benoem alle unieke essentie uit het onderstaande transcript, in het NL Zoeken in video 0:02 [Music] 0:56 oh you know when video arts asked me if i'd 1:02 like to talk about creativity i said no problem 1:07 no problem because telling people how to be creative is easy 1:13 it's only being it that's difficult and i knew it would be particularly easy for me because i spent the last 25 years 1:21 watching how various creative people produce their stuff and being fascinated to see if i could 1:28 figure out what makes folk including me more creative what is more a couple of years ago 1:35 i got very excited because a friend of mine who runs the psychology department at sussex university brian bates 1:42 showed me some research on creativity done at berkeley in the 70s 1:49 by a brilliant psychologist called donald mckinnon which seemed to confirm in the most 1:54 impressively scientific way all the vague observations and intuitions that i'd had over the years 2:02 so the prospect of settling down to a quite serious study of creativity for 2:07 the purpose of tonight's gossip was delightful and having spent several weeks on it i can state categorically 2:15 that what i have to tell you tonight about what how you can all become more creative is a complete waste of 2:21 time so i think it would be much better if i just told jokes instead 2:27 you know the light bulb jokes you know how many poles does it take to screw in the light bulb one to 2:32 hold the bulb before to turn the table um how many folk singers does it take to 2:37 change a light bulb answer five one to change the bulb and four to sing about how much better the old one 2:44 was how many socialists does it take to change a light bulb answer 2:50 we're not going to change it we think it works 2:56 how many creative art you see the reason why it is futile 3:02 for me to talk about creativity is that it simply cannot be explained it's like mozart's music or 3:09 van gogh's painting or saddam hussein's propaganda it is literally inexplicable freud who 3:17 analyzed practically everything else repeatedly denied that psychoanalysis could shed any light 3:22 whatsoever on the mysteries of creativity and brian bates wrote to me recently 3:29 most of the best research on creativity was done in the 60s and 70s with a quite dramatic drop off in 3:36 quantity after then largely i suspect because researchers began to feel 3:42 that they had reached the limits of what science could discover about it in fact the only thing from the research 3:50 that i could tell you about how to be creative is the sort of childhood that you should have had which is of limited help to you 3:57 at this point of your lives however there is one negative thing that 4:03 i can say and it's negative because it's easier to say what creativity 4:09 isn't a bit like the sculptor who when asked how he had sculpted a very fine 4:15 elephant explained that he'd taken a big block of marble and then knocked away all the bits that didn't 4:22 look like an elephant now here's the negative thing creativity 4:28 is not a talent it is not a talent it is a way of operating 4:38 so how many actors does it take to screw in a light bulb answer thousands only one to do it but 4:45 thousands to say i could have done that how many jewish mothers does it take to screw in a light 4:52 bulb answer don't mind me i'll just sit here in the dark nobody cares about 5:01 how many surgeons you see when i say a way of operating what i mean is this 5:06 creativity is not an ability that you either have or do not have it is for example and 5:13 this may surprise you absolutely unrelated to iq provided you're intelligent above a 5:19 certain minimal level that is but mckinnon showed in investigating scientists architects engineers and writers 5:27 that those regarded by their peers as most creative were in no way whatsoever 5:35 different in iq from their less creative colleagues so in what way were they different 5:44 well mckinnon showed that the most creative had simply acquired a 5:50 facility for getting themselves into a particular mood 5:55 a way of operating which allowed their natural creativity to function in fact ken and 6:02 mckinnon describe this particular facility as an ability to play 6:09 indeed he described the most creative when in this mood as being childlike for they were able to 6:16 play with ideas to explore them not for any immediate practical purpose but 6:22 just for enjoyment play for its own sake now about this mood i'm working at the 6:29 moment with dr robin skinner on our successor to our psychiatry book families and how to survive them we're comparing the ways in which 6:36 psychologically healthy families function and then the ways in which such families function 6:42 with the ways in which the most successful corporations and organizations function