“Creativity is subjective” and other copouts that keep you from being remarkable

Picture the most creative behavior possible. Is an isolated or eccentric individual part of your mental image?—Perhaps an artist covered in paint frantically attacking a canvas? Or maybe a writer like Lewis Carroll, who must have been in some trippy state, in order to concoct something like Alice in Wonderland?

It is too often that we equate the uniqueness behind all creative work with an eccentric way of life that enables it. When we use the term subjective, however, we are not simply highlighting the originality of the work or of the artist, but we are also putting creativity inside a very small box. Why? Because we transform it into an impenetrable process, into a black-box, whose constitutive elements are simply out of our reach—the term subjective becomes in fact a copout for what we prefer not to understand.

The words subjective and objective have a classic (although maybe stereotypical is a better word) scientific tint to them: the objective/subjective divide is used, or so we are told, to separate reality from dream, fact from opinion, and order from chaos. It is this underlying separation what makes of a statement such as creativity is subjective a particularly troubling one. I will spare you the philosophical conversation behind the use of the subjective/objective opposition, and will instead try to present several reasons why we should view creativity under a completely different light: as an essentially cooperative and social event.

Let’s take, for instance, two well known artists: Édouard Manet and Pablo Picasso. Both, Manet and Picasso are today regarded not only as masters of the visual arts, but also as true revolutionaries and innovators, who changed the history of western art forever. Manet is considered the father of impressionism and with it Modern art, while Picasso is the father of Cubism. Both painters struggled immensely to get their work shown. The critics of their time were implacable about their lack of talent, which isolated them from well known artists and galleries of the time—let alone museums. The creative spirit that we assume of them today was in their time, and by any measure, completely dismissed. It took them time, perseverance, and some luck (for the cultural changes proper to their time to gain momentum) before they were able to become respected artists. Theirs is to a great extent a story of success, because they were in the end recognized as amazingly creative artists—many others, like Van Gogh, who never received any formal recognition during his lifetime, are not half as lucky. The story of Manet and Picasso is a telling story about the importance that industry influencers have, but that is not the interesting aspect of their story. Theirs is a story with a clear lesson: no matter how creative you think you are, you will always need of a community that agrees on your work being creative. You need a Tribe—to use Godin’s term—before the broader public will actually appreciate your creative work.

Now, if you believe that you have come up with something creative, but you find yourself alone in this belief, don’t be surprised or discouraged—that is certainly not the point. It is true that without a community standing behind your creative work, you simply cannot expect any recognition or reward for the uniqueness or originality of your ideas—but this is only one aspect of this truth, although it can be a harsh one. Bear in mind that what I mean with community is not simply—or at all—a fan club or a group of admirers. A community is much more than that, inasmuch as what is at stake is cooperation and shared interests, not superficial devotion. Building a community begins by identifying and pursuing shared interests—this is another reason why creativity should not be reduced to the individual, because by doing so you truly miss the forest for the trees.

A creative community may function very much like those in social media, but they require a commitment that most of those do not have. A creative community requires the commitment and conviction of militant political groups, with the vein for experimentation and cooperation of an Art collective. Commitment and conviction are crucial, because they are powerful motivators that allow for group rather than individual goals to be set, which is precisely what is needed for shared interests to rise to the surface. Shared interests are seldom transparent or obvious, but most often come as the result of negotiations between individual perspectives—as a result of the critical discussion about what should be shared and pursued.

A community acts as a propeller: it allows for a shared vision to gain momentum. However the role of the community does not end there. By sharing a vision communities become relevant conversations or think tanks of their own: if, for instance, you want to innovate on user experience and web-design, your creative ideas will be best served if critically assessed by others who have a say in the same business, for example web-designers, product developers, programmers, etc., but also by others who have a relevant say, but who come from a different industry or discipline, for example visual artists, gamers, and experience creators at large. It is actually the opinion of the latter what can result in a criticism that will prove to be much more invigorating, for it will allow you to identify blind spots, to relate to other audiences, and, in this case, to learn from other types of user experiences—which is fundamental in this particular case.

The type of community I refer to has the connectivity and communication character of a network—I know this is an overused term, but once you forget about its use on ‘networking events’ it is actually a powerful image. This is because a network is a structure that gathers differences rather than simply ignoring them. A networks is made up of knots, through which information is not only relayed, but also transformed—that is precisely what occurs in the process of criticism and diffusion that I refer to above. In a network knots may vary in importance—in the amount of information they gather as well as in the number of connections possessed by each one individually—yet even the smallest knot must remain active and engaged for the network community to function properly.

So, once we leave the myth behind, what we find is that Creativity is a social process, and it is produced today through networks! I will come back to the subject of networks. Remember to subscribe to the factish and let’s continue harnessing the power of creative networks. 

Written by Daniel Vargas Gómez

3 Reasons Why Your Management Team Needs a Philosopher

So, you landed here for one of two reasons: either you are a manager or an executive and you don’t believe me, or perhaps, you are curious, mostly because deep down you, like almost everyone, have no clue what a philosopher does. In any case, you want to know what I’m talking about, so I won’t keep you waiting.

Managers must be good with numbers, they should preferably hold an MBA, and they should be able to encourage subordinates to be productive, right? Wrong, dead wrong. The reason most people believe in this is: either because they have climbed the corporate ladder thinking that way or, like most of us, because they think that organizing a productive team of workers is to an MBA what healing the sick is to a Physician. This reasoning is unfortunately based on the wrong metaphor: businesses today tend to entail complex interactions that are ill suited for technocrats, instead requiring a critical vision and a more creative approach. 

