A goal effectively achieved is the culmination of a journey fully experienced

"When I was small, I was told a story about a garden of treasure with a secret entrance. Everyone searched and searched for this garden until, after a very long time, the door finally opened itself and there was no treasure. In the end, maybe the purpose of the search is the search itself, through which we learn about composing." 

The composer Bright Sheng, from "The Muse that Sings" by Ann McCutchen


The above quotation contains an important truth about the creative process: many insights and other things of value are stumbled upon as we pursue our goals rather than when we attain them.

Many of us, however, can be so goal focused, so focused upon finding our very own garden of treasure, holy grail, magic bullet, theory of everything, money making opportunity, whatever we choose to call it, that we treat the things we stumble upon as inconvenient and sometimes painful obstacles along our path (rather than welcoming them as potentially valuable sources of unexpected knowledge and insight).

We would not voluntarily wear blinkers as we take a walk through the countryside to our favourite pub or café; we would miss the sights along the way and any stumbling would certainly tend to be painful rather than enlightening. But when we are at work we readily allow ourselves to become blinkered: our focus quickly narrowing towards the achievement of organisational goals, sometimes at the expense of pretty much everything else.

We often assume that the most efficient, cleanest and uncluttered path towards our targets is also the most effective. We are then surprised when, having so efficiently achieved our goals, our blinkers fall away and we see the upset caused to our surroundings, others and ourselves by our single-minded directness. We also, belatedly, comprehend the actual significance of our achievements which, when viewed within their true landscape, diminish and perhaps even disappear; having entered our secret garden we find little or no treasure.  

The journey towards and achievement of our goals can be damaging. This is especially the case when our goals are associated with financial rewards or performance assessments: think about the damage caused by the bonus culture within the financial sector, where huge individual performance bonuses encouraged high risk investments; consider the perverse incentives created by target-setting in the UK health service, which led to patients being placed in corridors or kept in ambulances to achieve waiting time targets set for A&E; reflect upon the obsessive compulsive preoccupation with maximising sales, again within the finance industry, which led to the widespread miss-selling of payment protection insurance.   

So, to be creative and innovative in the achievement of your goals, and to ensure their relevance, usefulness and benevolence, keep them in your mind but not always to the very front of it. Do not allow them, and the rewards and incentives associated with them, to pull you by the nose and stop you looking up, down and from side to side, and if you stumble, look mindfully at what caused you to stumble rather than absent-mindedly kicking it aside. You will then pick up glistening handfuls of unexpected insights shot through with multifaceted learning that will help you journey towards your goals: goals that can only be effectively achieved when perceived as the sum of the parts and the culminations of journeys fully experienced. 

You may also find that the insights, wisdom and experience you gain along the way enable you to travel past your goal and achieve much more than you originally thought possible.       

Develop the habits of:

Welcoming and exploring surprises, apparent wrong turns and unexpected paths that open up before you. Ask what insights you can gain from them.

Looking for ways to link unexpected insights with the goal you have in mind.

Being open to the possibility that unexpected insights, wrong turns and the occasional stumble may help you transform your goal into something even more useful than originally conceived.

Taking time to stop and reflect upon where you have been, where you are and where you are going.

Explore and experience your ideas in 3D and maximise their chances of success

"I realized that for me, a piece has to make sense in many different ways at once. I want it to flow sensuously, intellectually, emotionally."

Lois V. Vierk 
From 'The Muse that Sings', by Ann McCutchan.


The above quotation from the composer Lois V. Vierk emphasises a simple but much overlooked truth: useful, effective and truly attractive ideas must not only exist intellectually within our heads (and look good upon computer screens) but also live within our lives and feel good physically and emotionally.

The logical design of the London Millennium Footbridge looked good upon the computer screen but when tested by the reality of large numbers of pedestrians walking - and swaying - across it in unison, it provided an experience which felt physically and emotionally bad. (The bridge was closed for nearly two years whilst it underwent expensive modifications to reduce its side-to-side sway. Londoners still call it the 'Wobbly Bridge'!)

Give your ideas the best start in life by developing and testing them in three dimensions: the physical, the logical, the emotional.

