovation. But right now the political left and right, the CEOs and the artists, miraculously agree that innovation is needed, and that our future is dependent on leveraging our innovation capacity. I've called this the Innovation Imperative--that we need creativity and innovation more than ever, for economic, cultural and personal reasons.

Economic: America, with its diversity of ideas, free enterprise, university research and available capital, still has the raw materials for economic innovation. The Obama administration had been more quiet about "innovation" in 2010 than it had been the year before and, as I've discussed before, certain measures of innovation seem to be on the decline. But both political sides, as well as leaders everywhere, know that "innovation" is the key to us getting out of our economic hole. The "United States of Innovation" is the best rallying cry for getting us aligned and talking (!) under one unified banner.

Cultural: For economic success, we need an innovative culture in our cities, communities, schools and organizations. We have really difficult challenges now--from our healthcare to the environment to under-educated kids, that require a new mindset of innovation that can lead to real breakthroughs and better solutions. This blog has been dedicated to offering tools for an innovative mindset and culture, which include openness to new ideas, diverse perspectives coming together in new combinations, and the fostering of the "4Cs" of creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration.

Personal: We live in a world without long-term job security, and that means we have to be more creative individually, able to learn constantly as adults and re-invent ourselves as needed. The world is asking us to truly leverage our unique talents in ways that provide value to others, and to do that we have to be aware of and build our competencies of creativity, which I've described throughout this blog. Perhaps the most important is flexibility--which is our ability to see things differently, seek out new perspectives, challenge our assumptions and embrace change.

Despite our current malaise, the United States is still a young country and a small shift of mindset, perhaps an inner rather than outer revolution, could lead to needed change much quicker than we think. What do you think? Can we get people to rally behind innovation? What else can unify us? Here's to a 2011 where more Americans embrace their own creativity and where we're more of a united state of innovation and collaboration.

Permission to Take It On in 2011

2010-12-28T15:14:00.004-06:00

"Start a huge, foolish project, like Noah.
It makes no difference what people think of you."
~Rumi

As 2010 ends and we look ahead to a new, unknown year, I want to use this flicker of a moment of your at-least-partial attention to prod you to decide, right now, to take something creative on.

In this blog over the past couple of years, I've written dozens of articles about the state of creativity in our culture, about innovation in organizations, about tools and tips for opening yourself up to more creativity in your own life. I truly thank you for reading when you have and at times offering your own insights, feedback and appreciation.

But the truth remains that for most of us it's very hard to give ourselves much permission to be creative, to actually express our own unique perspective in some way, to play with ideas and each other with or without an end-product in mind. So...for your emotional and psychological health, for honoring your own amazing complexity as a human being, for being an active creator instead of just a passive spectator of life, why not decide, right now, that you will take at least a small sip of your huge and too-often-untapped internal cup of possibility in 2011 to work on something only you could do and/or bring into the world. Come on, take it on.

If you have difficulty deciding what creative project you'd like to tackle, let me suggest that you start small (unlike that huge cup in the picture above). Let's use the creative tool of constraints to help. It's winter right now, which constrains our options in many ways, so let's start by limiting ourselves to working on something inside. Look around your home now (or when you are there), and pick one location--just one place--that seems like a creatively comfortable spot for you to spend some time in. Clear and create one if you need to. Let that be your spot. And let that be the spot where you give yourself permission to try something you just want to try or do or make, secretly or not. Anoint that place as one where there is full, secret-smile permission to create something thathas a good chance of turning out lousy, that you may never share with anyone. What strikes your fancy: Write a short story? Make a mosaic collage out of rocks and lint? Make phone calls to famous people? Paint your cat? Build/invent/destroy/cook something you've never done before? Pick something that enters your mind and commit, right here and now, to try it. Choosing is the first, fertile step.

I'd like to help you in any way I can. Perhaps you know what it is you'd like to try, what project you want to work on--email me and I'll check in with you at a surprising time to see how you're doing on it. We all need support from others for our creative lives, so tell others you trust what you're going to do and ask for accountability or reminders. If you'd like ongoing help I might be just the one-on-one coach or music teacher you need; email me or call me at 773-388-2880 and let's talk about how we could make that work for you.

I write this right now recovering from an injury that has kept me homebound for more than a week. It has limited me and yet at the same time opened my eyes to opportunities in small places, to patience, and to help from others. 2011 looms as a long year full of opportunities, but that first step is often the hardest. Choose that one project, right now, that can get your creative self engaged and alive before the winter of possibilities melts like you know it will.

May you you lean into the new year with courage, creativity and cojones, Amigo.

Embracing your Inner Outcast

2010-12-17T15:51:00.004-06:00

This week I was at the southernmost point of the United States where I got a chance to mingle with outcasts and drunks on one of the coldest days in the warmest place in the country. Ah, Key West. If you ever make it to Rick's Bar on Duval Street, watch out for the most foul-mouthed and offensive "folk" singer on the planet.

But I spent even more time in Hollywood, FL, which got me thinking about the other Hollywood, where creative, talented outcasts can sometimes make it big. Though I was not much of an early fan, it's time to give credit the latest crossover Hollywood success, Justin Timberlake. Yes, it was surprising to see his acting chops in the recent movie Social Network but he has also earned his creative distinction with his ongoing appearances on Saturday Night Live, where he has proven to be one of the most unpredictable and funny performers in years. Check out his versatility in the video below (Facebook readers click here). Just like the previously praised Tina Fey, what makes Timberlake so extraordinary is his combination of cool talent--yes, he can sing and act--and willingness not to be cool at all. I mean, at all. He has somehow managed to give himself complete permission to be a fool--which we all need at least sometimes to be at our most creative.

"I was an outcast in a lot of ways," he recently told Ellen Degeneres on the Ellen Show. To kids: "Everything that you get picked on [for], or you feel makes you weird, is essentially what's going to make you sexy as an adult...I would not be here if I listened to the kids who said I was a terrible singer or a sissy. Be different." Now that might be easy for someone of such talent to say (and some weird things about us will never be sexy), but there is in an inner outcast in all of us that is sexy, or at least talented and worthy of much more exploration. The question is how to engage it and love it rather than give in to the conformist voices all around us that want to squelch and homogenize.

Originality is a hallmark (and key competency) for creativity, and anyone who embraces her own originality must at times accept--if not revel in--being an outcast. I particularly like what Mira Nair, the groundbreaking director of Monsoon Wedding, said when she was in Chicago earlier in the year speaking at Columbia College (see right). In many ways an outcast herself--an Indian woman director who found a way to bring stories of non-Hollywood-type outsiders to American screens--she explained that she thrives by putting herself in uncomfortable situations. “I like to do things I’m terrified by,” she said. "I don’t like to do things I’ve done before. I try to do things I don’t know if I can do." That's one way to embrace your inner outcast.

The truth is, when Timberlake released his "SexyBack" song a few years ago, I thought there was no way he would get away with his claim of "bringing sexy back." I mean, come on. But that song is passing the test of time and, frankly, it's a winner. I'm sure he was warned against it again and again, just as I'm sure advisors and commentators have questioned his decision to act or risk foolishness on SNL. Undoubtedly his outcast experience as a small town Tennessee boy ridiculed for singing like Michael Jackson has empowered him to follow his inner compass of creativity. Where is yours pointing you these days?

Creative Collaboration: the Art of Following

2010-12-09T11:30:00.004-06:00

If you listen to any great collaborators--take, for example, your favorite sports announcing duo--they demonstrate a form of cooperation that is quite rare among adults in most discussions. They are speaking with, not against, each other, in a verbal dance of give-and-take, knowing how and when to follow and build on what their collaborator has offered, and how and when to drive the conversation forward themselves. Following, Building and Driving--these are the skills of creative collaboration most important to learn.Our ability to collaborate is crucial for innovation and for moving forward in what we want to do in the world. "We hear about collaboration and how important it is in all we do," a Panasonic business development manager told me before a two-day innovation program I led last week in New Jersey. "But the truth is we have so little time and so much is virtual that collaboration seems more like a wish than a reality." The time-limited nature of all our interactions means that when we do talk with collaborators, live or on the phone, we need to do so with skill and purpose. Instead of our typical way of interacting--I report, you report, she reports, meeting over; or you suggest an idea and I tell you eloquently what's wrong with it--we need to learn the art well known to improvisors: To fully support your collaborators' ideas, no matter how wacky they might seem. The key is to consciously shift to following.

We practiced this distinction at the Big Ooga networking event I facilitated Tuesday night. Instead of half-listening to someone else, waiting to interrupt with the agenda/conversation you want, let this be the time that your partner drives and you follow. To follow means that your job is to hear what the other is saying and to follow their course of conversation instead of stopping it or redirecting it. Following is often difficult because we are so invested in showing that we are smart, right, good at judging and fond of protecting ourselves. Someone might suggest: Hey, we could try this or we could create that... and many of us are likely to respond, Yeah, but here's why it won't work or what's wrong with the idea. As adults--particularly during work hours--we are particularly good at the "but"s. Men in particular never learned how to follow on the dance floor so the whole idea of waiting for and following the steps of another can be quite foreign.

Like an improvisor who sees her partner throw an imaginary ball and therefore puts up her arm to catch it, we follow by suspending judgment and fully accepting an offered idea as true, brilliant and full of possibility (regardless of what our "Yes, but," judging mind believes). Then we say, "Yes, And..." to the idea, building on rather than blocking or challenging what was offered. We use our imagination to heighten and bring to life the suggestion driven by the other person. Later, in a good collaboration, it will be our turn to drive and our partner's to follow and build on our idea. This give and take, where we support and expand what our collaborators suggest, and they do the same, sparks everyone's creativity, airs more possibilities and makes for more fruitful collaboration and brainstorming.

We get somewhere new together faster and also make our collaborators much happier when we spend time following--practice it and you'll see.

Listening to the Women

2010-12-04T11:03:00.004-06:00

“The only difference between a creative person and an uncreative person is that a creative person takes her ideas seriously.” ~Mary Zimmerman

“We all have many hidden gifts within our own being, and they are all too frequently drowned in the negative and materialistic struggles on which we spend so much of our precious energy. Once we are able to get rid of our fears, once we have the courage to change from negative rebellion to positive noncomformist, once we have the faith in our own abilities to rise above fear, shame, guilt, and negativity—we emerge as much more creative and much freer souls.” ~Elizabeth Kubler-Ross

“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. It is not your business to determine how good it is nor how valuable nor how it compares to other expressions. It is your business…to keep the channel open.” ~Martha Graham

“If we fail to nourish our souls, they wither, and without soul, life ceases to have meaning.... The creative process shrivels in the absence of continual dialogue with the soul. And creativity is what makes life worth living.” ~Marion Woodman

“Remember that in order to recover as an artist, you must be willing to be a bad artist. Give yourself permission to be a beginner.” ~Julia Cameron

“The ‘creator’ and the ‘editor’—two halves of the writer whole—should sleep in separate rooms.” ~Judith Guest

“It takes guts, ardor, and faith to cobble a new path from emerging insights instead of simply defending the person-I-already-am on the path already known.” ~Shoshana Luboff

Videos that make your creative brain say "Ahh"

2010-11-24T13:30:00.006-06:00

You may have been introduced to RSA Animate videos during the past couple years. They are extraordinary video drawings--known by some as graphic facilitation--of provocative talks hosted by the RSA, a 250-year-old British think-tank-of-sorts (see more below).

