Compliant Creativity

Creative people come in many forms, yet when I think about it, only images of artists, musicians, and writers come to mind. I think of people who are loaded with the most amazing muse and practiced skills needed bring their intricate visions to life. The soulful and progressive type of person who knows where the richest coffee is roasted. It's the kind of coffee house where notes of chocolate waft through the air. The promise of flopping into a gritty and sticky sofa intersects with the chaotic sounds of pretentious scratched vinyl records and the whirring of machines. Espresso machines that have more chrome than Schwarzenegger and look like they were stolen from the body of 1957 Chevy Bel Air. Where an inspired barista whose dreams are bigger than their drive is at the helm of a wire tight ship while simultaneously balancing on the precipice of saying "fuck it, I'm out." As if on bated breath they wait to share their latest plan to move to Alaska and begin farming organic cotton-candy CBD apple-pears. How can I keep up with this standard of creativity? It's a lifestyle that I'm not willing to commit to. I meet none of the thresholds that I envision to qualify as any part of the above. I drink my coffee black. I don't know where to find the best IPA. I hate the mess of paint and drawing supplies. I don't want to walk into a smoke-filled lounge and listen to music or poetry. Hell, I don't even want to go into the wilderness known as public space. It's coarse and chaotic, it's cold and sober, it's loaded with hidden meanings. Stacks of unwritten rules covertly woven throughout social structures. My mere presence would be akin to a child haphazardly jumping in a muddy puddle. The pathway to creativity is sooo far out of reach for me that I've given up on it and I could never consider myself a creative person. Or could I?

In business, people move the goalpost to fit their objective all the time. Leaders celebrate things like emerging from bankruptcy and being valued at $5-Billion while ignoring the fact that their company was once valued at $10-Billion when they took the job. They choose to avoid the reality of job losses and cutbacks. They schedule champagne toasts, receive back-slaps/high-fives, and accept their bonuses and promotions. Why can't I use the same insane ideology to gaslight myself into believing that I'm a creative person? I can, I just need to adjust the qualifiers and give it an alliterative label so that it sounds catchier and trendier.

I'd like to submit Compliant Creativity for your consideration...

Compliant Creativity is the idea that we can utilize the tools and resources available, act within the rules and guidelines of our enterprise, and create something new and exciting. It's like when you look at the clock and realize that your day was littered with tasks so immersive and consuming that you've neglected to plan for dinner. You begin to misremember the inventory of your fridge. You're temporarily filled with the false promise of an easy meal. When you arrive in your kitchen the reality sets in and your will to cook erodes faster than my bank account on Prime Day. You open the fridge you find a handful of stale fries, 3 orphaned chicken nuggets, and one of those tasty AF happy cow red wax covered cheese circles. They're parked next to a jar of 2 pickle spears caught lounging in brine alongside the remnants of questionable Panera mac and cheese. Yet from all of this chaos comes the Tuesday night charcuterie board of destiny. You channel your inner Gordon Ramsey and all of a sudden, it's worthy of an Instagram story post #girldinner. This is the foundation of Compliant Creativity.

This type of article works better when there's some sort of acronym or numerical scheme built to help us remember how process. Let's build one. Here are the supporting factors, using available tools and resources, working within the framework and rules, creating a new result. Dang, this is easier than I thought it would be. We can use the 3-R's!

• Resources- What tools, information, items, people, knowledge, etc. are available to you?
• Rules- What guidelines or framework must you work within?
• Result- How can you apply what you have to generate a new result?

Now we need an awesome graphic to bring this all together!

POW! Now that we have a sweet pic, we can use it as a guide to keep us on track.

Let's sink our teeth into a real-world example of how we can apply the 3-R's. Has there ever a time in your life when you were presented with an opportunity to resolve a problem? I feel like if you're reading this, the chances of you having faced an obstacle in the past is a given. Living through the pandemic supplied us with more problems in 2 years than our grandparents had in their entire lives. Whether private or professional, the obstacles we encounter don't define us. It's how we respond and react to them that speaks volumes. Here's story that illustrates how simple the concept of Compliant Creativity can be. About 15 years ago I was working for a specialty bicycle retailer in South Florida. We were attending an outdoor expo in support of the local mountain bike trail system. "Building Community" is the term they used. Bullshit, if you ask me, we were building a book of business. Community is free and we were most certainly not free. We were there to sell you something. The sun was shining, the temp was mild, and the humidity was set to tropical. The wind was awake that morning too. It was an annoying zephyr. Like a toddler that pops up at 4:30am on a Saturday morning ready to rock & roll. It just kept nagging us. Nevertheless, we set up our crisp canopy and covered our event tables in a cool branded cloth designed to shout who we are. We laid out our pamphlets and screwed smiles onto our faces. The wind continued harassing us by constantly blowing our pamphlets open. Like fools we replied to the wind and kept closing them. But the wind would come back for seconds, thirds, & fourths. We tried to weigh the pamphlets down. We looked for some small rocks, someone used their cell phone, another used a coffee cup, anything we could find to place on top and keep the wind appeased and at bay. Then it happened, my supervisor stood back, thought for a moment, and simply turned the pamphlets around so that the folded side of the pamphlets was the leading edge into the wind. "Fucking Brilliant!" I shouted. I don't even like that guy but credit where credit is due. It was a simple and creative solution to a nagging problem. It cost us nothing to implement, it took seconds to execute, and it solved the problem. That guy used resources that were at hand, applied them within the rules of the event, and delivered what I regard as one of most remarkable and pro moves in the history of mankind! It was better than any halfcourt shot buzzer beater I've ever seen. Although not quite as clutch as the kick made by Jake "The Make" Elliot when the birds toppled the Bills, but it was a top ten'r for sure. It was an epic save and I use it as inspiration to problem solve to this day.

Compliant Creativity is not a challenge for you to execute with less, rather to do more with the resources that you already have. What can you do to exhaust them? How can you adapt them to better fit the rules of your project? What new and innovative result can we achieve through this practice? Find those simple or complex routes to overcome obstacles. Deliver creative results that are driven by the details that others have become numb or blind to. Find the path forward when those that came before have relegated themselves to the beaten and broad road. Take what everyone else has and use it in a new and more effective way. In short, set your adjustable wrench to hammer mode and get the job done!

As always, I'm human and I make mistakes, if you find any in this article, please message me privately and I'll work to correct them. If you found this helpful in any way please consider sharing it with your network. I appreciate you spending your time and energy reading this snarticle.