and we become 6:48 fascinated by the fact that we can usefully describe the way in which people function at work in terms of two modes 6:55 open and close so what i can just add now is that 7:02 creativity is not possible in the closed mode 7:07 okay so how many american network tv executives does it take to 7:13 screw in a light bulb answer does it have to be a light bulb 7:22 how many doorkeep well let me explain a little bit by the close mode i mean the mode that 7:29 we are in most of the time when we're at work we have inside us a feeling that there's 7:34 lots to be done and we have to get on with it if we're going to get through it all it's an 7:39 active probably slightly anxious mode although the anxiety can be exciting and 7:46 pleasurable it's a mode in which we're probably a little impatient if only with ourselves 7:52 it has a little tension in it not much humor it's a mode in which we're very 7:58 purposeful and it's a mode in which we can get very stressed 8:03 and even a bit manic but not created by contrast the open mode is a 8:11 relaxed expansive less purposeful mode 8:17 in which we're probably more contemplative uh more inclined to humor which always 8:23 accompanies a wider perspective and consequently more playful 8:30 it's a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate because we're not under pressure to get 8:36 a specific thing done quickly we can play and that is what allows our natural creativity to 8:44 surface now let me give you an example of what i mean when alexander fleming had the thought 8:50 that led to the discovery of penicillin he must have been in the open mode the previous day he'd arranged a number of 8:57 dishes so that culture would grow upon them on the day in question he glanced at the 9:03 dishes and he discovered that on one of them no culture had appeared now if he'd been 9:09 in the closed mode he would have been so focused upon his need for dishes with cultures grown upon 9:15 them that when he saw that one dish was of no use to him for that purpose he would quite simply have thrown it away 9:21 thank goodness he was in the open mode so he became curious about 9:27 why the culture had not grown on this particular dish and that curiosity as 9:33 the world knows led him to the nightbot i'm sorry to to penises 9:40 now in the closed mode an uncultured dish is an irrelevance 9:47 in the open mode it's a clue now one more example 9:55 one of alfred hitchcock's regular co-writers has described working with him on 10:01 screenplays he says when we came up against a block and our discussions became very heated and 10:06 intense hitchcock would suddenly stop and tell a story that had nothing to do with the work at hand at first 10:12 i was almost outraged and then i discovered that he did this intentionally he mistrusted working under pressure he 10:19 would say we're pressing we're pressing we're working too hard relax it will come and says the writer 10:27 of course it finally always did but let me make one thing quite clear we 10:34 need to be in the open mode when we're pondering a problem but 10:40 once we come up with a solution we must then switch to the close mode to implement it because once we've made a 10:46 decision we are efficient only if we go through with it decisively undistracted by doubts 10:53 about its correctness for example if you decide to leap a ravine 10:59 the moment just before takeoff is a bad time to start reviewing alternative strategies 11:05 when you're attacking a machine gun post you should not make a particular effort to see the funny side of what you're 11:11 doing humor is a natural concomitant of the open mode but it's a luxury 11:17 in the closed one no once we've taken a decision we should narrow our focus while we're 11:24 implementing it and then after it's been carried out we should once again switch back to the open mode 11:29 to review the feedback arising from our action in order to decide whether the course 11:35 that we have taken is successful or whether we should continue with the next stage of our plan 11:42 whether we should create an alternative plan to correct any an error we perceive and then 11:49 back into the close mode again to implement that next stage and so on in other words to be at our most 11:55 efficient we need to be able to switch backwards and forwards between the two 12:01 rows but here's the problem we too often get stuck in the closed 12:08 mode under the pressures which are all too familiar to us we tend to maintain 12:14 tunnel vision at times when we really need to step back and contemplate the wider 12:20 view this is particularly true for example politicians the main complaint about them from their 12:26 non-political colleagues is that they become so addicted to the adrenaline 12:31 that they get from reacting to events on an hour-by-hour