A Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity discussion topic

Copyright 2008 by K. Ferlic,   All Rights Reserved

With the risk of over simplifying over 200 years of organizational experience, the pattern that most organizations use is to try and harness the creative spirit of the individual as you would harness a horse as opposed to creating the space for that creative spirit to unfold within the organization’s needs. Then, working with that unfolding spirit in a way that severs the need of both the individual spirit and the organization.

All organizations exist for a stated mission, goal or purpose and individuals in that organization will have to meet that reason. Such a statement is, of course, obvious. However, individuals do not have to serve the organization at the expense of their creative life energy and the free expression of their creative spirit. Nor does the organization or any one in it need to be severed in a way that drains the life of the individual.

What needs to be understood is what the organization ultimately achieves and provides the individuals who participate in that organization, its customers, its shareholders and/or stakeholders can be, and often is, quite different and can sometimes be independent of the stated mission, goal or purpose. For example, few organization give as one of their goals "security to the individual employee’s life" yet that is what many individuals seek in an organization for a steady pay check will provide security for many. This is one reason why some individuals feel betrayed when an organization fails for one reason or another. The organization wasn’t just a job, it was their security in life.

In any case, all organization rely on the individual and how effective the individual is at meeting the task that needs to be performed. All organizations start with the individual and the organization’s success or downfall is based ultimately on the individual performance. Most organization try and "iron out" or somehow remove the individual from the process but they can’t and never will. Although systems are created where individuals are interchangeable and individuals are trained to function certain ways the individual is still what makes the organization run. In the end, no matter how we look at the problem and structure the organization it depends on individuals and the individual performance. The individual is the organization’s most valuable asset.

Although creativity may not seem important for an organization, it ultimately is and the organization will need to develop the creativity of its people if it desires to survive in the long run. However, most are too short sighted to invest in the future. Few managers see the creativity within their employees is the energy that will carry the organization thought the future. An organization’s investment in the creativity of its employees is an investment in its own future and survivability.

It needs to be remembered, the source of the individual’s energy to accomplish any task in life flows from the same source within our being as our creative power and creative ability. The same energy, a creative life energy, that one uses to be creative is the same energy that allows us to perform any task at the job site. It is only in the manner in which it the energy flows and into what it flows that makes a different. In a creative task, the energy flows into the creative endeavor. In a routine and mundane task, the energy flows into completing the task as required in the format that is provided. One path takes the individual into the unknown and unknown difficulties and challenges and allows the individual to awaken and become more aware. The other path takes one into a very known and well characterized environment where the challenges are often non existence. On one path the individual is challenged to remain very aware and awake, always look and always observing, where as on the other path the individual is often challenged to simply remain awake because they are asked to perform in such a deep habitual way that a sleep walker, zombie or robot could do just as well. But a robot or zombie will not respond well to change. Each organization will need to looks at organizational requirements and demand to see what exactly is being required and then orchestrate both the flow of energy within the individual and within the organization to achieve an optimum flow in both.

The Organizational Creativity approach uses the term orchestrate and, in particular, it talks about orchestrating the organization. This is because in working with the flow of the individual’s creative life energy, it is more about orchestrating circumstances to allows its flow as opposed to controlling, managing or directing the flow. In tapping into and accessing the flow of energy within one’s being to perform any task, one is tapping into a creative power that is unlimited in what it can do.

It needs to be clearly understood and cannot be over emphasized that the energy that sustains us is a creative life energy. It desire to create and it desires to express itself in life in a way that makes the individual feel alive and what makes me feel alive may or may not be what makes you feel alive. But most importantly, it is a creative force and it will create. If it is not allowed to be use consciously to create it will do so nonconsciously. But it will create.

However, the whole modern industrial revolution since the eighteen hundreds has been to take this creative life energy within the individual and simply harness it into a task much the way one would take a free spirited horse and harnessing it to pull a wagon. The job may get done but there was little to no attention paid to the fact that something may be lost in harnessing the individual’s creative spirit in a way that did not ultimately serve the individual. At first look, it doesn’t really seem to make much difference. We can point to all the successes that humanity has made over past few hundred years as proof that it doesn’t matter how we harness the individual’s creative life energy.

But one must ask why a significant number of the improvements of humanity have been directed towards figuring out how to make bigger and better war machines as opposed to simply facing the challenge of the unknown. The saddest thing about one of humanities greatest accomplishments, the United States putting a man on the moon, is that is was not inspired by the shear creativity of the project of a love of exploration of the outer reaches of space. Rather, it was done in competition against the Russian Empire. Which brings up an extremely important point. There needs to be a tension between opposites for energy to flow much like the positive and negative poles of a battery or the tension between the masculine and feminine and there will always be such a creative tension.

