Gran parte de las dificultades por las que atraviesa el mundo se debe a que los ignorantes están completamente seguros, y los inteligentes llenos de dudas.
Think outside the box, shake things up, and think different: The metaphors we use for creativity suggest that it's different from many other pursuits.
As a result, it might seem that being creative requires a different approach than most other skills. If you want to be a great tennis player, you need to practice your swing. If you want to nail a presentation, you need to practice it several times. But, it turns out that creativity also requires practice.
In order to practice properly, there are two things you need to do:
1.- Know enough about creativity to practice the right things.
2.- Set aside the time to create rituals that lead to habits that support your creative practice.
The most creative people know a lot in their domain of expertise. In order for jazz musicians to improvise, they need to know a lot of music theory related to the song structures they play. The best scientists are deeply immersed in their fields. Inventors spend years understanding the way the world works.
In order to stoke your creativity, you need to continually develop your expertise. That means that you need to read, listen to lectures, and engage in conversations with others. These activities are often pushed into the background in our busy lives. So, you need to make time to learn.
When are the times that you engage in “fake work” where you sit at your desk and stare at the internet or shuffle papers? Instead of fake work, keep a book or stack of articles by your desk. When you feel a bout of fake work coming on, grab your book, find a quiet spot and read for 15 or 20 minutes. That time adds up and increases the knowledge you can use to generate new ideas.
Creative people also draw their inspiration from areas outside their domain of expertise. That means that you need to expose yourself to information that doesn’t seem relevant right now, but may end up being important later.
It is particularly difficult to find the time to do things that don’t have a clear benefit to you right now. After all, we are taught to be highly goal-directed. And that means clearing away distractions.
Set aside at least an hour a week to learn about something really new. The best way to do that is to pick a consistent time of the week and block an hour out of your calendar. Do it way in advance before that calendar fills up with things to do. And set that time aside to try something new.
Then, email friends and colleagues whose work you respect. Look for people who do things in a different domain than yours. Ask them for recommendations of things to read, see, or listen to. No matter how wacky their suggestions may seem, you will be surprised at how new things can shift your perspective.
Finally, lots of research suggests that people who have lots of good ideas also have lots of ideas. That means that if you want to succeed at doing things that are creative, you need to put in time in the act of trying to create.
To really develop a habit for creative practice, you need a regular ritual. For example, Stephen King (a prolific and creative writer) sits down each morning to write for a few hours. He compares the process of getting ready to write to the ritual of getting ready to go to sleep.
In order to create rituals for creativity, you need to think about what makes you feel creative. I find that having discussions with students and colleagues leads to great ideas for new experiments and projects, and so I schedule regular meetings of my lab and meetings with students with the express purpose of generating ideas. If you work best alone, then you need to put time into each day to engage in your creative pursuits. Whether you do it alone or in a group, you need to find ways to generate ideas, knowing that some of those ideas will be great ones.
Obviously, the key limitation for these creative pursuits is time. That is why rituals are so important. By making the pursuit of creative ideas a part of your daily life, you make the time you need to be creative. Though you never know which day will be the one where the light bulb goes off, a consistent practice will put you on the road to a breakthrough.
After Labor Day weekend last week, many of us are wishing four-day workweeks were the norm year round.
The 40-hour, five-day workweek has been the topic of much debate dating back to the last century. In 1930, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that by 2030 technological advances would allow people to work as few as 15 hours a week.
With nearly 15 years to go, Keynes prediction may seem light years away from reality, but in recent years a number of arguments have surfaced in favor of a shorter workweek. This past July, the president of the U.K.’s leading public health industry group argued Britain should switch to a four-day workweek, attributing stress and rising health concerns including high blood pressure and work-related mental health issues to the fact that most of us work five days a week.
Mexican telecom billionaire entrepreneur Carlos Slim recently argued in favor of a three-day workweek stating the shorter workweek would improve the quality of life of employees, making them healthier and more productive. His three-day workweek proposal comes with a couple of caveats, however: employees would work 10 or 11 hours a day in those three days, and would continue to work into their seventies.
