Business as Art by Stanford Business Professor Michael Ray

Business as Art by Stanford Business Professor Michael Ray

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  1 BUSINESS AS ART The uncreative life isn’t worth living. Ted Nierenberg Founder Dansk International Designs, Ltd. Creativity is within everyone. That is a redly wild statement. ButI redly think it’s true. Rene McPherson Former CEO Dana Industries Imagination is more important than knowledge. Albert Einstein Business is my art. Robert Marcus CEO, Alumax, Inc. For most people, the word creativity is more easily applicable to art than to business. You expect the Picassos of the world to experience creative breakthroughs, but are less convinced that business people have anything to be creative about. But a wise man has said, “Art is basically the production oforder out of chaos,” and isn’t chaos the natural environment of business? In speaking to our class, Wayne Van Dyck, founder of Windfarms, Ltd. and several other enterprises, had this to say: The highest artform is really business. It is an extremely creativeform and can be more creative than all the things we classically think of as creative. In business, the tools with which you’re working are dynamic: capital and people and markets and ideas. (These tools) all have lives of their own. So to take those things and to work with them and reorganize them in new and diferent ways turns out to be a very creativeprocess.
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  4 ESSENCE Dozens of course speakers and hundreds of MBA and Sloan Manage- ment students and workshop participants have confirmed over and over again that successful business people approach their problems creatively. They might not verbalize in terms of art, but they express in myriad ways the same approach that artists do: They become totally immersed in ex- pressing their inner visions, knowing that their chief challenge is to or- ganize familiar materials in a fresh way. They are curious, adventurous, experimental, willing to take risks, and they are absorbed in meeting the challenges of their working day. But even if the regeneration and sustenance of American business has been due to such creative individuals throughout its history, how does this relate to you now? The answer is that you too can contribute creatively, and by developing your own inherent creativity, you can lead a completely fulfilling and valuable life, both in and outside of business. You can live your life as a work of art. The Heuristic Approach The value of developing your inner resources becomes apparent as you look more deeply into the nature of creativity. Theresa Amabile provides this scientific definition in her book The Social Psychology of Creativity: A response will be judged as creative to the extent that (a) it is both a novel and appropriate, useful, correct, or valuable response to the task at hand and (b) the task is heuristic rather than algorithmic. The (a) of Amabile’s definition is easy: What you do is creative if it is new, different, and helpful. Thus, if during a drive or walk or business meeting you do anything the least bit unusual that is “appropriate, useful, correct, or valuable,” you are being creative. Even routine activities are likely to elicit something new: new perceptions, a new mood, a new need of the moment, a new decision or response. Part (b) requires further definitions, however. A heuristic is an incom- plete guideline or rule of thumb that can lead to learning or discovery. An algorithm is a complete mechanical rule for solving a problem or dealing with a situation. Thus, according to Amabile, if a task is algorithmic, it imposes its own tried-and-true solution. If a task is heuristic, it offers no such clear path. You must create one. But when is a situation in business totally algorithmic? Isn’t it possible that a task becomes algorithmic only when you approach it algorithmically? It is the premise of this book that a heuristic response to problems is the open-sesame to personal creativity in business. Each of the following chapter titles are heuristics, and each chapter provides explanations, actual business experiences, and exercises for living with these credos or heuristics. Since heuristics are rules of thumb or guidelines for discovery, they relate to exploring your creativity as a road
