To understand "productivity vs. creativity as a form of culture war" is critically debilitating for an organization, an initiative, or an individual, because both are required. Further, to frame "productivity vs. creativity as a form of culture war," with a single victor, is in a sense to revive the tired and pointless "left-brain vs. right-brain" debate, or, to adopt language from the fluffier sector of the entrepreneurship literature, the "entrepreneur vs. manager/technician" debate. These debates have been definitively closed; any perspective that cannot accommodate—and make careful and controlled use of—both of these ostensibly diametrically opposed approaches (lifestyles, methodologies, whatever you like to call it) is almost certainly destined to fail.

The relevant question, then, is not which "culture" or "side" should "dominate" (the language becomes confrontational rapidly); it may be how to structure time, personnel, and ideas in such a way that creativity and productivity—and indeed, even efficiency—can reinforce one another. But before we ask even this question, it may be even more appropriate to ask: to what end are these abstractions glamorized? Do we really want "creativity," "productivity," "efficiency"? Or do these buzzwords stand in for (and perhaps obscure) other things that we actually want: "novel ideas," "timeliness," "predictability," "controllability"? I am not at this stage willing to make strong claims, but perhaps we would do well to examine closely our motivations for valuing particular characteristics within an organization, initiative, or individual, and to ask honestly whether these characteristics are linked closely (or at all) to our desired outcomes, whatever those might be.

Hi, Six:

>> To understand "productivity vs. creativity as a form of culture war" is critically debilitating for an organization, an initiative, or an individual <<<

Nobody, I think, is trying to say there should be a war between productivity and creativity. Everybody as far as I know agrees, once they give it a moment's thought, that both domains are important. What Hindo and DeAngelis are arguing is that fads or fashions in the business world, led by best-sellers and high-powered seminars, often lean so heavily in one direction that the other gets short shrift, and that the effect of preferential fashions of this type has in fact been to damage real industries, and by extension both real people within those industries and in the wider picture the world we live in.

>> because both are required. <<

Precisely. But in a balance which may vary from one situation to another. And the question here is how best that balance can be achieved within the world of social entrepreneurship, whether those fads and fashions from the wider world of business do in fact impact us, whether we as social entrepreneurs have special needs, whether we have, perhaps, a tendency to be too creative at the expense of real effectiveness in acghieving our goals, or to dumb down our creativity and flexibility in the name of increasing "efficiencies of scale"?

>> Do we really want "creativity," "productivity," "efficiency"? Or do these buzzwords stand in for (and perhaps obscure) other things that we actually want: "novel ideas," "timeliness," "predictability," "controllability"? <<

That's an excellent set of questions, and even here I think we could go deeper with careful definitions, one possible example being "we want to find and implement one or more new ideas which make an end run around the pervasive corruption currently endemic in State N, so to deliver the donated food to needy sections of the population in an efficient manner, thereby avoiding the constant rake-offs by the current major beneficiaries of our programs and others like it, the politicians and warlords."

As always, it seems to me, the deepest question is how to make a nuanced response…

I thought I worked better in an efficient environment, until I started my Masters in Creative studies, I found that I am more of a creative person faking to work in a structured world!

After combating the two worlds I find that I agree partially with Silberman in that they should not be against each other, but together. Efficiency make things go faster, they are better in big groups or lots of partners, everybody will know where to start from and where to finish and not being lost for a long time means working and producing better results.

However, creativity gives us the option to better develop this efficiency system each time we use it! If we are offered a little time to toy around with ideas, try out new processes or use products in other ways, we may stumble across a much better "effective" way of doing our own thing, and therefore switch our process to the newer model.

I do believe that both can co-exist together. By providing basic guidelines on how things are done and a little bit of lee-way to help us imagine the impossible, we are certainly fitting into our social enterprise definition that combines profitability and social innovation.