The first insight to keep in mind:

Adam Smith made a nail factory famous by using it as an example of the positive effects of the division of labor: divide a complex process into smaller, technically simple ones, and your productivity will soar. In Smith’s time there were not many factories, not in our sense of the term anyway. Chances were that if you adopted such process you would be able to conquer or at least take over a good share of your market. Today, however, the story is different: everyone knows about the secrets of division of labor, efficiency and cost accounting. This means that no matter how good you get at it, the advantage you get of doing so will be minimal in an established market. The key lies instead in being able to build complex products; to efficiently manage people doing complex not simple tasks—if you find yourself lost at this point, bear with me as I say a few explanatory words. It is precisely the combination of complexity over complexity what is mind-boggling for your traditional MBA graduate, who has been told over and over again that simple is better, period. The truth is that simple is better if and only if your product is as simple as a nail and your competition is not aware that division of labor exists. Given that they most probably are, then you need someone that is able to, literally, build complex offerings (the distinction between products and services has become blurry, which is why I prefer the term offering). You need someone capable of managing a team that can repeatedly deliver complex work.

Here, we arrive to the second thing you must keep in mind:

Organizing teams of people means having to deal with people; not with efficiency, process flows or any of that jargon MBAers love—those same MBAers that at my mention of the word ‘people’ roll their eyes thinking that some touchy-feelly story is coming their way.

Dealing with people is something we all do everyday all the time, so we should all be quite good at it, right? No, wrong again. As with driving a car, we can get pretty good at it, but our proficiency behind the wheel pales in comparison to the one of a formula driver. Our driving expertise consists in simply getting around town without crashing, in being able to Parallel Park, and in having once, when we were 16, showed off our ‘drifting’ skills to our high school friends. Hence, and keeping with the analogy, when it comes to dealing with people, a philosopher would be the formula driver and an MBA graduate would be the grumpy old man slowly driving on the express lane, and who, visibly annoyed, signals others to go around him. The point is that in business, just as in the highway, we do want to go faster. Or would you rather stay behind the old man, who would insist his driving is safer?  

If you want to spot the grumpy old man within your ranks, just ask your manager of choice a question of this sort next time a mild conflict among coworkers emerges: Why did X and Y clash over such a menial assignment last week? Or, why did X blow out irrationally in front of everyone this morning? Or, how can the people in Y’s team lack motivation and yet continue coming to work? If any of the answers you get explains their behavior in terms of personal character, personal issues, stress, or on it being a one time event, then you can be sure you have a grumpy old man in your hands.

You see, here is where the difference appears. A philosopher doesn't reduce human interactions to personal and professional attitudes and there is a simple reason for that: such view is entirely outdated and unscientific—the psychology of a person matters, naturally, but someone’s psychological make-up is neither stringent nor the natural cause of behavior. The key to a philosopher’s advantage lies in her ability to gain and maintain more than one perspective at the same time. Instead of seeing conflict as the necessary result of emotions or genetics, the philosopher sees it as the result of different but equally valid rationalities. Sounds complicated? It should, and as with any form of mastery it takes years of training to get there. Yet being able to understand conflict, as the expression of various points of view, is the easy part. It is being able to negotiate between them what really counts. A philosopher will do both and the result will be….alas! Greater motivation and increased productivity.

Lastly, the last reason why your company needs a philosopher is vision:

All companies have a vision, although usually nothing beyond a webpage tab dedicated to outlining some ambiguous future, where innovation is very important and they are the leaders of something. This sounds as a nice message and it may play well with an emotional approach to identity and brand cration, but it is not really a vision. It is not a vision if it does not outline concrete and attainable goals. Even if hypothetical scenarios need to be created, being able to imagine, to see the future as a concrete event, is essential to actually arriving at that future. Philosophers are trained to deal with hypothetical scenarios all the time; they are trained to create thought experiments and derive practical outcomes from them. The skill needed to see past-present-future as a continuum lies at the core of philosophical thought and it is not a matter of numbers. Economic or financial forecasts, as any honest economist will tell you, are grossly dependant on suppositions: suppositions about the market, about the demand for an offering, the behavior of your competitors, about aspects, such as technological innovations, prices, and the list could go on and on, for way too long. 

Forecasts deliver nice pictures indeed, but they are not visions, they are wishful thinking in the best of cases. Most strikingly, putting too much faith in them ends up transforming them into self-fulfilling prophecies—when they are negative—and in terrible miscalculations and unnecessary restructuring, when they are good (and we all have seen this!). The philosopher’s vision is, on the contrary, the construction of a future, yes, but more importantly, it is the construction of a pathway leading towards that future: the philosopher will tell you what has to change in the company for that future to come about.

So, next time you see the HR Manager preselecting the MBA’s…make yourself useful, and throw them to the bin once she is done.

Written by Daniel Vargas Gómez

What is the factish?

If you need to sum it up then it's as simple as this: facts are no longer the source of faithful and objective knowledge they once were....the truth is that they hardly ever were.

Yet, I do love science, don't get me wrong. The problem is not science, the problem is not that science is biased (it is! But that is not news). The problem is that in a world where science lives in journals that no one reads, most of us build our knowledge based on a myriad of other sources. This task faces us with a begging question:

How do you separate what's relevant and what's not?

The problem, I said, is not science. The problem is having knowledge that is neither freely accessible nor easily understandable. Have you tried reading an article on microbiology, astrophysics or evolutionary theory, lately?

Exactly... so, the issue is that knowledge lives throughout social media, online news, IMS, popular and less popular websites.....and, perhaps you get the point by now, knowledge is everywhere, but in truth it is nowhere unless you are able to grasp it, to discuss it, to criticize or to argue in favour of it. It is this endeavour what characterizes the factish.

Read on, comment, and suscribe freely to the world of the factish.