5.2.5 Creativity In Strategic Thinking

Strange as it seems, as some countries get wealthier in terms of GDP and GNP (and all those metrics beloved of economists), poor people – particularly poor people in the Focus Group – tend to get more dependent.

(This might not be the case in all countries but it is the case in some, and it has certainly happened in Ireland in my lifetime).

Sometimes the strategies that are put in place by the Pillars to alleviate very acute social problems (e.g. homelessness) can be causative factors in increasing the incidence of that problem [1].

It is easy to figure out that this is because the root causes of such problems are not dealt with.

It is argued in many texts, research etc. – one of which, a book entitled Spirit Level is referenced in an earlier part of the book – that root causes of almost all social problems stem from inequality, and I agree with such arguments.

An allied cause of social problems is the powerlessness that families in our Focus Group feel (and have always felt).

I believe that the provision of handouts to alleviate poverty often leads to powerless people simply giving up.  This is because a handout (the financial equivalent to one-way knowledge flow that we have mentioned already) is a top down solution to the problem – and almost always top-down strategies will try to do everything but challenge vested interests – in other words, they will try and fix problems within the paradigm of what caused them in the first place.

Also, a financial handout keeps a docile workforce in their place as they wait for the next big industry to come along, employing them for a few years, making a lot of profit, and then leaving when the profits dip.

And here I am referring to people who have enough confidence to compete for jobs in the first place!

I believe that if I am growing up in a family in our Focus Group there is a fair possibility that I will be distrustful of the system. Also, my ability to compete for jobs is so low that I don’t believe that I have a chance anyway.

I might come to believe, instead, that ‘I don’t have to look after myself, someone else will do that’.

This is reinforced by many generations of dependence and, in many cases, addiction, which inhibits responsibility anyway.  Lack of confidence leads to the belief that being resourceful in respect of competing for employment is okay for others but not for me.

Very often, to solve many problems, you need only solve the one that allows the others to flourish.  (For example, if a company wants to solve a multitude of HR problems they would go a long way towards solving them by giving staff a sense of belonging).

Or, in the case of social problems, reduce or eradicate inequality.

But that is a very unlikely prospect – which is why we need to try a different strategy! Some suggestions are posited in the next post.

[1]. There are, of course, some exceptions to this but I am speaking in a general, Governmental sense.

In the previous post I described how poverty and dependence go hand in hand. It might be tempting, as we consider a long term strategy to help people in distress, to think that we need to eradicate poverty before we help families in our Focus Group.

However I propose that reduction or eradication of poverty is so unlikely that our strategy will probably not include expending the majority of our resources in campaigning, agitating, protesting against injustice etc.

(That doesn’t mean that we are not concerned about poverty, inequality and such matters – and organisations that are set up to challenge society’s ills are greatly deserving of our support). 

Many organisations that support people with disabilities which had, in the past, names that described the disability, now have names that describe what people can do.  This is a statement in respect of encouraging people to have a sense of power, be resourceful and take appropriate responsibility.

This name-changing is an example of creativity in strategic thinking.

In being creative in our strategy in helping people in deep distress we need to take all the emotional factors that impact on people into account.

Many strategies beloved of the Pillars tend towards the quick fix which usually ignores the different paces at which people process trauma.  When people struggle, there are great opportunities to include creativity in our strategies – simply because, as I said already, people are drawn to creativity – but pace is most important too.

And how can we be creative with time?

I said earlier in this Chapter that time offers great potential for people to heal.  There is another aspect to time too – that is, the longevity of the strategy.

Being involved (and available) for the long haul gives people confidence and is a refreshing alternative to the short pilot scheme so common within the Pillars.

This Sub-Chapter is concerned with developing a strategy to include creativity – so it might be helpful to identify characteristics of same.

I will describe some here and you might ponder on their relevance, and the difference between the enhancers and inhibitors of creativity which I have already described. Also, try and imagine how to include the characteristics. In some cases it’s not easy!

Cycles of Creativity:  The title of the website includes the word natural.  I believe that creativity, like the natural world, has a cycle in humans.  At times of high energy we can be very creative, and when energy is low we might not.  In our strategy it is necessary to allow time for these natural slumps in our creativity, trusting that it will rise again with its natural inherent rhythm.

Spontaneity: Spontaneity is very helpful in fostering creativity but it can be quite frightening for the bureaucrat.  Because of this, policies and protocols are often put in place to discourage or at least dampen it down a little.  Also, spontaneity is not that highly esteemed in our mainstream education system so if we’ve had a lot of formal education we may shy away from it – or be a little scared of it!  But sometimes, in spontaneity, we show our true selves and this is why firstly creating (yes – creating) and then maintaining the conditions where people feel safe to be spontaneous is so important.

