JANEY’S WORK
Creativity vs Productivity
“In 2024, the ability to think creatively is no longer a nice-to-have or a quality reserved exclusively for entrepreneurs. Creative thinking skills are imperative if you want to remain in business, progress your career, drive innovation, and experience long-term fulfilment and success.” – Forbes, Jan 28, 2024
A pivotal moment of change is happening in all aspects of society and impactful leadership today requires creativity, not productivity, where curiosity and play serve as some of the essential ingredients needed to deliver on this change.
This is a time of new awakenings for many where the interconnectedness of people and global economies, our relationship with the natural world, racial justice, health equality, and new technologies call for new conversations and agreements. And businesses have a significant and important role to play in speeding up this process.
Getting people around a table talking – real or virtual – is the start of moments of shared understanding, mutual appreciation, inspiration, new ideas, and creative thinking where connections can be made between seemingly unrelated things.
Pushing creative boundaries comes with examining our relationship to failure and how our personal and industry standards are perceived. Breaking through the norm can often mean leaving behind the ‘right’ thing to do, and not taking ‘no’ for an answer.
“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.” ― Oscar Wilde
Curiosity Awakens Creativity
Why?
Because curiosity is contagious…. our curiosity encourages others to be curious and push their edge.
Curiosity deepens our connection and our relationship to others and situations.
Curiosity helps us live longer. To have an unending curiosity for life means we are always learning and growing. It requires us to be intellectually humble and dissolves the constraints to knowledge through the art of asking questions to learn more.
Play Unleashes Creativity in Problem Solving
Why?
The Dutch cultural historian Johan Huizinga who theorized the concept of “the magic circle” in his book Homo Ludens refers to the way in which play creates a separate, defined space in which certain rules apply. This space is distinct from the “real” world and is governed by its own set of rules and conventions therefore allowing creativity to flourish.
Play takes the pressure off from ‘needing to get it right’ or ‘making a mistake’ and creates room for learning through experimentation.
Play is associated with children who are believed to know very little. It is our ‘knowing’ as adults that gets in our way. Not knowing is our access to humility and learning.
Play requires taking risks. It has the spirit of curiosity and courage and when people are invited to challenge past-based assumptions in a playful setting, the imagination can fly .
“Imagination is the only key to the future. Without it, none exists—with it all things are possible.” – Ida Tarbell