Wishing you a Happy Thanksgiving with these animated videos for two of my favorite speakers on creativity:

1. Sir Ken Robinson speaking on education. No one captures the need for teaching creativity and changing our worldwide education system like Robinson. (If you are reading this on Facebook or from an email, click here to go directly to my blog to see the videos or here for YouTube.)

2. Dan Pink speaking on motivation, based on his most recent book, Drive. Intrinsic motivation is key for our own creativity, and the principles for increased motivation and increased creativity are quite similar. (If you are reading this on Facebook or from an email, click here to go directly to my blog for the videos or here for YouTube.)

From the RSA website: "For over 250 years the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA) has been a cradle of enlightenment thinking and a force for social progress. Our approach is multi-disciplinary, politically independent and combines cutting edge research and policy development with practical action."

Making Time for Think Time and Passion Time, even at Work

2010-11-19T08:25:00.000-06:00

"There is never a day we come in and there are only a few things we need to do," explains an Obama staffer in Newsweek's current cover story about how overwhelming presidential responsibilities have become. The story makes clear that, for the President and people working with him, there is not enough "bandwidth," not enough "time to catch your breath" during the day. "Lincoln had time to think," explains one history professor. "That kind of downtime just doesn't exist any more."

Sound familiar? We are all our own president today--each of us the President of what every 21st century career counselor will refer to as the Brand called You--more than ever stretching our personal bandwidth to meet unceasing demands to get it all done. Time to think or downtime at work have become luxuries for most, and even much of what many of us consider free time is spent just trying to keep current: Checking our email, catching up with Facebook, gulping down some news, reading a blog like this (p.s. Thanks).

But for creativity to thrive in our lives--and for innovation to reign in any organization--we need that think time and downtime, that free time and play time, even at work. More than ever at work.

"We need to reinvent free time," writes Nancy Gibbs, in her excellent essay about invention for Time Magazine this week. Read it here. In the same issue, Time features the Best Inventions of 2010, celebrating the latest innovations of the year, ranging from jetpacks to spray-on hair, highlighting the very technological breakthroughs that require the time, experimentation and play that are too often in short supply. "One thing technology can't give us," writes Gibbs, "is time for serendipitous discovery." Here's more from Gibbs:

Many of us are too busy keeping up to pause for tinkering, conceiving, concocting or devising. Technology, that bullying child of progress and prosperity, gives us ever finer tools of invention even as it denies us the time to use them. We are so wired, so networked and so well equipped that one person now does the job five people used to, thus hoisting productivity while precluding creativity.

It seems we're on the verge of getting our jet packs--but no one has yet managed the time machine. Or better yet, the time expander. So we've got to play tricks on ourselves: schedule free time, however counterintuitive that may seem. Deep immersion in a task--no distractions, no interruptions--can give the illusion that time itself is receding. We feel lighter, braver, our brains more nimble; we free ourselves to try and fail and try again. I've always envied the Google engineers their "20% time": the one day a week they are told to allocate to a kind of intellectual R&D, working on projects that aren't part of their normal job description. This speaks to one of the ironies of innovation: too much freedom makes it harder, too little makes it impossible. But if we were ordered by our bosses to spend even one hour a week brainstorming, blue-skying, free-associating, I imagine the rest of the week would become more creative as well.

Dan Pink, the ever-insightful author who just spoke at the Creativity World Forum in Oklahoma last week, tackles the issue of play in this wide-ranging Blogtalkradio segment. Having time to play, to do things for their own sake on your own time, he says (start interview at 10:58), is essential both to human motivation and to creativity itself. "People are creative in situations where they have freedom and autonomy to explore," he explains, referring to Google's "20% Time," where unofficial projects became highly profitable innovations such as GoogleNews and Gmail. This is what I call "Passion Time," where employees are empowered to pursue passions during the workday along side their other work. Pink refers to this as a "form of recess from work," like a "Spring break," which is how he describes Twitter's recent "Hack Week," which allowed employees to work on whatever they wanted. He tells the story of the 2010 Nobel Prize for Physics invention of graphene, which came outside of regular work time research during "Friday night experiments," which was more of a play time.

As Pink explains, this idea of more autonomy, having the "passion time" to pursue creative ideas at work, is an "idea that is really spreading." Think Time, Free Time, Play time or Recess--whatever you want to call it--is becoming more common in the most innovative organizations, where leaders know their most creative resource comes from the unique brains and passions of their employees.

In these days of overload, we now need to be proactive about how we spend our time, actually scheduling it into our days. So give yourself--and/or your employees and collaborators--the gift of time set aside just to think, scheme, tinker and play. Give it a name, put it on your to-do list and see what happens.

Digging through the Innovation Awards Goodie Bag

2010-11-11T10:38:00.004-06:00

Last week the Chicago Innovation Awards and a crowd of nearly 1000 at the Goodman Theater celebrated the innovative spirit that is indeed alive and well in the midwest. Keynoter J.B. Pritzker reminded us that many great ideas and companies like G.E., Microsoft and MTV began during recessions, and now is time for "the next generation of innovators" to step up. The evening, which included an appearance from "Visionary Award" winner and Stanley Cup champion Chicago Blackhawks owner Rocky Wirtz, honored the latest eye-opening products and services from local companies--for winner videos and more on the event, click here. There was also an overflowing goodie bag, which I'm happy to rifle through for your enjoyment.

In various ways, the award-winners reflected true innovation, which is taking the practical step of bringing creativity into the world, so let me dig in the bag to share a few with you. I'm reaching past the discount cards, freebies, magazines, promo pens and brainteaser game (thanks, John Kennedy). Now I'm briefly massaging the strawberry shortcake-flavored gum from Wrigley, the thumb-sized flashlight from Tripp-Lite, the natural sweetener from Pure Via and the noise-isolation ear buds from Molex. Not bad. Here are a couple more:

>>The Master Lock Speed Dial--Here's a sturdy lock for people who have difficulty remembering combinations (most of us?). Instead of numbers that you can easily forget, you open the lock using directional movements (like a video game joystick), so you can open the lock one-handed, without looking, based on remembering the movements you've chosen.

>>Probably the most unusual goodie-bag item I've ever gotten, here's a "Water Saving Fill Valve" from MJSI, whose HydroRight won this year's award. You actually install this one in your toilet to save water.

Innovation can be best defined as actualizing creativity in a way that provides real value or, as designer/innovator Dan Buchner recently asserted in this video (click here), "the implementation of an idea that improves someone’s life and brings meaning to their life.” Just as MJSI's innovation can make a meaningful difference, so can these other award winners whose actual products did not quite make it in the goodie bag. They include:

>Abbott Labs' recently FDA-approved HIV test, with much earlier detection ability.

>SoCore Energy's portable solar panels that can be rented and installed more easily.

>Smart Medical Technology Liftaem Patient Transfer System, which uses a cushion of air to reduce time and injury from lifting patients.

>CrowdSPRING, now the world's largest online marketplace for creative services.

>Chicago Transit Authority's Bus Tracker, an online tool to tell you exactly when your bus will arrive.

You can decide how meaningful these innovations are to you or others--and learn more about them here. But clearly the creative spirit is infusing some companies here in the midwest. If Rocky Wirtz can turn around the very recently woeful Blackhawks, miracles can indeed happen, especially if we make time for, promote and honor innovation, as these awards have aptly done again this year.

Scary to be an American? Part 2

2010-11-04T13:46:00.003-05:00

My previous blog made the point that pessimism and fear--currently irrationally amplified by our divisive politics and media--is incompatible with creativity and change. Our midterm election may be over, but the belief that it's scary to be an American right now persists. And the truth is, wherever you might plug into the American conversation, even if you tap the more reasonable, harder-to-hear-amidst-the-shouting sources of information, it's hard not to be scared, which closes down our individual and collective creative solution-making ability.

For some hope, I had turned to Time magazine's cover story last week--the positive-sounding "How to Restore the American Dream"--but found myself again shaken by the dark "realities" it outlined. Fareed Zakaria, one of the more intelligent and solution-focused media voices today, primarily made the case that our mood is bad for good reason, with many accompanying graphs "charting the decline" of what was once the land of opportunity. The rational media may not scream fear but they do supply a torrent of facts about the economy and American decline that are just as scary.

Zakaria captures this troubling reality well in this video (below)--while at the same time making clear that we need to think differently in order to restore the American Dream. This is the great challenge for us as individuals and for American organizations of all stripes: To find a new reality, a different mindset--a more optimistic belief in being, as Zakaria says, masters of our own destiny. While we may not be able to escape the current cultural narrative (though unplugging from media would help), we have to realize it's not as true as it seems. Yes, unemployment is higher and it's harder to sell my condo, but most people I know have kept their jobs and are only "sour" when they tune into our public conversation.

When it comes to offering ideas and different thinking, one could argue, especially of late, that Republicans are the main political obstacle. This from this month's Esquire: Republicans "haven't had a new idea this century. Unless you count teabags and fear, which we don't." But it definitely takes creativity to cut the budget, and, amazingly, both Democrats and Republicans find common ground on innovation. Yes, perhaps more than any other policy point, both political sides join leading commentators like Zakaria in support of "Innovation" again and again. So the great news is that we as a nation have a real opportunity to come together to support creative ideas and investment in innovation right now.

But to have some room to do that, we can't let fear and extremism rule our airwaves and infect us individually. Last weekend's Rally to Restore Sanity made an attempt to change the conversation, and Jon Stewart's "Moment of Sincerity" is well worth viewing (below). Stewart makes the point that "we live in hard times, not end times," and rightly highlights the media distortion: "If we amplify everything, we hear nothing...the press is our immune system--if it overacts to everything we actually get sicker." "The 24-hour politico pundit perpetual panic conflictonator," he explains, is not reality: "The image of Americans that is reflected back to us by our political and media process is false. It's us through a funhouse mirror."

The truth, Stewart says, is that we work together to get things done every day. We do. But real innovation--taking the time and effort to create something new and then actually implement it--is not easy. As Congressman Jared Polis of Colorado says, "It's easier to stop bad things than to pass good things." Our challenge is to shift our mindset from fear-mongering noise to another even-more-valid reality of possibility. Most often real creativity and change come after crisis, or as new California Governor Jerry Brown just said in his acceptance speech, "Breakdown paves the way for a breakthrough." How might we help each other break through?

Happy Halloween: Is it scary to be an American?

