Vincent Nolan RIP

I first met Vincent Nolan some forty years ago. He came to teach Synectics to a group of us at Garland-Compton (shortly before it morphed into Saatchi and Saatchi). I was in my late twenties and had risen quickly in the advertising business, but learning from Vincent undoubtedly transformed my life.

It dawned on me that one of my main skills up to that point was in identifying weaknesses in other people’s thinking and wielding the scalpel, and that this approach, while it had helped me to be successful, was of very limited value in promoting real creativity and innovation (the lifeblood of marketing communications). Vincent taught us that a better approach was first to articulate the value in emerging ideas, then going on to identify the key issues and problem-solve them.

This may seem simple, even obvious, but it required some complete personal rewiring in myself, changes that have lived at the heart of my life and work ever since.

Following that early encounter, I brought Vincent into each successive new role I found myself in – training my new teams in the whole Synectics bag of tricks. Perhaps most powerfully this was achieved at Lintas in Sydney, where, in a succession of visits from him, most colleagues in the agency were given the treatment. This was a major factor in enabling us to work together more effectively and creatively – and as a consequence we were able to rise from eighth in the local league table to second in just five years, quadrupling profits in the process.

Eventually I joined Synectics myself, as Vincent gradually wound down his life's work, concentrating more on his cello and his golf.  

At 85, Vincent Nolan died last Sunday, 17 August.

Inspiration and laziness

Chris McKay kindly sent me a piece on Tchaikovsky’s thoughts on inspiration and the lack of it. The composer makes inspiring (and experienced) observations on both sides of the matter. Here he is in a letter to his benefactor, Nadejna von Meck, in 1878:

In general it is suddenly and in an unexpected shape that the seed of a future work appears. If the soil is receptive, ie if it is disposed to work, this seed takes root with astonishing force and swiftness, shows itself above the ground, puts out a little stalk, leaves, twigs and finally flowers. I can most precisely describe the creative process by means of this metaphor… It is useless trying to find words to describe to you the unbounded sense of bliss that overcomes me when a new main idea appears and begins to take definite form…

Sometimes inspiration flies away for quite some time; one must seek it again, often in vain. Very often a completely cold rational technical process must be employed…

Here you very often have to overcome laziness, reluctance. Then certain things happen. Sometimes victory comes easily, sometimes inspiration slips away, eludes you. But I consider it is the duty of an artist never to give way, for laziness is a very powerful human trait… Inspiration is a guest who does not like visiting those who are lazy. She reveals herself to those who invite her.  

I think this probably applies to all aspects of the creative life, whether in the arts or science or business, or anywhere else.   

Creativity in academia

As founding Director of the Centre for Creativity in Professional Practice at City University London, I proposed to my boss that we start a programme to offer to academic staff across the institution an opportunity to think both about their own creative skills and how they might develop them systematically.

In the months that I had been there, it had struck me forcibly that the most important contribution to the growth and development of the university the new Centre could make would be internal.   

My boss, a senior professor, was absolutely appalled by my proposal. Pressed for a reason why, he declared: “It’s what we do.”

So we taught creativity skills only to a few paid-up students on our newly-launched Masters in Innovation, Creativity and Leadership ‒ and left the academics well alone.

 

Losing the difficult bastards

Some years ago I was commissioned by a client, a major multinational, to dig into the stories surrounding ten major innovations that had taken place in the company over the past decade.

How had the innovations come about? Who was involved? What sorts of personalities were involved? Who had had the original ideas behind them?

We conducted one-to-one depth interviews with everyone involved and it gradually became clear that the answer to that last question – the originators ‒ was that they had each left the company. Some had been fired. Some had chosen to leave. Several had set up their own businesses.

They were all described by surviving colleagues as highly creative, but difficult. Unable to fit in. Resistant to rules, systems, processes. Difficult.

And the company, which had previously recruited these kinds of people on a regular basis, now effectively excluded them at source.

There emerged consensus from the survivors that the company was better off without them, these mavericks. So much easier for them – and for us ‒ to be elsewhere. What I noticed over succeeding years was that senior managers in the company became highly conscious of the lack of breakthrough innovations now.

No one seemed to be prepared to connect these things together.   

Creativity and teamwork at Bletchley Park

For years I’ve been meaning to visit the British code-breaking centre from the Second World War, Bletchley Park, finally making it there this last long weekend.

