And Now for Something Completely Different BY JOHN CLEESE couple of years ago, I became very excited when a friend, Brian Bates, who runs the psychology department at Sussex University, showed me a body of research on creativity done at Berkeley in the 70s by a brilliant psychologist named Donald MacKinnon. It seemed to confirm in the most impressively scientific way all the casual observations that I'd made over the years And so I was delighted at the prospect of settling down to a seri ous study of creativity. But now, having spent several weeks on it, can state categorically that what Thave to say to you about how you can become more creative is, in fact, a complete waste of time. ‘THEORIES OF CREATIVITY The reason simply is that crea- tivity cannot be explained. Its like ‘Mozart's music or Van Gogh's paint- ings or Saddam Hussein’s public relations. It is literally inexplicable. Creativity passeth understanding, Excerpted from a speech given by British humorist John Cleese to the British-American Chamber of Commerce in New York. Cleese, known for his work with the Monty Python comedy troupe, is founder of Northbrook, Il.-based Video Arts, a producer of training films In fact, the only advige I could give on how to be creative is to Suggest what sort of childhood you should have had, wl would be of limited help to you : this point in your lives and possi bly discouraging. However, there is one negative thing I can say. It’s negative because it's easier to say what creativity isn't. Its like the sculptor who, when asked how he had sculpted’ very fine elephant, said that he had taken a block of marble and then knocked off all the bits that didn't look like an elephant. Moreover, although there are certain conditions I could describe that might help you become more creative, they can only really be provided by your bosses. And even if they give you these condi- tions, which they won't, these conditions still wouldn't guaran- tee that you would be creative. ‘There is one other thing that I can say about creativity. Crea ity is not a talent; it is a way of operating, a mode of behaving. ‘When f say “a way of operat- ing,” what I mean is this: Creativ. ity is not an ability that you either have or do not have. It is, for example, and this may surprise you, absolutely unrelated to 1Q, provided you're intelligent above a certain minimal level. In fact, the most creative people simply have acquired a facility for getting themselves into a partic lar mood—a way of operating— which allows their creative abili- ties to function, MacKinnon described the par- ticular facility as “an ability to play.” Indeed, he described the most creative people, when in this, mood, as being childlike, for they were able to play with ideas, to explore them, not for any immedi- ate practical purpose, but just for the enjoyment of playing, the de- light of exploration, And that’s all that can be said about the subject, except perhaps for one thing about this mood. I'm working at the moment with Dr. Robin Skynner on a successor to our psychiatry book, Families and How to Survive Them. In this book, we look at the research that’s been done on exceptionally psychologically healthy familie: and then we compare the ways in which such families function the ways in which the most suc- cessful corporations and organi- zations function. And we've be- come fascinated by the fact that we can usefully describe the way in which people function at work in terms of two “modes”: open and closed. What I can add now is that crea- tivity is not possible in a closed mode. By the closed mode, I mean the mood that we are in most of the time when we're at work. We have inside us a feeling 50 MANAGEMENT REVIEWthat there's lots to be done, and we have to get on with it if we're going to get through it all. It's an active, probably slightly anxious mood, although the anxiety can be exciting and pleasurable. It's a mode in which we are probably a little impatient, if only with our- selves. It has a little tension in it and not much humor. It's a mode in which we're very purposeful. And a mode in which we can get very stressed, and even manic, But not creative. By contrast, the open mode is a relaxed, expansive, less purpose- ful mode in which we are probably more contemplative, more in- clined to humor (which always accompanies a wider perspective) and consequently more playful. It is a mood in which curiosity-for- its-own-sake can operate because we're not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly. And it allows our creativity to surface. Let me give you an example. ‘When Alexander Fleming had the thought that led to the discovery of penicillin he must have been in the open mode. The previous day, he had arranged a number of dishes so that cultures would grow in them. On the day in ques- tion, he glanced at the dishes and discovered that on one of them no culture had appeared. Now, if he'd been in the closed mode, he would have been so fo- cused upon his need for dishes with cultures grown in them, that when he saw that one dish was of no use for that purpose, he wor have quite simply thrown it away. It was useless to hii like some magazine articles. But, thank goodness, he was in an open mode. He became curious about why the culture had not grown on this particular dish. And that curiosity led him to penicillin In the closed mode, an uncuk | tured dish is an irrele- vance; in the open mode, it's a clue. One more example. I'm reading a biography of one of my favorite film directors, Alfred Hitchcock. The writer, Donald Spoto, quotes Hume Cronyn, who wrote several screen- plays with HitchcockSOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT Cronyn said: “When we came up against a block and our discus- sions became very heated and in- tense, Hitchcock would suddenly stop and tell a story that had noth- ing to do with the work at hand. At first I was almost outraged, and then I discovered that he did this intentionally. He mistrusted working under pressure, and he would say, ‘We're pressing, we're pressing, We're working too hard. Relax—it will come” And of course it ff nally did.” But let's make one thing clear: As positive as the open mode is, I'm not suggesting that we should be in it for more than part of the time. We need to be in the open mode when we're pondering a decision, but once we've