2010-10-29T15:14:00.000-05:00

There is nothing quite like waking up in one city, flying hundreds of miles, and then walking the streets of another later that day. The wild Chicago winds delayed but did not cancel my early Boston-bound flight so I found myself at Faneuil Hall Tuesday afternoon, surrounded by stunning fall foliage, curving streets and history everywhere around me. This new reality stimulated new insights, old college memories and hopeful thoughts for me, confirming that travel is indeed a creativity lubricant. During my few-day trip I facilitated a teambuilding program with an enthusiastic company, visited with old friends, and was a guest on a cable TV program called "Wake up your Magic." I buzzed with ideas and schemes.

But by doing a little reading, eavesdropping and now TV-watching back in Chicago, I am once again reminded of another pervasive reality--which is not optimistic, not conducive to new ideas. Just turn on your TV now in the week before an election and here is the voice of that reality: "Happy Halloween: It's scary to be an American." Here's one political ad example:

Now, creative thinkers are particularly adept at shifting among different realities, enabling them to see from different perspectives, flexibly consider possibilities, and shift their mindset to come up with new solutions. But the current "reality" that for too long has infected the American discourse and media--that these are scary times, and that extreme and often irrational views trump rational ones--blocks our creativity and squelches innovation and change. That's because fear and creativity are not compatible. The more afraid you are, the less ability you have to open to divergent ideas, consider new options and access your heart--all creative keystones.

We (meaning our predominant cultural conversation) appear to be stuck so deep--and constantly reinforced by media--in this particular "reality" of pessimism and fear that we can't honor other valid realities, like my time in Boston, which was great. It can be as scary to read rational commentary (I'll discuss the Time Magazine cover story on restoring the American Dream next time) as it is to watch Democrats and Republicans hurl fear-bombs in the current political campaigns on everyone's television. I wanted some relief so I read though my old college newspaper when I was on campus and found the same partisan and fear-inducing views parroted there. So it's everywhere. Right? America is in decline and we all should be afraid, right? Preachers are burning Korans and Obamacare is taking over our freedom.

Are we insane to ignore these threats or are we insane to listen to them?

This is the question that Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert (click on banners for more info) are addressing in this weekend's rally in D.C. Usually I'm on the side of crazy, as creativity is not possible without coming up with way-out-there ideas that some will call crazy. I am an advocate of letting our freak flags fly, engaging our individual and original passions as a birthright to being human. But right now we need more sanity. We need to stop reinforcing extreme views and irrational arguments--and subscribing to the "reality" that creative solutions are impossible in America right now. Stewart and Colbert will try their own creative take on shifting this reality, and I'm curious to see how they will attempt to pull it off.

I want to encourage you to take this Halloween opportunity to explore a different reality, to try on another identity for a little while --perhaps someone less crazy than our current politics is--to see where it leads.

Swinging through the Trees on a Path Less Travelled

2010-10-21T16:25:00.002-05:00

I had the doubly natural pleasure this week of facilitating a retreat for the Nature Conservancy in lovely Door County, Wisconsin. Like most organizations, this leading advocate for preserving lands and water is looking for innovative ways to more effectively accomplish their mission and attract more supporters (this was the marketing group). In keeping with the retreat's theme, "Innovation: Freeing your Inner Brilliance," I invoked our surroundings to make the case that individually and collectively they needed more often to swing from the trees (as in the classic Piraro cartoon, left), not only during our time together but also when they returned to the workplace.

For any culture to be to be truly innovative, it must honor individual divergence and originality. Are you empowered to follow your own passion and encouraged to support and build on your colleague's tree-swinging ideas without squelching them? We can learn to do this better when we separate diverging time from converging time, when we put off judging an idea much, much longer than we normally would. Instead of jumping to what is weak or wrong with a suggestion, we instead place it into consideration, let it breathe, build on it and play with it for a while. Later we can converge and decide which course to go.

Too many organizations today do not allow for breathing room--the instinct to judge and dismiss quickly (that's what smart people have learned to do) is so strong, that most half-baked ideas get smothered before they even have the possibility of rising. Without an environment for at least some half-baked, oddball or zany ideas--originality disappears and innovation becomes impossible.

I left the Conservancy group to brainstorm among themselves yesterday and I took to the road around the still-leafy County. I found myself walking through the woods, stimulated by how yellow the leaves were. Then it hit me--the yellow woods took me right back to a memory of the classic Robert Frost poem that I hadn't looked at for years. Let me refresh your own memory with this excerpt of Frost's "Road not Taken":

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear...

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

If you can't literally swing through the trees, at least you can more often explore paths less travelled.

Creativity highlights so far in 2010

2010-10-13T18:29:00.014-05:00

As we head into our final quarter of 2010, I wanted to recap some of the most important headlines on creativity and innovation this year. In a year full of lingering economic and cultural malaise, the innovation imperative--our need to be more creative as a culture and as individuals--is as urgent as ever, particularly here in the U.S.

Stunning news (at least for me) broke in the spring when the largest IBM CEO survey ever identified "Creativity" as the "single most important leadership competency." In a business world that loves to overuse the word "Innovation" (most often defined as "applied creativity") but shies away from the more personal "C" word, creativity itself was heralded like never before, as I summarized previously. Now you can read the full report, called "Capitalizing on Complexity," and even access an interactive version by clicking on the graphic on the right. "CEOs now realize that creativity trumps other leadership characteristics," states the report. "Creative leaders are comfortable with ambiguity and experimentation. To connect with and inspire a new generation, they lead and interact in entirely new ways."

In July, Newsweek weighed in with a cover story called "The Creativity Crisis," which explored new research that has found that creativity test scores have declined since 1990 in the United States. The authors note that other countries are making creative development more of a national priority, with the European Union actually designated 2009 as the "European Year of Creativity and Innovation." "While our creativity scores decline unchecked," write authors Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman, "the current national strategy for creativity consists of little more than praying for a Greek muse to drop by our houses. The problems we face now, and in the future, simply demand that we do more than just hope for inspiration to strike." You can read the story and hear a fascinating radio interview about Torrance creativity tests, schools and adult creativity myths here, and can experience your own creativity test here.

Both of these headlines are calls for action, and one new source of inspiration comes from Steven Johnson, whose subtitle alone in his new book "Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation," makes its release a worthy event this month. While his book takes a wide-lens and historical approach to human innovation, he shared some of his more contemporary conclusions about creativity in the workplace in this interview with Salon.com yesterday. "The problem," he says, "is that most traditional companies...talk a big game about innovation and making their workforce more creative" but do very little to change the culture or allow for ideas to be nurtured in the normal structure of daily work. He argues for "innovation time off"--like the "20% passion time" Google allows for employees to work on what they wish--so that "you're always spending a little bit of your time working on something weird that's not part of the official plan," a "permanent track of hunches and half-baked ideas that runs alongside the regular work-week with its immediate deadlines and fixed concepts." Yes.

A local upcoming highlight here in Chicago local inspiration is the always entertaining and eye-opening Chicago Innovation Awards, scheduled for November 1, which honors our region's most innovative new products and services. If you live here, rush to reserve a free ticket (this link should work) and come join me as we see some positive examples of how humans are demonstrating the #1 leadership competency and combatting the creativity crisis as best we can during this time in our natural history...

Committing Acts of Innovation: Help Needed...

2010-10-06T13:04:00.001-05:00

I keep thinking about my friend George asking me how much I actually "commit acts of innovation"--it's one thing to write about creativity and innovation but quite another to actually do it. In its rawest form, the creative process is simply the opening up—and then closing—of possibilities. We are engaging in it all the time. When you have a decision to make, you open your closet door of ideas, rummage around to see what’s available, and then choose one as you close the door. A more complicated decision or challenge may require much opening and closing of different doors, the pivot between divergent and convergent thinking. To be creative, we have to open wide to a divergent stream of possibility—fully turn on our faucet of ideas—but also know how and when to filter, evaluate and narrow the stream so that we’re left with the best, nourishing drops.

Innovation requires sustained creativity, repeated diverging and converging, leading to a result--a product, an outcome, a more courageous and risky perseverance that makes a positive impact. That's not easy. Right now I'm trying to bring two acts of innovation more fully into the world--a new kind of theatrical show, the Malaise County Fair, and an interfaith program for kids, called Poetry Pals. Perhaps like other acts of innovation, I realize there are two challenging realities for me here: 1. I don't really know how to do it. 2. I need help from others. And I'm trying to bring these two projects to life while at the same time sustaining my consulting business of live learning, leadership and innovation events that provide me with the money I need to live (also a particularly difficult enterprise in this economy).

Both of these projects have the goal of helping us get out of our malaise, the numbness I believe we all feel living in a culture of information overload and political paralysis, where we express ourselves less and isolate ourselves more, where we distrust our neighbors and prefer cynicism to creative possibility and personal participation to change the world. I know for many these attempts are "unrealistic" and have questionable "market value." But I've chosen to take them on. And I need help.

The Malaise County Fair is designed to be a new form of entertainment, one in which the audience participates and stretches their own comfort zone, steps beyond the typical spectator role and acts as part of the story. It's a love story and multi-arts performance that takes place at an unusual fair--where creativity abounds and there is singing and opportunities for the whole community to jam together. You can experience a free introduction to it yourself this Sunday as part of the Gypsy Jam showcase (this Sunday at 3pm at Arts at Large, 3318 N. Lake Shore Drive, just north of Belmont, in Chicago). I'm looking for more creative folks to participate, help shape it and share their talents. Can you help? Can you come to the event to support us, get involved, recommend it to friends who might be itching to be involved in an innovative project?

Poetry Pals brings together kids--and their teachers and community--who usually would not meet. Our main program has been partnering Muslim, Catholic and Jewish school kids to get to know each other and write poetry together. Everyone involved agrees that it's been wonderful and so needed in a too-divisive culture that focuses on extremism and keeps us insulated from others who are different. Click here to read more and see me on a television program sharing what we're up to. But we need help. Are you interested in helping interfaith communication and learning about other cultures? Are you good at facilitating groups of kids and fostering friendship, conversation and a little poetry writing? Do you have access to diverse groups and can help us bring in more schools and partners and money? Do you know others who might? Please contact me for a flyer, help spread the word and come to a meeting.

I know we're all busy and that these may not be the projects that interest you. I would appreciate any way you might be able to help, including donations. I also encourage you to commit your own acts of innovation however you can, starting today.

Imagining a New Frame

2010-09-29T19:25:00.010-05:00

What do you picture when you see leaders of the Federal Reserve Bank coming together for a meeting? Could your frame be wrong--or at least need to be adjusted? What about the frame through which you define yourself or view the possibilities in your own life?

I was back giving a creativity session to nearly 100 leaders of the Federal Reserve System this week, as they took part in a conference called Thrive, intended to help them become adaptive, creative, right-brain thinkers. You read that right. There are indeed hearts and pulses and thoughtfulness in residence at the Fed, and their colorful and inventive conference included presentations from several provocateurs including Benjamin Zander, the charismatic and world-renowned conductor, whose book, The Art of Possibility, has become a creativity classic over the past decade.