Just so interesting, even exciting, to learn about the extraordinary achievements of creative thinking and teamwork. And the consequences for achieving sustained success – the shortening of the war, perhaps by years, and the saving of innumerable lives.

I had not realised how extensive it was, nor how much of it still exists. Nearly 10,000 people worked there at its peak, just a few of them still celebrated, Alan Turing the most.

It had me thinking about whether the German military machine enjoyed similar successes.

The Germans certainly poured similar resources into code-breaking, but with significantly less success. Why was that? My understanding is that while the British had one centre dedicated to all the services, the Germans had something like a dozen separate departments working in secrecy and isolation from each other. So there was very limited opportunity for one branch to benefit from the breakthroughs of another.

They did, of course, have successes. The most significant of these was that, in the early part of the war, their Naval code-breaking team were able to know the positions of all British ships – naval and merchant. 

I believe there are learnings here for R&D functions everywhere?

Literally?

“She is literally a shining star at work.”

“It was the end of the line - literally.”

“We shall literally be up s**t creek without a paddle.”

Why is it that people say “literally”, when they mean “metaphorically”?

Is there something deeply difficult in understanding the difference?

Ease with metaphor is crucial to creativity.

Book-learning

“I learned it from a book,” announces Manuel, hidden behind the moose’s head that is for some reason on the reception desk at Fawlty Towers.

“Did you? Did you really?” responds the Major, impressed.

I read books all the time, but most of the really useful stuff that I’ve learned in life simply cannot be learned from them.

How to be creative, for example, as and when it’s needed.

Aristotle and the Power of Metaphor

“To be a master of metaphor is the greatest thing by far,” said Aristotle. “It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others. And it is also a sign of genius.”

I believe that facility with metaphor is at the very heart of creativity. Yet when I introduce the subject in training workshops, there usually descends a look of apprehension, even fear, shortly followed by an apparently semi-hypnotic state, as though the mere mention of the term has induced a measure of psychic paralysis.

I wonder why this is so? In my own school days we were taught the meaning of metaphor alongside simile and analogy, as though defining them would in some mysterious way set free our ability to use them freely. Not so. It’s practice that counts.

In my old company, Synectics, we sidestepped the whole issue by talking about “excursions”, which seemed to me to be in practice a practical way of getting into metaphor without using the mesmerising term itself.

(Have you noticed how many suggestive metaphors exist in this brief piece alone?)

Einstein: Master of the One-Liner

Not content with being voted the most important human being of the twentieth century, Einstein was also the greatest master of the insightful quote about the business of creativity. I’ve written about several of them previously here and I expect to use more in the future.

"Imagination is more important than knowledge."

"The only really valuable thing is intuition."

“If at first the idea is not absurd, then there is no hope for it.”

“A person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.”

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

“If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough.”

"Common sense is the collection of prejudices acquired by age eighteen."

“I think and think for months and years. Ninety-nine times, the conclusion is false. The hundredth time I am right.”

"Problems cannot be solved by thinking within the framework in which the problems were created." 

“Information is not knowledge.”

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

“Curiosity has its own reason for existing."

“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious.”

"Not everything that counts can be counted, and not everything that can be counted counts." (Sign hanging in Einstein's office at Princeton)

So many of them turn “common sense” on its head. Which is the MOST important, yet LEAST understood?

Entrepreneurship and age

Interesting and provocative article by “Schumpeter” in The Economist* turning on its head the idea that entrepreneurs are predominantly the young.

Among the examples he cites of creativity stretching well into “Third Age” are The Rolling Stones, Paul McCartney and Leonard Cohen.

Then, digging into recent research, Schumpeter says that in the USA “twice as many successful founders [of start-ups] are over 50 as under 25, and twice as many over 60 as under 20.”

And he says that research shows that “the highest rate of entrepreneurial activity [is] among people aged 55 to 64 – and the lowest rate among the Google generation of 20 to 34 year-olds.”

So what might we conclude?

1.That experience coupled with creativity is critically important to successful entrepreneurship, and that

2.Maybe it’s more a generational thing more than an age thing. After all, the examples he quotes all come from the 1960s generation that considered creativity to be of the essence. Talkin' 'bout my generation. Schumpeter doesn’t seem to have considered this possibility.

Time will tell!

* http://www.economist.com/node/21548135

Learning to be more creative

I haven’t yet read Jonah Lehrer’s new best-selling book on creativity, Imagine: How Creativity Works, but I have read his extended article in last week’s Wall Street Journal, and I’m not impressed.

