Category Archives: Creativity

Thriving in the New Normal: Change

Posted on October 26, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

 

Screen Shot 2015-10-26 at 12.20.17 PMIt is a truism that the one thing that doesn’t change in life is change; we are constantly dealing with the unknown.  A decade immersed in the performing art and cultural studies gave me a new perspective on the how modern world deals with change.  When directing or acting, I had to accept that great art is not about control.  It is about having discipline in the preparation and surrendering during the performance.  Management, at least the way I had experienced it, is about controlling the environment to ensure flawless execution and reach the expected results. Management is a powerful means to reach one’s ends, but my artistic journey made me realize that in the modern world, our fear of change and our inability to deal creatively with the unpredictability of change lead us to seek control over the process of life.  This means that although management should be about stabilizing our environment to facilitate the natural creative process belying any human activity, we attempt to control the process to secure the results we want; we do everything we can to eliminate the unknown, but in doing so we work against the creative nature of life.

In recent years, neuroscience research has revealed three key facts that may change forever the way we think about and approach creativity:

–       Instinct plays a leading role in complex decision making.

–       Eighty percent of our grey matter is dedicated to nonconscious thought.

–       Imaginative play is one of the most direct means of activating our creativity and problem-solving abilities.

These three discoveries open up unprecedented opportunities for progress, creativity, and efficiency, if we only embrace the instinctual and unconscious aspects of the mind and the randomness and chaos of life.

The uncomfortable part of this is that we are not used to relying on instinct and the unconscious, and we are certainly not used to accepting randomness or chaos.  We are used to seeing life and reality as linear and logical when they aren’t.  Success in modern times mean making a leap from seeing the world as we think it operates to seeing how it really operates.  In reality both life and the whole of the human mind operate in a way that is closer to chaos than to linear order.

In my seminars at L’Oréal, SAP, and other companies, I often recount Edgar Allan Poe’s “A Descent into the Maelstrom,” a story that beautifully illustrates this aspect of chaos theory.  It describes how three brothers go out on their fishing boat only to be caught in “the most terrible hurricane that ever came out of the heavens.”  The storm drives their boat into a powerful whirlpool, the maelstrom of the title.  One brother is thrown overboard into the whirlpool and quickly carried under.  Another brother goes mad with terror. But the third brother is suddenly struck by the awesome beauty of the maelstrom.  With an inner calm he notices that some objects are being spun around at the top of the whirlpool rather than sucked into it.  Unable to convey this to his mad brother, he submits himself to the sea, cling onto a barrel, and rides the maelstrom until it subsides and he is rescued.  In the meantime the mad brother, because he fights the chaos rather than submitting to it, drowns when their boat spirals down to the depths. Although the experience turns the surviving brother’s hair white and makes him look older that his age, it give him a deep insight into the working of nature, and an enduring serenity.

I always remind participants that Poe’s story shows that the way each one of us chooses to handle confusion and chaos may have a huge impact on the final outcome for everybody.  Each brother acted his own way and by doing so chose his own final outcome.  In Poe’s story, when the third brother decides, in spite of his fear, to give up the fight with the maelstrom, he actually facilitates the organizing principle creates all the marvels that have evolved in nature. In our minds, it brings reason, feeling, and instinct into balance, if only we have the wisdom to trust it and stop trying to override it.

 

An Important Listening Exercise to Sharpen and Develop Your Creative Skills

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Excerpted from Francis Cholle’s The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass3

I am going to teach you an exercise, call The Listening Posture, in which you focus on your ability to listen differently.   Listening is very powerful.  It is a receptive function, which is a feminine quality.  Therefore proper listening can greatly help you access the feminine dimension of your psyche and develop your creative sensitivity.  There are many other reasons putting the emphasis on your auditory sense.  Some are scientific; some are related to ancient wisdom and rituals. Professor Alfred Tomatis developed the Listening Posture.  Although designed for therapeutic reasons, it is also a great way to sharpen your sensitivity, and access and develop your intuition.  You can do it anyplace–in your office, or even in a loud environment such as a waiting room.

