Ref Ben's comment:
>Honestly, I can't see why anyone would want to live a secure, stable and
>static life -- all of these are completely unachievable.
and Rol's follow up:
>If I were a corporation, how would I increase creativity?
> How would I structure insecurity and instability to increase
> productive creativity?
I would like to touch on what I perceive as an implication in these sort
of comments: i.e. that "stability" = "security"
This has been a major notion in business, but I would regard it as a
paradigm rather than a fact. If, for instance, I define myself as "a
COBOL programmer who works on Motorola's mainframe systems", then any
change in this status quo is dangerous to me. I would fear other
programming languages, client-server architectures, work stations, leaving
Motorola, and generally anything that threatened my "stability".
Alternatively, if I define myself as "someone who uses software to solve
business problems and just happens to be doing this using COBOL at
Motorola right now", then I am free to learn new skills, embrace new
systems architectures, and even change companies without any threat to the
stability of my self-image and my life's work.
Steven Covey has written at length about this, and I think we are all
familiar with the trap of assuming "I am my job", but I view the essential
element here as drawing strength from an internal mission vs. drawing
strength from external validation.
If I am in the former position, I can embrace great changes in my external
surroundings (and, I believe significantly, I can take great chances in my
external surroundings) without affecting the "stability" of my fundamental
view of myself.
Conversely, if I draw my view of myself from my external surroundings, any
change in them is a threat to me and I will fight change (i.e. stifle
creativity) out of fear.
I believe that creativity thrives in an environment that offers "freedom
to fail" and honest discussion. I will go further and say that corporate
downsizing focuses people on external fears (i.e. job loss) and thus
detracts from internal motivations (personal mastery, individual missions,
etc.) that produce both creative ideas and the focus and passion to turn
them into reality.
Regards,
Robert Lucadello
RLucadello@AOL.com
--Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>