Deborah Khan -- Creative Inspiration

Always worth reading

Said it before  and I will say it again. He is always worth reading. Blatantly pimping a client but when they write as well as this it feels a pleasure.

Read Matthew d'Ancona's Reading Aloud post in the increasingly excellent Coffee House blog. It is my post of the week - I think I read a fair few to make such a bold claim.

A synopsis would be an injustice.  Describes what was clearly a great night.Vital cause of Darfur and Chad supported by Pass On a Poem. Poetry, football, performance, creativity, ex-Blur's Alex James, Fiona Shaw's feet and one of my favourites, Steven Berkoff. It's all in there.

Well crafted. Atmospheric. Informative. Great.

A threefer

Anyone who has stumbled across this blog will surely be familiar with stunningly well designed Presentation Zen. Garr was one of the first people to encourage me with my blog. His comments were very well appreciated and validate this post. I would utterly endorse his description as a mensch. Yiddish for good bloke, apparently.

Three blogging superstars in one hit feels good value indeed.Tags and references to Seth and Dan by Garr has to be a one stop shop for anyone wanting to know what exemplar blogs look like.

I was intrigued at how Dan Pink communicates in front of an audience. Like Garr,  Dan Pink’s A whole New Mind was my book of the year. I’m almost worryingly evangelical about it.

Always fascinating if those who write well can cut it as a speaker and a presenter. They are two distinct states of consciousness. They use both different skills and cognitive processes 

Hence my advice to clients- never read from your own writing as a presenter. We do not speak as we write. Laurence Olivier was one of the few peole who could animate a piece of text. Most of us can't.

Dan sounds like he has the rare ability to emotionally engage in both mediums.

Threefer- the price of one by the way.

Creative leadership- define please, if you can.

Just discovered Darren Rowses' excellent pro blogger. Useful and makes money. Respect, Darren. Thanks Mark. Again.

Trying to nail the attitudes of creative people is tough and this great post was a catalyst to some thinking I have had on a very slow burn. Interesting to see how much my views connect with Darren. Just the language differs. I particularly love Darren's Constructive Discontent descriptor and Flexible Imagination. I think we all have and can still achieve glimpses of those feelings ourselves but a minor discussion point, I feel.

Fascinated at the complexities surrounding the definitions of creative people. I am never sure how useful definitions are. Obviously they inform and provide frameworks but what interests me is how much direction they provide in developing these qualities and behaviours in ourselves.

I have been grappling with this for a while. I run a course “Creative Leadership”. I’m not happy with the title. But gets them in there- we have been over-subscribed for all of the courses for the last two years. And as I design and deliver it, I'm extremely happy that something is working.

Problem for me is that the title feels reductive. Are you a creative leader as opposed to an influential leader or inspirational leader or whatever the fashionable term is this week?

What I’m interested in is how your creative thinking skills and behaviours support you as a leader. How by understanding how to realise your own creative potential, you can learn how to realise the creative potential of those you lead. This appears to be a core challenge for every leader.

Leadership is a complex issue. Notoriously well documented in the myriad of books, training courses, TV programmes, it is a highly complex series of behaviours that are accumulated over a long period of time with support, reflection and commitment to self development.

This does not imply you cannot be an effective leader if you are young. Far from it. It does mean that the process of self-development is on going.

My core challenge has been to identify how a creative leader behaves and communicate? What is the potential impact and influence of these behaviours?

Chris Bilton’s Management and Creativity is top of my "work" pile of reading at the moment. It provides a comprehensive overview of how we can learn from the structures and processes within the creative industries. It’s an excellent analysis of a subject that is so fraught with misconception, is so widely appropriated (who doesn’t think they are a creative organisation?) and so overly used and abused.

I am co-authoring a publication now. More on that soon. Where am I now in terms of some of the qualities of Creative Leaders?

