Killing Creativity

I put this article over in the left column under the Creative Brain, however after mulling over it, I had to pull it into the center for some deliberation and expansion.

First off, read this article on the Slow Leadership site entitled How To Kill Creativity. Now, it seems to me that creativity in this sense applies to business processes, money-saving initiatives, and other like things, however, this article can just as easily apply to the creativity of advertising, marketing, public relations, or other related specialties.

Big, fat paraphrased quote that was too good not to include:

“In pressure-based cultures, old ideas are continually re-hashed, new ones tested to destruction, and any spark of innovation drowned in consensus-building. An idea that can’t be grasped in under five minutes by executives so distracted they can’t recall the next meeting on today’s schedule — or what was agreed at the last — is dead meat. There’s no time to be wrong, so there’s no time to be right either. Stick to what you’ve done before and get a move on. With such penalties for trying anything new, is it any wonder everyone quickly gets the message that, whatever fine words executives use, innovation isn’t wanted or valued?”

“These organizations don’t simply shoot themselves in both feet; they use machine guns. Their attitude ensures no new ideas will survive … As a result, they must run still faster to stay in business at all; and so have even less tolerance or time for risky, creative ideas. The result is self-induced obsolescence, followed by commercial suicide.”

Does this sound like where you work? If so, what can you do about it? As one of the biggest beaters of the creativity/innovation drum, I have only one suggestion… fight.

As John January of American Copywriter said in one of his posts: “Create or die.” Think about that. You got into a creative career because you have an innate desire to make things clever, aesthetically pleasing, functional, or a myriad of other goals of creativity. If you are steeped in a culture of fear and mediocrity, then your inner creative soul is being smothered or crushed. Yeah, that sounds melodramatic but in its own way it’s true. And, when your creative fire is extinguished, you are no longer effective in your position and you just have to get out and manage a QuikTrip.

So… fight for creativity. Fight for innovation. These are things that make life and business great and should be injected back into thought processes before mediocrity holds sway.