He starts from the proposition that “there’s no such thing as a creative type” and that “anyone can be learn to be creative”. It is not an encouraging thesis.

Basically it’s an extension of Malcolm Gladwell’s 10,000 hours insight. And while it’s true that everyone can improve their connection-making skill (this being at the heart of all creativity), nevertheless it’s quite observable that some amongst us have creative skills of a quite different order.

Think Shakespeare, Mozart, Einstein, Edison, Turing… To be frank, even with a million hours of skill-building, I’m unlikely to achieve their level of, well, genius. And to deny this strikes me as, well, blind.

I have been training people in creative thinking over several decades now, and I notice consistently that the students who have lost their creativity (or suppressed it or never seemed to have had much anyway) can indeed up their game substantially. However they never catch up with the ones who have real self-confidence in their connection-making capabilities.

The latter make massive progress in a structured training session, because they are enabled to hone skills that already exist, taking them up to a whole new level. Whether the basis for their special talent is nature or nurture seems to me to be of secondary importance.

Learning by shouting out

You may have seen that a recent study of primary school children by Durham University shows clearly that pupils who shout out in class do better, academically, learning faster than those who seem better-behaved.

And yet so many teachers (and parents) still regard this sort of behaviour as disruptive and rude, censuring pupils accordingly.

My belief is that a major side-effect of the repressive way teachers react is that children start to suppress their own creativity.

On the subject of enthusiasm, the great American choreographer, Martha Graham, hit the nail on the head: “Great dancers are not great because of their technique. They are great because of their passion.”

The real question is: how to encourage and support impulsiveness in children and re-awaken it in adults?

Mavericks and leadership

I was to discover rather early in life - in my teens - that having maverick tendencies is a serious barrier to being promoted to leadership positions.

I think the basic issue is that bosses can’t predict what you’ll do in any particular circumstances. Mavericks seem to them to carry more risk than reward.

And yet, when an organisation is in trouble and needs new directions, the creativity of mavericks is exactly the place that good solutions are likely to come from.

My own approach to this problem has often been to team myself with more sensible, structured, reliable partners. I think I did this for the first time at Saatchi and Saatchi. It worked well.

Are there other approaches that work?

Listening and Creativity

At the start of innovation workshops, I ask the participants to come up with some groundrules for working together productively and creatively.

Usually second on the emerging shortlist is LISTENING.

Prompted, the person proposing it will often say how important it is to pay attention to what others are saying, both during any presentations and in the course of discussion.

It’s often comes as something of a shock when I add to this item that it’s important to listen to oneself. In fact, in sessions where the point is to tap into our creative selves, it’s more important, much more important, than listening to others.

In this situation, what others say is valuable primarily not as information, but as stimulus – to help us to trigger new thoughts, new perspectives, new ideas. Never more so than during a long, fact-filled presentation.

As usual, Mark Twain (above) caught this brilliantly: “Life does not consist mainly – or even largely – of facts and happenings,” he wrote. “It consists mainly of the storm of thoughts that is forever blowing through one’s head.”

The challenge, of course is not only to listen closely to that storm of thoughts, but also to catch plenty of them on the wing. For me, that means making brief notes as they flash by. And then reviewing them consistently for further consideration and development.

Richard Branson once told me that he does this every day( see blogpost 03/11/2009). And so do I!

The chasm between intent and effect

How often in life we get the wrong end of the stick.

This can have disastrous, destructive consequences, not only in terms of our interpersonal relationships, but also in the area of creativity.

For example: Person A says to Person B, “That shirt is the wrong colour for you.”

What does B do in response?

They may choose to ignore it and move on.

Or B may take offence, taking A’s observation as an uncalled for intrusion, and make one of a range of responses:

“I don’t recall asking for your opinion.” Or

“What’s this to you?” Or

“You’re quite wrong. It’s just right for me.” Or

“Please mind your own business.”

These are just a few of samples of how A’s statement can be dealt with by B. The problem with all these is that, in turn, A may well take offence at the bluntness of B’s response – and consider how to follow up in kind.

You know where this is going. A sequence of traded insults, sometimes cloaked in apparent politeness, can easily happen. It can go on for minutes, hours or days, weeks, months or even years.

This is sometimes called a Discount Revenge Cycle. And it can have the effect of closing down communications, not just between A and B, but throughout the whole team. The resulting damage to creative productivity can be immense.

So how can this negative cycle be stopped and even changed to something more constructive?