Instructions for the Listening Posture:

  1. Set your intention: Think about an area in which you would like to get insights.  Make your question open ended.  Write it down.
  2. Sit still in a comfortable chair, feel your seat in the chair.
  3. Leave your legs and arms uncrossed and relaxed.
  4. Close your eye and focus and your breathing.  Breathe naturally.
  5. Relax your diaphragm (allow the muscular “floor” in your abdomen to move up when you exhale and down when you inhale).
  6. Relax your neck and shoulders, lower back, middle back, and upper back.
  7. Relax your facial muscles and the muscles around your upper lip, and tighten the skin of your face up and out to make it more smooth and even.
  8. Pay attention to the sounds in the room
  9. Focus on your right ear (unless you have impaired hearing, it is the one that can relay sound to your brain in the quickest way).
  10. Focus on all high-pitched founds,
  11. Focus on the harmonics of all sounds )the luminescent part of all sounds, like the crest of a wave).
  12. Float in this sonic bath.  Let these harmonics energize you as much as they open you to greater awareness.
  13. Stay in this state for five minutes.
  14. Open your eyes and look around the room.
  15. Look at your question.  Write all the ideas that come to you.

 

Why You Need Intuition in Business (part two)

Posted on August 31, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

 

This week we continue exploring techniques to sharpen and hone your intuition.  For more about the case for intuition in business, check out last week’s post.2

Relax and Practice Noticing

  • the world-renowned mime Marcel Marceau said, “Our body knows things the mind does not have access to.”  The best gateway to information from our subconscious mind about the world around us is through a relaxed body.  The most efficient way to relax our body is not a five-star vacation, it is breathing.  Breathing can dramatically alter our experience in any given moment.  You can do this almost anywhere with a simple meditation.  Sit quietly with both feet on the floor, hands at rest on your thighs, eyes closed.  Don’t try to alter your breathing in any way, just pay attention to it.  Don’t think about anything–not your problems, not even happy things–simply focus on the movement of your breath.  Do this for a minute, or five minutes, or as long as you like,  Taking this little break, even for just five minutes, may at first make you anxious, but give yourself permission to take five minutes in which you do nothing but breathe.  To focus on your breathing, simply notice the movement of your diaphragm–the horizontal muscle that moves up and down in your mid-torso.  when your diaphragm goes, up, you exhale and your rib cage narrows.  When your diaphragm goes down you inhale and your ribcage expands.  Becoming mindful of the movement of your diaphragm is enough to largely improve your breathing.  When you give yourself this permission, your body will relax and your breath will deepen naturally.
  • Pay attention.  It is very easy to stop noticing small things, or even large things.  Buddhists have a practice of mindfulness in which every movement, whether lifting a cup of tea to one’s lips or placing a foot on the ground while walking, is afforded the greatest attention.  Be mindful during a routine event such as eating breakfast; afterward, record the sensations, thoughts, and emotions that arose in the short interval.

After you have tried the exercises from both this week’s and last week’s post, keep practicing the ones that resonate with you.  Over time these exercises will help your intuitive abilities get stronger and will make it more likely that they will become natural part of your daily life. Intuition is a skill not made by either nature alone or nurture alone.  We are born with a capability, and we turn it into a capacity by using it over and over again.  Once you’ve identified the exercise of the few exercises that are most natural to you, with regular practice you will improve your ability to reflect about a decision or a situation beyond pure logic.  This will greatly enhance your ability to pay attention and notice, to trust the unknown and tolerate the confusion that comes with ambiguity and complexity.  You will be more comfortable with your own subjectivity.  It will prevent you from too quickly jumping to a logical conclusion, which would not necessarily get you to the most creative answers

 

How to Create a Work Culture that Maximizes Creativity and Agility

Posted on July 20, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Excerpted from Francis Cholle’s The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-BassScreen Shot 2015-07-19 at 11.59.51 PM

To get the most out of employees in terms of creativity and agility, you need to create a work culture that enables them to explore new ideas freely and fail without fear of reprisal.  A work culture that is open to new ideas is key to success over the long term.  A work culture that honors autonomy generates unexpected–and often lucrative–new products.  A fluid, vibrant work culture resonates with and balances the complexity and unpredictability of today’s business landscape.  The following are some questions that can reveal the state of your work culture as it stands currently.