basis that they almost completely lose the 12:37 desire or the ability to ponder problems in the open mode so as i say creativity 12:45 is not possible in the closed mode and that's it 12:52 well 20 minutes to go so how many women's livers does it take to change a light bulb 12:57 answer 37 one to screw it in and 36 to make a documentary about it 13:04 how many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb the answer only one but the light bulb has really got to 13:11 want to change oh there is one just one 13:19 other thing that i can say about creativity there are certain conditions which do make it 13:26 more likely that you'll get into the open mode and that something creative will occur 13:32 more likely you can't guarantee anything will occur you might sit around for hours as i did last tuesday and nothing 13:38 zilch butt kiss not a sausage nevertheless i i can at least 13:46 tell you how to get yourselves into the open mode you need five things one 13:52 space two time three time four confidence 14:00 and five a 22-inch waist 14:05 sorry my mind was wondering getting into the open mode too quickly 14:11 server instead of a 22-inch waist read humor i do beg your pardon okay let's take space 14:18 first you can't become playful and therefore 14:23 creative if you're under your usual pressures because to cope with them you've got to be in the closed mode right 14:30 so you have to create some space for yourself away from those demands and that means 14:37 sealing yourself off you must make a quiet space for yourself 14:42 where you will be undisturbed next time it's not enough to create 14:49 space you have to create your space for a specific period of time you have to know that 14:55 your space will last until exactly say 3 30 and that at that moment 15:01 your normal life will start again and it's only by having a specific moment when your space starts 15:08 and an equally specific moment when your space stops that you can seal yourself off from the 15:15 everyday closed mode in which we all habitually operate and i'd never realized how vital this 15:20 was until i read a historical study of play by a dutch historian called johann 15:26 heisinger and in it he says play is distinct 15:31 from ordinary life both as to locality and duration this is its main 15:39 characteristic it's secludedness it's limitedness play begins and then at a certain moment 15:47 it is over otherwise it's not play so combining the first two factors 15:55 we create an oasis of quiet for ourselves 16:01 by setting boundaries of space and of time 16:08 now creativity can happen because play is possible when we're 16:16 separate from everyday life so you've arranged to take no calls you've 16:21 closed your door you've sat down somewhere comfortable you take a couple of deep breaths and if you're anything like me 16:28 after you've pondered some problem that you want to turn into an opportunity for about 90 seconds 16:35 you find yourself thinking oh i forgot i've i've got to call jim and i must tell tina that i need the 16:42 report on wednesday and not thursday which means i must move my lunch with joe and damn 16:47 i haven't called paul's about getting joe's daughter an interview and i must pop out this afternoon to get will's birthday present and those plants need 16:53 watering and none of my pencils are sharpened and right i've got too much to do so i'm going to start by sorting out my 16:58 paper clips and then i shall make 27 phone calls and i'll do some thinking tomorrow when i've got everything out of the way 17:06 because as we all know it's easier to do trivial things that are urgent 17:12 than it is to do important things that are not urgent like thinking and it's also easier to do 17:19 little things we know we can do than to start on big things that we're 17:24 not so sure about so when i say create an oasis of quiet 17:32 know that when you have your mind will pretty soon start racing again but you're not going 17:38 to take that very seriously you just sit there for a bit tolerating the racing and the slight anxiety that 17:44 comes with that and after a time your mind will quieten down again 17:50 now because it takes some time for your mind to quieten down it's 17:56 absolutely no use arranging a space-time oasis 18:02 lasting 30 minutes because just as you're getting quieter and getting into the open mode you have to stop and that is very deeply 18:09 frustrating so you must allow yourself a good chunk of time i'd suggest about an hour and a half 18:15 then after you've gotten to the open mode you'll have about an hour left for something to happen if 18:21 you're lucky but don't put a whole morning aside my experience after about an hour and a 18:28 half you need a break so it's far better to do an hour and a half now and then an hour and a half 18:33 