Author: Suresh Dinakaran

 

The business world has launched a new quest. The ancient pursuits- for capital, for raw materials, for process technology- remain eternal. But now business seeks a new advantage- delicate and dangerous, and absolutely vital- the creativity advantage as a conduit to sustainable, cumulative, competitive advantage.

 

Way back in 1995, IBM acquired Lotus for US $ 3.5 Billion. Surely it was not just to get its software. Steven Spielberg, Jeffrey Katzenberg, and David Geffen did not estimate DreamWorks worth at US$ 2.7 Billion based on traditional capital assets- it had none. These companies bank their bottom line on fresh talent and new ideas-on the creative potential of their employees.

 

To survive and triumph in today’s marketplace, all organizations be it airlines, accounting firms, shoe makers, retail chains, software developers- must make creativity their number one priority.

 

Creativity has both a vocabulary and a grammar. It is both an art and a discipline. The jazz jam session is a brilliant metaphor for understanding creativity. You understand how a group of musicians can use their ideas to create new possibilities by challenging each other’s imagination while creating collective impact and individual brilliance. At once unpredictable and harmonious. Stimulating creativity is a process that can be observed, analysed, understood, replicated, taught and managed. Contrary to popular perception. Furthermore, managers must control without controlling and direct without directing and you will see that it is not as senseless as it sounds. Managers can’t demand creativity  any more than they can order growth from a flower.

 

Like jazz, creativity has its vocabulary and conventions. As in jazz too, its paradoxes create tensions. It demands free expressiveness and disciplined self-control, solitude in a crowded room, acceptance and defiance, serendipity and direction.

 

All this is risky. Unavoidably so. When the alto sax player starts a solo, he doesn’t know where he is going, let alone how far and for how long. His inner voice- to which the music, the other musicians, the setting and ambience and even the listeners contribute- directs him. That’s the nature of improvisation and companies that aren’t willing to take its risks are not long for this fluid, protean, constantly challenging world. Companies that shun creative risks may be undercut by competitors not only with better products and services, but also with better processes and ways of perceiving new opportunities. Escaping the stagnation of the status quo, of the risk free life, is part of the exhilaration of jamming-in music and in business.

 

In jazz-and in business- the improvisational style derives its power from the way it juxtaposes certain vital human tensions or paradoxes. Here’s a partial list, in no particular order:

 

• The established( tradition, powers that be, status quo) in tension with the new
• The need for form in tension with the drive for openness
• Critical norms and standards in tension with the need to experiment
•  The security of the familiar in tension with the lure of the unknown
• Responsiveness(responsibility) to the group in tension with individual expressiveness
• Discipline in tension with freedom
• Power in tension with desire
• Established theory in tension with persistent experimentation
• Expertise in tension with freshness, naivete

 

The choice is stark. Create or fail.

 

 

 

It is very common during a floor test in parliament or senate that some members abstain either by design or inertia. Abstain because you are not certain about the next step or the future. Staying away or hiding from taking action, casting a vote, or showing up to dispense your responsibility is never a solution if the intent is progress, resolution or making things better.

 

The better way is to show up. Even when things are unclear or uncertain. Even when you are not well informed. Engage with the situation or problem. Find a point of view that you hitherto did not have.

 

” Man is not what he thinks he is, he is what he hides. One of the greatest regrets in life is being what others would want you to be, rather than being yourself. You can keep as quiet as you like, but one of these days somebody is going to find you “.

The ability to stand naked in our own truth is an incredibly salve and is the boldest statement you can make about your integrity and authenticity, both of which are at a high premium in the current social media calibrated culture that we find ourselves in.

 

So, show up and ship out. Be out there. Hiding isn’t a great place to be especially if you are seeking the true and best version of yourself.

 

There used to be this fabulous guy, of all places, at the international arrivals airport hall of the Newark(New Jersey) airport who sang, yes sang -weary travelers towards the baggage claim area at 6 am.

 

Talent– what a word!