Some countries are already experimenting with a shorter workweek. The Netherlands has had four-day workweeks for years, and some North American companies are toying with the concept. In 2012, 37Signals cofounder Jason Fried wrote an op-ed piece in the New York Times citing his company’s 32-hour work week from May through October helps improve workers’ focus. “When you have a compressed workweek, you tend to focus on what’s important,” he wrote. In a post earlier this year, I cited a tech company, Treehouse, who has implemented a year-round four-day workweek, noting higher employee morale, greater focus, and a greater ability to attract and retain top talent among the benefits.
The five-day workweek was the focus of a recent article in the Atlantic. Author Philip Sopher says we can thank the Great Depression for our two-day weekend as prior to that time American workers were obligated to work half days on Saturdays and only received Sundays off. The shorter hours were considered a remedy to the country’s unemployment problem. Yet despite economic stability and advances in technology, the five-day workweek remains the dominant concept in workplace organization.
Sopher says there’s reason to believe the two-day weekend is inefficient. He cites a growing body of research pointing to evidence that a shorter workweek would lead to increased productivity, improved health, and higher employee retention rates and says the five-day workweek may actually be hindering productivity.
He cites a study in the American Journal of Epidemiology that found individuals who worked 55 hours per week performed worse on some mental tests than those who only worked 40 hours per week.
The question is: Is the five day workweek so ingrained in our culture that it can’t be changed? Some companies already offer the option of Fridays off, but in many cases, employees still put in a 40-hour workweek; they simply work longer hours Monday through Thursday in order to reap the benefits of a three-day weekend.
Although the benefits of a shorter workweek are clear--improved morale and employee health not to mention attracting talent--Sopher says it’s unlikely companies will jump on the shorter workweek bandwagon simply because they would feel it would put their company at a competitive disadvantage against others who still operate on a five-day work schedule.
While it’s unlikely Keynes’s prediction will become reality by 2030, perhaps a different way of looking at how we organize our workweek is in order.
Every Monday, tune in to Fast Company Leadership for a quote to get your week started right.
While many of us are stuck inside fluorescent-lit offices, the weather outside is turning crisp, the days shorter, and the lure of new school supplies is calling. Even if you’ve outgrown back-to-school season by a few decades, the excitement of a fresh start doesn’t have to pass you by.
We asked 12 entrepreneurs to recall words of wisdom from childhood teachers. One of our favorites is short but gets a gold star for motivation:
“Go for it.”
Design by Robbie Jones for Fast Company, Photo by Jake Hills
Jess Lee’s high school English teacher Melody Wong pushed her to take an AP exam she didn’t feel ready for. Lee, now the CEO and co-founder of Polyvore, aced it. “Her encouragement taught me that sometimes you can do things even if you don’t have the right pre-qualifications,” she says. “Just go for it and you might surprise yourself.”
From fostering character to keeping things simple, it’s often words of wisdom that teachers offer during casual conversations or informational sidebars that have the biggest impact on students.
With back-to-school season upon us, a dozen entrepreneurs shared the best advice they ever received from a teacher:
“My 12th-grade anthropology teacher told me: ‘When you’re feeling bad, do the work and let the feelings take care of themselves.’ This turned out to be great advice for running a business. Every startup, even the most successful, is a roller coaster. When the bad days hit, you can’t let them stop you. I’ve found that the act of doing the work often makes you feel better.” --Amy Pressman, president and cofounder of Medallia, a provider of customer experience management solutions
“My second-grade teacher, Ms. Caruso, gave us a seemingly simple writing assignment: Describe how to build a peanut butter sandwich. On the day we turned in our assignments Ms. Caruso had bread, silverware, and jars of peanut butter and jelly.
She collected our papers and began reading them one by one: ‘First you take the bread, (Ms. Caruso took the loaf of bread still in the bag) then you take the peanut butter and put it on the bread. (Ms. Caruso took the jar of peanut butter and placed it on top of the bread bag). Then you take the jelly and put it on top of the peanut butter.’ (Ms. Caruso took the jar of jelly and placed it on top of the jar of peanut butter).
