Creative Leadership – From There to Here

I recently found myself in a hotel room with some time, some paper, some paint and a brush, a fatal combination. I started to play and here’s what happened at first.

Frankly – this is awful. It’s overcrowded, it’s a mess. There was a time, not so long ago when I would have thrown this in the bin, shut the paintbox lid and gone and done something else. Not this time. This time I thought a while and tried again.

Attempt number two. This time I get something quite different. This time, though the basic colours remain the same, water plays a much bigger part in flowing and diffusing the image. Is it any better? It hints at movement, dance, maybe something floral?

Attempt number three. This time the blue has gone, replaced with a red. I’ve tried to apply different quantities of water on the paper to create different depths of colour. I titled this image Roses In The Hospital, to me it somehow evokes life blood.

Attempt number four. I’m due to go out soon, and before I go I decide to have one more play. This version interested me as I tried to draw one colour into another. I called it Pressed, as it reminded me a little of pressed flowers.

I learned, and was reminded of a couple of important things as I moved through a journey that took around 50 minutes.

You can’t jump into creativity. It isn’t an app you just switch on. It isn’t PowerPoint, it isn’t Excel, it isn’t Word. Creativity is something you need to slide into. I gave myself enough time to experiment. How much is enough? I don’t know, and I do know it’s often more than we first think.

Mix and match. Subtle changes in direction can bring about marked differences. All through this experiment I used the same basic equipment, altering only the volume of water, and swapping one colour for another. I wasn’t looking for the next big thing, I was placing small, low risk bets and getting on with it.

Rob Jones wrote recently about creativity and implementation. In his post he says:

It is my belief that to successfully drive innovation within an organisation it is not creativity that needs to be addressed (walk around your business tomorrow and ask if anyone has any ideas – there’ll be loads) it’s how the organisation successfully considers those ideas, turns them into plans, funds them and executes them into sustainable change that is the challenge in being more innovative. In other words how does the system adapt to the change required that requires focus not the impetus for change.

I agree that often the impetus for change is not the challenge, and that businesses are often not good at considering ideas, sequencing and prioritising them, and acting on them. However from my experience, ideas are not as plentiful as Rob suggests, and they’re certainly not encouraged out into the open often enough. You can’t begin to consider, sequence, prioritise and act if you can’t first create the environment for ideas to seed, grow and develop.

As for that first awful picture I showed you – it did end up in the bin, where it belonged (though it was later rescued). The other three? We’ll see what happens with them later.

Author: Doug Shaw

Artist and Consultant. Embracing uncertainty, sketching myself into existence. Helping people do things differently, through an artistic lens. View all posts by Doug Shaw