Tackling the big, bad blocker to innovation

It's easier to mock things than to make things. And that's the problem.

If you've ever tried to inspire innovation in an organization with a toxic past or creativity in a department with crushed morale, you may have encountered a level of disappointment that has persisted so long that it's hard to believe in change or participate in making things better.

This is cynicism: the biggest, baddest blocker to great work. It's the belief that there is no possibility of good in our work or in each other, and it can suffocate the best of us.

As Caitlin Moran writes in her latest book, "When cynicism becomes the default language, playfulness and invention become impossible. Cynicism scours through a culture like bleach, wiping out millions of small, seedling ideas. Cynicism means your automatic answer becomes 'No.' Cynicism means you presume everything will end in disappointment... Cynicism is, ultimately, fear. Cynicism makes contact with your skin, and a thick black carapace begins to grow — like insect armor. This armor will protect your heart, from disappointment — but it leaves you almost unable to walk. You cannot dance in this armor. Cynicism keeps you pinned to the spot, in the same posture, forever."

Lately there are times when I feel that cynicism is consuming our culture at an unprecedented pace, threatening to usurp our personal and professional lives. If you make the mistake of scrolling through your smartphone newsfeed first thing in the morning - as I have many days - you may have felt the power of social media's negativity bias and its corrosive effects on a sense of possibility. I try to put away the phone before it cultivates that carapace. If we believe nothing can change, nothing will.

The creative impulse and faith in change are vulnerable urges. Most people who have tried to make things remember the insidious power of an early encounter with a cynic who discouraged them - someone who scolded them for asking so many questions or a teacher who criticized their art. It's easy to internalize that judgement. How sadly contagious is the sentiment that we cannot make something original - or make something better.

Maria Popova, who highlighted Moran's work in her Brainpickings blog, has written that "To live with sincerity in our culture of cynicism is a difficult dance — one that comes easily only to the very young and the very old. The rest of us are left to tussle with two polarizing forces ripping the psyche asunder by beckoning to it from opposite directions — critical thinking and hope. Critical thinking without hope is cynicism. Hope without critical thinking is na?veté."

So what are you to do in the face of cynicism as a leader, as an innovator or as a human being?

I can think of three things. First, recognize cynicism when we encounter it within ourselves or others and seek to frame it as suffering rather than hopelessness. Cynicism is born of fear, hurt, anger or scar tissue. Second, try to train ourselves and others to look for the good one thing within us or around us. There is always at least one. When you notice it, you recognize more good things, and a creative energy starts to awaken. As Julia Coleman said in The Artist's Way, “The capacity for delight is the gift of paying attention.”  Third, reform or (if that doesn't work), remove the cynics from your workplace if they are spreading their suffering and stifling the sparks of creation that are needed to ignite innovation.

A dear colleague of mine this week asked me where I get my energy. My answer? From her. And people like her: The people who make rather than mock, who build things up rather than tear them down, and who never stop trying to find a better way. Cynicism may be contagious, but so is creativity. If cynicism is a self-imposed blindness (as Stephen Colbert has said), then creativity - its opposite - is the ultimate opening of the eyes.

Where there is no innovation, look for cynicism. And then counter the cynicism with the search for good. Maria Popova says it best: "There is so much goodness in the world. All we have to do is remind one another of it, show up for it, and refuse to leave."