Welcome to Emerging Futures -- Volume 159! Organizations and Creativity – It’s Not What You Think…
Good morning stable becomings distributed across events,
This week we want to launch into a series on organizations and creativity.
Why?
Well, to start with, all of our lives are “organized”, and all of our lives are dynamically within, across, and of various organizations—families, friend groups, jobs, social media…
And these forms of organizing and organizations do not simply shape and transform our seemingly pre-existing authentic selves. Far from it—rather, it is our selves that are the creative outcomes of how our life is organized and of organizations of all sorts. To get a grip on creativity and creative processes, one must get a handle on organizations.
Of course, when we say that we are the creative outcomes of how our lives are organized—we are not for a moment suggesting that we are passive bystanders in this process—organizations are not producing us like sausages. It is a dialectical process full of feedback and feedforward loops: things are making us as we make them. And in this process we do gain autonomy, but we also become ever more creatively intra-dependent on what we are of...
We have written extensively about how stable configurations are creative in how they enable certain emergent (novel) possibilities and then stabilize (“constrain”) around these possibilities. In the human world, this temporal and temporary synching of things, practices, subjects, rules, and environments (here we could call this an “assemblage” or a “configuration"—or simply organized practices…) is the engine of creativity, stable patterns of behavior, subjectivities, and further practices. Autonomy, agency, and independence are always specific, situated, and dependent.
In the broadest sense, this is what we mean by saying that we are always in and of "organizations.”
Now, just to be clear, we are using this term deliberately in an ambiguous manner. We are never not in and of something “organized"—we are never not of some nested set of “configurations"—we are never not of, in and moving across diverse "assemblages." So the ambiguity is important.
Temporary assemblages are always forming and dissolving—some in sequence and many in parallel as we go through our day. Some of these are directly with other people, and in other activities people are only present in how they participated in the making of the built and conceptual environments we inhabit. Some of these structures of organization are formal, and others are informal. Think of all the diverse organizational logics we move with in a day: taking the bus, walking on the street, driving, working at our job(s), shopping, taking care of kids, writing an email, opening the fridge, cooking dinner, scrolling through social media...
All life is the creative outcome of how it is organized (creative enabling/constraining configurations) and the semi-stable organizations that participate.
In this way all life emerges from the middle, and remains in and of the middle.
The middle of what? Configurations are organized practices supported by organizations that create (or “enable”) what we become and then stabilize (or “constrain”) these emergent propensities.
But this understanding is not our culture’s de facto understanding of individuals, organizations, and creativity. In our contemporary western context, far too often we think of ourselves first and foremost as individuals with a capital “I.” That is to say, as independent beings with a fixed or true internal identity—and that creativity wells up from deep within this authentic individual. From this perspective, organizations and groups of any kind come after the individual, who is always already there, no matter what. Because of this understanding, all groups are composed of a collection of individuals who must compromise their individuality for the sake of the group.
And this logic leads us to think of organization, groups, and organizations in a generally negative manner in regards to creativity. We define creativity as being something that is already inside our individual selves—something that the group will always compromise. We see our creativity as being something that involves “breaking all the rules"—and as such a critical key to individual freedom and our true independence. From this individualistic perspective, groups and organizations at best are neutral in regards to our creativity, but more often than not, they are what we believe to profoundly limit and undermine our authentic individual creative aspirations. Groups and organizations are the problem for creativity...
BUT—nothing could be further from the truth. This strong and difficult dichotomy of individual versus group is a false one. And a deeply debilitating logic in regards to our lives in general and even more so in regards to how we can engage with creative processes. For us, the real issue is one of understanding how configurations (forms of organization) creatively give rise to differing processes and forms of creative individuation.
This is a critical concept: Individuation is the process by which anything comes into being as something distinct. Differing configurations creatively individuate clouds, weather patterns, economic structures, cultural logics, subjectivities, individuals, and groups.
Understanding individuation as a process means that we can ask: What are the creative configurational processes that give rise to various historical forms of human subjectivity?
Or: What are the creative configurational processes that give rise to various historical forms of organizations?
We need to move beyond the duality of individuals versus groups to consider how both arise as interconnected forms of individuations.
PAUSE: Before going further, let’s summarize a few pragmatic points for engaging with creative processes:
And—before anyone accuses us of fully denying our “individuality"—yes, of course we do have autonomy and agency—there is no doubt about this. But so do other forms of organizations/individuations: A family unit or a sports team also has a distinct form of autonomy and agency. And it will be different from, but intimately connected to, the process of individuation that gives us our specific individual autonomy and agency. And this connection is what we need to understand to effectively engage with creative processes.
In this contrast between radical individuality and processes of individuation, everything hinges on how we understand “what does it mean for things to come together in an organized manner?”
From the perspective of radical individualism, we tend to think of things coming together (e.g., groups and organizations) in an additive or linear manner:
And with this logic, we imagine group behavior to be thus:
Now some things can be understood “reasonably” well from this perspective—but only if we radically narrow the scope of what we are considering. For example, we could ask, “Who built that chair, and how did they build it?”
And from the radical individualistic approach to creativity, it would be reasonably fair to say, “The carpenter, Jane, and three assistants built that specific chair using six pieces of wood and a set of seven hand tools over a two-week period in their shop, following a very specific step-by-step process.”
And so here we can talk clearly about an organization with a leader, assistants, materials, a goal, and a process. Here the lead carpenter Jane has a creative vision (the idea), and the rest of the team submits to this vision (the plan) to get the project done (the making).