  • Is your work culture about anticipating your employees’ deeper need for meaning?
  • Is your work culture hierarchical only?  If not, do you have systems in place for informal gatherings, informal exchanges of information, informal participation?
  • Do you really care about people being happy, or do you just give it lip service?
  • Do you make it explicitly safe for people to try new things and to fail?
  • Do you encourage diversity in age, ethnicity, professional background, gender, and sociocultural styles?  If so, how?
  • Do you allow for and promote play?  If so, how?
  • How do you inspire employees’ creativity?
  • How do you create among employees a natural sense of belonging to your organization?

 Each question represents one key aspect of a work culture relevant to the new economic environment.  Answering these questions should help you understand your current work culture and see ways that you can improve it.

 

Stop Thinking and Start Feeling to Gain Key Customer Insights

Posted on June 22, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Excerpted from Francis Cholle’s The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass

Screen Shot 2015-06-21 at 11.44.33 PMCreativity and innovative thinking are great, but the ability to notice the one pivotal piece of information in a creative brainstorming session is key to transforming an organization or making a project truly innovative.  This is why we need to carefully pay attention and notice with our senses, open to the unusual or the irrational, but at the same time analyze and evaluate that information.  Just because something does not make sense from the point of view of logic does not mean that it lacks value.  A simple example:  when Isaac Newton saw an apple fall from a tree, he did not simply see a usual phenomenon of nature.  He was inspired to start thinking about a particular type of motion–gravity–which then revolutionized our perception of the universe.  If he had not been open to his inner feeling of puzzlement, he would have simply seen an apple falling from a tree, and he would not have developed his novel understanding of the workings of the universe through mathematics.

This is why I advise clients to stop thinking and start feeling.  If all we did was to think and only think, we would not allow the sensorial perception and emotions that come along with thoughts to feed our creative imagination.  When we are anchored in our conscious mind, we know only what it knows.  Now ideas–ideas we don’t yet about –cannot be found in our conscious mind, because we already necessarily know everything that is conscious to us!  So the ability of move beyond our conscious thinking an access our unconscious is key to creativity.

And excellent example of the business value of the skill of noticing the unusual can be found in the commercial airline industry.  Many of us have probably wondered how air travel ever became so unpleasant.  What began three generations ago as one of the most luxurious of consumer experiences, an event that people dressed up for and looked forward to, has degenerated to the point that the average consumer approaches it as if preparing for battle.  Today it is an experience marked by bad food (or no food), a smelly environment, narrow seats, poor service, delayed flights, stern-faced flight attendants, shabby cabins, and outdated design.  For frequent business travelers on tight schedules it’s often challenging in both economy and business class alike.  However, one company has been able to provide it clientele with quite a different experience:  Virgin America.

Virgin America, a company that first put its planes in service in 2007, didn’t become an award-winning airline in an industry-wide financial crisis by slashing costs or slashing ticket prices; they did it by raising the bar on design, service and customer experience.  Beautiful design, uplifting colors, clean cabins, warm and personable service, short waiting time to check in, and easy upgrades are among the many ways Virgin America has attempted to make passenger’ experience easier and more enjoyable.  But more important Virgin understand our unconscious needs.  The planes have a mood-enhancing lighting system on board that is reassuring because it relaxes the body and, by doing so appeases our discomfort or fear of flying.  Virgin America also gives all passengers on board the opportunity to order their own food from their seats through a personal digital screen, allowing them to eat on their own schedule.  this last detail is genius because control of one’s own eating schedule is key on an instinctual level. Whether we’re conscious of it or not, managing our hunger at our own will is reassuring.

Both relaxing lights and food on your own time touch the passengers at an instinctual level.  Many will say that they choose an airline based on cost or, for people who can afford it, comfort, and they’ll most likely be sincere.  What they don’t realize, though, is that when they get on board, their reptilian brain is unavoidably evaluating whether they’re safe or not.  And when an airline caters to this basic need, passengers at some level eventually feel it and this positively influences their relationship to the airlines.

So how did Virgin America come to think of these great ideas for the comfort of their passengers?  They put themselves in the shoes of a passenger and truly tried to see and understand the way passengers feel rather than focusing first and foremost on the profitability generated by every ticket sold.  They opened themselves up to their creative imagination by paying attention to two unusual aspects of traveling:  lighting and food service. Two things that were never contemplated before.  Virgin America has been voted the best North American airline multiple times by readers of Condé Nast Traveler, a luxury travel magazine, showing that the ability to notice the unusual is a powerful aptitude, one that can put a company ahead of its competition. 