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  BUSINESS AS ART 5 map relates to exploring a new area. Just like a road map, our heuristics don’t tell you exactly what to do on yourtrip, when to leave, what vehicle to use, what route to take, or how far to go in what time period. They allow your own creativity to determine its own path. One student discovered: Creativity isn’t a destination, it’s a journey. With this heuristic approach to business, you can see that creative behavior is integral to business, because such behavior is useful, resource- ful, correct, valuable, and self-expressive—not different for the sake of difference. Creativity in business is a way of life. lt is an ongoing process, not a series of isolated aberrations. It is a productive attitude developed by individuals throughout their business lifetimes, not a random good idea that happens to work. Creativity thrives at all levels and in all phases of business. Beginning clerks, corporation heads and everyone in-between can be creative. This includes data analysts as well as the idea men and women in marketing and advertising. Our approach also implies that creativity is more individual than organi- zational. Some people live creatively in smokestack industries in the American Midwest. Others stagnate in Silicon Valley. It’s easier to be creative in a company whose policies invite it, of course, but corporate policy is not a requirement for individual creative expression. Your Creative Experiences The word “heuristic” has the same Greek root as the exclamation “Eureka!” so often accompanied in comic strips with the flashing light bulb of a new idea. The Eureka! phenomenon has been a part ofdiscussions on creativity ever since the day Archimedes reportedly ran naked through the streets shouting “Eureka!” (I have found it)—having discovered, as he sat in a bath, his principle for identifying a metal’s composition by the water it displaces. Have you had any Eureka! experiences lately? If we ask our students on the first day of class to rate themselves on a creativity scale, many put themselves below average. For that reason, we confront them with the task of recalling a time when they had a great idea, one that solved an important problem for them. By merely contemplating their own past experience and hearing the experiences of others, they recognize the presence of their own creativity. You can do the same thing with the following exercise. As with all the exercises in this book, just reading the directions and the sample experi- ences can give you a sense of what the outcome will be for you if you complete the exercise. In this case, it may be enough for you to just quickly remember a time when you solved a problem. Or you might try doing this in a meditative way, as follows:
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  6 ESSENCE Sit comfortably, with your back straight and your hands in your lap. Close your eyes and breathe deeply into your belly. Notice your stomach rising and falling as you breathe from your center, doing easy abdominal breathing. Now think ofa time when you had a great idea—one that solved a problem or dealt neatly with a situation. It doesn’t have to be a business idea. If it was briefly important to you, that’s enough. With youreyes closed, breathing from your center, remember how it felt to have that idea. What was the specific problem? How long did you struggle, and against what? What emotions did you feel? How did your rational processes go? What was the Eureka! moment like? What were the surrounding conditions? What happened to you and your idea next? Was it actually used’? How did that come about? Enjoy the memory for as long as you like. When you open your eyes, consider taking the time for further exploration. You might write down the details, your feelings, and the upshot of this creative experience. Over the past twenty years or so, thousands of people from all sorts of academic and business settings have done this exercise with us. No matter how uncreative someone believes himself to be, he soon recalls a past idea, and he eventually recalls many. These episodes areevidence ofthe inherent creativity in each individual. Many of the great ideas, like the following two, are business-related. Bill Camplisson, now director of marketing plans and programs at Ford-Europe, tells of a time when design engineers couldn’t find a cost- effective way to produce, for a new sports car, bucket seats that would automatically adjust to body contours. Months of work seemed wasted on exorbitantly expensive mechanical models. One night Camplisson sat back, exhausted, in one of these seats and started daydreaming ofplaying on the seashore as a child. A big guy steppedon his beach ball, crumpling it. Camplisson (the child) started to cry. His father came running and pushed in the edges of the ball. Eureka! The ball popped out, as round and firm as new. The dream beach ball exploded in Camplisson’s mind. Through its dynamics, the engineers created a cost-effective design for bucket seats that responded to body contours. A second example of a great idea comes from Mary Lou Shockley, now chief financial officer of the Spectrum Services division of Pacific Telesis. She relates that she had presented to her company, at that time Pacific Telephone, an analysis of their poor performance in the timely installation of data services. She was flying back to Los Angeles with her boss, Doug Fagg, having an end-of-the-day drink, when: It dawned on me that the responsibilityfor the installation of the service was in the hands of only fifteen people in a department of sixteen hundred. Why not set up a club that would meet every two weeks over lunch to discuss the roadblocks to service installation?