Cheers! Randah http://contagiouscreativity.wordpress.com

Hi Randah, all:

I wanted to single out this comment of Randah's:

>> creativity gives us the option to better develop this efficiency system each time we use it! <<

That's a thought worth pondering...

I was also caught by this phrasing:

>> providing basic guidelines on how things are done and a little bit of lee-way to help us imagine the impossible <<

What Randah calls "lee-way" is exactly it: flexibility… the opportunity to experiment, to make discoveries of the sort all too easily pigeon-holed as "mistakes"…time for reverie, time for a nap, time for "sleeping on it", time to "dream up" the next step…

The thing about creativity is that it looks ineffective:

http://www.fotosearch.com/PHT270/paa270000024/

See that guy with his eyes closed? Maybe he's wasting valuable time, maybe he's refreshing himself, maybe he's thinking.

Can you tell which?

The last three years have taught me that creative chaos can lay the most efficient path to maximum productivity.

Clara

Hi Clara:

>> The last three years have taught me that creative chaos can lay the most efficient path to maximum productivity. <<

I sometimes think that order is like continuing in a straight line, and chaos is like taking a turn. Sometimes one ants to turn just so much, at one particular place, and that brings one back in line with one's objectives. But sometimes, one wants complete flexibility, the ability to turn, and to turn again, any time, any way, any place.

What I'm trying to say is: there's the application of creativity within a controlled environment, and then there's creativity as freedom.

Warm regards, nice to read you here again...

I've found that the more you learn about a problem and potential solutions and the more time you spend thinking about this, and applying trial and error to problem solving, the more inspiration and creativity that results.

Because I feel this is so important to social benefit organizations I've created a section of links to sites that illustrate innovation, creativity, process improvement, etc. You can find them at http://www.tutormentorconnection.org/TMLearningNetwork/LinksLibrary/tabid/560/rrcid/13/rrepp/20/Default.aspx

While these are generic tools, I'm looking for web sites that illustrate how organizations use these tools to make more and better social benefit organizations available in more of the places where they are needed.

I illustrate how the Tutor/Mentor Connection attemps to do this, using concept maps and web based essays. You can see one of these concept maps at http://tinyurl.com/2futnp

I feel that if I can locate maps created by others to solve the same problem, or to solve other problems, then I can learn from these, or find partners who will work together to make the resources available to implement these strategies in more places.

This illustrates the persperation part of creativity. The more ideas I can draw from, the more my time spent thinking of ways to apply these ideas can lead to innovation and solutions that enable me to do this work more effectively, using the limited resources available to me.

Once again, Daniel, the encyclopedia nature of your endeavors impresses.

Do you have a single page that serves a sort of indexical or table of contents like function, simply listing the various resources you've brought together? Maybe with some rubric like, "If you want to X, read here" or "If you want to know about Y" etc?

I'd love to reference that page in particular in the Resources Wiki here, and maybe then assign some of your subsections to individual wiki pages.

In continuing gratitude...

Charles,

I keep looking for a way to help people find the information on my site and to show how one section of information relates to each other section. Here's a concept map showing the information library: http://tinyurl.com/2nysnt

In a reference to six sigma, Prof.K.Prabhakar described this as a linear process. When I talk, I use the word blueprint and am refering to the drawings that construction people and engineers use to build a building or construct an appliance, starting with just a design.

It's possible that to read a blueprint you need special training, which might mean that for people to understand and use my maps, they also need special training.

I'm not sure. I was able to read the blueprints when I had an addition put on my house. So, I'm hopeful others who care about helping kids living in poverty will make an effort to use these blueprints.

At the same time, I'm constantly looking for others who will use their talent to help simplify the understanding and use of all of the information that is available. That's one of the reasons I participate in forums like this.

