It’s taken me a while to get round to it, but in many ways, starting a blog seems like a really natural extension of my work, my interests and my enthusiasm for writing as a means of figuring things out.
I’m not sure how regularly I’ll post, and inevitably, who might be interested, but I guess that’s true of everyone who puts their stuff out there.
I’ve called my blog, ‘the creative work place’ which also happens to be the name of the company I run with my partner Andy. That said, this isn’t a corporate space. It’s more that what came to mind when we were thinking about what to call our company, is the same that comes to mind now.
I’m interested in work. I’m interested in creativity. I’m interested in the ways that creativity adds to work.
Still, it’s probably worth explaining what I mean in a bit more detail. Not least because, creativity is one of those words that sends some people running for the hills – it whiffs of pretension and vagueness and stuff that’s all very well, but that doesn’t pay the bills. So what’s it got to do with work? I mean, haven’t you heard, we’re in a recession! And work, isn’t that just about paying the bills too?
Pretty obviously, that’s not where I’m coming from.
I once tried to put creativity into the pithiest form I could, and came up with – ‘what’s new and valuable’. I’m not sure, as a definition, that it has the mysterious ‘swing’, that’s also part of something creative. So maybe I should say creativity is what’s new, valuable and swings.
As far as work goes, it seems pretty obvious to me why creativity matters.
Any workplace works…more or less. Businesses get by, teams achieve what they need to achieve, you go home at the end of the day and work was…OK. Great maybe.
And on the days when it doesn’t work? Or the longer stretches of frustration or failure.
Well, apart from when the wheel comes right off, that’s much the same.
There’s a quality of familiarity to what we do, that makes it comfortable. Even the frustrations are familiar.
The reason I think work and creativity come together is the chance to make something that lifts us out of that familiarity – the good and the not so good – into something better.
Of course, there’s no real need to bother. Unless the wheel’s coming off. Or you’re in the worst recession since the 1930s. Or you’re worried about your job. Or stumped. Or stymied. Or hungry. Or you catch yourself wondering occasionally – Is this it then?
Who needs something better? Who needs something new? Who needs something that’s got a bit of swing?
To my mind, creativity is the operating system that deals with the way things are and generates the stuff – the ways of working, the ideas, the relationships – that offers the possibility of something even better.
Creativity and work…in my experience, it’s an exciting combination!