Responsibility:  I was listening to a radio programme some years ago and the item concerned a young man who had many, many difficulties in his youth and who died in the care of the state.  One of his near relatives was listing the number of agencies involved over many years.  I wondered did any of them actually have a strategy in respect of responsibility-for-including-him-in-the-long-term.  Sometimes, to build responsibility into a strategy that will support very vulnerable people we have to be very creative with time.  Since (as we have already established) responsibility is an existential given it is also necessary for fostering creativity.  This is also linked to the argument that creativity cannot be value-free.

Tenacity:  Truly creative people are tenacious – that is, they have the ability and willingness to stick at a task for a long time – confident that a result will ensue eventually.  Failure is a spur to try and create, not a damper of enthusiasm.  Indeed, enthusiasm is a kind of fuel that stokes tenacity.  Self-belief is another – this needs to be nurtured in our organisation.  Many great discoveries were as a result of tenacity over a long time (90% perspiration and 10% inspiration as they say) and lucky breaks came after months or years of endeavour.

Curiosity: Who, what, where, when, how, why, and in particular why not!  Curiosity often precedes a burst of creativity.  Being willing to explore the unknown and believe in one’s ability to negotiate the challenging conditions that the unknown might bring is a huge part of being creative in any sphere – but in particular in building relationships.  We said in the Chapter on Modalities (Person Centred Therapy) that we meet people where they are at and start from there.  Where they are at is the great unknown.  Sometimes organisations shy away from why not (or what if) because people who work in them are conditioned to take things at face value and such questions may threaten the status quo.

Risk-taking: I believe that part of the buzz of creativity is risk taking.  The truly creative thrive in taking risks – pushing out the boat a little, going with a hunch, imagining something different and new, and then having the confidence to try it out.  I read somewhere once that we can walk or we can dance – and there’s a big difference between the two!  We need to hang on to childhood’s freshness and originality and resist, as much as we can, being trammelled by the strait jacket of formal education and adulthood.  Once again, as we stated elsewhere, the Pillars are generally risk-averse so our strategy needs to be tempered with the reality that not everyone will join us in our risk-taking.  But in my experience, while they will not do it themselves – they will often acknowledge its value!  This is why statutory (Government) organisations contract out work to charities that they will not do themselves, and ensure that the charity will take full responsibility if it all goes pear shaped – to use an expression that lowers the humble pear to a status beneath, I assume, the slightly more symmetric apple.

Meaning: Our strategy needs to be meaningful for those who will benefit from it.  Meaning is a central part of creativity.  Meaning is what causes people to be passionate and interested.  If something has meaning for us we will enjoy it and follow it through to the end – or at least as far as we can go with it.  And in respect of our Focus Group, meaning often signals easing of distress.  It can also be evident in someone feeling safe in being angry with an organisation, or workers in the organisation.  Many things that are meaningful for the Focus Group tend to be challenging for the Pillars, (in particular the anger element).  Perhaps this is the reason why so much meaningless stuff goes on!

Good enough: When we become good enough at something, and we know that we are good enough we begin to do it with a certain instinctual rhythm and in-built routine.  We fear making mistakes less as our confidence grows.  We also gain self-belief so that if we make a mistake our world will not fall in.  Indeed we will use it as a learning experience.  Being good enough allows us to be creative – because we are not afraid of getting it wrong.  If we are good enough strategists we can see the wood from the trees. That is, be willing to give up a non-essential goal because we have enough experience, intelligence and confidence to know that we will prevail in pursuit of essential goals.

Beauty: I mentioned beauty in the Chapter on symmetry and its importance in the work.  How do we ensure that beauty is part of our design, and thus our strategy in helping people?  I believe that we can do that by attending to all the above and ensuring that our engagement has a symmetry and resonance that makes us attractive to people in distress.  But beauty in our physical environment needs to be celebrated too.  Did you ever notice the difference between a bank and a post office?  A bank (a private entity that caters mostly for middle-class and rich people) is usually brightly coloured and often adorned by works of art.  A post office (a public entity that deals in unfashionable things like stamps, social welfare cheques, post, immigrants sending money home and lottery tickets) is usually less fancy! Perhaps our organisation should aim for somewhere in the middle.  There is beauty in the relationship building but also in the standards of cleanliness, neatness and display of works of art – often by participants in the organisation.

Others: I am sure that there are others – the above are just a sample that I came up with. Can you think of any more? If you do, don’t hesitate to let me know……

Final Note

I find it interesting that (sometimes) in big bureaucracies creative people don’t want to be the boss. In fact, they often leave the organisation rather than go up the ranks. Perhaps this is because when one is the boss there are so many pressures to maintain control it is a bigger struggle to be creative.  This is probably a reality in most organisations – but it is also a pity. 

