imagination and leadership

I’m working my way through writing a new book…this one is based on my observations and experience of leadership and the necessary elements it takes to lead well, whether it’s your family, team, department or organization. One of the key elements I’m currently working on is: imagination.

I’m convinced that the power of imagination and creativity is way too often overlooked in management and leadership circles. Many times we relegate imagination to the exclusive domain of artists and creatives, forgetting that we are all made in the image of a God to whom we are introduced in the opening pages of scripture via an explosive flurry of creativity. We have the same spiritual DNA, regardless of how artistically-challenged we may consider ourselves. If your best doodles are stick people and the only poetry you recall is “There once was a girl from…”, fear not: your true creativity is not limited to sketches and poems.

Ed Catmull, the president of the creative powerhouse Pixar, began his leadership life in front of a computer with a single dream: to somehow create animation with a computer. His boyhood had been shaped by two heroes—Walt Disney and Albert Einstein. Even though he worked his way through the comic-book-advertised Jon Gnagy’s Learn To Draw art kit (which I remember buying as a kid myself!), he sadly discovered that he would never reach the talent arc of Disney’s animators. So eventually he turned his attention to computer science and graphics.

Twenty-five or so years later he would help lead and manage the creative team that developed the industry-changing movie Toy Story. But he writes tellingly that after they had finally released the movie, he “felt adrift”. Is this really what he wanted to do—manage a complex, messy company mixed with insanely creative people, bean-counters, bottom-line investors and now skyrocketing expectations? Would he miss personally using his own artistic, creative abilities?

Catmull would ultimately make a paradigm shift in his thinking: he could use his restless creativity to think imaginatively about how an organization could develop a “culture of creativity” and how structures, processes and values could be creatively designed to bring the best out of their employees while satisfying their audience with stories and characters of incredible emotional depth brought to life from zeroes-and-ones.

In other words, he could shift his creative juices from graphic programming to thinking innovatively about organizational structures, systems and culture. Management didn’t have to just be about maintenance and metrics; he began to see a much larger picture for his creativity-starved leadership role. In his book Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration, he writes tellingly:

. . . Figuring out how to build a sustainable creative culture—one that didn’t just pay lip service to the importance of things like honesty, excellence, communication, originality, and self-assessment but really committed to them, no matter how uncomfortable that became—wasn’t a singular assignment. It was a day-in-day-out, full-time job. . . . My hope was to make this culture so vigorous that it would survive when Pixar’s founding members were long gone, enabling the company to continue producing original films that made money, yes, but also contributed positively to the world. . . . That was the job I assigned myself—and the one that still animates me to this day.

How is your imagination being used in leadership? What kind of “what if?” questions are you mulling and tackling with your team? How much time do you allot for creative thinking?

“Best way—bar none—to stay creative is to manage ‘hang out.’ Religiously. Hang out with weirdos (on any and all dimensions) rather than ‘same old, same old’ and you automatically win.”                 ~Tom Peters

viral messages

This weekend was an out-of-body experience. I was so glad when the last celebration was over. I know I don’t have the gift of martyrdom; I was whining to anyone who asked me how I was doing.

On Friday, Christmas Day, I started feeling like a truck ran over me and my throat began to hurt. Saturday morning I was sure there were tire tracks down the front of me and I was having a tough time swallowing. Anita, being the good wife she is, said, “Don’t be a guy. Go see a nurse.” and sent me to a place called “The Little Clinic” in Kroger’s.

Huh?

I had never heard of it, but she convinced me that it would be the quickest way to go, especially since I still had a message to write…and to speak that night. So on my way to the office, I swung by “The Little Clinic”.

Turns out that they can do a strep test quickly, no appointments are needed, and you can pick up a bottle of sauvignon blanc, brick cheese and Wheat Thins on your way out. Now this is healthcare that works.

The nurse asked me all the typical questions about any exiting body fluids and so on. My head felt like I was in a fog, so I made up stuff when she asked my medical history. She swabbed my throat, checked my blood pressure, stuck that thing in my ear (a major technological advancement over every other method of temperature-taking), listened to my lungs and my heart, looked in my mouth and said, “’Ewwww! That’s really red,” then said it wasn’t strep: “See, only two lines instead of three on this, uh, thing.”

I told her thanks because of what I do in my job: talk a lot. She asked me what I did and I told her I was a pastor. Turns out she goes to what she described as a “oneness” church. I told her I had some friends in the UPC (United Pentecostal Church) denomination. These are folks who believe Jesus is God…but they’re not Trinitarians. It’s complicated.

Then she asked me what church I belonged to. I told her and she said she had heard of it. Then she asked me what I spoke about last weekend and I honestly couldn’t remember…so I said, “Uh, God.” Okay, chalk it up to head fog, raw throat distraction or viral brain freeze, but that’s pretty embarrassing.

Anyone who regularly speaks wrestles with retention, or “how people learn”. I think that’s why we tell people that this thing that happens on the weekend is not “real church”. “Real church” happens in the framework of community and serving/wooing/healing those outside of the community.

That’s why it’s so important that churches become activistic. Any kind of “doing” connected with input is processed and integrated far better. Years ago the “Learning Pyramid” was promoted by National Training Laboratories and then discredited mostly because of unproven percentage stats (and a dude named Thalheimer who was on a crusade), but I think many educators would agree conceptually with it, though argue about context. Regardless, it’s interesting and from my experience, true. The short version is: people learn and retain information way, way better with “practice by doing” and “teach others/immediate use” than by listening to a lecture or reading.

That’s the reason we never wanted to be just a “come-and-see” church, but a “go-and-do” one as well. For instance, we never wanted ministry to the underresourced and marginalized to simply be a “drop-off-your-offering-for-the-poor”-type thing. We have to personally rub shoulders with the poor to understand the heart of God. Or as we’ve said many, many times: we need the poor more than they need us.

I don’t think we really understand—or integrate the message of the Kingdom—until we begin doing what the Father is doing. I have no doubt that there are too many people sitting in churches that really don’t get it, but it may be that they have done very little of what God says we’re to do, and that ranges from relationship issues (eg. forgiveness) to compassionate service to healing the sick to whatever Jesus did…and does. That’s when real learning kicks in. Or as Jesus put it, “Knowing the correct password—saying ‘Master, Master,’ for instance—isn’t going to get you anywhere with me. What is required is serious obedience—doing what my Father wills.” (Matthew 7:21 The Message).

That verse alone should have the capacity to freak us out, but I’m not so sure that’s the intention. It could be that Jesus was way ahead of the National Training Laboratories folks: we learn best by doing and showing others how to do it.

Anyway, I was back at “The Little Clinic” today. This time whining for amoxicillin.