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[0:37]Creativity in Management THIS SPEECH ON CREATIVITY IN MANAGEMENT WAS GIVEN BY JOHN CLEESE TO AN INTERNATIONAL AUDIENCE LINKED BY SATELLITE AT THE GROSVENOR HOUSE HOTEL LONDON... 23 RD JANUARY 1991.

[1:00]You know, when Video Arts asked me if I'd like to talk about creativity, I said, no problem. No problem. Because telling people how to be creative is easy. It's only being it that's difficult. And I knew it would be particularly easy for me because I spent the last 25 years watching how various creative people produced their stuff. And being fascinated to see if I could figure out what makes folk, including me, more creative. What is more, a couple of years ago, I got very excited because a friend of mine, who runs the Psychology Department at Sussex University, Brian Bates, showed me some research on creativity, done at Berkeley in the 70s by a brilliant psychologist called Donald McKinnon, which seemed to confirm in the most impressively scientific way all the vague observations and intuitions that I'd had over the years. So the prospect of settling down to a quite serious study of creativity for the purpose of tonight's gossip was delightful. And having spent several weeks on it, I can state categorically that what I have to tell you tonight about what, how you can all become more creative, is a complete waste of time. So I think it'd be much better if I just told jokes instead. You know, the light bulb jokes, you know? How many Poles does it take to screw in a light bulb? One to hold the bulb, four to turn the table. Um, how many folk singers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer five. One to change the bulb and four to sing about how much better the old one was. How many socialists does it take to change a light bulb? Answer, we're not going to change it. We think it works. How many creative art. You see, the reason why it is futile for me to talk about creativity is that it simply cannot be explained. It's like Mozart's music or Van Gogh's painting or Saddam Hussein's propaganda, it is literally inexplicable. Freud, who analyzed practically everything else, repeatedly denied that psychoanalysis could shed any light whatsoever on the mysteries of creativity. And Brian Bates wrote to me recently, most of the best research on creativity was done in the 60s and 70s, with a quite dramatic drop-off in quantity after then, largely, I suspect, because researchers began to feel that they had reached the limits of what science could discover about it. In fact, the only thing from the research that I could tell you about how to be creative is the sort of childhood that you should have had, which is of limited help to you at this point of your lives. However, there is one negative thing that I can say, and it's negative because it's easier to say what creativity isn't. A bit like the sculptor, who, when asked how he'd sculpted a very fine elephant, explained that he'd taken a big block of marble and then knocked away all the bits that didn't look like an elephant. Now, here's the negative thing. Creativity is not a talent. It is not a talent. It is a way of operating. So, how many actors does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer, thousands, only one to do it, but thousands to say, I could have done that. How many Jewish mothers does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer, don't mind me, I'll just sit here in the dark, nobody cares about me. How many surgeons? You see, when I say a way of operating, what I mean is this. Creativity is not an ability that you either have or do not have. It is, for example, and this may surprise you, absolutely unrelated to IQ. Provided you're intelligent above a certain minimal level, that is. But McKinnon showed, investigating scientists, architects, engineers and writers, that those regarded by their peers as most creative were in no way whatsoever different in IQ from their less creative colleagues. So, in what way were they different? Well, McKinnon showed that the most creative had simply acquired a facility for getting themselves into a particular mood, a way of operating, which allowed their natural creativity to function. In fact, McKinnon McKinnon described this particular facility as an ability to play. Indeed, he described the most creative when in this mood as being childlike. For they were able to play with ideas, to explore them, not for any immediate practical purpose, but just for enjoyment. Play for its own sake. Now, about this mood, I'm working at the moment with Dr. Robin Skinner on a successor to our psychiatry book Families and How to Survive Them. We're comparing the ways in which psychologically healthy families function and then the ways in which such families function with the ways in which the most successful corporations and organizations function. And we become fascinated by the fact that we can usefully describe the way in which people function at work in terms of two modes: open and closed. So what I can just add now is that creativity is not possible in the closed mode. Okay? So, how many American network TV executives does it take to screw in a light bulb? Answer, does it have to be a light bulb? How many doorkeepers? Well, let me explain a little more. By the closed mode, I mean the mode that we are in most of the time when we're at work. We have inside us a feeling that there's lots to be done, and we have to get on with it if we're going to get through it all. It's an active, probably slightly anxious mode, although the anxiety can be exciting and pleasurable. It's a mode in which we're probably a little impatient, if only with ourselves. It has a little tension in it, not much humor. It's a mode in which we're very purposeful, and it's a mode in which we can get very stressed and even a bit manic, but not creative. By contrast, the open mode is a is a relaxed, expansive, less purposeful mode, in which we're probably more contemplative, uh, more inclined to humor, which always accompanies a wider perspective, and consequently, more playful. It's a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate, because we're not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly. We can play, and that is what allows our natural creativity to service. Now, let me give you an example of what I mean. When Alexander Fleming had the thought that led to the discovery of penicillin, he must have been in the open mode. The previous day, he'd arranged a number of dishes, so that culture would grow upon them. On the day in question, he glanced at the dishes and he discovered that on one of them, no culture had appeared. Now, if he'd been in the closed mode, he would have been so focused upon his need for dishes with cultures grown upon them, that when he saw that one dish was of no use to him for that purpose, he would quite simply have thrown it away. But thank goodness, he was in the open mode, so he became curious about why the culture had not grown on this particular dish. And that curiosity, as the world knows, led him to the light bulb. I'm sorry, to to to penicillin. Now, in the closed mode, an uncultured dish is an irrelevance. In the open mode, it's a clue. Now, one