next thursday and maybe an hour and a half week after that than to fix one four and a half hour 18:39 session now and there's another reason for that and that's factor number three 18:46 time yes i know we've just done time but that was half of creating our oasis now i'm going to tell you 18:53 about how to use the oasis that you've created why do you still need time well let me tell you a story 19:02 i was always intrigued that one of my monty python colleagues 19:08 who seemed to be to me more talented than i was did never 19:14 produce scripts as original as mine and i watched for some time and then i 19:21 began to see why if he was faced with a problem and fairly soon saw a solution 19:28 he was inclined to take it even though i think he knew the solution was not 19:33 very original whereas if i was in the same situation although i was sorely tempted to take 19:39 the easy way out and finish by five o'clock i just couldn't i'd sit there 19:45 with the problem for another hour and a quarter and by sticking at it would in the end almost always come up 19:52 with something more original it was that simple my work was more creative than his 19:58 simply because i was prepared to stick with the problem longer so imagine my excitement when i found 20:04 that this was exactly what mckinnon found in his research he discovered that the 20:10 most creative professionals always played with the problem for much longer before they tried to 20:16 resolve it because they were prepared to tolerate 20:21 that slight discomfort and anxiety that we all experience when we haven't 20:28 solved a problem you know what i mean if we have a problem and we we need to solve it until we do 20:34 we feel it inside us a kind of internal agitation attention or uncertainty 20:40 that makes us just plain uncomfortable and we want to get rid of that 20:45 discomfort so in order to do so we take a decision not because we're sure it's the best 20:50 decision but because taking it will make us feel better well 20:56 the most creative people have learned to tolerate that discomfort for much longer and so just because they put in more 21:03 pondering time their solutions are more creative 21:08 now the people i find it hardest to be creative with the people who need all the time to project an image of 21:15 themselves as decisive and who feel that to create this image they need to decide 21:23 everything very quickly and with a great show of confidence 21:28 well this behavior i suggest sincerely is the most effective way of strangling creativity 21:34 at birth but please note i'm not arguing against real decisiveness i'm a hundred percent 21:41 in favor of taking a decision when it has to be taken and then sticking to it while it's being 21:48 implemented what i'm suggesting to you is that before you take a decision you should always ask yourself the 21:54 question when does this decision have to be taken and having answered that you defer 22:01 the decision until then in order to give yourself maximum pondering time 22:09 which will lead you to the most creative solution and if while you're pondering somebody 22:15 accuses you of indecision say look baby cakes 22:20 i don't have to decide till tuesday and i'm not chickening out of my 22:25 creative discomfort by taking a snap decision before then that's too easy 22:32 so to summarize the third factor that facilitates creativity is time 22:38 giving your mind as long as possible to come up with something original now 22:45 the next factor number four is confidence when you're in your 22:51 space-time oasis getting into the open mode nothing will stop you being creative so 22:57 effectively as the fear of making a mistake 23:03 now if you think about play you'll see why to play is experiment what happens if i do this 23:10 what would happen if we did that what if the very essence of playfulness is an 23:16 openness to anything that may happen a feeling that whatever happens it's okay 23:23 so you cannot be playful if you're frightened that moving in some direction will be 23:29 wrong something you shouldn't have done when you're either free to play or you're not 23:37 as alan watts puts it you can't be spontaneous within reason 23:44 so you've got to risk saying things that are silly and illogical and wrong and the best way 23:51 to get the confidence to do that is to know that while you're being creative nothing is wrong 23:57 there's no such thing as a mistake and any drivel may lead to the breakthrough and now 24:07 the last factor the fifth humor well i happen to think the main evolutionary significance of humor is 24:14 that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else 24:22 i think we all know that laughter brings relaxation and that humor makes us playful yet how many times have 24:28 important discussions been held where really