The Creativity at Work Blog

Creativity at Work Newsletter
July/August 2007

Diane Ackerman, in her book An Alchemy of Mind, says “I’ve always trekked through imaginary worlds, lived on my senses, and fiddled with words. Writing is my form of celebration and prayer, but it is also the way I organize and inquire about the world. Driven by an intense, nomadic curiosity, I may find myself in a state of rapture about a field and rapidly coming down with a book…. I also love playing with ideas, looking at something from as many sides as possible, lifting up an observation, and shaking it to see if a revelation might fall out.”

My own alchemy this summer occurred through taking a painting workshop, reading, and holiday time in California, which included attending the Police/Sting reunion concert in Las Vegas, a San Francisco opera performance of Don Giovanni via satellite at UC Berkeley (better than live, better sound, and we got to see what happens backstage after the final curtain ) they all breath out a sigh of relief and give each other hugs and kisses) and time at Point Reyes National Seashore, where my friends Richard Blair and Kathleen Goodwin were putting the finishing touches on their latest gorgeous photography book California Trip

All of this brought about a three week surge of intense creativity which I expressed through painting. What a joy to paint for days on end, and frankly take a vacation from myself. When I paint I don?t think, at least not in the usual sense, but I do pay attention to nudges from my intuition and act on impulses.

I had seen thousands of butterflies newly hatched in a forest at Pt Reyes, and somehow images of those butterflies flowed from my paint brush. I then translated art for pleasure into art for commerce and sent a new collection of images for review to my agent in New York. They will soon be available for reproduction at SIS.
Sneak peak here.

Painting for pleasure ignited my imagination and this got me thinking about where ideas come from. Ray Bradbury said ?If you stuff yourself full of poems, essays, plays, stories, novels, films, comic strips, magazines, music, you automatically explode every morning like old faithful. I have never had a dry spell in my life, mainly because I feed myself well, to the point of bursting.? How true.

Summer Reading

C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success

Interviews with CEOs on their private library collections in the New York Times (”C.E.O. Libraries Reveal Keys to Success” July 27, 2007) reveal they have more literature and poetry than business best sellers in their personal libraries; and that serious leaders who are serious readers build personal libraries dedicated to how to think, not how to compete.

Steven Jobs of Apple reportedly had an ?inexhaustible interest? in the books of William Blake ? the visionary 18th-century mystic poet and artist. Dee Hock, founder of Visa, searched for the ONE book, that contained the thoughts of all the great philosophers, and found it in Omar Khayyam?s ?Rubáiyát,? the Persian poem that warns of the dangers of greatness and the instability of fortune. Shelly Lazarus, the chairwoman and chief executive of Ogilvy & Mather, says ?As head of a global company, everything attracts me as a reader, books about different cultures, countries, problems. I read for pleasure and to find other perspectives on how to think or solve a problem, like Jerome Groopman?s ?How Doctors Think?; John Cornwall?s autobiography, ?Seminary Boy?; ?The Wife,? a novel by Meg Wolitzer; and before that, ?Team of Rivals.?

Aesthesis
This new international journal of art and aesthetics in management and organizational life is worth reading. The inaugural issue has compelling titles like Unwrapping Christo, and Organizational Topophilia.

It is published by The Aesthesis Project to investigate art and creativity in management and organizational contexts. The project has its roots in the first Art of Management and Organization conference in London in 2001, with successive conferences held in Paris and Krakow. From those events emerged an international network of academics, writers, artists, consultants and managers, all involved in exploring artistic experimentation and intellectual exploration in the context of management and organizational research. The Aesthesis Project will be developing extensive research and artistic projects internationally, with academic research fellows and associate creative practitioners, publications and consultancy.
http://www.essex.ac.uk/aesthesis/

Sketches of Frank Gehry

Also of interest is a documentary “Sketches of Frank Gehry” by Sydney Pollack (2005) in which Gehry discusses his work and creative process — his early experiences (playing with blocks with his grandmother, drawing with his father, hearing Alvar Aalto lecture), discovering computer-assisted design, finding a psychoanalyst, using hardware materials as a design devise and bringing an artist and sculptor’s sensibility to architecture.

The documentary includes interviews with Mike Ovitz, Dennis Hopper, Bob Geldof the late Phillip Johnson, and a surprising one from his psychoanalyst of 35 years, the late Milton Wexler, who revealed once Gehry got his relationship problems sorted out, and built up his confidence, he excelled in his work.
You can buy the DVD at Amazon.

Related links

Five Minds for the Future
In his new book, Howard Gardner argues that to survive the demands of tomorrow?s world we must develop five ways of thinking, or five minds.

Study: Vegetables May Keep Brains Young

Art Boosts Alzheimer’s Patients’ Spirits

Vote for your favourite books and DVDs on creativity

Creativity at Work in Singapore

Last chance to sign up for my creativity and innovation workshop in Singapore August 20-21. Due to popular demand, additional dates are being added for that week. Click here for details.

Happy creating,

Linda Naiman

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About Linda Naiman

Linda Naiman is a corporate alchemist, and recognised internationally for pioneering the use of arts-based learning to develop creativity, innovation, and collaborative leadership in organizations. She is co-author (with Arthur VanGundy) of Orchestrating Collaboration at Work, and an associate business coach at the University of British Columbia.

About Creativity at Work (TM)

We help organizations turn leaden thinking into gold, through arts-based training, coaching and research-based consulting. We work at the intersections of art, business, design and science, helping organizations generate breakthroughs in business performance. Our focus is on leadership development, creativity, collaboration, and cultivating environments that foster innovation.
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