Zander encourages a shift of frame toward new possibilities (See a recent interview here, and more extensive TED talk here) and sees the financial crisis as an opportunity for making the world better. "I believe the next 30 years are going to be THE most exciting 30 years in human history," he recently remarked, with enthusiasm we rarely hear these days.

As he explained in his book, "Revolutionary shifts in the operational structures of our world seem to call for new definitions of who we are and what we are here for." He uses the metaphor of music in his talks to encourage change and better leadership. "Art, after all," he writes, "is about rearranging us, creating surprising juxtapositions, emotional openings, startling presences, flight paths to the eternal." It is this rearranging that is a key lever for creativity, part of the flexibility competency of creativity I've written about previously.

I woke up this morning reading his book, thinking about this line, "The frames our minds create define--and confine--what we perceive to be possible," as I headed toward the bathroom and saw myself in the mirror. My hair on top of my head was arranged, rearranged, in a kind of propeller shape I had never seen before (I swear I did not touch my head before I took the picture, right). I took out my iphone for a picture but felt unsatisfied by the shot I took. For all its great features, the iphone's camera has always been a limitation to me, unable to zoom, so I could never have control over the size of the shot I was taking. Indeed, I often felt limited by the frame.

In frustration, I blindly poked the camera button as I held it out in front of me, attempting another shot. I turned the phone to look at the picture I had taken, and, voila, I suddenly saw something else on the viewfinder I had never seen before--an activated horizontal zoom feature! I'd had the phone for two years and just assumed there was no zoom, when in fact there was the whole time. My frame of frustration was my reality, and I never considered the possibility that it could be different on my dated version of the phone.

Zander's contention is that most of us wake up in the morning "with the unseen assumption that life is about struggle to survive and get ahead in a world of limited resources." He argues that we can invent a new framework of meaning, a "universe of possibility" instead where "you set the context and let life unfold." Hmm.

A New Season for No-Mind

2010-09-22T17:38:00.001-05:00

As summer blurs into autumn today, I am returning from my blog-break to once again rabble-rouse for innovation to reign and your creativity to blossom throughout this new season and beyond.

I'll remember this summer as one where I worked less on business but more on my mind--specifically, on trying to detach from the addictions of mind. Creativity is the nimble dance between mind and heart, but so many of us get caught in a stranglehold of mind so that we are blocked from expressing ourselves, taking risks, seeing differently and feeling free to create (not to mention just feeling good). The mind is a powerful instrument, but, as Eckhart Tolle in his classic The Power of Now explains, "about 80 to 90 percent of most people's thinking is not only repetitive and useless, but because of its dysfunctional and often negative nature, much of it is harmful." Too much of our thinking--especially in this Information Overload-Great Recession-Multi-Tasking world of ours--is spent stuck on shoulds, fears, anxiety about the future and replays of the past.

I know mine was. So I consciously broke from my normal routine, both physically and mentally, and shifted my mindset. I was lucky to spend more time than I ever have on Lake Michigan, thanks to my friend Joe and his sailboat (above). I truly was able to incubate--a key part of the creative process--in water and for more prolonged periods than I have before. I was able to leave my scolding mind with the buildings of the city and embrace the great creative principle of "Not Knowing"--seeing with fresh eyes, giving up being right and smart and an expert. My mind stopped being king, and frankly I feel much better and more ready to imagine and create a future that works for me.

In an enlightened state, according to Tolle, you still use your thinking mind when needed but otherwise there is an inner stillness. To come up with creative solutions, he explains, "you oscillate every few minutes or so between thought and stillness, between mind and no-mind...only in that way is it possible to think creatively." You need "no-mind"--consciousness without thought--to tap into your real power. Here's more:

The mind is essentially a survival machine. Attack and defense against other minds, gathering, storing, and analyzing information--that is what it is good at, but it is not at all creative. All true artists, whether they know it or not, create from a place of no-mind, from inner stillness. The mind then gives form to the creative impulse or insight. Even the great scientists have reported that their creative breakthroughs came at a time of mental quietude.
~from The Power of Now, p. 19-20

I know I was extremely lucky to be able to take a partial break this summer, and that it's hard to find the time for "mental quietude." But you can find a way to reduce your "predominance of mind," as Tolle would call it, both for your own sanity and to be more creative. Read The Power of Now. Learn to Meditate. Swim, run, practice Tai Chi, paint or lose yourself in a creative pursuit that gets you out of your thoughts. The key is to be aware of--and to be less enslaved by--your involuntary internal dialogue, especially the nasty, needless thoughts that create stress but little else of value.

Express Yourself this Summer

2010-06-17T14:20:00.015-05:00

As children, we are creators. We use our hands and our mouths, our hearts and our imaginations, to sing and dance and draw and build and dream. If we go into any first grade classroom and ask, "Who here can sing? Who here can dance?" we'll see most of the little hands shoot up in the air, screaming, "I can! I can! Watch me!"

But as we enter the high school years, even young people with great voices and agile bodies no longer feel comfortable saying they're a singer or a dancer--not without years of training and unwavering public approval. As we become adults in this culture, the playful arts of our childhood often become even more distant strangers. Stroking the keys of a piano or holding charcoal between our fingertips is given up in favor of the more pressing demands of career, money and relationships. We forget how much the act of creating is a birthright to being human.

But it doesn't have to be this way. We are never too old to remember, reclaim and re-engage our unique voice and self-expression.

It's our special challenge as adults to express who we've now become and to reconnect with that creative spirit that we have hidden in some deep but retrievable place inside us. As Albert Camus wrote, "A man's work is nothing more than to rediscover, through the detours of art, those one or two images in the presence of which his heart first opened."

It's also our challenge to help each other take the kinds of risks necessary to bring out all our voices, whether creaky, sore or smooth.

If you're in Chicago, I invite you to create with me this summer. Here are a few ways:

1. Our next Creativity Jam is scheduled for Sunday late afternoon, July 25th. Email me for more information or to RSVP and come join us.

2. I'm bringing people together--of all artistic inclinations--to develop The Malaise County Fair, an audience-participation show like no other you've seen before. Want to participate?

3. Let me help you learn to jam with others and play your own songs, whether with guitar, keyboards or other instruments. Read more here and check out the details on my website on my music coaching lessons.

It's time for me to take a little break from this blog to work on my own creative pursuits and to get a little freedom from the computer oppression we all are dealing with these days. Click on one of the themes, below right, or search using the window top left, for previous blog entries to help inspire you to be a force for creativity and innovation in your own life. Here's to letting it out this summer.

Putting on a Show in the 21st Century

2010-06-09T12:14:00.004-05:00

I really like the two theater trends I've noticed in the past decade or two--going to a show often offers an experience that feels much more like the circus or a rock concert.

Take a look at the final scene (right and video here) of Lookingglass Theater's production of Hephaestus here in Chicago (now extended for two more weeks to June 20), playing in our esteemed Goodman Theatre. The story of Hephaestus, the Greek god who could forge anything out of metal, is played out in an amazing array of physical and circus performances, swinging from the rafters, flipping from ribbons and navigating the trapeze. Yes, those are seven high wire performers, including veteran members of the Wallenda Family, Ringling Bros. and Cirque du Soleil, way up above the audience (click the pic to see video of it live). I believe the future here is in the merging of narrative and acrobatic acts of wonder, as seen in Hephaestus, illustrating how innovation comes through hybrids--the combining elements in ways not quite seen before.

Now I am someone who sometimes finds myself disengaged during theater, so I welcome these physical feats as a way to draw me in. The popular physical acts of our time--Cirque du Soleil, Blue Man Group, Stomp and others--are also tremendously creative, surprising us with new ways to entertain and astound. Here in Chicago I've been dazzled by the circus-like spectacles of Redmoon Theatre (the pic I took below is a Redmoon spaceman above the crowd at the recent Columbia College Manifest) and the acrobatic wonders of the smaller Ameba Dance ensemble. I find, though, that the narrative element that I need to be fully drawn in is not always there.

The other theater trend--the full-band, rock out shows perhaps first popularized by"Rent"--also works in engaging me and has thankfully updated the musical for a post-Beatles world. I'd like to hear what your favorites have been.

But I'd still like to see theater innovate further by engaging the audience even more, experimenting with removing the fourth wall from the performance. I always ask myself, how can a show enable the audience to participate even more, perhaps even shape the content of the evening? Certainly we see occasional attempts toward audience participation in improv shows, who-done-it capers (where the audience decides on the villain or outcome), Tony 'n Tina's Wedding and the like. But generally the roles are minimal and we are still seated spectators, not exhilarated participators. For years I've been working on my own version of the audience-participation show, The Malaise County Fair, which would allow audience members, if they choose, to play a role in the performance (contact me if you'd like to get involved).

What would you like to see more of as a ticket-buyer? What trends have you noticed? Do you have any other ideas for more audience participation or innovation in shows?

CEOs: "Creativity is the most important leadership quality"

2010-06-03T11:01:00.001-05:00

It's already been two weeks since the news broke: According to a new IBM survey, CEOs have identified "creativity" as the most important leadership competency for the successful enterprise of the future. We're used to hearing "innovation" bandied about in the business world, but creativity--the juice that fuels the more results-oriented innovation--doesn't get the corporate limelight nearly as much. Now it does.

"CEOs are telling us they have to be more creative," says Saul Berman, Lead Partner, Strategy and Change, at IBM. "We're not going back to the old normal." Creativity was the highest ranked leadership quality at 60%, followed by integrity and global thinking (Thanks to Fast Company for this graphic, right).

The great challenge for CEOs is dealing with increasing complexity and change on all fronts, and because of that, according to the report, "Creativity is the most important leadership quality." The best corporate executives "practice and encourage experimentation and innovation throughout their organizations." The survey was based on interviews with more than 1500 CEOs worldwide, the largest one-on-one sample known.

So what are the characteristics of a creative leader? As the graphic below reveals, the creative leader is one who invites disruptive innovation and change, can tolerate ambiguity, challenge the status quo and invent new ways of doing things. For more on this study and to get your own copy of the report, click here.

Creative Participation Opportunities Abound in Chicago right now..

2010-05-27T10:38:00.003-05:00

Next week I'll report in more detail about the big national news on the creativity front--that CEOs have identified creativity as the most important leadership competency for the future (More here).

But it's a full moon tonight, and I want to urge you to kick up some early summer creative dust of your own. I'll be kicking the creative cat (apologies to my cat, Jupiter) myself, so if you're in Chicago, come join me for one of the following:

Tonight/Thursday, May 27, Full Moon Jam after sundown
It’s another world at the Full Moon Jam, where hundreds will be gathering tonight after sunset on the lakefront just between Lawrence and Foster. There will be fire spinners and drummers and who knows what else in Chicago’s closest outdoor approximation to Burning Man. It’s a family/community event, no alcohol, ends around 10:15pm. More info here.