 

Why You Should Revisit Google’s Interior Design Strategy If You Want Your Employees to be More Creative

Posted on June 15, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-06-14 at 11.33.49 PMExcerpted from Francis Cholle’s The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass

Thinking paradoxically is an exercise in setting linear and logical patterns aside for a while and opening ourselves up to the possibility that solutions and new ideas can come from places that challenge common sense.  To wit, Einstein once said:  “Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything that counts can be counted.”  The question that follows, then, is this: what happens if a company departs from the traditional business approach, where executives focus on reason and results and where everything that count can and must be counted?  Could this company still be successful with a business approach that reaches beyond conventional logic?

The best example is a company that designed the most playful and instinctual work environment we’ve probably ever known.  This company is Google.

Google’s European headquarters in Zurich, Switzerland, offers a slide to take employees to a gourmet company restaurant, swing chairs hanging from the ceiling in study rooms, bathtubs to lie in and relax in front of lit fish tanks in rooms with low light, massage tables and masseurs available for employees’ breaks, and igloo-shaped meeting rooms with penguins and snow as background  It looks like a kindergarten playground, not like the offices of a serious company.  Yet it probably has one of the most analytical and efficient work culture if judged by the number of patents it register every year and its exceptionally high profitability.  This is because Google fully embraces paradoxical business thinking.

First, let’s remember that research shows human productivity does not follow a linear continuum with time.  Specifically, according to Pareto’s principle, people produce 80 percent of what really matters in approximately 20 percent of the time they spend at work.  So when I hear clients complain about summer hours, coffee breaks, or employees’ short days, I always remind them of the result of the study. Timesheets for employees are a relic of the past.  They made sense in the industrial era when the scientific management of labor was implemented to organize work in assembly lines.  But in today’s global economy more and more companies rely on their employees’ creativity for their success.   Because creativity does not follow a linear relationship with time, time management for creative employees shouldn’t either.  For instance, great advertising copy can take weeks or even months to be worked and reworked to final edit, whereas, conversely, a brilliant slogan may come to mind in just a few seconds.  Time spent on copywriting is not a guarantee of success.  So when Google provides employees with space and resources for a break, relaxation, or a massage they actually are managing the 80/20 rule of human productivity very well.  They know that at some point in the day it inevitably becomes useless to require employees to sit at their desk.  Google embraces the paradox of creative time management.  In my work I regularly hear executives in creative firms stating along the lines of conventional wisdom that summer Fridays off are unnecessary and counterproductive and the employees sitting at their desk all day long is their ideal representation of productivity.  They do not recognize the paradoxical nature of creativity management and have a hard time thinking paradoxically when it comes to managing employees’ time.

And what about the slide to get to the restaurant?  What does it do to people? What would it do to you? Do you remember the last time you went down a slide? It’s a physical experience for many of us, it’s fun, but, for others, it may feel risky. In all cases, it involves our body and therefore engages us in our guts and puts us in play mode.  Simply put, it sends people to a place where they can best access their genius.

Similarly, the swing chairs get us literally off of our feet and off of the ground, and take us away from verticality, Language first developed in human beings when we moved from a horizontal position (resting on our hands and knees) to a vertical position (standing on our two feet).  So when we’re sitting back in a swing chair we’re away from the axis of language, which is the instrument of logic.  Therefore sitting in a swing chair takes us away from our rational mind and opens us to our imagination.  Here’s the paradox:  Google is extremely analytical and specific in the steps they take to engage their employees’ creativity and commitment in a playful and instinctive way.  Google is probably the greatest financial success in the history of capitalism.  It’s work reflecting on the face that Google handles the paradox of relying on hardcore brainpower and intellect very well while simultaneously offering headquarters that look more like a school playground than a studious and orderly library.  It obviously understands something that would very likely benefit many other companies seeking higher levels of innovation.  If you wish to have creative and agile employees you need to embrace paradoxical thinking, because creativity does not follow any predictable rule, but rather demands specific ingredients: flexible time management, proper play, physical engagement, and some element of random collaborations, among other things.  In the same fashion, if you wish to tap into more personal creativity you need to embrace paradoxical thinking, because new ideas will not come from common assumptions.