Thus we believe that what we are seeing in action is a linear logic of:
It is assumed that materials are being used in an additive and passive way to make the original idea a reality. And this linear logic seems like a fairly accurate way to talk about groups, individual agency, creativity, and organizations: an individual comes up with the idea, they share it with the group who comes up with the plan, and then they all make it a reality—end of story…
But is it?
To frame it this way requires that we narrow the scope of what counts as part of the process so radically that we profoundly distort what we are trying to understand—and ultimately, we no longer have anything like an accurate grasp of the creative process.
For example, let's try and answer some very basic questions from this perspective:
These are all relevant questions about the full scope of creative agency. Trying to make sense of the action by which an object as simple as a chair creatively came into being turns out to be no easy task if we are approaching it from a framework that cannot account for the creative power of organized configurations. And it certainly cannot be done via a linear individualistic approach to organized practices, organizations, and creative agency.
We need an alternative approach if we are ever going to make sense of how complex networks of things, practices, individuals, and environments (organizational configurations) give rise to creative outcomes whatsoever.
And critical to any such alternative approach to how configurations/organizations are creative is a clear conceptual understanding of the process of emergence:
The first key correction is that most organizations/configurations are, in practical terms, non-decomposable (see diagram above #1); obviously, you can take an assemblage or organization apart, but you cannot put it back together and expect it to be the same thing.
Let’s take our example of Jane’s organization (their chair-making workshop): You could fire or furlough the assistants and sell the tools and wood supply. Jane could pursue other interests. And at a later date, rehire the team, buy new wood, and find similar tools. But time would not stand still—in an irreversible manner, things would have changed. The moment would be different, the assistants would have evolved, and trees might no longer grow that way or be processed that way. The tools have changed... So we are not dealing with a simple additive and decomposable structure. Our world is meaningfully irreversible.
The organization has individuated in a unique manner: how things come together—the people, the moment in the world of furniture, the project, the materials, etc.—does not add up in any simple way (#2 above)—it qualitatively exceeds any linear understanding of outcomes. There is something distinct—a type of signature, a style—a logic that has emerged that identifies and defines this organization. And the organization's "emergent" logic is irreducible to any one input (#3). It cannot be ascribed to Jane, the context, the unique materials, their special tools, or anything else. But it is there nonetheless.
And what shifts an organizational configuration into such an emergent, novel state? The immediate cause could be something seemingly insignificant (#8).
Now what is emerging from this special configuration in an irreducible manner that we could call a “style” is a unique set of propensities. The style is not one specific thing. It is more general than that—it is a circumscribed pattern (#4) of possible outcomes that are tending in a direction (#5)—hence “propensities” (#6). And in having an emergent, circumscribed set of potential tendencies, the organization pulls everyone and everything ever more in the direction of these emergent propensities. What emerges has an agency. And this agency acts as a “feedforward” loop (#7).
And most importantly, as these tendencies emerge and develop as a global quality of the organization, they in turn shape each and every component: tools, materials, practices, outcomes, and people (#9).
PAUSE: Let’s pause again in our story, and before going further, let’s summarize a few pragmatic points for engaging with creative processes:
Groups are Creative
We are going to go much further into organizations and creativity over the next few newsletters. And because of this, we do not want to go much further in this one. Let’s return to where we started:
Far too often, the individualistic internal approach to creativity proposes that organizational creativity should be thought of as a question of managing “creatives” such that they can be their “true selves." Or helping everyone in the organization find their “inner” creativity”, which is most often framed as getting individuals to be more divergent in their thinking...
But engaging effectively with creative processes is not about “managing creatives," increasing in the organization individual's divergent thinking capacities, or improving individual ideational capacities—and it never was!
In our own experience, far too often we have found that an organization's view of organizational creativity is almost exclusively in terms of supporting creative individuals to be more of themselves—"herding"monkeys towards the relevant creative goals,” as one manager told us.
So before ending this week's newsletter, let’s be absolutely clear about the fundamental problems with this:
While this is not a complete list by any means, it should make clear: we need to embrace a radically different approach to groups, organizations, and our own individuality in relation to creative processes.
If we keep making the logic of (fictional) discrete individual human behavior the paradigmatic exemplar for creativity, we will never get close to actually engaging with the logics of creative processes in organizations.
And let us remember that “organizations” here should be both understood broadly—all human life is organized, intra-dependent, and collective. And also “organizations” should also be understood narrowly as well—most of the creative processes we are interested in catalyzing are in the context of some form of organization...
Organizational creative processes are not about managing individual creatives. It is about how dynamic ecosystems lead to novel emergent outcomes—and that is an entirely different problem...
That is it for this week. Next week we will continue this series with a focus on: What is an organization and how does creativity emerge within it?
But before we go, a big thanks to all those who reached out to us with thoughts from our last newsletter—a special thanks to Curtis Michelson, Kristin Westmore, and Thom Markham for their detailed responses—we will share more in the coming weeks.
So till next week, stay carefully organized and creatively individuate with interesting emergent newness!
Keep Your Difference Alive!
Jason and Iain
Emergent Futures Lab
+++
P.S.: Looking to connect more deeply with our work?
Have a look a our book, or hire us! Innovation workshops, corporate talks, webinars, one on one coaching, innovation facilitation, + more… Something else in mind? Great - let's chat.