original and creative ideas 24:35 were desperately needed to solve important problems but where humor was taboo because the subject being 24:41 discussed was so serious this 24:46 attitude seems to me to stem from a very basic misunderstanding of the difference between 24:52 serious and solemn now i suggest to you that a a group of 24:59 us could be sitting around after dinner discussing matters that were extremely serious like the 25:05 education of our children or our marriages or the meaning of life and i'm not talking about the film 25:11 and we could be laughing and that would not make what we were discussing one bit less 25:17 serious solemnity on the other hand i mean i 25:23 don't know what it's for i mean what is the point of it 25:28 the two most beautiful memorial services that i've ever attended both had a lot of humor and it somehow 25:35 freed us all and made the services inspiring and cathartic 25:41 but solemnity it serves pomposity and the self-important always know at 25:48 some some level of their consciousness that their egotism is going to be punctured by humor that's 25:55 why they see it as a threat and so dishonestly pretend that their 26:02 deficiency makes their views more substantial when it only makes them feel bigger 26:13 no humor is an essential part of spontaneity an essential part of 26:18 playfulness an essential part of the creativity that we 26:24 need to solve problems no matter how serious they may be so 26:30 when you set up a space-time oasis giggle all you want and there 26:37 ladies and gentlemen are the five factors which you can arrange to make your lives 26:43 more creative space time time confidence and lord jeffrey archer 26:52 so now you know how to get into the open mode the only other requirement 26:58 is that you keep your mind gently round the subject your pondering 27:05 your daydream of course but you just keep bringing your mind back just like with meditation because and 27:12 this is the extraordinary thing about creativity if you just keep your mind resting against the 27:17 subject in a friendly but persistent way sooner or later 27:22 you will get a reward from your unconscious probably in the shower later or at breakfast the next morning but 27:28 suddenly you are rewarded out of the blue a new thought mysteriously 27:34 appears if you've put in the pondering time first 27:42 so how many cecil parkinsons does it take to change a light bulb answer two 27:47 want to screw it in one to screw it up how many 27:54 how many account executives does it take to screw in a light bulb answer can i get back to you on that 28:02 how many norwegian oh sorry how many yugoslav how many mult how many dutch 28:11 i'm out of jokes oh one thing 28:17 looking at you all reminds me i think it's easy to be creative if you've got other 28:22 people to play with i always find that if two or more of us throw ideas backwards and forwards 28:28 i get more interesting and original places than i could ever have got to on my own but there is a danger 28:34 a real danger if there's one person around you who makes you feel defensive you 28:40 lose the confidence to play at its goodbye creativity so always make sure your play friends are people that you 28:47 like and trust and never say anything to squash them either never say no 28:52 or wrong or i don't like that always be positive and build on what's been said 28:58 would it be even better if i don't quite understand that can you just explain it 29:03 again go on what if let's pretend try to establish 29:10 as free atmosphere as possible and you know sometimes i wonder if the success of the japanese isn't 29:16 partly due to their instinctive understanding of how to use groups creatively you know westerners are often 29:22 amazed at the unstructured nature of japanese 29:27 meetings but maybe it's just that very lack of structure that absence of time pressure that frees 29:34 them to solve problems so creatively and how clever of the japanese sometimes to plan 29:41 that unstructuredness by for example insisting that the first 29:46 people to give their views are the most junior so that they can speak freely without 29:52 the possibility of contradicting what's already been said by somebody more important 29:59 four minutes left ah how many irish oh sorry sorry sorry well 30:07 look the very last thing that i can say about creativity is this it's like humor 30:15 in a joke the last comes at a moment when you connect 30:21 two different frameworks of reference in a new way example there's the old story about um a woman 30:28 doing a survey into sexual attitudes who stops an airline pilot and asks him amongst other things 30:34 when he last had sexual intercourse he replies 1958 now knowing airline pilots 30:42 the researcher is surprised and queries this well says the pilot it's only 21.10 