Sometimes politics hinders true creativity

Edward De Bono noted in Serious Creativity, that often we pay lip service to creativity but don’t actually do it.   What I have learned should come as no surprise to most, yet it’s what I have found to hinder most creative and liberating efforts to produce organisational learning and innovation, is politics.

Why Politics hinders creativity

Often solutions that should happen aren’t the ones that are implemented.  This is sometimes for reasons beyond our control.  However, it’s been my experience that some solutions that are creative challenge political arrangements.  I have heard it said this way, what is politically attainable and culturally feasible (nod to Checkland) doesn’t necessarily mean the best solution.  Often we dream up the best answers to problems and even in some cases we completely redesign things giving fantastic ideas.  These ideas are wonderful but workplace arrangements and politics hinder there uptake.  In essence an idea can be the ‘best’ answered in theory but through the reality of politics, it will not ever get off the ground.

Creativity isn’t unbounded

The lesson here is the creativity should be nurtured, I cite Google and 3M as examples (see also Semco, Virgin and other such places).   Often though, it isn’t nurtured, it’s squandered and crushed into Dilbert sized cubes.  In the rawest most artistic sense creativity is unbounded but only by itself.  When we apply it to a situation where other people are there to interpret it, it’s subject to their opinions and judgements.  Yet, if the artist is faced with a canvas or a page, they are truly unbounded.  Yet, when the art is released, it’s turn over to the political realities of social structures.  People engage with it, they interpret and reinterpret it and make their own judgements about it.

In essence you can’t predict how creativity will be received even if it seems it really obvious that it’s the best thing to do.  The fact is, there are a lot of areas in our society where we don’t do what is best.  For instance, in abandonded petrol station about a one kilometre from my house were 17 homeless children.  In this country, with our abundant welfare and support it shouldn’t happen but it does.  It’s very sad.

What’s creatively best may not be politically feasible and it may not be accepted socially… even if it’s a great concept.  These realities are not minor hindrances to creativity, they are the foundation of it.  Truly creative solutions must pay attention to things like culture and politics.  If they don’t they run the risk of not being redunant.

In saying all of this, sometimes there is a solution that should be taken up, but often isn’t because of politics.  People protect themselves from change sometimes because of the political structures they build around themselves.  They select the right deputy,  a certain person for a certain task and a cavelcade of yes men and women.  This is an enemy of creativity because it stands in it’s way and hinders it, to no positive end.   Yes, if you have read this far, I have contradicted myself and said that creative solutions need to consider politics and then how political structures hinder it.   Yet, as so often happens in real life, it is contradictory.   We want real change, we seek it because we know we need it, yet we fear it and build structures around ourselves to make sure we don’t change.  What ensues is usually disaster, and we need look no further than recent world events like global warming, financial crises and epidemics.

What can we do to be truly creative?

While we need to be sensitive to politics, social and cultural concerns and we should not ignore them,  on the other hand to be innovative and clever in our practices we need to question our assumptions and learning.  Doing so, offers us the unique opportunity to change.   I have to be cynical at this point and say most people I meet talk of change, but in reality return back to a revised version of the same thing over and over again.  True reframing, political restructure and redesign is rare because it means a complete shift of assumptions, a change in the frame of reference we used to assess things.  Why is this case?  Ask a psychologist, I have no idea!

It is clear to me that people what to be capable of change.  Yet, I am not certain of it.   I hope for it… but I doubt I will see real change in my life time.  There are times when I have seen changes, real creativity at work… yet 95% of the time we fail to change.  I have not given up hope to see real creativity in my life time and as a matter of fact I am committed to see it, wherever I may find it.  However, I suspect that real change and creativity escapes us time and time again.   I would welcome comments with your thoughts.

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