Creativity As A Dirty Word

Dear reader, good Monday to you. I hope you will not categorise what follows as cheating because even though I haven't written today's insight myself, it says much that I could have told you, if only I didn't feel still so raw about the years I wasted by inhabiting a corporate cubicle. I know, it's easy to say with hindsight, but life must be lived forwards, yeah yeah yeah. 

As you may recall, I receive Hugh's newsletter, which is a Monday-to-Friday cartoon with a few paragraphs of commentary. I have ravishingly talked about Ignore Everybody in the past, hence it should come as no surprise that I am, again, looking up to Hugh's work for inspiration. Oh, and just to be clear, one of the advantages of being one of the newsletter's subscribers is that I can reproduce the newsletter while giving it appropriate accreditation. Subscribe yourself and you too will be able to get this beautiful daily surprise in your inbox.

So where and why is creativity a dirty word? 

I've been working as a "creative" professional.

One thing I've learned over time is, clients don't like the word "creative". They really don't.

Why? To steal shamelessly from my good friend, Mark Earls:

'I think it embarrasses the grown-ups: a lot of folk think business is some separate rational sphere of activity, in which maths, analytics and rational thinking prevail (whether it’s in customers’ or employees’ minds). "Creativity" makes things personal – makes you put your balls on the line. It cuts through the crap of “strategy” and all that pseudoscience that we hide behind.'

Yet WE KNOW our future is tied into our creativity, that without it, we're dead. Yet we resist it, anyway, with every fiber of our being.

To survive in the future, we're ALL going to have to get more creative – not just the boys in the black polo sweaters, but every last one of us, regardless of job title.

Ergo, businesses are going to have to get more creative.

Which means businesses are going to have to get more personal.

This is not an opinion; this is reality. Do with it what you will... 

Comments

[drmstream]

"Creative" is too much defined as a type and an outcome rather than an approach, in business and life. To be creative means toake new things, either out of whole cloth or pieces of other things. Many creative souls are artists, but creativity exists within all of us and has a place in everything we do.

Business depends a lot on control and conformity. That makes "new" an obstacle. The issue for business is that it creates a ghetto for creative expression -- a strategy process or a suggestion box. Jar like art has forms -- painting, short stories, photography -- that creative people use to express themselves, businesses needs form that allow people to be creative without being self-conscious or worried.

Great post. (This would be at the top of the comment, but I'm lost inside my iPhone text entry box.)

[Steph]

Oh gosh this is so true. And that is precisely the problem. When I didn't have a creative job, I felt the need to keep my creative endeavours to myself. When they sort of slipped out, I was always looked at with suspicion, just in case I was glassy-eyed for five minutes thinking about my whatever-fill-in-the-blank, as opposed to being glassy-eyed because it happens to all of us from time to time. Being creative upsets the way things are done and if you work in the corporate world (or in age-old institutions, say libraries or most universities), well... good luck with your creativity! You're gonna need it (both the luck and the creativity, if only to keep you sane).