Not definitive. Still very much a work in progress. Combination of what I have experienced in a diverse range of organisations, private and public sector, ages, situations, highly profitable and not for profit. Plus loads of stuff I have read about and tried to capture.

Creative leaders:

• Personalise. They use a variety of  techniques to tap into and realise the creative potential of those they lead to help add value to their organisation
• Identify potential. They have the imagination to spot what people could achieve and realize- they identify as well as realise where someone could be as opposed to where they are now
• Energise. They generate and inspire atmospheres that are tangible. There is a sense of the possible, there is real shift in mood and energy when we are working on the art of what could be. It is a fusion of the intellectual, emotional and physical. We feel sense and know it is happening. They know they need to keep the ball in the air. Lack of motivation kills creativity, dead.
• Use story. They humanise and contextualise everything. They know that we process the world through stories. Our lives are stories. We need to find stories that effect emotional engagement with all of those we lead. Creative leaders create a vision, articulate it through a range of stories and know  how this is somewhere their followers will want to go to. Their stories  offer a call to arms and inspire action rather than an audience marveling at their rhetoric.
• Use stimuli from a wide and diverse range of sources.   They are fascinated by and interested in a range of subjects. They know that everything they read, experience, listen to and see will one day be of value in the complex cognitive processes of our brain.  Creativity is about connecting seemingly disconnected pieces of information to generate original responses that are of value.
• Navigate between the four stages of the creative process. Understand when to direct, evaluate, make decisions and when to be open to non-judgmental, free flowing, right brain directed germinal   thinking. When to be in left brain mode and when to switch to right brain mode. They know how to challenge, listen, facilitate and direct. They understand where ideas come from, how to grow ideas, how to select, refine and how we learn from realising an idea
• Value Play - as learning, intelligence, fun, energising, a release, a contribution, as exploration...
• Practise non-judgemental behaviour. Judgement short circuits the creative process. They don't mind the inevitable grey areas of confusion that are normal within the development of any idea.  They allows for vague, half formed ideas and possibilities to grow. They see all ideas as      potential.
• Value diversity, contradictions and complexities. (Bilton, 2007)
• See problems as normal. They find challenge  invigorating, obstacles stimulating and they enjoy, rather than are overwhelmed,  by challenge. Darren's term of acceptable is very appropriate here.
• Value right brain directed thinking  skills.    As of vital importance if we are to flourish and grow in the 21st Century.  They understand these thinking skills are as vital as left brain directed      skills within the full cycle of the creative process. They know when when to shift their thinking and how to direct the thinking skills of others. Bilton's description of creativity existing at the edge of the box is so apt.
• Know boundaries and constraints are necessary and can release, rather than inhibit, ideas.
• Lack ego. They know that ideas are tied to ego. Ownership of ideas limits our potential. Creative leaders receive ideas as if they were their own. The more we give out, the more we get back. Ideas come from an infinite number of sources and people. We need to be open to accepting and receiving them. And find ways of capturing these, formally and informally.
• Are not trapped by dogma. They do not live with the results of other peoples thinking. They want to know how to make this organisation, department, project or whatever remarkable. They do not allow it to stand still but are not addicted to change for change sake- it is always about the good of the organisation. They understand that new ideas can amplify, extend and support existing thinking, rather than supersede it.
• Permit a culture where failure is accepted, learned from and moved on. They allow risk. Very, very hard, I know
• Understand the major obstacles to creativity. And do something about it
• Look for rich, not big ideas.
• Like and value, recruit and retain creative people. Dead tough, this one as they understand that the needs and motivations of creative professionals can differ from the motivations (financial etc) of others
• Value creativity. Obvious but essential. I have yet to meet a leader who does not recognise how   vital creative thinking and behaviours are to the health, development and success of their organisation The problem is for many of them is that it simply isn’t top of their priorities right now.

That’s all for now.

Very much a work-in progress. Most of all, quite easy to say. Tough to do

The art of football

Tenuous, as ever, link to the previous post. Just a nice story to hopefully shatter lots of preconceptions.