The class was laughing because we had a Jenga tower of groceries and not a peanut butter sandwich. As it turned out, not one person in our class had accurately described how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. This exercise taught me the importance of precisely transmitting information to others so they can execute on a vision.” --Catalina Girald, founder of Naja Lingerie, an undergarment manufacturer
“My high school English teacher Melody Wong pushed me to take the AP English exam, even though I hadn’t taken the class. I ended up scoring a five, the highest possible mark. Her encouragement taught me that sometimes you can do things even if you don’t have the right pre-qualifications. Just go for it and you might surprise yourself.” --Jess Lee, CEO and co-founder of the social commerce website Polyvore
“The greatest advice I ever received was from an acting teacher who insisted that I ‘really listen and really do the task’ while performing. Those words have echoed in my mind time and time again whether I am directing, interviewing, hiring, or presenting to clients. Working with clients or colleagues, I find that by truly listening half of my work is done. When you take the time to really listen, you connect and can hear what the other party really feels, needs and wants, and you can move forward without second-guessing or worrying.” --Terry Rieser, cofounder of TAG Creative, a New York-based marketing firm
“One of the stern nuns in my high school once told me: ‘Don’t give me excuses; change your behavior.’ Although this was in response to a somewhat minor situation it has stayed with me and dictated so many decisions in my adult life. It is always easy to explain why something didn’t work the way I wanted it to, why I was not making the money or achieving the success I wanted. Each time I found myself looking for a reason why I didn’t hit the mark I realized I was making an excuse and I needed to change my behavior.” -Patty Lennon, founder of Crowdfund With Ease, a crowdfunding consulting firm
“The best advice I ever received was from my high school political science teacher, Peter Duynstee. On the first day of my junior year, he said the only lesson he wanted us to take away from his class was a simple one that he wrote on the blackboard: CHALLENGE AUTHORITY. This simple message is pretty stunning, seeing that he taught at a Catholic school, but he wanted us to question leaders, not accept the norm and do our own thing. It’s stuck with me for life.” --Jim Zambrano, CEO and founder of First Abroad, a gap-year travel agency
“My 10th-grade chemistry teacher, Dr. Jerry White, noted that I tended to over engineer problems and said to me: ‘Don’t over think it. The answer to most of life’s problems require nothing more than common sense.’ I keep this in mind every time I’m struggling for an answer to a problem I’m trying to solve.” --Aashish Dalal, founder and CEO of the parking app ParkWhiz
“My business professor Catherine Duggan said that every bit of business history was made by someone who was relatively unknown the minute before they decided to do something that changed the world. Sure, those folks seem famous and daunting now, but when they started--just like we did, in a business school dorm room--no one knew or cared about them at all.” -Robert D. Biederman, CEO and cofounder of the consulting firm HourlyNerd
“In high school some of the concepts in chemistry class got hard, and there were things being taught that many of us didn’t understand. We just wanted to give up. Anticipating that some of us might quit learning altogether, our chemistry teacher told us this was normal and it might even go on for several days. When this happened, he asked us to just show up in class anyway without worrying if we would really learn the concepts. We did and eventually we grasped what was being taught. This advice really helped me later; whenever things get hard and I don’t want to deal with them, I show up anyway and at some point I am able to figure them out.” --Harman Singh, founder of the online education platformWizIQ
“My physics advisor told me to look for your top strength, for something that you can do better than anyone else, then focus your energy on it. For entrepreneurs, this means positioning your company in such a way that it can be No. 1 in the area of choice.” --Johann Schleier-Smith, cofounder of Tagged, a social discovery platform
“My high school chemistry Dr. Minne taught me a lot about atoms and bonds, but it was a lesson of actions, not words, that has stuck with me. I missed the spring final exam because of sports commitments, and Dr. Minne let me make up the test at his house. When I arrived, he sent me up to his study and simply said ‘Leave the exam on my desk after an hour and a half. I have to run.’ As I looked around the room, I quickly realized that his bookshelves were filled with every chemistry book imaginable, all of which held the answers to the questions laid out before me. The temptation was obvious, but I resisted. Putting me in this situation taught me about my own character, but also silently passed along the piece of advice to trust in others, and to believe in them as he believed in me.” --Matthew Bellows, founder and CEO of Yesware, a software provider
“My high school guidance counselor, Mr. Neil Ginsburg, noticed that I wasn’t making good eye contact with him during a meeting. I’ll never forget his words to me: ‘When you don't look someone in the eye, it suggests you don’t feel good about yourself or that you’re hiding something. Making eye contact is one of the best ways to build a relationship or kill one before it begins.’” --Kat Gordon, founder of the annual marketing event The 3% Conference
It seems like everywhere we turn we’re being told to “embrace failure.” From social media to countless business books and articles and the global failure conferenceFailCon, the importance of mistakes is lauded as a key stepping-stone for success.