 

I love the word. So different and far removed from the over fatigued:-

 

” employees “

” personnel “

” human resources “

 

Talent! Just hearing the word makes you feel like doing chest bumps, offering the high five. Uttering it makes you puff up and feel good about yourself.

 

You love the word because the adjacent images that come to mind include Zakir Hussain playing(toying with?) the tabla, Yo Yo Ma on the cello. Gene Hackman in total control of a scene. Lata Mangeshkar in crooning glory. Pavarotti in full throttle. The quintessential Kevin De Bruyne sublime assist. And Michael Jordan ” parting the waters ” … and making that famous last shot that won the Chicago Bulls their sixth NBA Championship during his tenure with the team.

 

Talent! What a word!

 

To quote editor extraordinaire Tina Brown ” The first thing is to hire enough talent that a critical mass of excitement starts to grow “.

 

Coming to Your Local Cinema: The story thus far goes like this: We lived through the Age of Agriculture. Then the Industrial Age. The Information Age followed suit. And what has arrived on the Big Screen. The Age of Creation Intensification.

 

The white collar paper processing age is… long gone. Great products are not enough.(Not nearly enough). Great services are not enough. ( Not nearly enough). New bases for value-added are imperative- posthaste. And the revolution has only begun.

 

You are not going to make it in the next new forever changing dynamic with yesteryear concepts be it TQM(Total Quality Management) or Six Sigma or CI(Continuous Improvement) or any of those other New Nostrums that we so obsessively embraced 25-30 years ago. You are going to make it by providing ” Solutions “. ..” Experiences “..” Beautiful Systems “..” Dream Fulfillment “..” Design that WOWs “..” Brands that Inspire “.

 

And this ” new stuff ‘ is all about ” creativity “..” imagination “..” intellectual capital “. And that stuff is all about..Talent. The new technologies that undergird the white collar revolution may seem like a dehumanizing force; but, they herald the end of “grunge” work and thence a People’s Revolution. In other words, a ” Talent Revolution “.

 

Fundamental premise for all those who have already(or now willing to acknowledge it)- we have entered The Age of Talent. ” Okay, fine, ” I can hear you saying. ” Put people first. Been there and done that”. No..No..No!

 

The point being made is not about people being cool, people being important. It is that ..people(their creativity, their intellectual capital, their entrepreneurial drive) is all the hell there is.

 

Talent(if you are serious about it) is a 25-8-53 affair…25 hours a day, 8 days a week and 53 weeks a year. Historically, smart people have always turned to where the money was. Today, money is turning to where the smart people are.

 

So, time to go beyond the ubiquitous term ” we put people first ‘ which drops off every second corporate lip without hesitation. Putting people first is according a special meaning to the word ” first “. It means that ” getting the people things right”.. is alpha and omega ..and every letter, Greek or non-Greek in between.

 

Are you talent obsessed?

 

Stop. Impasse. Status quo. As is where is. Inaction. Static. None of these words convey anything even remotely called movement, progress , action or resolution.

 

But the wait continues. So does its partners in rhyme viz anxiety, worry, tension. And what is the return on investment in this case. The IRR( the Internal Rate of Return as it is called) reads negative. It achieves nothing of any value. Unlike if you were to focus, take action, explore, learn.

 

It is said many lives are wasted by just waiting for something good to come from the horizon instead of going to the horizon and finding something good over there! Whatever happens, do not let waiting become procrastination. The full proverb goes something like this- “good things come to those who wait but only the things left by those who hustle.” The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations dates it to the early 16th century, some three hundred years before Lincoln’s birth.

Waiting is akin to wasting time. And time is a scarce resource. It is therefore both shameful and painful. Worry and waiting are never the substitute for activity. Imagine if we reduce our waiting and worrying time , the skills we could learn, the work we could ship out, how our mindsets and attitudes can get recalibrated for the much better.

 

We are over protective of our lineage, of our past and what has transpired. We are over dependent on past decisions than we would like to think or admit. Attribute it to the trap of what Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman articulated in his seminal book ” Thinking Fast And Slow ” of System 1 and System 2 Thinking. System 1 thinking is a near-instantaneous process; it happens automatically, intuitively, and with little effort. It’s driven by instinct and our experiences.