now 30:52 we laugh eventually at the moment the moment of contact between two 30:58 frameworks of reference the way we express what euro it is in the 24-hour clock now having an idea a new idea is 31:04 exactly the same thing it's connecting two hitherto separate 31:09 ideas in a way that generates new meaning now 31:14 connecting different ideas isn't difficult you can connect cheese with motorcycles or moral courage with light green or bananas with 31:22 international cooperation you can get any computer to make a billion random connections for you 31:28 but these new connections or juxtapositions are significant only 31:34 if they generate new meaning right so as you play you can deliberately try inventing these random 31:42 juxtapositions and then use your intuition to tell you whether 31:47 any of them seem to have significance for you that's the bit the computer can't do 31:53 it can produce millions of new connections but it can't tell which one of them smells interesting and of course 31:59 you'll produce some juxtapositions which are absolutely ridiculous absurd good for you 32:06 because edward de bono who invented the notion of lateral thinking specifically suggests in his book 32:13 poe beyond yes and no that you can try loosening up your assumptions 32:20 by playing with deliberately crazy connections he calls such absurd ideas 32:27 intermediate impossibles and he points out that the use of an 32:33 intermediate impossible is completely contrary to ordinary logical thinking in which you have to be 32:39 right at each stage it doesn't matter if the intermediate impossible is right 32:46 or absurd it can nevertheless be used as a stepping stone to another idea that is right another 32:53 example of how when you're playing nothing is wrong 32:58 so to summarize if you really don't know how to start or if you've got stuck 33:04 start generating random connections and allow your intuition to tell you if one might lead somewhere interesting 33:11 well that really is all i can tell you 33:17 that won't help you to be creative everything and now in the two minutes left i can 33:23 come to the important part and that is how to stop your subordinates becoming creative too which is the real threat 33:32 because believe me no one appreciates better than i do what trouble creative people are and how 33:39 they stop decisive hard-nosed bastards like us from running businesses efficiently i 33:44 mean we all know we encourage someone to be creative the next thing is they're rocking the 33:51 boat coming up with ideas and asking us questions now if we don't nip this kind of thing in the bud 33:57 we'll have to start justifying our decisions by reasoned argument and sharing information the 34:04 concealment of which gives us considerable advantages in our power struggles so 34:10 here's how to stamp out creativity in the rest of the organization and get a bit of respect going 34:16 one allow subordinates no humor it threatens your self-importance especially your omniscience 34:22 treat all humor as frivolous or subversive because subversive is of course what 34:29 humor will be in your setup as it's the only way that people can express their opposition 34:34 since if they express it openly you're down on them like a ton of bricks so let's get this clear blame humor for 34:40 the resistance that your way of working creates then you don't have to blame your way of 34:47 working this is important and i mean that solemnly your dignity is no 34:52 laughing matter second keeping ourselves feeling irreplaceable 34:59 involves cutting everybody else down to size so don't miss an opportunity to undermine your employees confidence 35:05 a perfect opportunity comes when you're reviewing work that they've done use your 35:11 authority to zero in immediately on all the things you can find 35:17 wrong never never balance the negatives with positives only criticize just 35:24 as your school teachers did always remember praise makes people uppity 35:33 third demand that people should always be actively doing things if you catch anybody pondering 35:38 accuse them of laziness and or indecision this is to starve employees of thinking 35:44 time because that leads to creativity and insurrection so demand urgency at all time use lots of 35:52 fighting talk and war analogies and establish a permanent atmosphere of stress 35:58 of breathless anxiety and crisis in a phrase keep that mode closed 36:05 now in this way we no nonsense types can be sure that the tiny tiny microscopic 36:12 quantity of creativity in our organization will all be ours but 36:20 let your vigilance slip for one moment and you could find yourself surrounded by happy enthusiastic and 36:28 creative people whom you might never be able completely to control ever again so be 36:34 careful thank you and good night 36:59 you