Taking Stock of Today’s Business World

Posted on May 17, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-05-16 at 10.44.13 PMThe best business leaders want to innovate, embrace change, and create new business approaches because they recognize the need to evolve.  And yet in business too many leaders still do things by the book and stick to the logic of reason and results to the exclusion of other ways of thinking.  Too many of us think and operate primarily this way, especially during difficult times.  The uncomfortable reality is that disruptive ideas come from the combination of instinct and play, so we’re pretty much thinking backward when it comes to engaging innovation.  We’re rearranging our companies rather than exploring the many ways we could create a completely different kind of company.  Organization has the potential to add the most value when it follows creative imagination possibilities, no when it precedes it.

Popular thought says that by applying more analysis, focusing more on results, and working harder to get those results, we will get to the new and different.  But that is not the case.   This is a forceful approach to change, but it’s not actually a smart approach to change.  It’s certainly not a very creative approach to change. Given this way to thinking, however it’s no wonder that we’ve developed business models that are hard to sustain.  The fragrance industry, the car industry, and the media industry, for example, have all been predominantly operating in the same way for many years, still try to innovate with reason to get results, and still hoping that if they use the same business models and the same management models they will be able to capture the market, keep sales afloat, and maintain margins.  But that is not in the cards.  In fact, the odds have been against it all along.

On an even larger scale, it’s no wonder that we’ve developed economic models that are not sustainable and that contribute to dwindling resources, climate change, and pollution.  The way we’ve been thinking about development has been through the linear, rational management systems.  But life unfolds according to very different principles.  Most likely, if we haven’t integrated the fundamentals of play, intuition, and instinct into our development models, it’s because we haven’t conceived of them in the first place.  Yet they present a huge opportunity.

It’s clear that we have evolved, progressed, grown, and prospered through a model that largely excludes the fundamentals of our ecosystem.  But we’ve reached a place where the disconnect is so big that we have no choice but to think differently–really differently–and innovate radically. Play, intuition and instinct show us how to do just that.  They show how we can think in a way that includes the fundamentals of life, the randomness of play, and the power and adaptive nature of our instinct for survival while responsibly harnessing our propensity for aggression and leveraging our valuable scientific heritage and its instrumental tool called logic.  And if we’re able to do that, then we’ll be able to innovate and change more easily.  We’ll also be able to prosper in a way that is more balanced between cooperation and competition, without compromising our ecosystems, our survival, and our legacy for future generations.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011. 

The Importance of Rituals in the Workplace

Posted on May 11, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-05-10 at 9.56.51 PMRituals are significant and powerful.  Symbols can have a great impact, as they communicate beyond words and convey meanings without explicit explanations. Rituals and symbols play an important role in the success of managing the creativity and innovation because they speak to our subconscious, comfort our unspoken fears, enable us to tap into solution that cannot be found in a linear fashion, and connect us emotionally to our friends and colleagues.

Ritual is a powerful way to harness the life force the lives deep down in every one of us.  The way rituals impact us is through rhythm (rituals occur at well-defined moments: Sunday mass, birthdays, the end of puberty, end of year graduation) regular repetition (Thanksgiving every year, morning ablutions, Sunday family lunch) and dramatic staging (Christmas tree, sculpted pumpkins, candles for a Valentine’s Day dinner).

Rituals imply a certain level of ceremony and require time, but they are profoundly efficient in both the short and the long term.  For example, think about how football players huddle before they go onto the field at the beginning of a big game.  It is a moment that may include a prayer or words of encouragement from their coach, but most important it is time that they set aside to reach beyond self-doubt and turn fear into audacity by connecting to their guts.  In Rugby Six Nations Tournaments, national anthems are played at the beginning of the game to invoke a sense of pride and responsibility for the success of the team.

Rituals are transformative because they help us deal constructively with the intangible dynamics within us and within groups.  They productively channel instinctual forces into creative powers.  Ritual is what allows us to gather the energy needed to achieve great things, often beyond what we could imagine ourselves capable of.  When managing the creative process, celebrating wins and awards is one effective way to reassure creative teams, whose members often question their own talent.  And one thing is certain:  not celebrating wins can cause a lot of damage to the spirit and motivation of your creative team.