I am often asked about how and why I worked in Opera. I always tell them because I was asked. More pertinently, by someone who I immediately recognised as a deeply considered, hilarious, supportive, thoughtful, truly creative bloke called Paul. With slight Jarvis Cocker aspirations to boot.

I hope this story challenges one of the many thorns in my side.That is  how certain "creative"€ types are often perceived as taking the moral high ground. As being unapproachable. About serving the needs of their art above all else. About suffering from a sense of humour failure.Those myths are bowel shatteringly inaccurate.

Paul Reeve, Director of Education at The Royal Opera House, sent me this story in response to my Fame At Last post about Interesting 2007, where I am speaking.

The story is just too good to keep to myself.

I've played the City of Varietiestoo!  Simon may appreciate the story of when I was due to do a Saturday matinee there.  Another actor with a football passion and myself realised that the House was going to be woefully thin.  We'd got wind the previous evening that, unless business picked up on the door, the show might get cancelled.  Since Leeds were playing at home that same afternoon, we were rooting for the cancellation.  We carefully picked up any production flyers we saw on our travels round the city and disposed of them, lest someone should pick one up and feel the urge to book for the matinee.  We did debate hanging round the box office and telling people the show was crap, but felt that might be rather disloyal.  Despite the fact that we were in the opening scene, we didn't don any make-up or costume, ordered a cab to wait at Stage Door and prayed.  The announcement that we were cancelled came at 2.25 (5 minutes before curtain up); we were in Elland Road by 2.45.

Great news for the house (or art and money #1)

Congratulations to the well deserving team at The Royal Opera House. The £10 million endowment from The Paul Hamlyn Foundation is however, more than good news. It indicates a potential sea-change in arts funding.

State sponsorship of the arts has generated vulnerability in those whose livelihood depends on Arts Council grants. What’s the alternative? Be dependent entirely on box-office?  For ROH this would inevitably result in endless seasons of La Traviata, Sleeping Beauty… All gorgeous.  Unfortunately leaves little margin for artistic freedom, genuine creativity or experimentation.

Money buys artistic freedom. Lack of money constrains ambitions.

As I understand, the endowment is a capital sum that, through interest and capital growth, provides a long-term income. Effectively a water-tight insurance policy.

Will this unleash a tsunami of demands from arts organisations demanding endowments rather than one off grants? Who knows but it has to be an improvement on the current you're either in or out scenario.

All of the public organisations I know are gearing up for that slightly clichéd expression “a change of administration”. With the prospect of no real increase in arts funding, plus the buoyant public demand for art in all forms, we have to look to new models of sustainability. We need to accept that we are all responsible for the development of our society. Dependency on government subsudy can abidcate responsibility in the wider business community. It is just not something that they "do".

A cultured and creative population is the measure of any civilised society. The ancient Greeks knew a thing or two about that. The Americans appear to have this sussed with a history and value placed on creative philanthropy.

It’s made me think, again, about the relationship between creativity and money. A separate post, I feel.

Whatever debate this raises, it really couldn’t happen to nicer people. Paul Reeve, now Head Of Education, gave me my first break directing (wait for it) a Bollywood version of Turandot. A new commission, we had classical Asian and Western composers, film makers, players form the orchestra, Bollywood choreographers, librettists and me trying to pretend I really knew what I was doing. Plus over 100 young people from Villiers High School in Southall. Wonderful stuff.

This was a very long time before Andrew Lloyd Webber hit the Bollywood trail. Yes, Paul knows the meaning of the word zeitgeist alright. Tony Hall, Chief Executive of ROH, still describes this as a formative experience. In post a few weeks, I will never forget his face, support and enthusiasm as he sat near this very nervous young (ish) director.

 

Well done to all of them. I know their work is about so much more than anyone could ever anticipate.