Ask the following simple questions:

1. Can you create a physical model of your idea that people can experience and interact with? Can you make your idea tangible to others? Can you gain a sense of its look and feel within people's lives?
2. Can you describe your idea logically? Can you clearly articulate its rationale, its reason for being? Can you list its strengths and weaknesses and how the former can be maximised and the latter minimised?
3. What are people's gut reactions to your idea? What do people love or hate about your idea? How can you help people love your idea more? How can you help people hate your idea less?

Explore and experience your ideas in 3D and maximise their chances of success.

National Youth Orchestra of Iraq: the adventure continues in the USA!

The National Youth Orchestra of Iraq, the creation of which is an inspirational story, is shortly to tour the USA.

Click on the following link to find out more about the orchestra and how you can get involved:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1489654862/national-youth-orchestra-of-iraq-american-debut 
 

To find out more about the orchestra's conductor and the story he tells about its creation click here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mTbO2kC6mA&list=PL8504429F79F948B1&feature=c4-overview-vl

Work hard at getting a second performance

"Getting a second production is about as difficult as getting it done first time."

Eric Stokes (composer)
(From 'The Muse that Sings' by Ann McCutchan)

This is a common problem for contemporary composers: a piece is commissioned, written, performed, and then all too easily forgotten. The energy and enthusiasm everybody feels for their 'bright new piece' dissipates in inverse proportion to the amount of time that passes after its first, sparkling performance.

Eric Stokes's short but telling statement also hints at an under-rated characteristic of successful creators and innovators: the ability to recognise the importance (and difficulty) of continuing the work beyond the successful introduction of an idea. Successful creators and innovators stay with an idea as it journeys into the world. They invest effort in maintaining, supporting, polishing and publicising it in readiness and expectation of its next outing and eventual acceptance into the repertoire of how things are thought about and done.


Example

Those involved in the ground-breaking world of collaborative working, which brings separate organisations together to find new and innovative solutions to complex and difficult problems, need to work hard at gaining a second hearing or 'performance'.

Many of the bright new ideas and approaches identified and implemented by collaborative projects are generously applauded by those who commission and/or use them. Once the project's work is done, however, once the curtain has fallen on its premiere performance, the bright new ideas can easily become faded memories of sound and shadow, rather than influential instruments of ongoing change and innovation.

"That new youth centred approach to providing services to young people; that simple yet innovative way of helping the unemployed into work; that novel way of building health and social services around the needs of older people - what were they again? I think they were good. Why is no one using them now?"

The answer is not simply that the initiatives finished (or the money ran out), but that no one pushed for those second performances; no one worked to gain the interest of additional people or organisations who were willing and able to provide repeat performances which would help embed the ideas within the main stream repertoire of thinking and practice.

Take a walk

Beethoven frequently took an afternoon walk in the countryside, note book at the ready to capture ideas that occurred to him. Tchaikovsky was obsessive about taking a two-hour walk each day - not a minute more and not a minute less. Eric Satie, during his long nightly walks home through the suburbs of Paris, would frequently stop under a street light to note down ideas that came to him. (His musical output dropped during the first world war. Perhaps this was because the street lights were switched off during the blackout.)

During our own time the inspirational powers of the walk have not diminished. For contemporary composer Bright Sheng, taking walks is an integral part of his compositional process:

'My normal composing process is this: I think about a new piece first while taking walks. I start to hear sounds and I process them. I pick the music that excites me. It could be an interesting beginning for a piece, or a middle section, or an ending. As I take more walks, I hear more. Each time, I hear more details.' (From 'The Muse that Sings' by Ann McCutchan) 

The brain boosting effects of taking a walk, especially before or between bouts of mentally challenging activity, are now supported by scientific research:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/10491702/Lacking-inspiration-Exercise-found-to-boost-creativity.html

Perhaps most importantly, we know from our own experience that doing something physical and relatively mindless can not only be predictably therapeutic but also unexpectedly inspiring: that great idea that occurs to us as we do the shopping, do the gardening, take a shower, take a walk.

So, if your thinking gets stuck in a rut resist the temptation of just sitting there, trying to think harder and harder. The evidence shows that the longer you just sit there, trying to think harder and harder, the longer you will just sit there, trying to think harder and harder.

Take a walk between thinking, and energise not only your body but also your mind.

Capture and combine butterfly ideas

'I'll put thirty ideas together, and that will be 1 piece'

John Zorn
From 'The Muse that Sings: Composers Speak about the Creative Process', by Ann McCutchan


One of the ways the composer John Zorn creates his music is by combining small, simple ideas.

