overvaluing and overestimating creativity

I have listened to dozens of commencement addresses in my 54 years. Many of the speakers admonish and encourage the huddled, robe-clad graduates to take charge of their lives, live creatively, give themselves to ideas bigger than themselves, etc. etc. So often do they exhort to creativity, however, that it makes you wonder if these speakers are really tuned-in to the ways that America actually works and lives. This essay probes what I call the overvaluing or overestimating creativity that happens all around us. The three (iconoclastic?) points I want to make are that in the real world you will be expected to follow directions rather than be creative; that the value most prized in the workplace is your ability to fit in rather than take off in new directions; and that, in fact, creative people are ignored, ridiculed and generally dismissed because they don't contribute to the "bottom line" of the company. In the long run, what American business really desires is not creative people, I will argue, but people who fit well into someone else's vision of where the business or company or enterprise should go. Take it from me, being creative is not all that it is cracked up to be.

A Typical Address

I am on this theme because of the words of Dean Frances Bronet of the University of Oregon School of Architecture and Allied Arts, excerpted in the December 2006 edition of the U of O Quarterly. She said to the graduates of her program about six months ago:

"While uncertainty and insecurity clearly exist, these are incredible times for innovative and creative thinking; traditional disciplinary boundaries are more permeable, and new connections can be forged. The complex, multidisciplinary challenges of the twenty-first century demand leaders like you, trained to understand problems from all relevant perspectives and able to integrate these perspectives through critical inquiry, creative organization, and representation; to design and implement solutions," 14.

The Real World of Work

In fact, once you decide to get a job and actually show up at the place of work, you face the following reality: it will take you about five years to learn to do your job really well, and during those five years you better just hunker down, learn the system, worry about political arrows flying through the office, please the clients, dress well, and try to be a pleasant person to all with whom you come in contact. The reason that it takes you around five years just to learn your job (unless it is a mindless job with no potential for growth and advancement) is that you have to learn at least three things: the skills necessary to accomplish your tasks, the environment in the office and the needs of clients. Many offices also work in a "cyclical" environment, and so you really won't understand "crunch" time until you have been through it a few times.

I suggest that it will take five years just to learn what you are doing, but in fact it might be much longer. Changes of personnel, buyouts of companies, different clients in the mix, change of job descriptions, promotions, etc. all contribute to the reality that you just have to exercise the virtue of patience rather than creativity, kindness rather than brilliance, listening rather than speaking for the first several years of your work life.

Fitting In

When I began work in earnest in 1982, with a freshly-minted Ivy League Ph. D. and a year of study at a leading European University under my belt, I thought that the best thing for me to do in my new location was to use my massive intellectual and personal abilities to help transform the institution where I worked into a leading national institution. It took me three years, because I am headstrong and an extremely slow learner in some areas, to realize that what people wanted of me was not my creative thoughts on how parts of the curriculum should relate to each other or which fresh texts should be used in Freshman Humanities, but how I could be an ally of one or another faculty member. In other words, they wanted me to "fit in" to the flow of the college culture. I was so incensed when I realized this, believing as I did that my most precious contribution I could make to any place was my creativity, that I refused to go along. After all, internal politics, wrangling for position, trying to work with obstructive committees, etc. was just not my idea of what a creative person like myself should have been doing. You know, of course, what eventually happened. I got canned. Another victim of creativity.

Giving People What They Want

The real secret of success in the American workplace is to discern what people want and then devise a way to give that to them. While I was in my "creative" phase, I thought that people's desires were impure or were not worthy of the lofty goals that I had for them as people. For example, I thought it was far more worthy of people that they knew the intricacies of Reformed theology of the 16th century, or the internal squabble within Gustavus Adolphus' 17th century planning for war than it was to know how to make good meals or find good lawn mowers. I was actually amazed to learn, when I was in my 40s, that people actually bought magazines that told them how to make better muffins. I was angered by that, since I said to myself, "Why should they be worrying about whether the cranberry muffins rise properly, when there are so many untapped ideas to explore out there?" But people are a funny lot; we tend to want the things that come into our immediate world.

You can argue that people's desires are manipulable, that markets for products can be created, and there is some truth in that statement. But not as much as you might think. People in general want the things that make them live life more easily. They want things in several areas of life: (1) Advice on love; (2) Advice on how to raise kids; (3) Advice on how to make more money; (4) Advice on how to improve their home; (5) Advice on how to learn how to do specific tasks that are before them and, sometimes, (6) Advice on how to establish more "meaning" in life. Thus, if you really want to be a success in life, you learn to get people what they want, realizing all the time, however, that what they want is generally manifest in about six or so large desires.

Conclusion

If, in spite of all this advice, you still seek to be creative, realize that you will be ridiculed and ignored (usually the latter), that your ideas will not be underestood or appreciated, and that you will be warned by the practical people in your family and friends that what you are doing is a sure way to impoverishment. If you get this far and still think you have something brilliantly creative to offer the world, go for it. Maybe the world will agree. Maybe it won't. And, maybe it will agree with your assessment--in 300 years. Ultimately, if you choose to live creatively it is because you can live no other way. You really don't need to be exhorted to creativity. Especially by Deans of schools, who are buffered pretty significantly from the costs of creativity that you, the listener, must bear.

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