New idea killing fields

I like to tell people that I don't really want to be a manager, but I do want to be a leader. Implicit in this reluctance to merely manage is an aversion to enforcing rules simply because a rule exists. This is especially the case when the rule offers nothing more than an assertion of bureaucratic power. Requiring people to work for a specified period of time in a specific location is just the kind of rule that I would love to undermine if I'm ever put in a position of authority. I just want to people to deliver by whatever means possible. Managers enforce the rules. Leaders free followers from restrictions that limit their potential.

Given this perspective, it should come as no surprise that I have very little regard for managers who feel compelled to demonstrate the authority granted to them by the bureaucracy. Aggressive assertions of bureaucratic control, especially through appeals to the ultimate bureaucratic authority, HR, vividly illustrate the lack of imagination and vision in a senior leader. If a leader's first response to a situation that challenges the established norm is to file a complaint with HR, that leader is simply expressing their reliance on the power granted by their place in the hierarchy. The complaint is nothing more than the recognition that they see their role as executor of existing systems. They might as well hang up a sign that says they believe in command and control management. Their office is the place where new ideas go to die because new ideas threaten the power that enables this managerial style.

Niche master

The lawyers who have achieved elite status in some specialized niche of the legal world charge much higher rates than lawyers who handle more routine matters. The money flows to those who do something different. They're unique. They stand out in a profession of largely interchangeable parts.

Niche masters compete on expertise while the less capable try to do more of the same at a greater rate for less money. Expertise is scarce. Scarce resources are expensive.

The niche master finds their "unique contribution" and exploits that skill in any way possible. That unique contribution emerges from what you know, who you know, and how you can mix those things up with what you've done to create a unique proposition.

If you're the only person doing something, you're the best in the world at that one thing.

Advice to job seekers

My advice to job seekers (based on my experience reviewing resumes and interviewing candidates for a few openings in my group, I don't get to make the final decision but I do get to offer plenty of input): STAND OUT. Forget the safe, boring resume that follows all the tips in some worthless book or website. If you've spent most of your career in the pharmaceutical industry, I already have a good idea of the kind of work that you've been doing. Show me how you've gone beyond expectations, broken out of your job description, and achieved something that could only come from your unique combination of skills, insight, intelligence, and experience. Stop spending so much time telling me what you can do and start telling me what you've accomplished. Give me your highlight reel.

Show me that you know how to invent. Demonstrate that you can take an idea that you pick up in a meeting and turn it into something valuable without needing step by step instructions from a supervisor. It's great that you can solve problems. Will you see hints of a problem that others may miss? Tell me how you spotted a problem and implemented a solution before your colleagues were even aware that there was a problem.

Stop being safe. I don't want to see you showing me what you think I'm looking for in a candidate. I want to see what you have to offer. Your fear that you're going to blow this interview when you are in desperate need of this job radiates from you with palpable heat. Nobody wants to date somebody who's desperate. The same rules apply to selecting co-workers.

I'm not going to respond well to fear, uncertainty, or listlessness. Don't put your passion in a corner. Put it out on display. If you can get me excited about something you've worked on, I'm going to get excited about working with you.

Drop the predictable answers. Stop playing it safe. Show me that you know how to push the boundaries while still playing by the rules. Take me to the edge.

Seek, and you shall find

This new book, Imagine, demonstrates the first step to take if you need to find a creative solution to a problem. DO SOMETHING DIFFERENT THAN EVERYBODY ELSE. A product of our effort is considered creative when it is different than those things that have come before it. A book about creativity that delves into what the experts have to say about the topic in the context of the stories about the birth of innovative ideas has been done before. The experts, especially those that use fancy instruments to watch blood move around in the brain, are intensely focused on the individual. They're in constant pursuit of this getting to the bottom of why some people are creative and others are less so. What individual factors are at the root of these differences in creativity? All of those creativity books that are listed in my reading lists explore similar questions in varying levels of detail.

Is the individual the best place to look for the origin of creative thought? Sure people are the protagonists in the stories of creativity that continually pop up in books and articles about creativity. A person invented the post-it note, but the post-it note is really nothing more than the solution to a problem. The problem presented itself, how can you use small pieces of paper to mark pages in a hymnal?, and somebody with the appropriate experience was able to apply a fragment of their history to that problem.