Hello again, Dan:

>> It's possible that to read a blueprint you need special training, which might mean that for people to understand and use my maps, they also need special training. <<

I think George Miller's "The Magical Number Seven, Plus or Minus Two: Some Limits on Our Capacity for Processing Information" gives us an indication of the number of nodes the human can held together "in the mind's eye" at one time

and conceiving of the termporal shifts that occur with feedback loops without the aid of a systems dynamic model seems very difficult for us. But then the tibetans -- if I may stray a little -- put as much effort into learning visualization for their Geshe degree as we do into verbal learning for our PhDs. In a recent post in answer to a "crystal ball" question about the view from 2020 or 2025 on the gamer-academic's blog Terra Nova, I suggested:

>> We are going to understand that handling emotions as we pass through events is very like taking a truck loaded with a variety of volatile explosives through a series of high mountain passes, and will have begun to construct sims which allow us to practice the appropriate moves away from reality and its disastrous consequences.

This will, among other things, require us to internalize a set of kinaesthetic - synaesthetic feeling shapes, which will represent complex spaces and webs of tensions, constantly in weave and process, as something akin to what we now know as cat's-cradles – but present to the mind's-eye rather than strung between the hands just in front of the body. A marriage could be seen as one such cat's-cradle, the requirements of different children's personalities, the impact of in-laws or affairs, as additional fingers causing constant shifts in the tensional pattern.

To be able to express such patterns in communicable form, in two- or three-dimensional representation of shifting n-dimensional tension-webs, will be the preoccupation of our brightest minds, whether working on primitive "string webs" and mudra-like finger-dances for interpersonal expression, or the development of more subtle software tools for mutual visualization. <<

I'm not sure how clear that is, I'm just dipping my toe here into an area I want to explore over the next few years

but i do think we need to develop skills in the visualization of complex dynamic systems, not just software for approaching it by number-crunching.

*

http://www.musanim.com/miller1956/ http://terranova.blogs.com/terra_nova/2007/06/gaze-into-your-.html#comments

Dear Charels, It is one of the most important topic to be addressed. As you know the six sigma process is based on linear thinking. It is applicatble to simple sytems that can be measured and controlled. On the other hand creativity is a non linear process. Trying to add a linear process to address non linear issues i think is not a right thing to do. Unless we start addressing the issue of weaving complexity in the business considering it as a complex system, you will have same problem as 3M is facing today. Organizations today are not just simple input process and output feedback systems. They are complex and non linear. You need to change the mind set that six sigma is a cure for all ills. Six sigma is one tool, but not a theory to explain complex sytem behaviour. I request your comments. Yours sincerely, Prof.K.Prabhakar

Prof. Prabhakar:

Many thanks for your comment, which I see Dan Bassill has already picked up on, see his post " Resource page - follow concept map" above your first post.

I too think this is an extremely important topic, and opening it up to the more general issue of linear and non-linear systems, systems dynamics, feedback loops, modeling, complex adaptive systems and so forth only makes the issues more powerful. It may take me a while, maybe a couple of days, to write up a fuller response than this, so this post if just a marker to say I'm hoping to do that.

Thanks again for your intervention, which addresses us to one of the great questions.

I closing, I would like to ask whether in your opinion the distinction between qualities and quantities is somehow parelleled by, or implicit in, the distinction between linear and non-linear systems, or sequential and associative thinking?

Dear Professor Prabhakar

Here's my second stab at a response to your challenging post, as promised. You wrote:

>> As you know the six sigma process is based on linear thinking. It is applicable to simple systems that can be measured and controlled. On the other hand creativity is a non linear process. Trying to add a linear process to address non linear issues i think is not a right thing to do. Unless we start addressing the issue of weaving complexity in the business considering it as a complex system, you will have same problem as 3M is facing today. Organizations today are not just simple input process and output feedback systems. They are complex and non linear. <<

I believe I see three "levels" emerging from our discussions here.

On the first level, creativity and productivity "methods" can be integrated in (eg) brainstorming sessions with clearly defined "divergent" (creative / associative) and "convergent" (productive / liner) segments. That's good working practice.

