Dare To Be Different
If there’s one thing we need right now, it’s creativity, right? Here we are, 20 months into a global pandemic that has disrupted life and business, facing an uncertain future with no models or examples to follow. Whether we like it or not, we’re all winging it and making it up as we go along.
Yet many corporate cultures stifle creativity. Why is that?
Well, it’s because creativity is counter-cultural.
This genius bit of insight has been rattling around my brain all week since I read it in this blog by Steve Chapman (who happened to be the guest on the last episode of the Be More Pirate podcast).
Being creative is about up-ending norms, slaughtering sacred cows, shattering preconceptions, puncturing egos, disorientating people, challenging and upsetting long-held perceptions. It’s confrontational, messy, unpredictable work. It’s the work of rebels, misfits, mavericks, independent thinkers (“Shall I mention Pirates?” “No, too soon. We’ll get to them in a bit”).
Corporate culture is all too often about conforming, fitting in, not rocking the boat. It’s about shared values and purpose, and it can all get a bit warm and fluffy, especially if they are ‘one big family’.
Anyway, a culture is, by definition, going to squash the counter-cultural, as many rebels, mavericks and misfits will ruefully recount. So it's practically designed to stop creativity.
Steve talks about ‘culturing’ in his blog and so I misread it originally as ‘Culture change is counter-cultural’. Then I reflected on that and realised that taking conscious actions to enable a culture IS a creative act. So I was sort of right.
‘Culture change is counter-cultural’ has a nice ring of dissonance about it, doesn’t it?
House Of Fun
Play and fun are a big part of creativity too. Yes, we get loads of those in organisations, don’t we? Especially in the office, right?
Hmmm. In my early career at BT I was in two small, semi-independent bits of the organisation where play and fun were encouraged, or at least tolerated. We were working in completely new areas and being highly creative (we had no idea what we were doing half the time), so it rather came with the territory.
Then we got ‘integrated’ into a bigger division and I can remember our ‘office behaviour’ being very much frowned upon. In fact, we were told to stop ‘larking about’ and laughing so much as it wasn’t ‘being professional’.
In amongst the beige and brown cubicles (they were very much the office colours of the 1970s, whereas the 1980s got all jazzy with blue and grey!), there wasn’t much scope for creative expression or fun. However, we could put things on the cubicle walls and mine was adorned with Dilbert cartoons.
I think it shows how much we like to have fun that we love cartoons, even one’s about business! Or maybe especially ones about business. They are subversive, they poke fun at the powerful, they highlight the absurdities of corporate life. Playing in the gap between what you are told is happening and what you actually experience, they are ironic. By making laugh at ourselves and the situation, they help us to cope.
(BTW, I remember reading a piece by a consultant saying that if he went into a company and the senior managers had Dilbert cartoons on their walls, he knew they had big problems.)
I’m a fan of the work done by The Business Illustrator, my friend Virpi Oinonen, who has had this cartoon doing the rounds on the socials recently, proving that a picture can indeed speak a thousand words and make us smile at the same time.
I’ve also recently discovered The Marketoonist, Tom Fishburne, who lampoons the marketing profession in particular, but business in general, on a weekly basis.
Fun and humour are very much part of being human. Corporate environments that discourage them are suppressing us, constraining our humanity. Then they tell us to ‘be creative’ and wonder why nothing happens.
Through The Barricades
Returning to Steve’s blog, he talks about how creativity requires leaders to be uncomfortable, which they are often unwilling to allow. He observes:
“Even though most senior leaders can pull a Ghandi quote out of their pocket when they need it, the majority are unable be the creative change that they want to see emerge before them. This is because to do so involves relinquishing status, power and, at a much deeper level, identity.”
This chimed with me because I’d identified the exact same things (although I used ‘ego’ instead of ‘identity’) in this LinkedIN post about why two-thirds of bosses are pushing a full time return to the office, despite the fact they are mostly thriving under Work from Home.
Whilst COVID has forced them to relinquish some power and status, they are now desperately trying to claw it back in order to protect their sense of identity.
This is the real barrier to change. If senior leaders cannot, or will not, redefine their identity in a way that allows them to relinquish some power and status, we will remain stuck in the current models. Organisations will remain bereft of the creativity needed to navigate the future, too.
Two ‘origin stories’ of the leading examples of self-organising, Ricardo Semler of Semco and Jos De Blok of Buurtzorg, began with them consciously giving away their power and redefining themselves and their role in their organisations. From that point, everything grew and bloomed.
Perhaps giving away your power is the single greatest act of creativity a leader can do.
Friggin In The Riggin
Now, if only we could think of a metaphor for up-ending norms, challenging the status quo, creating new ways of doing things and having lots of fun ….
I know! It’s time to Be More Pirate!
The Pirates of the Golden Age created a whole new society and a whole new way of being. It wasn’t just about treasure, women and rum (although that was quite a big part of the attraction!), they broke new ground in all sorts of ways. They were, in fact, the original counter-culture.
They pioneered new rules for society that included:
one man, one vote
equality for all, regardless of race, sex, gender or nationality
fair shares for all
transparency
dual governance (power shared between the Captain and the Quartermaster
social security (payments for injury)
inheritance (wealth passed onto dependants)
single-sex marriage (matelotage)
They pushed forward the frontiers of weaponry, warcraft and ship design, which made them a formidable fighting force that hugely punched above their weight.
They also created the first global brand, the Jolly Roger, recognised (and feared) across the seven seas. They dressed in new and exotic ways, breaking social norms and stereotypes, and they even invented cocktails.
There are some very powerful lessons to be learnt and great examples of creativity and change but these can make people feel uncomfortable and challenged. However, wrap them up in a bit of pirate playfulness, some nautical silliness and they can be a rather more palatable and accessible.
See, you’re already smiling aren’t you? “OK, but that’s a bit silly, Colin.” you say, “This is serious stuff, we can’t be talking about Pirates and going around saying ‘Arrrrrrrgh!’ all the time”. Unbidden, images of Jack Sparrow jump into your brain, you start whistling the theme to Captain Pugwash and wondering what your Pirate name might be. Gotcha!
The truth is there’s a playful irreverence around them. We all dressed up and played Pirates when we were kids. It connects us with our inner child, our defences come down and we open up to new ideas.
And when we need to put some Pirate principles into action, when we need to take some small bold actions and start a little mutiny, we can step into that character, our piratical alter ego, to give us a bit more courage and resourcefulness. Once again, we feel that invincibility and imagination of our childhood.
So get creative, get into your swashbuckling secret self and Be More Pirate!
F*** The Status Quo baby...all I got to say on "dare to be different" You know I live this everyday Colin.
Now when it comes to fun. I could not agree with you more. Creativity dies in a corner and collects dust if fun is taken out of the equation. I have always encouraged this in the teams I've run and the businesses I've owned. (It might be because a part of me refuses to grow up ha ha.) But a huge part of being capable of the fun is having the 'cajones' to let get of that power trip. Let your people enjoy themselves and put as many cartoons up as they bl**dy like. (An no, bean bags and games tables will not fix this issue.)
It is my opinion the day we can't have fun with our clients and colleagues, act the fool, and we stop finding joy in our work should be the day we quit our job to find a new one or fire ourselves as owners and hire someone better at the fun stuff to take our place as the leader. I know I sound extreme, but culture is serious and once broken it's hard to fix. Not impossible, but it needs 'grenades of drastic change', grit, hard work and most importantly humility to achieve it.
That sounds like hard work, having fun is so much better.
I never knew that pirates introduced all of those things by the way. I knew there was a reason I always liked Pirates ha ha.