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  BUSINESS AS ART 7 Implementation of this idea required additional ideas and much hard work, but in six months Southern California’s data service went from the worst to the best in the Bell System. Many of the great ideas involve career changes. It seems that creativity blossoms for many people when they are doing something new, something that is forcing them to grow in all parts of their life. Like a new love or the renewal of an old one, a career change forces one to look at things in fresh ways. Some great ideas are very personal and perhaps trivial to the outside world, but they are examples of creativity nonetheless. They give valida- tion to each person’s innercreativity. One man, for instance, was extremely depressed after business and social failures and deaths in his family. His great idea recollection went back to childhood—when he was six years old and was sent with another boy to the principal’s office to be disciplined for fighting. By telling the principal they were friends (having formed an uneasy alliance in the hall enroute), they avoided punishment. He applied that childhood success to his adult depression by making friends with himself. As with Camplisson’s bucket-seat breakthrough, the solution came through a daydream. It led to his getting on with his life in a very positive way. Your Inner Creative Resource Reviewing your great ideas and those of others gives you impressions of the creative process. It seems that creativity starts with some problem or need and moves in various ways through a series of stages, consisting of information-gathering, digestion of the material, incubation or forgetting the problem, sudden inspiration (when the conditions are idiosyncratically right), and, finally, implementation. But the creative process can be distinctive for every person and every idea. More important than striving to pin down the process is getting some experience and practice in living with your enormous, almost unfathom- able, inner creative resource. Jim Benham, founder of Capital Preservation Fund as well as of a performing jazz band, says this about his own creative process: I really do get a lot of good ideas when I play my horn. This type of meditation i’m describing is a very creative process WhenIpractice my . horn, I don’t look at music. 1 don’t read a note. I simply play, I play melodies that come into mind. Iplay scales. I play slow exercises. I’ll be playing my horn and all of a sudden some business thought pops into my head. I’ll go write it down. I don’t know how to explain it, but that’sjust what happens. Where do ideas come from? Benham is not alone in his puzzlement; the source ofcreativity has been amystery throughout the ages. When you have
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  8 ESSENCE an idea or when you have an experience of your own potential, what is it that you are experiencing? What can you expect ifyou were to fully realize your potential’? In some sense you can’t describe your inner creative resource in words. It is the very fact that it is beyond words that makes it so potentially powerful in your life. So we emphasize experiences in this book—experiences of creative people in business and experiences you can have. But let’s give you a starter description ofyour true potential. Your inner resource is so immediate and yet timeless, so basic and overarching, so individual and also universal that we have chosen the word “Essence” to describe it. Our speakers and students, many philosophical traditions and even principles of great art cry out with what this creative resource can mean in business and life. First, your inner creative Essence provides the quality of intuition: a direct knowing without conscious reasoning. Intuition has always been a powerful mainstay of great business, but until fairly recently it has been denied as a business tool in the era of overdependence on analysis. This is no longer true. Business people now speak of intuition with pride. It is considered a mark of management ability. Artists would relate intuition to the art principle ofdesign. And the word “design” describes perfectly what you are doing when you use your intuition. You see instantly with clarity the design ofa solution, a design for your life. But intuition alone is not enough either to describe your Essence or to sustain a creative life. A second quality, will, begins to fill in the picture. lt is the part of you that can take responsibility. It is the ground of your creative actions. People who are creative in business have a compelling vision or mission, and this exemplifies will. It is most directly related to the art principle ofunity, and it does have that characteristic ofunifying, giving you a singular purpose to integrate all your creative breakthroughs. The third quality of Essence is joy. This book could have been called The Joy of Business because, for all the work and frequent difficulty that creativity entails, it always brings a sense ofjoy. When you get a hint of your own creativity or potential, you always feel this bright, shimmering quality ofjoy. It is best related to the art quality ofbalance. When you have balance within yourself and between all parts of your life, you experience the joy of the flow ofcreativity. We often talk about creativity in terms of breakthrough. And to break through a wall of fear and criticism that might stop you, you need a fourth quality, strength. Creative business people take appropriate risks. Their strength allows them to do that without even seeing risks as risky. This inner strength overcomes fear. This Essence quality is most closely related to the art principle of contrast. Just as an artist—a painter or a photographer or a choreographer or a composer—relies on contrast to make a strong point, the creative businessman has the strength to be new and different when new