 

Begrudgingly we must acknowledge that NASA is the epitome of ultra progressive, non linear, uber innovative thinking. That said, it is intriguing to note that NASA’s Solid Rocket Boosters were designed using a 4 Feet & 8.5 Inches width. What sets the cat amongst the pigeons is that this is the exact width( 4 Feet & 8.5 Inches) used during the Roman Empire when they patrolled the vast amount of land under their control using their two-horse Roman War Chariots.

 

If you go back in time, the obsession with the 4 Feet & 8.5 Inches width applied to trains, wagons, tractors and what have you. Today we have trains running at well over 350 kmph, but we still have tracks the width of which were determined by what was prevalent in the two-horse Roman War Chariots.

We have scaled the zenith of space technology. Yet, what seems ridiculous is the fact that in each incremental decision people have weighed the options available and then decided to simply stick with what was there before. In other words, they stayed caught in a groove. The path of least resistance.

 

The takeaway is that we are more dependent on our past decisions than we would like to think or admit. Once a path is set, we often walk down it blindly, failing to question why it was put there in the first place and whether a better path might exist.

 

If you want to create the future, you need to dodge the traps keeping you fixated on the path that you are already on.

 

If I have stated the obvious in the caption above, I am not contesting that.

 

Some years ago, George Gallup, Member, Advertising Hall of Fame, had quoted ” Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted “.

 

Amidst the acerbic cancel culture that we not so grudgingly seem to have invented, you will find a large number of nay sayers for anything that you ship out be it a book or a post or a product or a service or a suggestion( mind you all these are acts of courage as you brave the risk of rejection)…and unfortunately, they fall into the bracket of conformist criticism, the kind of criticism which tells you that you have no right or business to do what you are doing and you should go back to colouring between the lines or let the sand slip through your fingers. The only thing you do at such times is ‘ do nothing ‘.

 

The ultimate disappointment would be to reman in a state of impasse for fear of being criticised or rejected. You rather show up and ship out in the quest to move people and enrich their lives.

 

 

Criticism is a dream slayer, the speed breaker that comes in the way of your voice, your idea, your product or generosity. That said, not all criticism is unhelpful. If you are able to distill the conformist criticism from the constructive criticism( which comes with the generous intent and suggestion of improving your work or product or solution), you are well on your way.

 

Our load bearing capacity is indeed Machiavellian. Especially when it comes to resentment, anger, envy, jealousy, bitterness. All these come with an adhesive that seems to have more stickiness than is needed. We can choose to lean against it and close the door on new thinking, new possibilities, new optimism and new connections.

 

One thing you have to doff your hat off to for bitterness and resentment is the consistency that it brings along. It tails you like a shadow, is never-ending, almost impregnable and it will show tenacity and persistence as long as long you want it to. It is the same old, same old, with nothing novel to offer. Impasse and status quo are its pillars.

 

 

Bitter can never be better. It is a Con job! Better implies that what we have right now is imperfect. Better requires change, and change is scary. Better might be in the eye of the beholder. Better is an assertion, one that requires not just the confidence to say it, but the optimism to believe that it’s possible.

 

 

 

The justified attribution for the caption of this blog should go to Southwest Airlines founder Herb Kelleher, who once remarked: “We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things.”

 

I am not discounting the need for planning here. That said, it does become a kind of rabbit hole where what is sought is the ideal time, the perfect situation, an in-depth analysis and the most conducive environment, before you get around to doing things, which in most cases does not happen because the planning for perfection is never the springboard for getting things done.

 

If you maintain a journal or a to do task list or your old project reports or business plans and you go back in time and look at them, a feeling of nostalgia does take over for a bit. Some of them are brilliant to say the least. But, when you introspect, you realise that most, if not all, have remained  just on paper and you did not do anything as planned.

