John Cleese on Creativity In Management

[Music] oh 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 produce 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 would 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 the light bulb one to hold the bulb before 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 had 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 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 in 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 ken and mckinnon describe 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 our 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 close 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 doorkeep well let me explain a little bit by the close 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 created by contrast the open mode 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 surface 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 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 nightbot i'm sorry to to penises 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 close 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 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 no 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 our 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 an error we perceive and then back into the close 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 rows 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 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 livers 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 there is one just one other thing that i can say about creativity there are certain conditions which do make it more likely that you'll get into the open mode and that something creative will occur more likely you can't guarantee anything will occur you might sit around for hours as i did last tuesday and nothing zilch butt kiss not a sausage nevertheless i i can at least tell you how to get yourselves into the open mode you need five things one space two time three time four confidence and five a 22-inch waist sorry my mind was wondering getting into the open mode too quickly server instead of a 22-inch waist read humor i do beg your pardon okay let's take space first you can't become playful and therefore creative if you're under your usual pressures because to cope with them you've got to be in the closed mode right so you have to create some space for yourself away from those demands and that means sealing yourself off you must make a quiet space for yourself where you will be undisturbed next time it's not enough to create space you have to create your space for a specific period of time you have to know that your space will last until exactly say 3 30 and that at that moment your normal life will start again and it's only by having a specific moment when your space starts and an equally specific moment when your space stops that you can seal yourself off from the everyday closed mode in which we all habitually operate and i'd never realized how vital this was until i read a historical study of play by a dutch historian called johann heisinger and in it he says play is distinct from ordinary life both as to locality and duration this is its main characteristic it's secludedness it's limitedness play begins and then at a certain moment it is over otherwise it's not play so combining the first two factors we create an oasis of quiet for ourselves by setting boundaries of space and of time now creativity can happen because play is possible when we're separate from everyday life so you've arranged to take no calls you've closed your door you've sat down somewhere comfortable you take a couple of deep breaths and if you're anything like me after you've pondered some problem that you want to turn into an opportunity for about 90 seconds you find yourself thinking oh i forgot i've i've got to call jim and i must tell tina that i need the report on wednesday and not thursday which means i must move my lunch with joe and damn i haven't called paul's about getting joe's daughter an interview and i must pop out this afternoon to get will's birthday present and those plants need watering and none of my pencils are sharpened and right i've got too much to do so i'm going to start by sorting out my paper clips and then i shall make 27 phone calls and i'll do some thinking tomorrow when i've got everything out of the way because as we all know it's easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent like thinking and it's also easier to do little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we're not so sure about so when i say create an oasis of quiet know that when you have your mind will pretty soon start racing again but you're not going to take that very seriously you just sit there for a bit tolerating the racing and the slight anxiety that comes with that and after a time your mind will quieten down again now because it takes some time for your mind to quieten down it's absolutely no use arranging a space-time oasis lasting 30 minutes because just as you're getting quieter and getting into the open mode you have to stop and that is very deeply frustrating so you must allow yourself a good chunk of time i'd suggest about an hour and a half then after you've gotten to the open mode you'll have about an hour left for something to happen if you're lucky but don't put a whole morning aside my experience after about an hour and a half you need a break so it's far better to do an hour and a half now and then an hour and a half next thursday and maybe an hour and a half week after that than to fix one four and a half hour session now and there's another reason for that and that's factor number three time yes i know we've just done time but that was half of creating our oasis now i'm going to tell you about how to use the oasis that you've created why do you still need time well let me tell you a story i was always intrigued that one of my monty python colleagues who seemed to be to me more talented than i was did never produce scripts as original as mine and i watched for some time and then i began to see why if he was faced with a problem and fairly soon saw a solution he was inclined to take it even though i think he knew the solution was not very original whereas if i was in the same situation although i was sorely tempted to take the easy way out and finish by five o'clock i just couldn't i'd sit there with the problem for another hour and a quarter and by sticking at it would in the end almost always come up with something more original it was that simple my work was more creative than his simply because i was prepared to stick with the problem longer so imagine my excitement when i found that this was exactly what mckinnon found in his research he discovered that the most creative professionals always played with the problem for much longer before they tried to resolve it because they were prepared to tolerate that slight discomfort and anxiety that we all experience when we haven't solved a problem you know what i mean if we have a problem and we we need to solve it until we do we feel it inside us a kind of internal agitation attention or uncertainty that makes us just plain uncomfortable and we want to get rid of that discomfort so in order to do so we take a decision not because we're sure it's the best decision but because taking it will make us feel better well the most creative people have learned to tolerate that discomfort for much longer and so just because they put in more pondering time their solutions are more creative now the people i find it hardest to be creative with the people who need all the time to project an image of themselves as decisive and who feel that to create this image they need to decide everything very quickly and with a great show of confidence well this behavior i suggest sincerely is the most effective way of strangling creativity at birth but please note i'm not arguing against real decisiveness i'm a hundred percent in