Sunday, May 30, Adam/Creativity Jam Performance, 1pm
I’m performing a 45-minute set/Creativity Jam as part of the Mitziut Art Show on Sunday, May 30th , from 1:15p to 2pm. It will be mix of original and popular songs, with opportunities for you to sing and play along (song lyrics, instruments and shakers available, with dancing encouraged). It’s the kickoff set to a free, full day of music and art at the North Lakeside Cultural Center, 6219 N. Sheridan Road. Parking can be tricky so come early just in case or ride your bike—should be beautiful out.

Tuesday, June 1, Creative Energy Boost Networking, 6pm
I’ll be co-facilitating (with energy expert and facilitator extraordinaire Natalie Goldfein) a “Creative Energy Boost” networking session for entrepreneurs and independent consultant types, brought to you by the Big Ooga. Natalie and I will facilitate a creative and interactive experience—you’ll leave with more energy, surprising ideas for what’s next in your business, and many new connections with colleagues. It’s at the 4Points Sheraton, 630 N. Rush (Rush & Ontario), from 6-8 pm. To learn more and purchase tickets (just $15): Click here. If you want to come for free, just say you are a guest of mine and RSVP to Lennie Rose: Lennie@BigOoga.com or 708-524-4562.

Wednesday, June 2, Gypsy Jam, 6:30p
Chicago non-profit Arts At Large is sponsoring this Jam dedicated to providing artists of all mediums an artistic playground--a place to come together, share ideas, inspire, support, (perchance collaborate), and yes, perform in a jam session. To sign up for a performance, contact Cindy Firing at fishopera@rcn.com/212.304.8871 asap. You can also just come to watch. More info here. Wednesday, June 2, 6:30-9:30pm, Arts at Large Office, 318 N. Lake Shore Drive. Note: Dial #100 at the front door to be buzzed in.

All of these events are participatory, guaranteed to get your creative juices moving.
Chicagoans, if you're not quite ready to participate in a jam but want to explore your musical side, I give great one-on-one starter lessons that provide an overview of music basics and get you playing songs on either keyboards or guitar in just weeks, on your schedule. Try it out and see what happens. Read more about my music coaching and six-week starter package. For those of you outside of Chicago, here's urging you to seek out--or create--creative participation opportunities of your own.

Say hi to Jupiter, the grand troublemaker.

The Creative Energy Crisis

2010-05-19T15:13:00.005-05:00

"We're in a new kind of energy crisis—and this one's personal" ~from the Energy Project website

How energized are you when you're reading this? Do you feel in balance, on top of your life, tasks and goals--or stressed, overwhelmed and guilty for not doing more? We need energy to be creative, and too many of us are pretty maxed out.

The Way We're Working is not Working, the new book from Tony Schwartz, human performance expert and founder of the Energy Project, explores this compelling and too-often-ignored topic of personal energy. "The relentless urgency that characterizes most corporate cultures," he writes--and, I would add, organizations of all stripes and many personal lives of Americans as well--"undermines creativity...and, ultimately, performance." Schwartz has focused on how mismanaging our energy has impacted engagement in organizations (see his previous best-seller The Power of Full Engagement). His new book cites a meager 20% global workforce level of full engagement (those who consider themselves "fully engaged" at work, according to Towers Perrin) even before the recession fully hit. 57% of people work on evenings and weekends. 37% take 20 minutes or less for lunch. It's hard to be fully engaged when you're running on fumes. Creative? Forget about it.

In my role as a consultant I get to take a peek into the work lives of many different people in various industries and organizations--and it's not pretty. Almost everyone is stretched and overwhelmed, and the people who thrive tend to be those who have learned how to ignore personal needs and jump from one urgent demand to another. (Pardon me as I take a moment to vent. Perhaps I experience this more than others because of my outsider role, but it's shocking how many "successful" people cancel meetings at the last minute, don't return phone calls and don't keep their word. These integrity gaps have only widened in the past few years.)

Schwartz offers a better, and ultimately more productive, way of excelling in our ratrace world. It's by understanding and respecting the way personal energy works (see 10-minute video below for a good synopsis). Yes, high performers work hard, but they also recover their energy more than others. Humans are not unstoppable computers. We function in waves and pulses, like the heart beat, and sleep, breaks and renewal are essential for our productivity. "As addicted as we can become to the speed and intensity of our lives," Schwartz writes, "we're more creative an productive when we move intentionally between effort and renewal, action and reflection." Organizations, Schwartz explains, need to meet core energy needs of employees so that they are "freed, fueled and inspired" to bring the best of themselves to work. Those energy needs are sustainability (physical), security (emotional), self-expression (mental) and significance (spiritual). You can take the energy audit on the Energy Project website to see how well you are meeting your own energy needs.

I saw Tony at this week's international American Society for Training and Development (ASTD) conference here in Chicago, where we all ran like panting dogs from one breakout session to another, from one Expo booth to another, trying to network and learn and push ourselves to swallow everything we can (sorry, energy...though all conferences are like this, right?). I originally met him in San Francisco in the 1990s when his book, What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America, made a particular impact on me. That book described his own five-year journey across America seeking out mystics, philosophers, physicians and psychologists--an amazing feat--to understand what makes humans thrive. While his focus is a bit more on the corporate world these days, it's great to see that he continues his commitment to helping us all live a little better. And I have no doubt that our understanding of "energy"--long a buzzword in California ("You have good energy")--will become more more crucial in helping us navigate our world in the decades to come.

"Conformity Reigns but Exceptions Rule"

2010-05-12T16:20:00.002-05:00

"Difference is a commitment to the unprecedented…a commitment to letting go.” Youngme Moon

I love Harvard professor Youngme Moon's sub-subtitle of her new book, Different: Escaping the Competitive Herd: "Succeeding in a World where Conformity Reigns but Exceptions Rule." In her book, she makes the case that true innovation--and success--comes when a business offers something meaningfully different.

As much as we Americans often claim the mantle of individuality and freedom to be different, most of us rarely are. From what we wear to what we talk about, from the party at the bar to the big wedding we attend, conformity reigns and rains and, as my poor friends here in Chicago have heard too much from me lately, I'm feeling all wet.

Moon makes the case that almost every success story of the past couple decades has been the exception to the rule, the outlier that has rejected orthodoxy, the difference-maker that did not simply compete in the same game as others. "Differentiation is not a tactic," she says. "It's not a flashy advertising campaign; it's not a sparkling new feature set. It's not a laminated frequent-buyer card or a money-back guarantee. Differentiation is a way of thinking. It's a mindset. It's a commitment. A commitment to be different, not in a superficial, I'm-going-to-offer-a-couple-of-features-my-competitor-doesn't-offer kind of way, but in a way that is fundamental and near impossible to replicate.”

Now I happen to be allergic to too much conformity, but I realize that it's often easier, and even satisfying, to conform. But creativity--which we need more than ever in our organizations and for our own personal success--requires deviance, a willingness to be different. A willingness and a mindset and a drive to be the one who doesn't do it that way, who draws outside the lines or creates meaningful new lines, who risks the stares and comments (and there will be many) from the conforming majority.

Moon's wonderful Anti-Creativity Checklist video (above) shares her top 14 ways to keep your place in the conforming majority and ensure that you won't be a difference-maker in your organization.

The "Four Cs" for 21st Century Education

2010-05-04T15:09:00.004-05:00

Most of us know that "there is a profound gap between the knowledge and skills most students learn in school and the knowledge and skills they need in typical 21st century communities and workplaces." So states the Partnership for 21st Century Skills, a national organization comprised of both business (Apple, Intel, Adobe, HP) and education (National Education Association, Pearson, Scholastic) leaders, committed to "fusing the three Rs and four Cs." As an advocate for the skills of innovation, I'm thrilled to see attention now placed on these Four Cs, with 14 states, including Illinois, having signed on to adopt the Partnership framework as a way to ready students for the 21st century. Most of us know the three Rs are reading, writing and arithmetic, but what are the Cs?
In the Partnership framework above, the Four Cs make up the "Learning and Innovation Skills" and are as follows:
1. Creativity and Innovation
2. Critical Thinking and Problem Solving
3. Communication and Collaboration

For creativity and innovation, the framework emphasizes Thinking Creatively (brainstorming techniques, creating new ideas, refining and evaluating ideas), Working Creatively with Others (communicating new ideas, being open to diverse perspectives, demonstrating orginality, viewing failure as part of the process) and Implementing Innovations (Acting on creative ideas and contributing to a field). These are terrific guideposts.

So the question is, how do we really teach creativity, critical thinking, communication and collaboration? These are right brain skills, those that are most difficult to teach in a codified, regimented way. With most school systems now fixated on measurable outcomes (usually test scores), how do we make these Four Cs a priority when they are so hard to measure? Illinois, for one, has charged "core content teams" with several tasks including to "ensure that the Illinois Learning Standards embody the fusion of the three Rs and the four Cs." I'm looking forward to delving into this question and learning more about what states are really doing to embrace the framework. Let me hear from you if you know more about the progress being made.

In this Pearson Foundation video below, "Teaching Teachers to Teach 21st Century Learners," we hear from various leaders from the worlds of business and education as they discuss the importance of 21st century learning and the need for change. Partnership for 21st Century Skills President Ken Kay begins to describe the skills needed with this distinctive pairing: "Non-routine thinking" and "complex communications."

The education world has long been averse to change--in many ways we are still preparing students for a world that no longer exists. The fact that the Four Cs have been defined and already embraced by many leaders is a promising step. The conversation is happening. We'll see if that can lead to real change and better learning for our kids in the near future.

On Blindspots, Shift and Change

2010-04-22T10:15:00.012-05:00

I woke up antsy again this morning, a common occurrence for me of late, sensing that I need a shift in life but not sure what to do or where to focus. So I write this with no conclusion planned, no lesson about creativity already identified. I am seeking a personal breakthrough, a change of perspective, right here, right now, fingertips on laptop.

I'm trying to turn toward my peripheral vision to uncover my blindspot(s)--where an answer lies--but what I see and hear instead is this constant barrage from my mind: Get to your 14 things to do, go through those 4 different pending email folders, make those calls, strategize then plan then do then act then go, go, go or you are in trouble. To escape this noise, I click on an email and suddenly find myself reading Will Marre's blog, where he is addressing something similar in his post "Take Back Your Life." He describes the increase of stress in our personal work worlds, and this part speaks to me:

Those who have decided to work for themselves as consultants or starting a new enterprise have so much pressure to outperform that the velocity of our warship has to always be moving at “warp.” If we slow down the immense gravity of our death-star economy will crush us. Whew.

That's it. The pressure I too often feel has put some kind of neck brace on me. I can't turn my head toward a very real force that is trying to get my attention. This is why I'm so antsy. I need to shift but the immense gravity weighs on me and I can't move.

So now I'm trying to access a different part of my being through the less rigid, right side of my brain. I rifle through some writing and find a poem of mine that recalls a long-ago moment in Napa, CA. Yes, this is close to the feeling I'm having.