On the second level, an organization may need to make space in its overall culture for two subcultures, one creative (characterized by a relaxed attitude towards various forms of mental and research drift, acceptance of "mistakes" as aspects of creative progress, etc) and the other "productive" (in the almost literal sense that it swings into operation once the creative aspect and its management has focused in ("converged") on a particular (and perhaps previously unforeseen) product. This, I think, is the level at which organizations under the sway of particular "movements" such as Six Sigma can benefit from understanding the virtues and requirements of both "creative" and "productive" cultures.

I believe it is the third level which you are addressing in your comment quoted above. This is the level at which the actual nature of the world process is allowed to guide our practices, and it is a level we rarely even consider. Perhaps you would consider Margaret Wheatley one of the thinkers in this area?

From my POV, this is the most fascinating area, but I would imagine it requires an organizational commitment that extends both top down and roots up. And as for understanding its flows and maybe mapping or modeling it as an approach, I'd presume complex adaptive systems and agent based models would fit in here, but I'm not at all sure that we yet know what they actually show us, how to critique them, or how to explain them to others.

For instance, how do we know what are "emergent properties" except by recognizing them as "looking like" pre-existing human categories? If "flocking" appeared in a CAS, and we hadn't already seen schools of fish or flocks of birds, would we have any idea of what it might mean?

And what happens between the question a modeler wishes to pose and the ruleset used to pose it? How often do models answer more questions than the questioner intended (ie, how often to they represent a more generalized inquiry, though crafted with a more specific purpose in mind)? And how often would a slightly different ruleset with perhaps very different outcomes have been equally valid as a ruleset for exploring a particular issue?

We tend to think of "emergent properties" in any case as un-predictable until witnessed

but what if any given level of complexity of ruleset has a higher order property-set that it is liable to trigger as "emergent" -- as, for instance, Don Beck and Ken Wilber might argue that higher-order properties which emerge from what they term the "green" memeset when ghere's a system perturbation will fall in what they call the "turquoise" memeset? Effectively, this introduces teleology as a possible aspect of emergence -- a thorny business to be sure!

I keenly await your own thoughts in this matter…

Hi everyone,

I still don't think they need to be separated. In the Creative Problem Solving method we do, there are steps that we follow, and within each step there is what we call "diverging" and "converging". The first means to seek all the ideas in the world with relation to the issue at hand, not stopping at any to examine it. We are talking quantity! Once done, you do the diverging exercises and decide on which ideas best suit you and further develop it. (Focusing on quality)

those divergent and convergent tools can also be applied to other methods, including the six sigma. (think of all the criteria you have to think of in each step, and then the ones you decide to keep).

in that sense, linear can meet non-linear and sweet and sour sauce is still very yummy!

cheers Randah

Heh

that sounds pretty creative to me!

And you know how I arrived at that conclusion? I noted first that your proposal would work for specific projects, time-slots and people, but wouldn't afford "permanent creatives" a place to exercise their tendencies to reverie and drift, and only then did it occur to me that such meetings might represent creatives "taking over" a bit of terrain which would otherwise default to a purely "productive" approach.

Perhaps downwind of such meetings there is a place for pure Six Sigma in the application of the eventual "convergent" decisions. And perhaps for such meetings to have decent creative input, or even exist at all, there's need for a creativity shelter that's pure intellectual play.

Studiossime ludere, to play most studiously, was Ficino's motto, and he more or less gave us the Renaissance...

Randah has describe the thinking behind the Tutor/Mentor Connection's activities. In the "diverging" steps, people are limited in seeking knowledge and ideas by their access to these ideas, and the amount of time/resources they can devote to collecting, organizing, rating, existing information. Thus, if someone collects and organizes knowldege, they can support the brainstorming and innovation process for any group of people interested in this particular process.