The power of stuff or where do ideas come from #3

"Photos’re better than nothing, but things’re better than photos ‘cause the things themselves were part of what was there"

David Mitchell, Black Swan Green.

Suggesting clients source an object to prompt ideas is always a big ask. Asking anyone to bring along anything always overloads the task.  People agonise. What will this  say about me? How will I be read? Is it sufficiently intriguing, esoteric, exotic, intellectual… (substitute whatever you worry about when someone asks you to choose an object)

No doubt though that objects are a fantastic starting point for idea generation. Objects have an emotional resonance. They were part of a real story. They hold memories. Their weight and feel engage our senses. Their presence and significance can never be replicated by a photo. They offer potential for metaphor and provide stimuli for linking to an apparently unrelated subject. They can generate genuinely new connections to seemingly unrelated worlds through structured linking tasks.

Show a group of teenage boys a baby’s gas mask from World War 2. It will teach them far more than a text book. I know- I’ve seen it happen 

Black Swan Green- recommend thoroughly by the way. Park your Booker prejudices. Mitchell has a composer’s ear for dialogue. His attention to rhythm, vernacular and idiosyncrasy create characters that jump off the page, nick your curly whirly and ride off on a BMX, flicking the v’s. (He could teach many a presenter a thing or two about writing as you speak.)

A bit of an indulgent 80s nostalgia trip. Describes a- year -in- the -life of a bullied teenage poet, struggling to deal both with his stammer, and the emerging Falklands debacle. Not obliviously a page turner I know but empathetic, honest, hilarious.   

And full of great descriptions of stuff.

Where do ideas come from #2

"Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better."
Samuel Beckett

'nuff said. Encourage an atmosphere where it's okay to fail. Fail yourself. Be prepared to always see the value in trying.

Fear of failure kills the flow of ideas dead.

Where do ideas come from #1

 

Another day, another post about creativity. Except this one from Brandtarot has immediate application.

Concise, provocative, useful and inviting contributions. All good. I loved lots and will plagiarise shamelessly.

A lot of the work I do now is isolated and isolating. Very different to a lot of my work in the theatre where I am surrounded by teams who build the design and development of ideas beyond belief.

I need prompts like this to halt the slippery slope into formulaic models that produce tired, formulaic responses. The last thing clients are paying me for.

For me nothing replaces conversation with others to stimulate ideas. Plus feeding my own creativity by watching, reading, visiting, listening to, experiencing...

Interesting question though. Can you structure and formalise the process at all? Can you adopt a slightly mechanistic approach to extend exploration beyond the immediate and obvious?

I totally agree with the premise of no hard and fast rules. For me it is about more than company culture. No two situations are ever the same. Group dynamics, personal politics, external pressures, degree of response are always variables we can never predict.

All of these would affect what I would do. I am wary of using any model without adaptation and sensitivity. Obvious I know but you need to align yourself with what’s happening in the room constantly.

Here are a couple more additional tips that are very do-able:

Approach the challenge from someone else’s perspective. We tend to be surrounded by people with a very similar world view to ourselves. We may argue about the finer points of last nights Apprentice or the travesty of Leeds United’s relegation but on the whole we are pretty similar. What if we approached the challenge from the view of someone with an oppositional political perspective?  Or a very young child? Or a different point in history? As the post describes “Homogenous teams come up with predictable ideas.”

By considering what the perceptions of these people could be, we add a whole new option of possibilities. Ones that we rarely imagine or perhaps we have begun to censor or feel uncomfortable with. The value is where this thinking leads.  This is very different from a focus group

 

Explore different media. Never fails. Be a bit careful- most people get slightly hung up once the pastels come out and far more preoccupied with their lack of artistic skills then the ability to use imagery to stimulate ideas. You need a warm up to democratize drawing.  Different media (fonts, colours, formats) are linked to different states of consciousness. Do not sit around a large sheet of paper or an endless word document. Capture responses as images, random words, blocks of colour etc. Do not worry about presenting finished ideas. This short circuits options of exploring the rich possibility of where the right side of our brain could take us.