...I cool against this tree trunk
with the wood-wind in my hair

and the sound of motors

in my mind

I remember the need I felt then to dip my head into some different kind of water:

Right now I crave water that has the texture of birth

and I would dip my head in it to show

what can be replaced

My hair would not turn gold
like the boy from the story

but I would find alloys from this strange land

in the puddle near the drain

of the bin I wash in

to start my day

I just took a shower. I was consciously trying to wash out the "alloys" from my hair in order to feel different, to emerge with a new mindset that would enable me to see what I needed to do in a way I couldn't before. But I discovered that nothing washed out of my hair. The alloys, if anything, were now a more permanent part of me--the gray in my hair. Which I realize I can cover or hide but can never replace.

Opening Day: Creative Renewal or Time-Suck of Distraction?

2010-04-15T09:19:00.018-05:00

I live just six blocks from Wrigley Field, and being a life-long Cubs fan I felt compelled to at least mingle with the crowd on opening day this week. So I hit the streets of blue early Monday afternoon. But I went also mulling over a big question for me this season: Is spending Cubs time helping or killing my creative life? I know willing to embrace failure is certainly a key creativity principle--and the Cubs embody that more than any other sports team on the planet (more than 100 years without a World Series title)! But watching games and following stats and news can also be a huge time-suck of distraction as a passive spectator, taking away from the time and focus I need to be a creative actor in the world. What to do this year? Well, now was the time to check it out.

Soon I joined the hundreds of folks in the streets surrounding the ballpark, excitement brimming, as I watched a television interview (that's Sarah Kustok from Comcast Sports interviewing a fan--already some creative interaction!), and headed over to Murphy's Bleachers, one of the classic bars kitty-corner from the stadium, where I thought I might find a friend of mine. It was packed and, of course, filled with people who had started drinking before noon. "What happens at Wrigley stays at Wrigley," I heard one guy slur. I liked that notion--that anything is possible--but my stomach cringed at seeing the tables and tables of already-consumed beer (see pic). I certainly believe that drinking can at times stimulate the creative process, but overall the scene reminded of the lost hours (including the debilitating hangover) that ultimately tend to numb rather than enliven my creative life.

Now, I wasn't planning to go into the stadium, but I couldn't resist querying some of the scalpers and soon learned that I might be able to snag a cheaper ticket than I had imagined, maybe even face value. As I debated with myself whether I could afford the time, I weaved through the crowds, past the Harry Caray statue, among the smiling children and the long-suffering but happy-at-the-moment grandparents, to the lines of eager fans waiting to get in. Hmmm. And as fate would have it, I somehow came across a regular guy with an extra ticket who was willing to give it away for a song. After a brief negotiation, I would join him for the irresistible price of just $20! Holy Cow! I was in.

And look at these seats! Magnificently located on the first base side, a beautiful cool day, a Pepsi in my hand, this was nice. I know a hell of a lot more about the Cubs and their players than I should admit, so it was only minutes before I had already made friends with three other guys sitting around me, discussing last year's hitting slump, the worst fielder ever (Soriano), and the potential of the pitching staff. Before we knew it, the Cubs homered once and then twice, and soon we had a victory on opening day, baby!

Now the truth is, baseball is not that exciting. It helps when you know the players and strategy, but even given that I often start to get antsy by the 6th inning. So why do I go? What do I care? Again, I ask, is it worth the brain space and the time?

There is something wonderful about being a Cubs fan, which connects you in spirit to millions of people around the world. There is something about the taste of possibility on your tongue, the stirring of creativity embodied by the "It's Gonna Happen" signs that set a vision of the future. It helps me imagine a different world, where the Cubs are victors and our decades of suffering can be transformed with a swing of the bat and a final strike out pitch. But. But. But. It's heresy, I know, but coming out on opening day has confirmed for me that I have to make a change this year. Say it ain't say so, millions might carp, but I have come to this conclusion. I need to get out on my own field more this year. I have to be more of a creator. Cubs, I love you, but I can't do this anymore.

Dean Kamen, Captain Creative

2010-04-07T16:13:00.004-05:00

I don't know all that much about Dean Kamen, known most commonly as the inventor of the Segway, but I believe he's the closest thing we have to an American Creative Superhero. He demonstrated his latest miracle invention--the robotic LUKE (as in Skywalker) arm--this week on the Stephen Colbert Show. Check out this more in-depth talk/demonstration he gives for TED, which shows even more what Luke can do (Video here).

The Colbert Report

Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Dean Kamen

http://www.colbertnation.com/

Colbert Report Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Reform

Kamen is one of those rare inventor-entrepreneur-visionaries of a generation, like Buckminster Fuller of the the previous, who uses his mental genius for good, despite a world not always ready to receive. His Slingshot is a good example; it's a water purifying system that is portable, ecologically friendly and miraculous, able to literally turn urine, dirty puddles and who-knows-what-else into drinking water, with minimal energy requirements. It can literally transform the developing world. Unfortunately, our short-term, profit-motivated mindset derails this kind of innovation (alas, there ain't much money in it), so no wide distribution. Yet. Check out this video for more on the Slingshot.

The more you learn about Kamen (and please share what you know), the more he looms like a character from Marvel Comics, commandeering a grand fortress of a company (I believe an island, jets and helicopters are involved). After years of financial success and accumulated, cutting-edge technical resources, he is able to focus on world-changing innovations like few others, uniquely positioned to take on projects and requests he wants to pursue. Let's hope he doesn't get lured to dark side like the outrageously wealthy, power-thirsty inventors Super/Spider/Batman often battles.

For now, his company Deka Research and Development continues to take on pressing problems of our time, particularly those involving solar energy and water. As an inventor, Kamen holds more than 440 U.S. and foreign patents, many of them for innovative medical devices that have expanded the frontiers of health care worldwide. He is the founder of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a program that includes the greatest student robot competition of our time, which will take place in just seven days in front of more than 50,000 fans at Atlanta's Georgia Dome. May the Creative Force continue to be with him.

Permission to be a Fool

2010-04-01T07:49:00.002-05:00

I had a dream last night about Tina Fey. I only remember two things--1. I enjoyed spending time with her and laughed a lot. 2. At some point she took out her retainer and put it on a table. I know it's April Fools Day but really this happened.

What is it about Tina Fey? Wherever I find her--presenting on big award shows, interviewed as cover girl on this month's Esquire, making the talk show rounds for her upcoming movie, Date Night, with Steve Carrell--she is always surprising me and making me smile. She continues to pile up Emmys and Golden Globes for 3o Rock, the show she created, produces and stars in. What is it that made this plain jane the AP entertainer of the year and one of the greatest creative successes of our time?It is, I believe, the permission she gives herself. She gives herself permission to explore any possibility, to play with a strange idea, to be foolish--and to let others around her be as foolish as they would like as well. She is not afraid to be ugly, uncool, a loser with a retainer fetish. You'll see it in these quips from the Esquire interview. This is how creativity flourishes, in an environment where you have full permission to be a fool. I call it Permission to Suck or P.T.S.

Watch 30 Rock and what you'll see is a cavalcade of creativity, undoubtedly generated from the improvisational world of pushing the fool's envelope. Fey first made her name here in Chicago as an improv player for Improv Olympic and Second City Theaters, where the great skills are in building on each other's imagination, never judging an idea until later (if ever), and learning that for every time you create something idiotic there is another time you create something ingenious. I guarantee you the 30 Rock writers (and the actors) are experts in giving themselves full permission to be preposterous, because it is only when you open wide to ideas that the most creative can come out. And by creative I'm not talking just outrageous. I'm talking, as you find in each of the 30 rock characters, outrageously fitting. Which makes for funny.

But ultimately there is the great improvisor herself, the former head writer and performer for Saturday Night Live, whose Sarah Palin impression will be memorable forever. It's Tina, whose Liz Lemon on 30 Rock is continually embarrassed and made the fool, who's gotten so good at giving herself permission that creative gold comes out of her again and again, and the fool's gold has become a treasure.

The better you get at giving yourself permission, the more creativity will come from you. So happy April Fool's Day and may you take the opportunity for fool permission.

Clues from the "Most Innovative Companies"

2010-03-23T21:18:00.003-05:00

The most creative business magazine out there, Fast Company, published its annual "World's 50 Most Innovative Companies" list this month, mainly singing the praises of the widely-sung bohemoths, including Facebook, Amazon, Apple, Google, Walmart and HP (all in the top ten).

A few smaller and newer companies made the list, including the two-year-old online clothes seller, Gilt Groupe; the "empowering" and medical-information-rich Patients Like Me; and the not-for-profit (yes it's true) IT/engineering firm Mitre, which works on national issues ranging from electronic health records to homeland security. Most of these innovation leaders play in the technology, energy or entertainment space, with some surprises, like my once-detested utility company PG&E, which has evidently so impressed FC editors by its enlightened energy practices that they ranked it number seven.

Interviews and overviews provide some clues as to what has distinguished these companies as innovators. A few highlights:

Facebook: "Older and wiser," FC writes about the Facebook founder (pictured on cover, left), "[Mark] Zuckerberg has nonetheless managed to preserve a culture of experimentation and fearlessness." "It's about being unafraid to break things in order to make them better...what we make won't last, but we make things fast and get to test our ideas quickly with real users."

Novartis: Describing this Swiss pharmaceutical giant as in "a fever of invention," FC asked Chairman Daniel Vasella about his "risky and expensive" choice to pursue drugs for rare diseases. "That how you get breakthroughs," says Vasella. "We're used to failures...in order to build the brighter future, you have to sacrifice some of the short-term benefits."

Gilt Groupe: CEO Susan Lyne attributes Gilt Groupe's fast retail success to the "promise of discovery" and its willingness to help its designers and brands. "It's more about 'Let us help you take risks again'," she explains. "You have the permission to experiment."

HTC: Tawainese technology company Chair Cher Wang says, "Every day we're trying something new. We have labs that our employees can use to work on their own ideas, to brainstorm with a group, to test things. We encourage everybody to innovate--even people who don't usually work in the labs."

For a little more innovation insight, check out Fast Company online series "Why You Should Start a Company in...," which looks at different hubs around the country. While we here in Chicago still struggle with certain obstacles I've mentioned previously, a recent interview explores reasons why Chicago is and can continue to be an innovation hotspot, which include lots of Midwest company customers, federal research dollars for universities, local connectivity and family trees of entrepreneurs. Check it out here: Chicago.

Moving the Elephant of Change

2010-03-16T15:14:00.004-05:00

"Why is it so hard to make lasting changes in our companies, in our communities, and in our own lives?" asks the Heath brothers in their new book, Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard. Dan Heath swung by Chicago last week to promote the book and left us with a lasting image: Trying to change is like you as a rider trying to steer an elephant. You can use the reins perhaps to effect some short-term adjustments in directions (i.e., exert a little willpower) but ultimately the elephant can go wherever the heck he wants.