In any organization there will be a creative tension between opposites that is driving the flow of energy of both the individual and the organization. The question each individual and each organization will have to face is whether the tension that is causing the flow of energy being used by the organization created because of a tension created by love in the sense of the love of the challenge to see what is possible or by war, conflict or competition to overcome, to overtake or suppress the "other" whomever the "other" may be. Is the tension created by pull of love between a masculine for the feminine or is it created by the push of war between the masculine against the masculine or worse, the masculine dominating and controlling the feminine.

With the risk of over simplifying, the understanding that helped fuel the industrial revolution that created our modern industrialized society was that one needed food to live. A job provided money and money provided the ability to buy food. If one wanted to live they took a job to supply the money to buy the food on which they could live and maybe have a family. It all made sense. It seemed to work and many seemed to live longer, healthier and somewhat more enjoyable lives.

Of course there was the need for intervention into this effort by employers because management did not give what the employees thought was fair. There were the unions who forced management to give some rights and safety considerations to the laborers. Then there was the need for government to ensure worker, public, and environmental health and safety and often investor and consumer protection. But the bottom line in all of this is that the creative life energy of the individual was harnessed to perform certain types and kind of tasks with little consideration for what was being harnessed and what were the repercussions of harnessing it in the way it was harnessed.

Sometimes there were creative tasks but most jobs simply required the job requirements to be met with little or no creativity. Because of these needs for food to survive and the prevalent thinking, the individual need for creativity was overlooked and a myriad of problems and issues were created that could have been avoided or addressed in a way that did not require competition. One can ask how many armies have been raised because the men had no where else to go to find a job.

Over the years there have been a variety of different approaches and philosophies as to how to improve the overall process of organizations. Some approaches focus on health and safety. Some focused on productivity. Some focused on efficiency. Some focused on eliminating corruption, some focused on eliminating waste. Some focused on quality. Some focused on employee development and training. Some focused on profits. Some focused on standards. Some focused on team building. Some focused on management by objectives. Some focused on morale. Some tried to improve up one or more of these. It seemed as thought anything that could be studied and anything that could be coached or performed by a consultant was. That is, except nurturing the creative spirit and that which gives life to the individual.

In almost all these approaches the focus still was on harnessing the creative life energy of the individual to perform a particular task. Few if any every considered the developing the enhancing the flow of the creative life energy. There reason for this was that it was probably recognized early on in the human evolution that when an individual consciously accessed and aligned with the flow of their creative life energy they found the job they were being asked to do did not fit who and what they were. It is almost an inevitable fact most jobs do not reflect who the individual really is and there are clear and understandable reasons for this. Most individuals who access the truth of their being find they need to recreate their life to live that truth. This often means finding a new job for the job they have was acquired under a false assumption as to what they should be doing in their life.

From an organizational perspective, there was little incentive to spend organizational resources having an individual develop their creative potential and then leave the organization because the organization no longer served their needed. There were/are career counseling programs and career development programs but most existed off to the side or as an after thought appended to the overall organization. A few approaches look towards the development of the individual’s creative life energy such as "career development" programs or executive training programs, but then integrated that developed individual into the organization to service the needs of the ongoing activities. In truth, the focus has been on harnessing the individual and not developing the individual. Few organizational approaches look at accessing and developing the creative potential within the individual as a way to improve the overall quality and efficiency of the organization. However as technology increased and there are rapid changes in technology in the workplace a different type and kind of workforce has been needed. The need for more creative and adaptable individual is continually increasing. Many organizations are rethinking the type and kind of organization that is needed.

As is stated in the origins of the Releasing Your Unlimited Creativity material the intent was to find an alternative way of being in the world were one could find a way to live in the world where they could align themselves both with the dream within the heart (the intention for their life), their creative passion, and what they do in the world whether it be inside or outside an organization. Organizational Creativity works to bring the needs of the work place and the organization together with the individual’s heart’s desire and their inherent creativity and desire to creatively express oneself.. This is best done through orchestration analogous to the way one would orchestrate music for a particular type and kind of orchestra to provide a sound unique to that orchestra. Hence the organization approach is about finding an organizational structure that best fits the both individuals and the organizational needs as opposed to emphasizing one over the other. Orchestrating the organization is best suited and most effective for organizations requiring either a very creative or adaptive workforce or one facing significant change. However, any organization can benefit from the developing and enhancing the flow of the creative life energy of their workforce. The challenge is to figure out how to work with the creative life energy as opposed to tying to harnessing it in way that eventually kills the spirit.

Related topics
The impacts of suppressing or denying the creative spirit

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