Even advertisers are realizing the power of bragging about getting it wrong. For example, earlier this year Domino’s commercials touted that at their company “failure is an option” with a nod to its failed cookie pizza of 2007.
Despite all the failure-embracing saturation we’re seeing these days, this concept is nothing new. Iterations of “embrace failure” have existed long before the slogan was popular. Before the likes of Steve Jobs and Richard Branson told us to embrace failure, Michael Jordan told us that he fails over and over again. Before that Truman Capote said failure was “the condiment that gives success its flavor.” And before that James Joyce dubbed mistakes “portals of discovery.” Thomas Edison, Abraham Lincoln, Henry Ford--the list of innovators that used failure to get at their success goes on and on and on.
So why the apparent resurgence? More importantly, what does embracing failure really mean, does it work, and at what point is it too much?
In an effort to find the answers, we consulted a few experts who know a thing or two about failure.
Global producer and FailCon cofounder Cass Phillipps remembers a time when there wasn’t even a whisper of “embrace failure.” In 2009 she and Diane Loviglio devised a one-day conference for startups to study their own and each others's failures. The conference was the first of its kind, but not surprising considering the economic climate at the time.
“We were all failing, we had all made mistakes, and we couldn't run from it anymore,” Phillipps says. “Everyone knew things had gotten harder, and so those rose-colored glasses were pretty cracked.”
Thought leaders began pushing for more open discussion of why we were failing, Phillipps says, to prevent it from happening again.
“I believe that (the embrace failure movement has) taken off because it taps into a widespread sense that we, as individuals, teams, organizations, and even societies, live in an era where we cannot always get things right the first time, no matter how smart we are or how carefully we plan,” says Anjali Sastry.
She believes that with the advent of social media, it became easier to share our own stories of defeat, and the complexity of our current social, economic, population, andenvironmental systems makes it impossible to predict and analyze the future.
“Mistakes will be made--in research labs, management consulting teams, C-suites, factory floors, farms, hospitals, school systems, government offices, supermarkets, and elsewhere,” she says. “So figuring out how to learn from failure is more important than ever before.”
Karissa Thacker, a business psychologist who has consulted with major brands like UPS, Ford Motor Company, and Best Buy, believes the embrace failure culture is popular now more than ever because business success in both large and small companies requires a higher level of risk than during the heart of the Industrial Age. “Whole markets can be captured overnight,” she says, citing Samsung’s quick rise to power within Apple’s realm of smartphone domination.
“Continual experimentation is the new normal,” she says. “With risk comes failure. You cannot elevate the level of risk taking without helping people make sense of failure, and to some extent, feel safe with failure.”
Michael A. Roberto, trustee professor of management atBryant University, sees the trend as a rebuttal to today’s work environment. “A backlash has emerged because so many corporate cultures have become so intolerant of experimentation, and people have become so afraid to fail that they have become reluctant to try new things.”
Sastry says the notion of failure in the pursuit of a career objective is something that first began to emerge with the advent of the scientific revolution. Some of our most admired innovators like Thomas Edison advocated going beyond acceptance of failure to embracing it, she says. But she wonders if Edison would be hailed a success in today’s corporate culture--during his career Edison lost a ton of money in his pursuit of ideas that never came to fruition.
Timothy J. Bono, an assistant dean in psychology at Washington University, says that those who publicly fail--and especially those who do so gracefully--are deemed more likable. He cites Jennifer Lawrence tripping at the Oscars and Hillary Clinton crying on the campaign trail during the 2008 presidential election as examples.