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  BUSINESS AS ART 9 and different is exactly right. You have this strength within you, waiting to be tapped. Finally you can draw on a fifth quality of Essence, compassion, to completely bring your creativity into the world. This compassion isn’t the mushiness of do-gooders. Instead it is loving kindness, first for yourself and then for others. When you operate from this compassion you nurture your own ability, recognizing your own creativity and that of others. It causes you to experience the ultimate Eureka! feeling of “I Am.” Creative business people can implement their creativity so well because they have that confidence in their own creativity and bring it out in others too. Compassion of this sort is best related to the art principle of harmony, and you can see how it can create harmony, not only among all the qualities of Essence but also in your business life. Intuition, will, joy, strength, and compassion—these qualities of Es- sence form your creative base. Consider what your life would be like if you lived every moment with what you can have at your beck and call. Philosophical and psychological traditions often emphasize the enormity of Essence by characterizing these qualities in totalities: infinite intuition (design), complete will (unity), absolute shimmering joy (balance), over- whelming strength (contrast), and boundless compassion (harmony). This vision ofcreativity is far wider anddeeper than mastery ofproblem- solving techniques. It is also far more personal, but at the same time impersonal. We look within to find our own individual and universal source. That source has been called the inner self, the Self, the hidden mind, the divine spark, the Divine Ego, the Great I Am, God, and Essence. Some say that the very purpose of human existence is to get acquainted with your own essential qualities and express them in your daily activities. Whether it is the purpose of life or not, it is a fine definition of personal creativity: living every moment from your Essence. Bringing Art into Your Business Life A question that has occurred to many thoughtful people might be coming to your mind now. If you have this inherent creativity within you, this Essence with its five magnificent qualities, why hasn’t it appeared more often? Why haven’t you been more naturally and consistently creative? The answer is that your creativity has been inhibited by fear, negative personal judgment, and the chattering ofyour mind. Your creative Essence is often blocked by what is called the false personality, the ego or the external self. And the key to personal creativity in business is in eliminating the conflict between false personality and Essence. The creativity techniques from the 1950s, such as brainstorming, do little to deal with this basic conflict—a conflict that keeps you from being consistently creative. Trying to destroy the false personality also has problems, because you c~n damage
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  I0 ESSENCE or submerge aspects of your persona that are truly valuable to developing your full potential. Your best approach is to awaken your own Essence by experiencing it strongly; then you can intelligently overcome your own false personality as your true self manifests itself more and more in your life. This strategy builds on the kind of experience we have all had; a deep, personal love for someone. Such love is an experience ofEssence. We know that when we’re in love we are not very much affected by fear, negative internaljudgments, or the endless chatter of a broken-record mind. Of course it is not possible to fall deeply into love every day before we go to work. At least it’s not possible for most of us. But it is clear that outstanding business people are successful because they deeply love what they do; they seem to live directly from Essence, without static from a false personality. Only a few people naturally find this kind of love for their work and art in their life. For the rest of us, the Stanford course and this hook offer ways to repeatedly experience personal creativity. With practice it becomes natural to replace confusion with will, fear with strength, negative judgment with intuition, and the ceaseless mental chattering with joy and compassion. The heuristics will help you to find your way. In the next four chapters they are used, along with exercises and experiences, to give you four essential tools—almost super-heuristics—that you need to develop in order to manifest your creativity fully. These tools are: faith in your own creativity, absence of negative judgment, precise observation, and penetrating questioning. In fact you had and used these abilities as a child. The next four chapters—the section called Preparation—will help you rediscover them. Of course you can’t have creativity without a problem or issue in your life. When we ask business people what is bothering them, the answers fall almost entirely into five categones: career or purpose in life, time and stress, balancing personal and professional life, issues of money and self-worth, and bringing personal creativity into the business organization. Do they sound familiar to you? They are so pervasive that we now call them the five challenges. They must be met in order for you to have a fully creative life in business. The last five chapters of the book—in the section called Inspiration and Implementation—each concentrate on one of these five challenges. We trust that as you live with the heuristics, develop the essential tools and apply them to the challenges in your life, your true creative potential will manifest more and more in business. You will become an artist in the largest possible sense.