There are hundreds more.

 

I would always avoid unstructured discussion. It is rarely productive and a lot of time is not about the development of ideas but around finding reasons to block.  There are lots of sensory exercises to heighten awareness I would do in silence or suggest a range of music/sound as an underscore.

They all get us out of our head - in the best possible way.

Any exploration needs boundaries, a clear objective and speed or we loose concentration.

But these are merely words on paper. Delivery is all. You have to lift them.  I work hard to inspire an atmosphere where people feel able to take risks. This has taken years of experience, skill and constant reflection. Getting it wrong loads and learning from why we never delivered.  It also requires energy, presence and an understanding of creating possibilities that afford everyone equal space and time to contribute.

It isn’t just keeping the ball in the air. It’s ensuring everyone has an opportunity to hit it as well.

I would be fascinated to see how these tools(horrible word- sorry- can’t think of a better one right now) suggested by Brandtarot  work in practice.

BTW- my absolute favourite but of the post Early on you need a lot of ideas (100), later you should work up (7), these then condense into 3 broad options. These are always the numbers - eg in the case of 3 it is a choice (2 is a dilemma, 1 a compulsion), in the case of 7 that’s how many items people can remember from a list.

Excellent suggestion

A thought. Perhaps Naked’s research refers to Ken Robinson’s thinking that we have creativity educated out of us. Getting it back takes practice. We’ve also lost the confidence to be open with our ideas.

 

 

Good timing Channel 4

MAKE ME A TORY - Channel 4 at 08:25am  on Sunday 13th May 2007

A clunkingly obvious transition from the previous post but let’s tackle the big question. Where do we go from here? Cosying up to Mr Cameron I fear…

Try and Sky + this irresistibly titled documentary. Here’s the billing:

For Daniel Cormack, the thought of nailing his colours to the Tory mast is nothing short of horrific. But can this disillusioned Labour voter do the unthinkable and turn Tory?

From swilling port with the pampered Hooray Henrys of the Oxford University Conservatives, to picking up litter in a muddy field with the gung-ho teenage Tories of the Wirral, to a one-on-one chat with David Cameron himself, Daniel travels the country to find out exactly what it is that modern Conservatives believe and how they see the future of this country.

Sharp and entertaining, MAKE ME A TORY is an accessible and genuinely revealing look at the political movers and shakers who form the future of the Conservative party…and one man's journey through their world.

Declaration of interest here.  Many years ago I taught Daniel his A level that got him swigging at Oxford in the first place. I also directed him as Christopher Ishwerwood in a production of CABARET  that I remain proud of to this day. (see below).

It’s his first independent commission. He is using every ounce of energy and creativity to carve a career in that notoriously hostile and competitive environment - film production/direction.

Dan secured funding from Lord Puttnam and Nick Jones amongst others for his previous short AMELIA AND MICHAEL.  And nabbed Buffy’s Anthony Head as a lead to boot  Check out the one of favourable reviews here. Even managed to snare a positive review form the notoriously picky Hotdog.  Despite my harsh criticism. Sorry Dan but ‘twas ever thus in the past.

I know Dan’s star is on the ascendancy. Then I am a tad biased

BTW- CABARET’S  MC was Dominic Cooper who some of you may know from the original production and film of Alan Bennett’s THE HISTORY BOYS. Another lead was Sam Spruell. Catch Sam in the extraordinarily visceral LONDON TO BRIGHTON. My film of 2006. I was lucky. CABARET had a cracking cast

.

Bye Blair, and thank you.

Big day today. Sad and yes, farewell to someone who has effectively been our spiritual leader  for 13 years.

Whatever your feelings and how you will remember him is not to be judged.

What I do know is that no other government in history have committed as much resources – yes, money - to the understanding, development and promotion of creativity as this one.

I doubt if it will happen again.