As part of what psychologists call the pratfall effect, when someone we perceive as competent makes a mistake, we often like that person more because it shows they are human, too, Bono says.
He also says failure works more for people who focus on the process rather than the outcome. These people, he says, tend to remain motivated in the face of challenging work and are more likely to persevere on future tasks.
Failing at a young age helps, too. Bono says that adults who had to overcome a moderate level of adversity while growing up have been found to have the greatest outcomes later in life. This is because they learned from a young age how to engage their social support networks and develop the coping mechanisms that are necessary to negotiate life's challenges. “Developing these skills early on comes in handy for bouncing back from later hardships,” he says.
How an individual responds to failure and other setbacks has significant implications, as well. “The happiest people are often those who have learned how to fail,” Bono says. “They've learned how to pick themselves back up after being knocked down, reflect on the experience, grow from it, and soldier on.”
The net result, according to Bono, is that people are paying more and more attention to the process instead of just the outcome. “When you take a systematic look at the process that has led many to their success, we see that one of the common elements among them is the resilience they exhibited when things weren't going their way,” he says.
The key question we must ask ourselves, according Roberto, is if we are learning from our failures and designing better tests to move forward.
Not all failures are the same, he argues. “Some experiments are well-designed and well-conceived . . . others are sloppy. We shouldn’t tolerate sloppy testing and experimentation failures. We should tolerate failures that come from a well-designed, iterative process of experimentation and prototyping.”
While there can be several benefits from taking risks, the potential consequences may be off-putting.
The challenge managers face is how to encourage risk taking and innovation without actually incentivizing the wrong outcomes, says Mel Fugate, associate professor of management and organizations in the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University.
Fugate says the successful embrace of failure in the workplace not only requires a change in how performance is defined and rewarded with policies and practices, but it also requires a radical mindset change for many.
“Frankly, relatively few of our organizations and leaders are willing, and that is assuming they are able,” he says. “But in the same vein, what this means is that the rewards will be greatest for those that are willing and able to embrace failure and innovate.”
It’s all about the calculation of risk, Thacker says. There are several zero-mistake environments where you would not want everyone to embrace of failure, like theairline industry, military, or nuclear power plants.
While Thacker believes we are far from saturation in terms of people really learning how to take risks, learn from failure, and take more intelligent action, she says she hopes the trend continues as long as it’s clear that embracing failure is about making intelligent decisions.
Sastry agrees:
In the end, failure by itself is not something anyone wants. It’s the success that follows failure that we all seek. So, failure should be embraced only if it enables even better success. We need to add some criteria to define the good failures that teach or reveal something important and discourage those that are simply dumb.
But does the overuse of embracing failure threaten to turn the idea into a cliché? Career and education coach Rebecca "Kiki" Weingarten believes it does. “We don't want to set ourselves up to be a failure society where it's all wonderful and everyone will now get a trophy or kudos for failing in the way they were getting them for trying or just showing up,” she says.
Roberto too thinks the phrase is overused without much meaning to back it up. He says he hears executives say that it is okay to fail in their organization, but when asked for an example of this actually happening, they fall silent.
“Yes, failure is part of entrepreneurship . . . but we still need to be careful about not just labeling all failures as equally ‘useful,’” he says. “Some are true learning opportunities born of a disciplined innovation and experimentation process; others are the outcomes of very poor decision making.”
In fact, a study published in Journal of Experimental Psychology found that people who believe they are being watched perform at a lower level. When a person is hyper-controlled, they often become resentful, and those who don’t leave the situation often mentally check out.
Micromanaging is a bad habit, so why do some bosses use this management style? “Managers micromanage because of a need for control,” says D. Scott DeRue, associate dean and professor of management at the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. “Decades of studies in psychology have established that people have a deep need for a sense of control in life and business. The irony is that micromanaging provides the manager with a sense of control, but at the same time robs the employee of it. It is no surprise that the number one reason employees leave their companies is ineffective managers.”
Jennifer Selby Long, founder of the Selby Group, LLC, an executive and leadership consultant, says fear is another factor for micromanaging employees: “Unfortunately, most companies throw people into management positions with very little training,” she says. “It’s no wonder they’re afraid; they go from being the person who produces results to the person who has to depend on others to perform. As a result, they try to control the situation by holding on tightly.”