The simple answer is for one or other (or both) of the participants to ASSUME POSITIVE INTENTION. Maybe to respond: “That’s interesting – tell me some more.”

It doesn’t always work, but it stands a much better chance of doing so than sending a heat-seeking missile back at the offender.

And it can set up the opposite of the Discount Revenge Cycle – what might be called a Positive Cooperation Cycle. That is so much more likely to create a climate of creative possibility.

Individuals or teams for breakthrough creativity?

For years I believed that the best ideas emerged collaboratively. As international managing partner of Synectics for many years, a leading proponent of team creativity, that’s what you’d expect.

I’m not so sure any more.

It’s gradually become clearer to me that real ground-breaking ideas are more often hatched in the brains of highly creative individuals. Think Galileo, Harrison, Einstein, Edison.

Certainly Edison’s biggest breakthrough ideas were conceived in solitude – but he was also superb in organising his innovation project teams to work systematically towards implementation once he’d made that initial imaginative leap.

In my experience team creativity is generally better for more day-to-day creativity, for problem-solving, for the creation of strategy and for getting the team fully on board.

Neckties and creativity

I went to a meeting recently at a London club and in the lobby there was a notice requiring members and guests to dress “appropriately”. Think I get the picture.

In fact, I haven't worn the “appropriate” suit, shirt and tie ensemble for over a quarter of a century. And clubs like the one I visited don’t seem to have noticed that daytime dress for men has been steadily changing over that period of time. So when I visit a client nowadays, I find that nobody is wearing a tie and that I’m the only one there with a traditional jacket.

It seems extraordinary to me that something that emerged as a fashion norm for men near the start of the twentieth century should have persisted in its rather tyrannical way for over 100 years. But, in truth, in 2011 it’s only a handful of times and places that still require that uniform. Top of mind, aside from olde worlde clubs, is salesmen. Is the reason that these institutions still insist partly because they fear that their blokes are going to turn up in shorts?

When I started working in innovation and creativity, I would encourage male participants in workshops to take off their ties in order to get into a more open and creative frame of mind. Some seemed to feel that they might be stark naked without it and needed a good deal of coaxing. That particular intervention is hardly ever necessary now.

In an article in Marketing magazine, Coca-Cola’s vice-president of global advertising strategy, Jonathan Mildenhall (above), tells us that his wardrobe consists of twenty pairs of Levi’s, twenty-five pairs of Nike Air Max and some suits from Ozwald Boeteng. Don’t think he’ll be let into that London club any time soon.

Harold Monro, poet

For whatever reason, I’ve only recently connected with the early twentieth century Anglo-Scottish poet, Harold Monro. He seems to have slipped off the radar screen, but, among others, TS Eliot admired his work greatly.

Like so much good poetry, Monro’s could be downbeat. But it always has, like Eliot’s, a profoundly musical quality.

In “Living”, in a rather rare glimpse of life as possibility, after a “Slow bleak awakening from the morning dream”, he writes

But suddenly, as if without reason,
Heart, Brain, and Body, and Imagination
All gather in tumultuous joy together,
Running like children down the path of morning
To fields where they can play without a quarrel:
A country I’d forgotten, but remember,
And welcome with a cry.

I don’t think you have to be a poet to recognise that exhilarating creative cocktail. (But you do need to be one to capture it so eloquently.)

Words, words, words

At risk of catching the dread disease of definitionitis (see blogpost, 27 October 2010), I think it’s useful to distinguish between some words that are commonly used and confused. For example…

Invention: is the application of creativity to solve a problem, usually involving technology of one sort or another.

Discovery: is usefully applied to productive new insights and new understandings.

Creativity: is the generation of new thinking, ideas that may be quite speculative in nature.

Innovation: is the process of turning new ideas into reality, making them happen. It usually involves problem-solving.

How am I doing?

Composing at 98

On Tuesday I went to the UK première of Elliott Carter’s Clarinet Quintet at Richmond Concert Society, played by the excellent Endymion, the clarinettist being the brilliant Mark van de Wiel.

The thing to note is that this extraordinary outpouring of creativity comes, not from a young man, but from a ninety-eight year old American who has been composing for seven, maybe eight, decades. He is a sprightly 102 now and is regarded by many as the world’s greatest living composer.

Of course, Carter is not alone. Among others, Bach, Brahms, Liszt, Wagner, Verdi and Vaughan Williams composed much of their finest music in old age.

And Janacek, who created several of the greatest operas of the twentieth century, didn’t really get going until he was past sixty.