You are also the elephant, Dan made clear, and that's the great challenge of change: to align your Rider (head, plans, goals) with the Elephant (emotions, desire, body). As I've discussed previously, with the speed of change continuing to increase, we have no choice but to get better at the skills of change, which are also the skills of creativity and innovation. And perhaps the most important skill is how to balance our heart with our mind, align our right brain with our left, make peace between our emotion and our reason.

The Heath brothers, with their previous bestseller, Made to Stick, which explored what makes certain ideas have more impact and "stickiness" than others, have emerged as new thinking stars in the popular intersection of business, psychology and self-help. Just like Malcolm Gladwell and others, their writing uses research and real life examples to help nudge us toward better understanding our own behavior. In Switch, their goal is to help us change, which they acknowledge is not easy. Their advice comes down to this:

1. Direct the Rider. While the Rider has limited power over the Elephant, the more you can provide crystal clear directions for the long-term change you want, the better.
2. Motivate the Elephant. While the Elephant's hunger for instant gratification can be your downfall, its emotion is actually what gets things done. You need to get in touch with the feeling
that motivates the change.
3. Shape the Path. You can tweak the environment and build habits that assist both the Rider and Elephant so that change is more likely.

As we head into spring, it's time to feel the urgency--to motivate the Elephant--so that we can make the changes we truly want. What does your head know and your heart desire for yourself this year? What do you have to do to harness the lazy, short-attention span Elephant into the real mover who can transform your life?

"It's Not a Waste of Time"

2010-03-09T13:56:00.014-06:00

After taking some creative--and successful--risks last year, the Oscars didn't break much new ground this time around. I did appreciate Sunday night's return of two of last year's new features:
>For best screenplay, the visual overlay of the actual screenwriter's words and read narration while we see the movie action in real time (nice!), and
>For best actor/actress, the heartful individual introductions onstage from other famous collaborators. While last year it was past award winners doing the introductions (and in some cases their connection to the honored actor was slight), the Academy made the adjustment of bringing on those truly suited to share insight and praise upon a newly minted nominee. Well done, Oprah.

Otherwise, Oscar did little creative experimenting, and the proceedings fell pretty flat. I enjoyed the comedy duo of Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin, but they, too, took few risks, and the result was an Academy Awards that will not be memorable for its moments, despite the first time selection of a woman as best director.But there was one main highlight for those of us seeking creative inspiration, and that was provided by Michael Giacchino (above, click for video), in his winning speech for best musical score from the animated feature, Up.

Most of us are constantly confronted with creativity killers, both subtle and overt from a young age, stopping us from fully pursuing our passion and talent: Why are you doing that? The odds are not in your favor. That's nice for a hobby. That's not practical. You need to focus on making a living. You need to grow up and get serious. You need to pick something more marketable. That seems like a waste of time (Add your own).

As Giacchino tells of first experimenting with a movie camera, he knows he was lucky: "Never once in my life did my parents ever say, 'What you're doing is a waste of time.' Never." Somehow he had the rare blessing and assurance from others that pursuing his creative side was worth it.

His simple message was offered to kids but it applies to all of us, of any age:
"I know there are kids out there that don't have that support system so if you're out there and you're listening, listen to me: If you want to be creative, get out there and do it. It's not a waste of time. Do it."

So let's be each others' support system. Let's do more than just be careful of our subtle creativity killer comments--let's ask about, encourage, listen and prod others to pursue their own creative expression or enterprise. It may not lead to the Oscars but it will definitely lead to a life of more possibility and fewer regrets.

Creation and Evolution...at its generative best

2010-03-01T07:06:00.020-06:00

It was an avalanche of creativity that fell all over me Saturday night as I unsuspectingly walked into a local theater production of Quest Ensemble's provocatively titled "Evolution/Creation" here in Chicago.

Some people will define creativity as simply the act of creating--the ability to generate ideas, make things up and put it all out there. Most researchers, as explained throughout this blog, argue that just generating is not enough; the ideas must fulfill the requirements of both being new (or unusual) and having value (it "works").

"Evolution/Creation" had both and more--the most unbelievably generative work imaginable, with props/masks/set pieces alone numbering in the hundreds, and truly creative in its unusual format and unique rendering of two great human dramas: the biblical creation story and the scientific story of evolution. Somehow the staging managed to be provocative without pandering to any political view, creating an experience both entertaining and educational, appropriate for all ages and attention spans without a single word of dialogue.

Here was the wonderfully creative format: Both stories were performed simultaneously on either side of a shared full orchestra, with you in the audience experiencing only one performance--Creation or Evolution--for about 45 minutes. Then after intermission you entered the other side and had a completely different experience, even though the score was the same.

What Quest did, thanks in large part to the papier mache miracles of founding member and set/prop designer Nick Rupard, was create visual eye candy on stage, using the cheapest of materials (mainly paper, wire, wood and color) to convey larger-than-life images as evocative as the best CGI effects of any movie. And with the magical storytelling gifts of artistic director Andrew Park, who also wrote the latin lyrics that narrated both stories and were sung throughout by ensemble members, we got a visual crash course in Genesis, Adam & Eve and Noah on one side--and the Big Bang, atoms and protons, and apes and humans on the other. The unauthorized iphone pictures here don't really do justice but will give you a little glimpse of the huge animals, light shows and surprises that will meet you if you make it to this one-of-a-kind show.

This production should immediately tour schools and communities across the country to foster real conversation about these not-really-competing stories. But it probably won't. Andrew, Nick and the other Questers are much more interested in creating than commercializing, and their mission to be the "People's Theatre of Chicago," making theater accessible to all, means that the dozens of performers get paid very little and there are no plans to market the production elsewhere or sell a video to the masses. But they will continue to do something that gratefully is not just a relic of a past generation--offer an opportunity for all nearby to step into an avalanche of creativity, free of charge.

Evolution/Creation plays at the Blue Theatre, 1609 W. Gregory Ave., Chicago, Illinois 60640, Fridays and Saturdays at 8:00pm & Sundays at 2:00pm until March 28. FREE! DONATIONS APPRECIATED! RESERVATIONS HIGHLY RECOMMENDED! Visit www.questensemble.org or Go Here to make reservations TODAY!

Adam speaking on innovation next Thursday, March 4

2010-02-22T16:13:00.004-06:00

Here is another chance to experience a public innovation session with me next week. It will be a great opportunity for networking, learning and inspiration, and we'll be exploring creativity with a more cross-cultural lens...Adam

VISIONAR Scholarships presents...

“THE TIME FOR INNOVATION IS NOW:

CREATIVITY COMPETENCIES FOR INDIVIDUAL AND CULTURE CHANGE”

In this interactive session, creativity expert Adam Shames will explore today's innovation imperative and share the key competencies necessary for individual and cultural innovation. You'll learn more about the mindsets and skills that boost creativity—and new perspectives and tools to help you be a force for innovation in your personal and professional life.

DATE/TIME: Thursday, March 4, 6pm to 8:30p. Program starts at 6:30p.

WHERE: CATALYST RANCH, 656 West Randolph, 4th floor, Chicago, IL 60661
ADMISSION: $30 (PAYABLE BY CREDIT CARD IN ADVANCE ONLY) includes appetizers and soft drinks.
VISIT THIS LINK TO PURCHASE TICKETS.

Proceeds from this event will provide scholarships to outstanding students in Argentina who need financial help to pursue a college degree. For more information, please call 312-402-7578 or write to: contact@vision-ar.org.

Alive Learning

2010-02-17T17:19:00.008-06:00

I've just finished an E-Book called TeamBreakers (email me or click on image for more info/preview or send $10 for single use through Paypal to adam@kreativity.net). It's a 40-page resource chock full of ice breakers and team challenges to increase engagement, participation and general aliveness when we bring people together to meet, learn or even hang out.

As I've written before (see You Lecture I Leave), the truth is most adult educational (as well as university and entertainment) occasions might as well just be watched on video later, given the spectator status of most attendees. And no doubt that watching it on video or on the screen (while connected on the phone) will continue to gain in popularity due to its personal convenience and its savings for companies and organizers.

So what we need now is a radical change in our instincts and expectations when it comes to learning together live. We need that experience to be fully alive for all participants--so that the actual time spent is of a completely different quality than what it would be like watching it later on tape or from your desk. We need to tap into, toss around and share the wisdom that the breathing humans in the room have. We need to become an instant creative community that pushes the boundaries of learning together, and asks more of each other than to just sit our butts down in a seat, take notes and keep quiet until the last 10 minutes of Q&A.

That's what I try to do when I speak or give workshops--find ways for people to connect, for us to learn from unexpected sources and to take on challenges that stretch us and gets our brains and occasionally our bodies way out of our seats. You can check me out in my next public "talk" on innovation, which will be Thursday evening, March 4th, in Chicago--more info to come soon.

In my experience "talking to" or facilitating groups ranging from CEOs to secretaries, real estate accountants to early childhood educators (just gave a couple workshops to them this Monday), kids of all ages to genealogical societies, the key is to change our normal ground rules of passivity right away. You as a participant should feel different from the start--and feel excitement about being in the room, being awake, and ready to both be challenged and have fun.

For those of you who have the chance to rule a room, it's time to engage and enliven attendees in new ways--for some tricks and techniques and exercises new and classic, I invite you to check out my new e-book: TeamBreakers: Ice-breakers and Team Challenges to Spark Connection, Creativity and Collaboration by contacting me.

Breaking into a White Mindset

2010-02-10T12:25:00.017-06:00

I'm looking out my window this morning and the world is white, Chicago completely covered in snow. I need to think differently now about people and plans and how I'm going to travel (as I hear a car spinning its wheels in the distance, desperate to leave a parking space). Suddenly the way I see the world has changed, and I have a new mindset that filters how I approach my life.

This time an outside force has caused me to shake up my mindset, but usually it's hard to get unstuck and change how we're seeing a problem or challenge. Creative people hold less tight to their mindsets, constantly seeking out alternative perspectives and foreign experiences--even those that cause discomfort--to keep themselves flexible and more able to adapt to change. Only by cultivating mindset shifts can companies and organizations make breakthrough innovations, like using Gore-Tex fabric for guitar strings and dental floss, or making money through clicks rather than a physical advertisement itself. The mindset of innovation is actually one that moves--that seeks out and considers other lenses all the time.

Trainers/consultants who attempt to teach breakthrough thinking skills like to use visual examples, like the two pictures here, that can play tricks on your perception. They illustrate the ways that your mind can get stuck in one way of seeing, even though there are equally valid alternative ways of seeing the elephant legs or square here. I prefer to offer up "mindset challenges"--puzzles or verbal stories that require you to shift your typical mindset in order to solve them. Here are three to challenge your mind, including one I previously shared when writing about Multiple Intelligence theory:

1. A great mathematician determined that half of eight can actually be zero. How is that possible?

2. A father and his son are out for a drive and get into a terrible accident. The father dies immediately but the son, seriously injured, gets rushed to the hospital emergency room. The surgeon comes in, takes a look at the boy, and says, "I can't operate on him; he's my son." How is that possible?