favor of taking a decision when it has to be taken and then sticking to it while it's being implemented what i'm suggesting to you is that before you take a decision you should always ask yourself the question when does this decision have to be taken and having answered that you defer the decision until then in order to give yourself maximum pondering time which will lead you to the most creative solution and if while you're pondering somebody accuses you of indecision say look baby cakes i don't have to decide till tuesday and i'm not chickening out of my creative discomfort by taking a snap decision before then that's too easy so to summarize the third factor that facilitates creativity is time giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original now the next factor number four is confidence when you're in your space-time oasis getting into the open mode nothing will stop you being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake now if you think about play you'll see why to play is experiment what happens if i do this what would happen if we did that what if the very essence of playfulness is an openness to anything that may happen a feeling that whatever happens it's okay so you cannot be playful if you're frightened that moving in some direction will be wrong something you shouldn't have done when you're either free to play or you're not as alan watts puts it you can't be spontaneous within reason so you've got to risk saying things that are silly and illogical and wrong and the best way to get the confidence to do that is to know that while you're being creative nothing is wrong there's no such thing as a mistake and any drivel may lead to the breakthrough and now the last factor the fifth humor well i happen to think the main evolutionary significance of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else i think we all know that laughter brings relaxation and that humor makes us playful yet how many times have important discussions been held where really original and creative ideas were desperately needed to solve important problems but where humor was taboo because the subject being discussed was so serious this attitude seems to me to stem from a very basic misunderstanding of the difference between serious and solemn now i suggest to you that a a group of us could be sitting around after dinner discussing matters that were extremely serious like the education of our children or our marriages or the meaning of life and i'm not talking about the film and we could be laughing and that would not make what we were discussing one bit less serious solemnity on the other hand i mean i don't know what it's for i mean what is the point of it the two most beautiful memorial services that i've ever attended both had a lot of humor and it somehow freed us all and made the services inspiring and cathartic but solemnity it serves pomposity and the self-important always know at some some level of their consciousness that their egotism is going to be punctured by humor that's why they see it as a threat and so dishonestly pretend that their deficiency makes their views more substantial when it only makes them feel bigger no humor is an essential part of spontaneity an essential part of playfulness an essential part of the creativity that we need to solve problems no matter how serious they may be so when you set up a space-time oasis giggle all you want and there ladies and gentlemen are the five factors which you can arrange to make your lives more creative space time time confidence and lord jeffrey archer so now you know how to get into the open mode the only other requirement is that you keep your mind gently round the subject your pondering your daydream of course but you just keep bringing your mind back just like with meditation because and this is the extraordinary thing about creativity if you just keep your mind resting against the subject in a friendly but persistent way sooner or later you will get a reward from your unconscious probably in the shower later or at breakfast the next morning but suddenly you are rewarded out of the blue a new thought mysteriously appears if you've put in the pondering time first so how many cecil parkinsons does it take to change a light bulb answer two want to screw it in one to screw it up how many how many account executives does it take to screw in a light bulb answer can i get back to you on that how many norwegian oh sorry how many yugoslav how many mult how many dutch i'm out of jokes 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 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 at its 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 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 four minutes left ah how many irish oh sorry sorry sorry well look the very last thing that i can say about creativity is this it's like humor in a joke the last comes at a moment when you connect two different frameworks of reference in a new way example there's the old story about um a woman doing a survey into sexual attitudes who stops an airline pilot and asks him amongst other things when he last had sexual intercourse he replies 1958 now knowing airline pilots the researcher is surprised and queries this well says the pilot it's only 21.10 now we laugh eventually at the moment the moment of contact between two frameworks of reference the way we express what euro it is in the 24-hour clock now having an idea a new idea is exactly the same thing it's connecting two hitherto separate ideas in a way that generates new meaning now connecting different ideas isn't difficult you can connect cheese with motorcycles or moral courage with light green or bananas with international cooperation you can get any computer to make a billion random connections for you but these new connections or juxtapositions are significant only if they generate new meaning right so as you play you can deliberately try inventing these random juxtapositions and then use your intuition to tell you whether any of them seem to have significance for you that's the bit the computer can't do it can produce millions of new connections but it can't tell which one of them smells interesting and of course you'll produce some juxtapositions which are absolutely ridiculous absurd good for you because edward de bono who invented the notion of lateral thinking specifically suggests in his book poe beyond yes and no that you can try loosening up your assumptions by playing with deliberately crazy connections he calls such absurd ideas intermediate impossibles and he points out that the use of an intermediate impossible is completely contrary to ordinary logical thinking in which you have to be right at each stage it doesn't matter if the intermediate impossible is right or absurd it can nevertheless be used as a stepping stone to another idea that is right another example of how when you're playing nothing is wrong 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 up 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 decisions 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 employees 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 positives 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 you

Channel: Video Arts

Views: 940,611

Keywords: creativity, john cleese, learning, creativity in management

Id: Pb5oIIPO62g

Length: 36min 59sec (2219 seconds)

Published: Wed Jun 21 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/terriblehashtags]

His book on this is really excellent, too. I heard his keynote at a conference a few years ago, bought the book and read it on the flight home. What a brilliant mind.

[u/LakeHoundGames]

"Play for its own sake". This resonated in a special way, especially when I started to think about the definition of a game.

I also love the structure of his talk. Thanks for digging this up!

[u/Bmandk]

I really can recommend reading the original Homo Ludens by Huizinga to game designers, it's very interesting

[u/shadowdun]

This is a great video. Thanks OP!