One of the links on my web site goes to a site that talks about the "Theory of Inventive Problem Solving, TRIZ". http://www.mazur.net/triz/

If you read this you'll see some pretty creative ways of supporting problem solving through this process of innovation and creativity.

Thank you Daniel for the link.

I have to disagree on the part you said that people are limited with the knowledge they have or time they need to get ideas. I do believe that since everyone is creative, everyone is capable of producing a crazy number of ideas in the shortest time once they believe they can!

I've facilitated problem solving meetings where we were able to generate close to 50 ideas in 5 minutes, by 6 people in the room only. following some guidelines that we set ahead, people have no limit to what they can connect with the issue at hand. we start evaluating those ideas and what works best only after those 5 minutes are over.

That is what I meant that we can include idea generation and the logical methods of evaluation (such as the six sigma) in the same issue we work on. we only need to understand when to do what and how to apply it effectively.

as an exercise, I wrote a short description on brainstorming guidelines. at the end, I asked readers to take 10 minutes to exercise their brains and send me a list of all the uses they can apply to a paper clip. the results were huge!! and most people gave in only 5 minutes!! I will compile the whole list within 10 days and send it to whomever wishes to see.

you can see the guidelines on http://changethis.com/pdf/35.04.Brainstorming.pdf and if you do take the few minutes to make the list and send it to me on myarabicstory@yahoo.ca, I'll be more than happy to send you the whole list!!

cheers! Randah

When we regard the relative roles of creativity and productivity within our Whole System, we must recognize two things:

1. Both are facets of a single flow of human endeavor, where boundaries have been drawn, and that it is the location of these boundaries that determine how we discuss them.
2. There are two broad kinds of creativity, and two kinds of productivity.

The two kinds of creativity are:

a) Creativity for generating anything new,

b) Creativity for fulfilling a purpose.

Often, we get the second kind of creativity through the processes involved in the first kind of creativity.

The two kinds of productivity are:

a) Productivity as the efficient production of the product with a minimum of investment (cost per widget),

b) Productivity as the product fulfilling the purpose for which it was produced (revenues from the widget)

The first of these productivities is relevant only where the second kind of productivity is attained, i.e., in the sense of value to customers.

Much of the discussion in this thread is based on regarding a linear flow from creativity toward productivity, i.e., creativity applied toward the generation and production of a product.

When we regard the issue from a Whole System perspective, i.e., products being designed by vacuums in prospects minds, creativity is required to first identify potential value to prospective customers, i.e., in reverse-engineering a product and its production from an imagined and new satisfaction.

In short, creativity is called for in defining the customer experiences that can evoke unique satisfactions (i.e., vis a vis imagined unmet hopes and yearnings in the customers' psyche.

Dr Arapurakal:

:: Much of the discussion in this thread is based :: on regarding a linear flow from creativity toward :: productivity, i.e., creativity applied toward the :: generation and production of a product. When we :: regard the issue from a Whole System perspective, :: i.e., products being designed by vacuums in :: prospects minds, creativity is required to first :: identify potential value to prospective customers, :: i.e., in reverse-engineering a product and its :: production from an imagined and new satisfaction.

Thank you very much for this suggestion. It took me a while to understand that what you are describing here is a very different form of creativity from the "linear flow" sort that leads from problem to product. What you are outlining here is a type of creativity that's almost "ex nihilo", if I'm grasping your meaning - the sort that creates new insights rather than new fixes. Bucky Fuller, if I'm not mistaken, was a master at this kind of creativity, always looking for a need that was going unseen and unsung, always peering over the horizon of the known.

If I can make a mild creative leap of my own, it seems to me that this type of creativity is in some way the counterpart to "black swans" and unintended consequences. It "skates to where the puck will be" in John Robb's elegant phrase.

I for one am delighted to find our conversation turning in this direction, and am angling for a future "Event" of this sort to be devoted precisely to this kind of "open" or "pure" creative thinking.