While employees dislike it and managers can get into trouble for doing it, micromanaging does have its uses. DeRue and Long offer five situations when a manager might want to be hyper-involved:
If an organization is in a turnaround, all employees must work together to move in the same direction. If there are layoffs, some employees will be covering tasks they don’t normally do, and managers will need to work more closely with staff members. Micromanaging is part of turning a company around, but it’s not a long-term solution.
“In this situation, the most important thing to do on a day-to-day basis is to communicate what progress is happening toward immediate tactical needs and to determine what your employees need from you to move forward,” says Long. “It’s also important to show employees how what they’re doing fits into the big picture to save the company.”
While micromanaging during a time of crisis could be justified, DeRue cautions that it could be a symptom of a bigger problem. “Why is the employee not able to handle that task on his or her own?” he asks. “Perhaps the manager has not developed his or her talent effectively.”
If an employee is assigned a new task, a manager who is experienced at the task should micromanage the employee until he or she is competent, says Long.
“The key in this situation is to set a performance standard and a timeline for developing the skills,” she says. “While employees might appreciate high direction when a task in brand new to them, they will resent it if you don’t eventually let go.”
Long says too often employees are given new tasks with not enough training: “Competence would come much faster if the employee got more of the boss’s time in the beginning.”
If you reinterpret the definition and consider collaboration as an element, there is evidence that micromanaging can work, says DeRue. He gives the example of asoftware development firm in which all employees work in pairs using a single computer to code and do quality assurance.
“The company intentionally pairs more senior coders with more junior coders to facilitate learning between the two,” he says. “It is a form of micromanaging when the more senior member is instructing the more junior member, literally working on a single computer, but it is culturally accepted and coded by employees as a form of learning and collaboration.”
If an employee is sending a lot of detailed emails about his or her work and asking a lot of questions, this person is asking for help, says Long.
“This is a clue that a manager should pay attention to,” she says. “Some employees have a natural style that leans toward a great deal of structure. These employees are looking for micromanagement.”
In this situation, Long says no more than a month of micromanagement should build the employee’s confidence. If the questions are coming from a higher up individual, such as a vice president, Long says the person may be in over their head; consider whether or not the person is qualified for the position.
If a company is moving into a new market, the decision to micromanage employees will depend on the skill and competency of the team.
“If there are a lot of people involved with no experience and just a handful of managers with experience, it’s time to manage this situation more closely,” says Long. “You’ll need a fair amount of day-to-day communication until everyone is up to speed.”
By Ariel Schwartz A competitive workplace isn't always a creative one--especially when women are involved.
Women tend to work well in teams, but don't try pitting those teams against each other. It probably won't end well.
That's the message from a recent study out of Washington University in St. Louis, which found that engaging workplace teams in competition is a surefire way to hurt creativity of the teams that are composed mostly or entirely of women. On the flip side, competition provides a creative advantage to majority male or male-only teams.
The study, led by professor Markus Baer, pitted teams of same-sex and mixed gender teams against each other in a lab setting, promising cash to the teams that were the top performers. Baer's data was boosted by another study, led by a colleague, examining real-life team dynamics at an oil and gas company.
"Groups composed of all women or majority women tend to do better when there’s an absence of competition. When you introduce competition, those teams tend to fare worse," says Baer. "The opposite happens for men. Once you introduce competition for them, they get excited, start to gel together."
The study is a reminder that tactics which can get people to work more efficiently don't always have positive results when it comes to creativity. With such a gender disparity in the study outcome, employers would do well to nix most team competitions, especially if they are high-stakes.
It's possible, though, that women can perform well in competition with non-monetary incentives--if they're competing for a good cause, for example. Research has shown that women may be more likely to compete effectively when it's on behalf of others.
Baer, who studies ways to make the workplace more conducive to creativity, hopes to experiment with methods that combine collaboration and competition in the future.
"I don’t want to suggest women are inherently less competitive," says Baer. I think a lot of it is either social roles that we adopt to in education or interactions. They guide the way we think about ourselves and others."