Creativity is not a trait. It's a consequence of the interaction between a situation and the individual's life history. That life history includes everything that person has ever experienced. The more variable your experience, the more material you'll have to pull from when you're searching for a solution to a novel problem. That experience includes everything from which books you've read, where you've lived, the kind of food you eat, conversations that you've had, movies that you've watched, the content of your dreams, every moment of your life. The more of that experience you remember, the better. The more you're able to let your mind wander, the more receptive you'll be to random thoughts generated by elements of the problem bumping into elements of your problem.

To be creative, you must seek a problem and make the conscious decision to pursue a solution. If you're never thinking about a new way to clean floors, you're not going to come up with The Swiffer. If you're not immersing yourself in a problem, even something as mundane as cleaning the floor, you're never going to find a novel solution to your problem. If you're only working on one problem and nothing else, you're limiting your opportunity to happen onto a solution for some long standing problem. If you're not reaching out, tapping into other people's experiences, it will take you that much long to find a solution. If you don't have time to think about the problem, to stir the pot that holds your experience and elements of the problem, that magic combination that will get to the answer you're looking for will probably never present itself.

All of these random things that creativity researchers love to write about are never pulled together into a coherent picture of creativity. There's plenty of talk around tactics (see that new book Imagine), but very little discussion of a strategy to direct those efforts under a guiding principle connecting those disparate tricks (edit your work in a blue room). You can't schedule creativity into your day. The foundation of your ability to be creative is the entirety of your life. Creativity rests on experience. No experience, no creativity. You can't be creative if you don't pursue problems that require novelty (or seek novel solutions to situations that may be associated with a well-established and accepted routine).

Watching the brain while daydreaming

This idea of structured daydreaming may have some validity. In offering some advice on how to become more creative, Anne Kreamer suggests that we let our minds wander. She offers a link to a recent paper in PNAS that describes the results of experiments using functional MRI brain imaging to determine which areas of the brain are active when we're concentrating on a task and which regions light up when our mind wanders. They observe activity in both the "executive" (controlled thinking) and "default" (automatic thinking) networks. As activation of the executive network typically represses activity in the default network, daydreaming may create a state in the brain that is particularly well-suited to creative thinking. This parallel recruitment of the two networks

"is reminiscent of the neural recruitment observed during creative thinking, where executive regions and default regions are activated before solving problems with insight...Thus, mind wandering may be part of a larger class of mental phenomena that enable executive processes to occur without diminishing the potential contribution of the default network for creative thought."

The essence of staying loose is letting the random process of idea generation occur while paying enough attention to record the ideas but not being so actively engaged to inhibit idea generation.

Stay loose

I've bumped into three disparate ideas that have coalesced into a single harmonious principle. Embracing chaos and unpredictability, thinking without extending excessive cognitive attention and focus enhances creativity, and working to create a future rather than trying to anticipate future events all speak to the value of acting and reacting rather than planning and executing.

We always know where we start when we face a problem or establish a goal. I favor developing a plan that has a reasonable probability of success that requires minimal time and energy over blindly executing a detailed protocol. Get the plan started and adjust as dictated by events. Acting shakes out the unforeseen. Used wisely, unanticipated difficulties are easily altered to look more like unexpected opportunities.

Consistency

I frequently find myself thinking back to a hastily organized talk given by John Fenn on the morning of his Noble Prize announcement. He gave a retrospective of his career where he gave serendipity and luck a starring role in his success. He spent his career kicking over rocks, and he had been lucky enough to find something interesting underneath a few of them.

As I think back on his comments, I see how his consistent effort to understand and solve problems gave him the insight he needed to develop electrospray ionization. Sure, when you look back you can weave a modest story of how a kid from the back woods of Kentucky bumbled his way to the highest scientific award in the world. But at the heart of that story is a country kid who worked hard every day. He picked up a little something here and a little something there. By themselves those little bits of knowledge may not have been much, but the substantial mass of those little insights made all the difference when it came time to figure out electrospray ionization.

Every day offers valuable training. Just because we may not know what we're training for doesn't make it any less important.