It is very important that organisations ensure that leadership is allowed to be creative – and that leaders have confidence to be creative too!

Finally, in this Sub-Chapter on creativity in strategic thinking I’d like to mention outreach work.

I define outreach work as walking around a locality where a high proportion of families who might form part of our Focus Group live.  It is important to note that the walking around is done with the sole purpose of building relationships with young (and some not-so-young) people.  Because I did this type of work for 12 years and I observed – at first hand – its positive impact, I am very biased towards it! 

To kick-start our thinking on this I’d like to consider what we do when we want a problem solved.  For example, if our tap is leaking, or our window is stuck, or our car won’t start.  We engage with a practitioner who solves the problem, pay him or her, and we then – generally – forget about that person until the next problem arises.

If it is a health problem it is not much different.  We go to a doctor or nurse, or the local clinic or pharmacy, and when the health problem is resolved, we do not go there again until the next one crops up.  Of course, we are encouraged to go for regular medical check-ups but this is like bringing our car to a mechanic before the NCT – it’s just to make sure everything is in working order, and we usually see it as a chore.

With an emotional problem it is slightly different – but for the majority of us, not much.  We may go to see a counsellor and when we feel that we are content and can live a stress-free, happy life we finish counselling.  Of course, if we are interested in personal growth or development beyond solving the problem we may continue with counselling or therapy or get further involved in education in this area.  But if we do this we are in a minority.  The majority of us simply want our problem solved and then we move on.

What I am getting at here is that practitioners (whether they are plumbers, doctors or counsellors) are largely irrelevant in our lives until a problem arises, and then, when the problem is solved to our satisfaction, are irrelevant until a problem arises again.

So, what about a situation where we are in deep emotional distress but we don’t know it or won’t admit to having a problem until our behaviour causes others to put pressure on us so that we are coerced into admitting that we have! 

That is, we get into trouble, find ourselves in court, facing a prison sentence, are excluded from the family home or even hostels for homeless people, or similar.  Or, indeed, are in deep distress because of the behaviour of a loved family member but are fighting an uphill battle to correct his/her behaviour so that it will not be causing us and everyone else problems, bringing anger, fear and shame on our family.

Typically, in such situations, there is a desperate need to solve the problem and we turn to someone for help.  However, when the problem is solved, or ameliorated – like the plumber, doctor or counsellor – the person who assisted is largely irrelevant until the next problem arises.

I will digress here to ponder on the purpose of crisis in our lives – because, unwelcome as it is at a conscious level, it does have a purpose!  To help us in this let us consider the result of crisis, that is, getting loads of attention from others.

So perhaps – and I don’t know this, I’m only speculating – an unconscious purpose of crisis may be to get loads of attention.  And during crisis we give ourselves permission to ask for attention, we usually get it, and we feel that we deserve it.  Very often, people who are deeply hurt might not perceive themselves to need help and/or, more importantly, don’t feel that they deserve positive attention when they are not in crisis.

When crisis passes, very often rather than using the respite from crisis to build on any healing that we might have experienced during the crisis, we forget about it altogether until the next crisis.  We perceive those who have helped us in our crisis to be, at best, those-who-we-will-turn-to-again-when-the-next-crisis-happens and, at worst, interfering-busy-bodies-who-won’t-leave-us-alone.  In both scenarios, people are only relevant when we need them. 

So faced with the above realities, how do we, concerned people who want to help others (and – hopefully – build safer communities) ensure that we are relevant in someone’s life during the very times that are optimum for growth, i.e. when people might have a lot of energy available – the between-crisis times!

This is probably the biggest challenge facing helping agencies, and I refer once again to the research How Are Our Kids referenced earlier.  The research posited that turning to someone in our own community or extended family, someone who is a familiar face, someone we know will listen and who is consistently available is the favoured option for the vast majority of people.  

Visibility of our organisation is significantly enhanced by walking around the community with no agenda other than to build relationships with people who need assistance, but who don’t usually go looking for help unless they are in some sort of crisis or other.  Usually, the people who are met on walkabouts are children and young people, but, as we all know, children and young people are a definite route into parents and extended family members!

Outreach work as described above (which is quite different to, for example, visiting people in their homes, or giving soup and sandwiches, or even engaging people for a particular purpose i.e. addressing addiction, homelessness etc. – all very worthwhile activities) goes a long way towards solving what I call the relevance problem.

That is, the challenge of staying relevant in people’s lives when crises have passed.