Brought to you by Jeff Thoren, DVM

“The things we fear most in organizations -- fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances -- are the primary sources of creativity.”  -- Margaret Wheatley

Who wouldn’t agree that innovation, creativity and change are essential elements for survival in today’s competitive business landscape?  As it turns out, these things are a lot harder said than done.  According to the late Gordon MacKenzie in his insightful and refreshingly fun book, “Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace,” organizations naturally favor a type of corporate normalcy (i.e. conformity with the “accepted model, pattern, or standard” of the corporate mindset) which stymies originality and creativity.

Where Have All The Geniuses Gone?

“All children are artists.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.”  -- Pablo Picasso

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 1 of “Orbiting the Giant Hairball.”  MacKenzie describes his experiences visiting local grade schools to demonstrate his hobby -- steel sculpting …

Arriving early in the morning, I’d set up shop in the school’s art room or gymnasium.  Most commonly, the schedule had me visit with one grade at a time, spending about 50 minutes with each.  As I was putting on my welding goggles and scarred leather apron, the teachers would heard the children in, barking orders at them to sit cross-legged on the floor in rows facing the semi-circle of sculptures and equipment arranged at one end of the room.

“Chatter!  Chatter!  Chatter!  Chatter!  Chatter!”
“Quiet, children, quiet.”
“Chatter!  Chatter!  Chatter!  Chatter!  Chatter!”
“Quiet.  Joel.  Cindy!  Quiet!  Now!”
“whisper whisper whisper whisper whisper whisper”
“Shhhhhhh!”

With the coming of silence, the children’s faces took on a certain solemnity.  Satisfied that order had been attained, the teachers would retire to the back of the room to lose themselves in grading papers, leaving me, for all practical purposes, alone with the children.  I always began with the same introduction:

“Hi!  My name is Gordon MacKenzie and, among other things, I am an artist.  I’ll bet there are other artists here, too.  There have to be with all the beautiful pictures and designs you have hanging in your classrooms and up and down the halls.  I couldn’t help but notice them when I first got here this morning.  They made me feel wonderful!  Very energized.  So many bright colors and cool shapes.  I felt more at home when I saw them because they made me realize there are other artists here, besides me.  I’m curious.  How many artists are there in the room?  Would you please raise your hands?”

The pattern of responses never varied:

First grade: En mass the children leapt to their feet, arms waving wildly, eager hands trying to reach the ceiling.  Every child was an artist.
Second grade: About half the kids raised their hands, shoulder high, no higher.  The raised hands were still.
Third grade: At best, 10 kids out of 30 would raise a hand.  Tentatively.  Self consciously.

And so on up through the grades.  The higher the grade, the fewer children raised their hands.  By the time I reached sixth grade, no more than one or two did so and then ever-so-slightly -- guardedly -- their eyes glancing from side to side uneasily, betraying a fear of being identified by the group as a “closet” artist. 

I’d tell the sixth graders, “I think you are being tricked out of one of the greatest gifts every one of us receives at birth.  That is the gift of being an artist, a creative genius.”

Genius is an innocent casualty in society’s efforts to train children away from natural-born foolishness (i.e. creativity).  From cradle to grave, the pressure is on to be “normal” (conforming to an accepted model, pattern, or standard).  But creativity and genius have not so much to do with being normal as being original.  Our creative genius is the fountainhead of originality.  It fires our compulsion to change.  It inspires us to challenge norms.  Creative genius is about flying to new heights on untested wings.  It is about the danger of crashing.  It is amorphous, magical, unmeasurable, and unpredictable.

We must override our herd longing for security through sameness and seek the help of our natural genius. 

Here’s this month’s online feature article …

How Is Your Company Like a Giant Hairball? -- by Anna Muoio

From Fast Company -- December 1997/January 1998

Highlights from the article:

• So, why the hairball analogy?  No, it has nothing to do with your cat!  An organization -- any organization -- is a Giant Hairball.  A hairball is an entangled pattern of behavior.  It’s bureaucracy, which doesn’t allow much space for original thinking and creativity.  What begins as a delightful spark of newness evolves, over time or under pressure of prior experience, into an intricate mass of gluey fibers.  It’s the corporate tendency to rely on past policies, decisions, procedures, and processes as a formula for future success.  All of this creates an inextricable knot of corporate normalcy -- an entanglement that grows over time.  As the mass increases, so does its gravitational pull.  And what does gravity do?  It drags things down.  But hairballs can be effective.  They provide a necessary stability.  It’s not the job of the hairball to be vibrant, alive, and creative.
    

• What does it mean to orbit the hairball?  Orbiting is vibrancy.  Orbiting is manifesting your originality.  It’s pushing the boundaries of ingrained corporate patterns.  It’s striking a relationship with the organization so that you can benefit from what it offers -- its physical, intellectual, and philosophical resources -- without being sucked in by its gravitational pull.  It’s a symbiotic relationship: without the hairball, the orbiter would spiral into space; without the orbiter’s creativity and originality, the hairball would be a mass of nothing.  Orbiting is responsible creativity: vigorously exploring and operating beyond the Hairball of the corporate mindset … all the while remaining connected to the spirit of the corporate mission.
    

• What is the biggest obstacle to orbiting?  A major hindrance to responsible creativity is most organizations’ attachment to outcome -- an obsession with perfect performance and results at all costs.  As soon as you become attached to a specific outcome, you feel compelled to control and manipulate what you’re doing.  And in the process you shut yourself off to other possibilities.  It’s hard for organizations to understand that creativity is not just about succeeding.  It’s about experimenting and discovering.  You need to give yourself permission to create while understanding that you may fail.  The results may not be in the form that you expected, but they will always provide a learning opportunity and bring value.
    

• Is there a recipe for creativity?  Ultimately, you have to follow your heart, not a recipe.  Everything you need to live creatively lies inside you.  As soon as you know (originality and creativity begin with knowing yourself) and embrace yourself fully, you have no choice but to orbit.  In the end, the most important creative skill is the ability to listen to yourself -- and to trust what you’re hearing.

For the full text article, go to …
http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/12/hairball.html

Next Month

Learn about the six myths of creativity.  Have you been operating under the wrong assumptions?

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