Navigating creative and innovative processes is rarely easy; it often entails a lot of unknowns and a lot of erratic moments.  No matter how seasoned and brave you are, self-doubt and fear are simply unavoidable in the process of creation.  Rituals address fear of the unknown, self-sabotage, and procrastination, which can all happen during any creative process–hence the importance of rituals in southwest management.

There are many ways to spark creativity and establish an atmosphere that resonates with creative teams.  These are effective ways to improve creative output that you can apply to your business.  Consider how many of them you’ve thought about before and how many of them you actually implement in your management.  Leaving these out is not a valid option.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

 

Giving up on Uniformity can Increase Creativity

Posted on May 3, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-05-03 at 12.10.30 PMGiving up on uniformity is really about acknowledging in tangible ways the fact that different people require different conditions in order to perform at their best. So rather than requiring everyone to follow the same rules within the workplace, you make allowances that enable all concerned to pursue their responsibilities in the way that best suits them.  Creative people have a tremendous capacity for teamwork, but they can also have a tremendous need to follow their own rhythms or work style.  It is very likely shortsighted to force creative talents to follow rules that inhibit their creativity without adding anything to your company’s goal of generating innovations. For examples, it may be important for everyone to show up to a weekly progress meeting, but is it really important for everyone to show up at 9 a.m. and stay until 5 p.m.?  They may be more productive working at different hours or not coming in at all on some days.  When you manage by exception you honor people’s individual requirements for freedom, and when you manage for inclusion you make sure that everyone feels a responsibility for the collective success (or failure) of the project.  When I was a publisher, my experience in working with authors was that each author was very different and required adaptation and careful attention to approach their creative talent in a unique way.  Over the many year I have worked in the fragrance industry,  I have observed the same thing with perfumers.  Creative talent is rarely separable from the individual’s personality, because it has a lot to do with imagination, sensitivity, and feelings. This is why seeking uniformity is rarely the way to go.  Management by exception will bring much more efficiency.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.

The Role of Constraints in Creativity

Posted on April 25, 2015 by Bianca Le Mouël

Screen Shot 2015-04-25 at 10.29.01 AMFostering an atmosphere of creativity and innovation doesn’t require business leaders to concede all control or throw all rules out of the window.  In fact, the judicious and clear application of constraints frames the challenges that employees are asked to address.  By setting a goal and laying out the constraints, business leaders can create excitement.  Most people like the experience of overcoming some obstacles; constraints are the obstacles that make the finding of the solution exhilarating.

“It is common knowledge that Cirque [du Soleil’s] designers don’t like budgets, deadlines, and limited resources,”says Lyn Heward, president of their Creative Content Division, but she adds, “Privately however, even they will admit that these ‘constraints’ force us to become more resourceful and more creative!  They require us to come up with solutions we’d never thought of before…and they actually become motivators for getting the job done.  In fact, some of our most inspired ideas arise from moderately Spartan situations.”  Cirque du Soleil enforces very strict budgets, and creative teams have to abide with nonnegotiable deadlines.

This is just one of the many paradoxes managing creativity.  As leaders and managers we we need to both establish constraints and free our employees from self-imposed boundaries.  In short, we need to find balance.  Along with budgets, time is of course one of the most obvious constraints.  Deadlines, as daunting as they may seem to creative people, are also their best ally and help them move through the fear of the white page and the unknown.  However, time pressure needs to be handled with a serious sense of balance.  A study by two Harvard Business School professors shows that to develop the creativity of team members it is better in the long run to be careful with excessive time pressure as it easily leads to high levels of stress and potential burnout.  In my experience with creativity, efforts to save time by accelerating the process can sometimes end up costing time.  Creativity often requires patience, because it follow its own rhythm and entails moments of what I call “active inactivity”–moments when creative teams need to lie fallow.  Creativity is quite often about problem solving, and problems by definition have some established factors.  Once the confining factors are clarified, the goal is identified, and balance can be more easily achieved, creative minds are more able to find inspiration to overcome challenges.  A paradox of time management applies:  time constraint is productive, but too much of it, repeatedly, leads to the risk of burnout.  This paradox cannot be resolved by following a fixed rule.  Managing the time of creative teams requires the ability to manage paradox and feel one’s way through it, depending on how your team members react individually and collectively, which talent(s) you are most heavily depending on, and how much leeway with constraints you have in any given situation.

Excerpted from The Intuitive Compass, Jossey-Bass, 2011.