 

Your plans are like dopamine- it energises, excites and gets you invested and moving. That said, they are also like impediments wherein you get mired in the default of what is planned with no room for looking around corners and adapting to new situations or opportunities. Therefore Planning = Shackles ? Well, probably.

The game changers in the world, the ones who made significant dents in the universe, the people who created global brands, movements and organisations were everyday people- college dropouts, frustrated, angry employees, teenage rebels etc. Did they have a hard bound script and a plan in place? No way. What they had was the willingness to listen to the whispers of possibility and the gumption to embrace uncertainty, the chaos of the world. Now that sounds like a plan.

 

The map is certainly not the territory. And the greatest journeys, discoveries, adventures and inventions are rarely mapped.

 

So, whats your…plan?

 

 

For decades, the over riding three-act structure default in Hollywood movies has followed a pattern of ‘ Set up, Conflict and Resolution  ‘, where the resolution is left completely to the seemingly Herculean abilities of the hero | heroine to resolve, overcome, destroy, make good, vanquish, discover, progress, unearth, overcome, accomplish etc as the situation warrants.

 

A lot of us suffer from what we call the ‘ Hero Trap ‘- an over reliance on our ability to handle something that becomes infuriatingly urgent which could have easily been avoided had it not been the temptation of the short term hack.

 

A project gone sideways, the end of a rocky relationship, the loss of a crucial game etc all leads us to think about what happened at the last moment, which is where we miss the wood for the trees. Actually, what is overlooked is what happened in the beginning or the middle, where the patterns could have been picked up, where one could have distilled the signal from the noise, when you had a stronger chance to make things better.

As it is said, New Year resolutions never really work. Though habits and systems do, more often than not. Hacking on the short term is short changing yourselves. Spending time on avoiding that and investing it in solid practices and habits is probably the best work you can do this year and probably the rest of your lives.

 

That way, we avoid the H(ero)iccups!

 

Yes, this is different from the ‘ idol worship ‘ that we are so used to hearing. Though phonetics will continue to play its part.  And so would ‘ herd mentality ‘ or is it ‘ heard mentality ‘?

 

I was intrigued by this line from a 2012 New York Times blog quoted by the essayist and cartoonist Tim Kreider, providing a memorable self-description ” I am not busy. I am the laziest ambitious person I know “. He continues, and I can imagine, reluctantly to add ‘ I’ve insidiously started, because of professional obligations, to become busy…every morning my in-box was full of emails asking me to do things that I did not want to do or presenting me with problems that I now had to solve “.

 

This thinking runs starkly counter to the ‘ hustle and be productive ‘ culture that we are outrageously immersed in.

 

ESSENTIALism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less. Sounds blasphemous in this day and age. The art of separating the trivial many from the vital few. A few years ago, I came across this fascinating book and after a gentle outreach and gracious response from Greg McKeown, the author, had me falling for the content Book, Line and Sinker.

 

There has been always something obscene about the cult of the hustle, the treadmill of alienated insecurity that tells you that the moment you stop running for even an instant, you will be flung flat on your face. Arbeit Macht Frei. Meaning work sets you free. These words first appeared in an 1873 German novel. And later got adopted by Nazis as a slogan. The mantra of work as freedom or a magical route to happiness has proved incredibly resilient.

 

A study called “Slack Time and Innovation” shows that even companies like Google, 3M and Wella encourage their workers to be innovative besides their strongly innovation-oriented work environments, by providing slack time. As Paul Graham, Y-Combinator founder, wrote: “Microsoft and Facebook both got started in January. At Harvard that is (or was) Reading Period, when students have no classes to attend because they’re supposed to be studying for finals.”

 

Many innovative ideas seem to be generated as side projects by employees and students.

 

Tim Kreider has an explanation- Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as Vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets…it is, paradoxically, necessary to getting any work done.

 

According to award-winning author and innovator Phil McKinney, slack time allows the brain to roam freely, decreases stress, provides an opportunity to refresh, and, ultimately, creates  a better work environment, making people happier and more productive.

 

How about maintaining a ‘ ledger of slack ‘ ?