3. Mary and Jonathan are lying dead in the middle of the kitchen floor in a puddle of water and broken glass. A nearby window is open with a blustery wind outside. What happened?

You might remember these from your games of childhood--and please share others in a comment if you have a good one. What they show, especially in a group where several people are unable to figure them out, is how easily we can get stuck in and unable to break a mindset. Together we can then explore ways to get unstuck by seeking alternatives, challenging assumptions and shifting intelligences. Those of us dealing with snow here Chicago probably get a little more practice at doing those things than you lucky (but perhaps less creative?) people in warmer climates...

1. In this case the answer can be found only when you shift from one intelligence to another, from mathematical to visual: Visually cut 8 in half.

2. Despite strides in women's rights, this one still results in more than half of each group unable to figure it out, demonstrating biases we may not believe we have.

3. Since you didn't have a whole lot to work with here, you have to be good at challenging some of your assumptions. Mary and Jonathan, it turns out, are fish whose bowl fell.

No Banana Fever at the Grammys

2010-02-03T12:50:00.015-06:00

I'm a big fan of J.D. Salinger, who passed away this week at 91, and of the Grammy Awards, which celebrated music in its stunning spectacle of creative performance on Sunday. Now, Holden Caulfield would likely take issue with the superficial celebrity culture of pop music. As you may recall, Holden, the narrator of Salinger's classic novel Catcher in the Rye, detested "phonies" and gave voice to that part of us that resists conformity and the inauthentic compromises of growing up. I'm sure he would have been disgusted by the idolatry and image-consciousness of the Grammys.

But here's the thing: Holden suffered from "Banana Fever"--as described in Salingers' unsettling "Perfect Day for Bananafish," the first tale of his Nine Stories, one of only four published books which reflect the writer's brilliant combination of uncanny dialogue, telling detail and conflicting angst of a post-World War II privileged generation.

In "Perfect," Seymour Glass (who really is the central character of Salinger's work, a zen-like genius whose New York family populates many of his stories) is explaining the "tragic life" of an imaginary species of "bananafish" to a young girl named Sybil as they look out onto the ocean. "They swim into a hole where there's lots of bananas," he says. "Once they get in, they behave like pigs...after that they're so fat they can't get out of the hole." "What happens to them?" asks the unsuspecting Sybil. "They die," Seymour replies. "They get banana fever. It's a terrible disease."

While the symbolic significance of banana fever may be debated forever, I take it like this: Holden--and many would-be creators--take in and feel so much from life and relationships but can't find a way out of their hole to express themselves. The love that Holden felt for the most authentic and uncorrupted people (Salinger the hermit too--sadly, he seemed to feel there were few left on earth) was so trapped inside him that he became more and more bloated. He suffered from the resentment, frustration and likely gastric reflux common to all of us who aren't able to relieve the pressure by sharing our talents and creativity with the world.

And that's why I love the Grammys--a show where no one ever suffers from banana fever. Instead we get to revel in the full flowering of talent, creativity, nerve and courage. Whether it's the ravaged and riveting Lady GaGa, joined by the still-inspiring Elton John (video below) or the high-flying Pink, her voice perfectly modulated despite the fountain of her body spinning in mid-air (this video is currently unavailable but it's worth finding), the Grammys provide the forum for demonstrating how some of the greatest musical performers of our time get completely get out of their holes and show us what's inside.

It's easy to be a critic about music or fashion or art, but I can't be when watching the Grammys. I love that the performers do not play it safe, that Taylor Swift is joined by Stevie Nicks, that the costumes and choreography of the Black Eyed Peas make my eyes stop blinking. There they are, the Peas, screaming out, "Fill up my cup. Mazel Tov!" and manifesting in celebration the love that incapacitated Holden. This is authentic creativity--full expression, no repression, often with freak flags flying--and, come to think of it, I believe even Salinger would approve.

Three Paradigm Shifts Needed for Innovation

2010-01-27T17:48:00.004-06:00

"We need to make 2010 what Obama should have made 2009: the year of innovation."
~Thomas Friedman in the New York Times

As I continue to speak out, discuss with others, and read/hear thought leaders grappling with how to make our culture more innovative, I am struck by common themes and agreements. Clearly, almost all of us see the need for change, and the need to support efforts that will bring about more creative solutions--in education, in organizations, in cities. We need more stimulation (rather than just stimulus) to get us excited about innovation and entrepreneurship, writes Thomas Friedman in the New York Times a few days ago. "The best way to counter the Tea Party movement, which is all about stopping things," he writes, "is with an Innovation Movement, which is all about starting things."

But an innovation movement needs to shift our quite-stubborn mindsets that are currently not serving us well or promoting creative action. Here are the three key paradigm shifts necessary for cultural innovation that I see, with recent confirmation in the pages of a couple of our few-remaining national publications.

1. The valuing of the right brain. It's one thing to say we need to be creative, but it's quite another to support, value and honor those things which improve our creative, right brains. Corporate America in particular still has a hard time valuing anything that appears too "touchy-feely" or that can't be measured easily through profit and loss. But as Einstein said, "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted." Recent commentators have been championing liberal arts--which support this blog's emphasis on right brain power--in order to boost innovation. "If the country is to prosper--economically, culturally, morally," writes Jon Meacham in Newsweek, "we have to trust the institutions, old and new, that nurture creativity." Even MBA programs are beginning to find ways to increase right brain education, according to a recent New York Times article. Roger Martin, the new dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, describes his goal as a kind of “liberal arts M.B.A." and other programs are increasing focus on thinking differently and using design thinking to solve problems. The next step is for companies to put actual money behind programs that increase right brain thinking of their employees.

2. Collaboration across Disciplines. We are realizing that new solutions must come from a kind of collaboration that breaks down silos of expertise and combines perspectives and wisdom from many. We are currently set up--in academia, in business, in government--with very little communication between departments and domains. It's time to be multidisciplinary. CEO of IBM Sam Palmisano just wrote, "We will need ongoing, structured collaboration among city agencies; across business, the nongovernmental sector, academia and communities; and among cities and regional authorities. And that's going to require that we develop new skills for both managing people and leading organizations." Both because innovation comes most commonly from the intersection of disparate ideas, and because our economy demands now that we share best practices and help each other solve difficult challenges, collaboration across disciplines must become a real priority. That means working on our collaborative skills, as some MBA programs in the aforementioned article are doing. It also means we need more people who are comprehensivists, able to facilitate dialogue and problem solving among different groups.

3. Act for the long term and not just the short. This is currently America's Achilles' Heel, perhaps the one change of mindset with which most people wholeheartedly agree, but often feel helpless about. To become an innovative culture, we must insist that the quarterly earnings report, the short-term R.O.I., and the next primary election cannot solely determine our behavior. A company can't be innovative if every new R&D project must prove its worth within a year, a requirement of one local large company that is handcuffing an employee I just spoke with. Short-term thinking, especially one ruled by data and numbers and not human values (Google getting out of China appeared to be a rare exception), is killing us as a culture. It limits creativity and prevents the adoption of unpopular-though-healthy policies and practices, regardless of how much the current system is limping along. Every expert in innovation knows that only by allowing for failure and taking risks, even during hard times, is innovation possible. And yet right now as a country we can't solve any of our persistent problems--you name them--because of the suffocating idolatry of the short term.

I found myself typing with rather exasperated fingertips here, as we are just hours away from the State of the Union. I'm not feeling particular hopeful that we can shift paradigms, despite some convincing clamoring for it. How about a little help from you, my elusive reader? Can you share any signs you see that we are valuing the right brain, collaborating across disciplines and acting for the long term?

Making Sense of our Urgency, Making Art out of Radishes

2010-01-20T16:59:00.006-06:00

Still tasting the tortillas from my recent excursion to Mexico, I am most struck by one cultural difference here: a distorted sense of urgency of American life. We always have somewhere we have to get to, something else we must do, this to get done, that deadline to meet. It's a badge we wear. Now, I know some of these tasks are indeed important right now, and that productivity is a hallmark of who we are. But, as un-American as it may be, I’m not ashamed to admit that I don’t like being a rat back running on my wheel of "shoulds."

Despite a more tranquilo relationship with time, the state of Oaxaca, like other areas of Mexico, is surprisingly safe, efficient and culturally vibrant. Creativity flourishes there, from its mole sauces to unique art contributions: black and green pottery, woven rugs and its colorfully painted woodcuttings known as alebrijes. But most amazing was the display of creativity during the Night of the Radishes, every December 23rd, where I and others waited in line for hours to see what artists could do with the otherwise inert and inedible root, which grows all around Oaxaca City. I've included a couple of examples.

I don’t believe we should be sacrificing our sense of well-being—let’s admit it, our happiness—for the currency we now trade in, one that ties our sense of self with how busy we are and how many things we can check off our to-do list. As I’ve argued before, our culture of perpetual-tasking and doing-rather-than-being ultimately compromises the breathing room we need for our creative selves, and fosters a consumerist rather creator culture.

In a new ChangeThis article, Olivia Sprinkel mirrors my own contentions with her “Creativist Manifesto,” saying our most important choice right now is whether to be a Consumer or Creativist. She makes some thought-provoking distinctions between the two: having vs. being, certainty vs. uncertainty, movement vs. stillness, answers vs. questions. “To be a Creativist,” she writes, is “to reclaim the right to our individual identities; to play an active role in shaping and in creating our lives from the inside out; to fulfill our need to create which is part of all of us.” Click here for more.

I have to admit: I struggle with this myself. I am an American, and I do feel the pressure of doing more, of finishing and publishing a book or three ASAP, of proving my worth through what I can say I've accomplished today. I am part of this culture that believes that claiming certainty to right answers will help my chances at success, even if I know that belief is as distorted as our incessant sense of urgency. Let's help each other answer this more-urgent-than-we-realize question: How do we find the right balance?

Adam speaking on creativity Friday Morn

2010-01-13T06:30:00.002-06:00

My Innovation on my Mind Blog will resume next week, but in the meantime for those early risers in the Chicago area...

Come join me downtown this Friday morning for a talk on creativity, innovation and organizations, a free event sponsored by the Internal Consulting PDN of the OD Network Chicago.

Date: Friday, January 15th, Time: 7:30 - 9:00 AM, 9-10 AM optional open discussion, networking

Location: Northern Trust, 181 W. Madison - 7th floor, Chicago

RSVP REQUIRED for building access. You must send an email to lw56@ntrs.com at Northern Trust to be able to attend the meeting.

TOPIC: Raising Your Innovation Quotient: Creativity Competencies for the 21st Century. Speaker: Adam Shames

Now more than ever all organizations need to raise a different kind of IQ—the Innovation Quotient—to flexibly embrace change and continually improve the ways they serve their customers and stakeholders. In this interactive session, organizational consultant and creativity expert Adam Shames will explore today’s innovation imperative and share the key creativity competencies necessary for individual and organizational innovation. You will learn more about the mindsets and skills that boost creativity—and experience for yourself ways to develop these competencies in others and embed them as part of a more innovative culture.