more example. One of Alfred Hitchcock's regular co-writers has described working with him on screenplays. He says, when we came up against a block and our discussions became very heated and intense, Hitchcock would suddenly stop and tell a story that had nothing to do with the work at hand. At first, I was almost outraged, and then I discovered that he did this intentionally. He mistrusted working under pressure. He would say, we're pressing. We're pressing. We're working too hard. Relax, it will come. And, says the writer, of course, it finally always did. But let me make one thing quite clear. We need to be in the open mode when we're pondering a problem. But once we come up with a solution, we must then switch to the closed mode to implement it, because once we've made a decision, we are efficient only if we go through with it decisively, undistracted by doubts about its correctness. For example, if you decide to leap a ravine, the moment just before takeoff is a bad time to start reviewing alternative strategies or when you're attacking a machine gun post, you should not make a particular effort to see the funny side of what you're doing. Humor is a natural concomitant of the open mode, but it's a luxury in the closed one. Now, once we've taken a decision, we should narrow our focus while we're implementing it. And then after it's been carried out, we should once again switch back to the open mode to review the feedback arising from my action, in order to decide whether the course that we have taken is successful or whether we should continue with the next stage of our plan, whether we should create an alternative plan to correct any error we've perceived. And then back into the closed mode again to implement that next stage and so on. In other words, to be at our most efficient, we need to be able to switch backwards and forwards between the two modes. But here's the problem. We too often get stuck in the closed mode. Under the pressures, which are all too familiar to us. We tend to maintain tunnel vision, at times when we really need to step back and contemplate the wider view. This is particularly true, for example, of politicians. The main complaint about them from their non-political colleagues, is that they become so addicted to the adrenaline that they get from reacting to events on an hour-by-hour basis, that they almost completely lose the desire or the ability to ponder problems in the open mode. So, as I say, creativity is not possible in the closed mode. And that's it. Well, 20 minutes to go. So, how many women's levers does it take to change a light bulb? Answer 37, one to screw it in, and 36 to make a documentary about it. How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb? The answer, only one. But the light bulb has really got to want to change. Oh, one thing. Looking at you all reminds me. I think it's easy to be creative if you've got other people to play with. I always find that if two or more of us throw ideas backwards and forwards, I get to more interesting and original places than I could ever have got to on my own. But there is a danger, a real danger, if there's one person around you, who makes you feel defensive, you lose the confidence to play and it's goodbye creativity. So always make sure your play friends are people that you like and trust, and never say anything to squash them either. Never say no, or wrong, or I don't like that. Always be positive and build on what's been said. Would it be even better if? I don't quite understand that. Can you just explain it again? Go on. What if? Let's pretend. Try to establish as free an atmosphere as possible. And you know, sometimes I wonder if the success of the Japanese isn't partly due to their instinctive understanding of how to use groups creatively. You know, Westerners are often amazed at the unstructured nature of Japanese meetings, but maybe it's just that very lack of structure, that absence of time pressure, that frees them to solve problems so creatively. And how clever of the Japanese sometimes to plan that unstructuredness. By, for example, insisting that the first people to give their views are the most junior, so that they can speak freely without the possibility of contradicting what's already been said by somebody more important. So, to summarize, if you really don't know how to start, or if you've got stuck, start generating random connections and allow your intuition to tell you if one might lead somewhere interesting. Well, that really is all I can tell you that won't help you to be creative. Everything. And now, in the two minutes left, I can come to the important part. And that is how to stop your subordinates becoming creative too, which is the real threat. Because, believe me, no one appreciates better than I do what trouble creative people are, and how they stop decisive, hard-nosed bastards like us from running businesses efficiently. I mean, we all know we encourage someone to be creative, the next thing is they're rocking the boat, coming out with ideas and asking us questions. Now, if we don't nip this kind of thing in the bud, we'll have to start justifying our decision by reasoned argument and sharing information, the concealment of which gives us considerable advantages in our power struggles. So, here's how to stamp out creativity in the rest of the organization and get a bit of respect going. One, allow subordinates no humor. It threatens your self-importance, especially your omniscience. Treat all humor as frivolous or subversive. Because subversive is, of course, what humor will be in your setup as it's the only way that people can express their opposition, since if they express it openly, you're down on them like a ton of bricks. So, let's get this clear. Blame humor for the resistance that your way of working creates, then you don't have to blame your way of working. This is important. And I mean that solemnly, your dignity is no laughing matter. Second, keeping ourselves feeling irreplaceable, involves cutting everybody else down to size. So, don't miss an opportunity to undermine your employee's confidence. A perfect opportunity comes when you're reviewing work that they've done. Use your authority to zero in immediately on all the things you can find wrong. Never, never balance the negatives with positive. Only criticize, just as your school teachers did. Always remember, praise makes people uppity. Third, demand that people should always be actively doing things. If you catch anybody pondering, accuse them of laziness and/or indecision. This is to starve employees of thinking time because that leads to creativity and insurrection. So, demand urgency at all time, use lots of fighting talk and war analogies, and establish a permanent atmosphere of stress, of breathless anxiety and crisis. In a phrase, keep that mode closed. Now, in this way, we, no-nonsense types, can be sure that the tiny, tiny, microscopic quantity of creativity in our organization will all be ours. But, let your vigilance slip for one moment, and you could find yourself surrounded by happy, enthusiastic, and creative people whom you might never be able completely to control ever again. So, be careful. Thank you and good night.