A Recipe for Creativity From the Groundswell

“The most important skill in the future will be the ability to "connect the dots" in your own way!” 

Like 24,217 other people, I loved this article written by Head of Consulting & Services at Microsoft, Fabio Moioli. Even though, as Kim van Maurik points out in the comments, “The content is nothing new,” the author managed to do something that many before him have failed to do. He brought a diverse group of thinkers and opinions on one page, and unlike most of the readers who, “loved the illustration,” the image that accompanied the article was not my favorite part. Spoiler alert: the voice of the Groundswell was.

But before I get to that, do you see a cat in the dots scattered on the left? 

If you, like Azhar Ahmad, “Didn't see a cat coming,” don’t beat yourself up. Jim Kerr suspects that the cat may have been there to begin with: “Were the dots randomly placed or were they placed with the cat in mind?” His question is one that only the creator of the illustration, Ron Letkeman (@letkeman) can answer. 

I didn’t see a cat coming either. I saw a Christmas tree??. A little more primitive than a cat (call it Creativity 1.0), but so much more seasonal, wouldn't you say? So, I went ahead and connected the dots in my own way. As I was doodling around in Photoshop, I kept thinking, "These dots are not very useful.” I was happy to read later that Paul Hart thought the same: “The graphic is amusing (I love cats),” he writes. “But [it is] not very useful. What is the significance of the dots having two different colors? If purple is oil and green is gas or steam, or purple is electrical and green is plumbing, then neither the efficient nor the creative connections shown are appropriate. Both ignore the knowledge shown.” 

It was encouraging to read that my Christmas tree in certain circumstances would denote “disruptive creativity.” Stuart Williams writes, “Experience would lead one to see that the dots are already a cat, ie it already exists, ie it is the status quo. Creativity (disruptive creativity) would change the dots into something else that would be more useful for that moment in time. I guess it comes down to how we see the world. Do we see what is hiding in plain sight - ie the status quo - and can we disrupt it for the betterment of the future?” 

I think trees ?????? do in fact contribute to the betterment of the future (pardon me for patting my own shoulder, but as you will read below, a healthy dose of self-regard is a key criteria for creativity). 

So what about the comments made me want to dedicate an entire morning to putting this article together? As I kept clicking, “Load more comments” at least 20 times, I started to see a pattern emerge. The 635 Comments could be broken down into 3 categories:

1. The Yea-sayers: these are 48% of the comments that expressed total astonishment about the ingenuity and novelty of the article. 
2. The Cat lovers: the other 48% who love the illustration.
3. The Dot Makers: 3% of all the comments that actually added quite some interesting dots to the picture.  

Please don’t quote me on the ratios. I am a right-brainer. I connect dots. I don't count them.

And so I thought, why not do as the article suggests: be creative and connect those dots? Seemingly unrelated comments suddenly started to form patterns. So I wondered, if perhaps by combining them, we could co-produce some meaningful insight about creativity. As Fabio predicted, this did indeed require some “passion and commitment,” but I was “willing to take risks and progress through discomfort to get to the finish line.” This article is that finish line - “the act of turning imaginative [comments]" into something new.

A recipe for creativity is born

The first new thing that was brought into being is a recipe for creativity. The ingredients? Here they are all 15 in a row: 

1. Independence
2. Courage
3. Self-awareness 
4. Self-regard
5. Imagination
6. Freedom (time & space) to daydream
7. Stress Resilience & Flow
8. Reality testing
9. Analysis & Critical Thinking 
10. Resourcefulness
11. Diversity 
12. Relating 
13. Flexibility
14. Fun
15. THE SECRET INGREDIENT

#1: Independence 

I'm sure you've heard leaders say, "I want to get everyone on the same page," writes Susan Hasty. "My question... 'Whose page?' Typically generates blank stares followed by emotions of either anger or insight. It serves my purpose because the ones who get angry don't want creativity. They want people to follow their rules. Their intent becomes quite obvious. Creativity and innovation demands rules (the mold) to be broken. Yet, a vast majority are "rule followers" whose identities align with "loyalty at all costs". This is evidenced by the US political divide and administration response to being challenged). Anyone questioning or challenging "the rules" faces punishment or ouster. The desire for creativity will always be overpowered by the strategy to survive.”

#2: Courage

Breaking rules however is not for the faint-hearted. “Creativity requires courage!" writes Jean Létourneau, "It takes a lot of will to find courage in work environment. Everybody talks about the need for creativity but most work environment are anti-creative! Why? Creativity is stuck in an anti-systemic uncreative straightjacket making it such that if one person is creative, organisations will celebrate...'Hey, someone has been creative here!' Let's party! So unnatural to be creative that Wowing is a sign of an anti-creative geriatric organisation…IMHO.” 

#3 & #4: Self-awareness & Self-regard

“Creativity and the ability to produce something from nothing is our human Competitive advantage. A trick to being more creative, be more comfortable with uncertainty and self-doubt,” writes Olivia D’Silva.

Being comfortable with uncertainty and with self-doubt requires Self-awareness and a skill that in Emotional Intelligence (EQ) terms is defined as 'Self-regard'. “Individuals with self-regard,” according to Bar-on, “respect themselves and accept both personal strengths and limitations while remaining satisfied and self-secure.”

And although, I am grateful to Olivia for adding the 2 pillars into the mix, I don’t agree with the first part of her comment. Creativity is not about producing “something from nothing”. For us to connect dots, there need to be some dots to begin with. Those dots may be puny, but are not "nothing".