Combining ideas is a widely used creative problem solving technique, but the importance of combining small, simple, seemingly insignificant ideas is not always emphasised as much as it could be.

A simple suggestion or passing comment can float by during a conversation, catching our attention like the occasional summer butterfly, but then, also like the butterfly, be quickly forgotten.

Develop the habit of netting the butterfly ideas that flutter around you: make an instant note of them; pin them into your mind; collect them.

Then review your collection. What interesting patterns do the butterfly ideas reveal? How do they complement and support each other? How could they be combined in useful and attractive ways? 

By the way, this is a butterfly idea for your collection...

Use a changebox to identify the best way to implement your solutions

When John Adams is composing he makes use of what he calls his 'Earbox'. This is a software module that contains a great many modes and scales. Adams can input a passage he has written and the box will rework it into any of the modes and scales it contains. 

This enables Adams to explore how a passage sounds within the context of a particular mode or scale, or combination of such. He can then choose a version of the passage that best meets his expressive needs.

By using non-musical rather than musical modes, we can apply the concept of the Earbox more widely; we can apply it to the solution selection phase of the creative problem solving process.

The Earbox would become a 'Changebox', be conceptual rather than computerised and work as follows:

1. You identify the solution you want to put into the Changebox.
2. You create possible modes that your solution could be implemented within. Possible modes are: personal and individual; team and group; organisational; wider sector; public or private; social or commercial; economy or deluxe (plus any others you consider relevant).
3. You turn a room into your Changebox by covering its walls with flipchart and allocating wall space to each mode.
4. You introduce your solution to the Changebox. You consider each mode and use an OWNORS Analysis to identify the implications of implementing your solution within it. OWNORS stands for Opportunities, Weaknesses, Novelties, Obstacles, Risks and Strengths. What are the opportunities presented by each mode? What are the weaknesses of each mode? What is novel or unique about each mode? What obstacles does each mode present? What risks are associated with each mode? What are the strengths of each mode?  
5. You identify how the opportunities, novelties and strengths can be maximised or exploited to good effect and how the weaknesses, obstacles and risks can be minimised.
6. You identify the modes that best meet your needs and purpose.
7. You create an action plan that will enable you to implement your solution effectively within the selected modes.                   

For example:

Let us assume you have identified offering more information and services online as a solution that will enhance user and customer service and improve efficiency. 

Possible modes that this solution could be implemented within are: personal; customer grouping or demographic; wider public (potential customers/users); basic or 'upgraded' mode; free for the social good or chargeable for profit.

You would create a Changebox by covering the walls of a room with flipchart and allocating wall space to some or all of the modes mentioned above, plus to others you think relevant.

Then you would transpose your solution into the various modes contained within the Changebox. You would do this by applying an OWNORS analysis to each possible mode of your solution.

So, if the online solution was being implemented at the individual or personal level (each customer or user being contacted and personally introduced to the system and encouraged to use it):

• A possible opportunity could be the chance to create closer relationships with key customers/users.
• A possible weakness could be its high cost and resource intensiveness.
• A possible novelty, something unique to this mode of solution, could arguably be the more equal and enhanced two-way communication between individual customers and the organisation, which could lead to new insights about customer needs and preferences.
• A possible obstacle could be lack of customer availability and engagement with the process.
• A possible risk could be customers becoming alienated and irritated by the high degree of targeted interest and attention they experience.
• A possible strength could be customers having their needs met more quickly through the use of less resources.

You would identify additional aspects under each section of the OWNORS analysis and, as mentioned above, your OWNORS analysis would be applied to each mode of solution within the Changebox.

Once you completed the above process, you would identify how to maximise or exploit the positive aspects of each mode and minimise the negative ones. For example, you could positively exploit the unique richness of the two-way communication offered by the personal mode of the online solution by arranging real-time Internet discussions with individual customers. To minimise the possibility of alienation of customers you could do some research into the times of day, month or year customers would be most willing and able to engage with the process.

Next, you would consider the results of all your OWNORS analyses and select the modes of solution best suited to your needs and purposes. To  help your decision-making you could create a Decision Grid or Matrix and use it to rate the suitability of each mode of solution.

Finally, you would create an action plan for implementing the selected modes of solution effectively. This would need to specify what needed to be done, by when and by whom. It may also need to specify the type of resources and support needed for effective implementation.