With thanks again, Charles

Interestingly enough, the same question was posed in a Harvard Business School case analysis with 3M as the specimen. If I can find it in my notes, I'll gladly post it.

Six sigma, kaizen, continuous improvement / TQM, and the other statistical process theories developed in the 80s are contingent upon one thing - a quantifiable, consistent, symmetrical output using a defined formula of production. The goal of these is to eliminate variance by having a "closed" system. The objective is to put in components A,B,C and get X, every time.

This model is inconsistent with what we are attempting to achieve through social entrepreneurship. Primarily, we use a different process to arrive at our solution each time, using new and changing arsenals of resources. This would make it difficult, if not impossible, to derive a methodology which would lead to a successful result for us, each time. Imagine the difficulties of building a house from blueprints when each time you must use different tools and materials.

Unfortunately, it seems like many nonprofits and agencies are doing exactly that. They're attempting to standardize their product and simplify it down to the number of clients served, the number of sites running the program, the percentage of budget spent, etc. which by nature decreases their effectiveness.

In this example, imagine Honda vs. Bentley. Honda has a large number of clients with nearly identical needs. Accordingly, they've produced a cost effective and reliable vehicle with limited options that can be reproduced easily. Bentley, on the other hand, is custom designed based upon the customer's needs. Although more resource and time intensive, the product is an exact fit for its driver. Which raises the question, how is efficiency defined? Is it simply producing a product consistently at low cost, or developing a product that is the best possible fit for the client?

Creative organizations like ours focus exclusively upon the latter. Unfortunately, even in the nonprofit sector, there are far more Hondas on the road than Bentleys.

Why is the non profit sector trying to push a square peg through a round hole? It's because the donors are forcing us to do this in order to get their money. And like lambs going to slaughter, we simply obey.

No successful entrepreneur would accept these conditions. They would innovate a new way to get the resources they need to build their business. Why can't non profits?

I come from a corporate advertising background and lead a non profit. In my corporate advertising I told 20 million people, three times a week, that we had merchandise and services they want, at stores near where they live. I don't recall ever putting metrics in my ads to show the impact of my work.

All we did was tell a story.

Thus, my own effort aims to mobilize non profits who do similar work, and help each be more effective at "telling the stories" of how mentors help kids and how donors help programs connect mentors and kids. In my http://tutormentor.blogspot.com article today, I pointed to a blog story written by a student from Northwestern University, who is starting a one-year fellowship with us.

I'm not saying non profits should not look for ways to measure what they do. They should do it as part of their own effort to constantly get better, not because some donor is asking for it. But to get the donor's consistent support we need to find ways to advertise with the same frequency, reach, and creativity as the fast food people have been doing it for 60 years.

One single program cannot make this happen. Thousands who link their stories via web sites and blog exchanges, can tip the rules of the game to favor the type of work we do and the type of consistent, flexible, on-going, operating dollars we need to innovate constant improvement.

Hi Dan:

Once again, you ask the question that's both provocative and to the point:

QUOTE:

Why is the non profit sector trying to push a square peg through a round hole? It's because the donors are forcing us to do this in order to get their money. And like lambs going to slaughter, we simply obey.

No successful entrepreneur would accept these conditions.

ENDQUOTE:

That's both the frustration and the impetus, eh?

Thank you for this, Jon.

I just want to say briefly that I too have been troubled by my sense that life is too complex for "more of the same is better" and "cookie cutter" solutions, particularly in the arena of social entrepreneurship.

Your post is an inspiration.

Creativity occurs in the space between fields, cultures, knowledge bases. Being efficient requires focusing on your field, your project, your knowledge base. The people that wander from place to place, field to field (known a "interdisciplinary") are eliminated in the Six Sigma plan. They migrate to small start ups where they can play fusball, try and fail and then try and succeed and be inefficient - and create things like 3M's pre-Six Sigma blockbuster invention Post-It notes, or Apple Computers, or YouTube.