#5: Imagination

“As a data analyst I completely agree with this. Without creativity data is just a data but with the spark of imagination there is entire story to tell,” adds Marcin Filocha and Patrick Rooney would probably echo him, “Who is more valuable? An employee with deep knowledge or an employee with tremendous vision?” 

#6: Freedom to daydream

"Creativity also requires space - to daydream," writes Caroline Brookfield, "Something we seem to place last in our priority list. We also need to work on the receiving end - Creativity Bias. If we can identify and acknowledge that humans are generally biased against creativity, we can see solutions more objectively. Dr Jennifer Mueller's book on "Creative Change" highlights the bias very well.” 

“However, I'd like to believe that the point of giving an employee "space and time" to connect those dots should also be considered as an important part of the success," comments Paulina Myszkowski, "Otherwise the "creative" job gets mistakenly done for the sake of it, and not for the aimed uniqueness/real progress.”

Stephane Thiltgen also agrees that, "Connecting the dots is more a “right brain” skill that needs “space”." And her next statement adds the 7th ingredient to our recipe.

#7: Stress Resilience & Flow

"Also, creativity is difficult to unleash when under negative stress. It often happens when we put the brain in the right conditions to experience the “flow”.”

#8: Reality Testing

Sivakumar S says that we: “Must connect the right dots. Not the wrong ones.” This - the ability to accurately size up the right dots - is called "Reality Testing” in the EQ lexicon. 

#9: Analysis & Critical Thinking 

“This is interesting," writes Jonathan (John) Alandy, "Because taking your dots and connecting them looking forward (Steve Jobs mentions) cannot be done. Maybe Steve was provoking the dots connected in the past to be the foundation for machine learning algorithms and an ability for MACHINES to think differently.”

Mitch Codkind adds that, ”Critical thinking is the ability to think clearly and rationally about what to do or what to believe. It includes the ability to engage in reflective and independent thinking. Someone with critical thinking skills is able to do the following: understand the logical connections between ideas."

#10: Resourcefulness

Johannes Kremer quotes Tony Robbins, "It's not the lack of resources, it's your lack of resourcefulness that stops you.” “Be unreasonable. Be creative and dare to think different," he adds.

Su Menzies-Runciman, agrees: “This is so true!! Businesses really need to start harnessing their creative employees, especially in this economic climate as ‘thinking outside the box’ or connecting the dots differently can bring phenomenal results and make you stand out from the competition!!” 

#11 & #12: Diversity & Relating 

Mark Zmarzly comments, “Read "Rebel Ideas" and you'll understand that you're missing the word "network" in this part of the statement: "Creativity is a combinatorial force: it’s our ability to tap into our ‘inner’ pool of resources – knowledge, insight, information, inspiration and all the fragments populating our minds.” We cannot do innovation in a vacuum even with a huge amount of inner resources. The book is very powerful and makes a great case for diversity, networks, and other added factors to accelerate creativity and idea sharing to power innovation.” 

“It's also important to have the ability to "connect the dots" across teams, departments, partners, with your customers, etc. to actually produce," notes Stephen Wing. "Sometimes it takes a little creativity to achieve that as well,” he adds.

Catherine Syme shares, "the worst career advice," she ever had (and fortunately didn't follow!) which was to, "Specialise. Generalists have much richer experience pathways making it easier to take the leap from experience to creativity,” she writes.

#13: Flexibility 

“Creativity certainly opens hearts and makes you flexible as a person," says Sunila Desai and Sandy Barsky agrees that flexibility, or rather "adaptability" is key. "The ability to adapt includes all of the crucial abilities.” 

#14: Fun

"Creativity is intelligence having fun.”Hannah H. adds in her comment quoting Albert Einstein. And this seems like the perfect positive note to end this compilation on. Piecing this article together was certainly a fun process. Thank you Fabio Moioli for starting this Fire on Purpose and thank you to all of the people that I quote above for adding all those ingredients into the mix.

And now that we have all this ingredients side by side, I cannot help but see another pattern. Have a look at this report.

Can anyone else see the similarities?

To me our creativity ingredients look very much like the Emotional Intelligence skills defined by Bar-on more than 20 years ago. And this is great news! This means that not only do we already have the right tools to measure our proclivity for creativity, it also means that what makes us more creative, also makes us more human (ie Emotionally Intelligent), and contributes to our wellbeing overall. Additionally, this it means that we can finally put to bed the debate on whether or not it is too late to develop or improve creativity after a certain age. If we can improve EQ by 20% in less than 24 hours in our LABs and workshops, we can improve creativity too.

#15: THE SECRET INGREDIENT

And as to the secret ingredient: I would be breaking tradition to reveal it, but I trust that the imagination of the Groundswell can connect this dot as well. I will just say that I would be remiss not to mention the main instigator of the content shared in this, as well as the original article:

Although, Steve Jobs often credited "taking LSD" for his ability to problem-solve, the idea that his superior connect-the-dots abilities might at least in part be related to psychedelics, is unlikely to become a popular one. And yet, to quote the man for his creativity and not consider the context in which he created would be an act of omission.

The fact that, "Psychedelic drugs have mind-altering powers in the physical sense," has been proven time and again:

"A new study has found psychedelics, specifically DOI, DMT, and LSD, can change brain cells in rats and flies, making neurons more likely to branch out and connect with one another."

Do the "dots" that we so often talk about connecting in fact refer to "physical neurons" in our brains? Are these not metaphorical dots, but actual cells? And is the formation of connections in fact referring to the new neural pathways that are physically created as a result? What say you, Groundswell?