made it, we must switch to the closed mode to implement it. Once we've made a choice, we are efficient only if we go through with it decisively, undistracted by doubts about its correctness. For example, if you decide to leap a ravine, the moment just before takeoff isa bad time to start reviewing alternative strategies. A platoon attacking a machine-gun nest should not debate the rele- vance of Security Council resolu- tions to their action during the assault. Nor should they make a special effort to see the funny side of what they're doing. Humor may be a natural constituent of the open mode, but it's aluxury in the closed one. Once a decision has been made, it should be imple- mented in a determined and very focused way. But after it has been carried out, we should switch back again to the open mode to review the feedback arising from our actions. And then it’s back to the closed mode to implement the next stage. And so on, In other words, to be at our most efficient, we need to be able toswitch backwards and forwards between the two modes. But the problem is, it seems to me, that we too often get stuck in the closed mode. Under pressure, we tend to maintain tunnel vision at times when we need to step back and contemplate the wider view. This is particularly true, for exam- ple, of politicians. The main com- plaint about them from their non- political colleagues is that they become so addicted to the adre- nalin they get from reacting to events on an hour-by-hour basis, they almost completely lose the ability to think in the long term, CREATIVITY AND DAN QUAYLE The five things we need if we are to get into the open mode are space, time, time, confidence and Dan Quayle. I'm sorry. My mind was getting into the open mode too soon. Instead of Dan Quayle, read “laughter or humor.” Beg your pardon, Dan. let's take space first. You can’t become playful and, therefore, creative if you're under your usual pressures, because to cope with them you've got to be in the closed mode. So, you have to cre- ate some space for yourself away from those demands. And that means sealing yourself off. You must make a quiet, undisturbed ‘space for yourself. Next is time. It’s not enough to create space; you have to create your space for a specific period of time. You have to know that your space will last until exactly, say, 3:30 p.m., and at that moment your normal life will start again, It's only at that specific moment when your space stops that you can seal yourself off from the everyday closed mode in which you hebitually operate By combining the first two fac- tors, we create an oasis of quiet by setting boundaries of space and time, Now creativity can happen, because play is possible when you're separated from everyday life, Know that when you create an oasis of quiet, your mind will pretty soon start racing again be- as we all know, its easier to things that are urgent than it is to do important things that aren't urgent, like thinking. Don't take the racing very seri ously. Sit for a bit tolerating it and the slight anxiety that comes with itand, after a time, your mind will quiet down ag: Now, because it will take some time for your mind to get into the open mode, it’s absolutely no use arranging a space-time oasis last- g 30 minutes. Just as you're get- ting there, you'll have to stop. And that will ‘be deeply frustrating. You must allow yourself a good chunk of time—T'd guess at least an hour and ahalf. Then, after you are in the open mode, you'll have an hour to come up with some- thing. My experience is that after an hour and a half, you go stale, So it's far better to do an hour and a half now and then an hour and a half next Tuesday than to fix one four-hour session, And there's an- other reason for that. The next factor: Time. Yes, I know we've just done time, but that was half of creating our oasis. n talking about how to use Let me tell you a story. I was always intrigued that one of my Monty Python colleagues, who seemed to me more talented than Iwas, did not produce scripts as original as mine. I watched for some time and then began to see why. If he was faced with a prob- Jem and fairly soon saw a solution, he was inclined to take it, even though the solution was not very original. Whereas if I was in the same situation, although I was sorely tempted to take the easy way out and finish by 5 p.m., I just couldn't! I'd sit there with the problem for another hour and a 52 MANAGEMENT REVIEWquarter and, by sticking at it, would almost always come up with something more original. It was that simple, My work was almost always more creative than his because I was prepared to stick with the problem longer. So imagine my excitement when I found that this was exactly what MacKinnon found in his re- search. He discovered that the “most creative” professionals were prepared to “play” with the problem for much longer before resolving it, because they were better able to tolerate that slight discomfort and anxiety that we all experience when we haven't solved a problem. You know what I mean: If we have a problem and we need to solve it, until we do we feel inside us a kind of internal agitation, tension or uncertainty that makes us, well, uncomfortable. And in order to getrid of that discomfort, we make a decision not because we're sure it's the best one but because making it will make us feel better. Well, the most creative people are prepared to tolerate that discomfort longer. And be- cause they put in more pondering time, their solutions are more creative. ‘And I have noticed one thing about Americans that may han cap them in this respect. Many Americans seem to need to pro- ject an image of themselves as decisive, and they feel that to cre- ate this image, they need to de- cide things very quickly and with a show of great creativity. I sug- gest that this can put a brake on creativity. Please note, I am not against real decisiveness. What I'm sug- gesting is that before you make decision, you should always ask yourself, “When does the deci Sion have to be made?” And hav- ing answered that, you defer the decision until then in order to give yourself maximum pondering time, which will lead you to the most creative solution The next factor is confidence. When you're in your space-time casis getting into the open mode, nothing will stop you from being creative so effectively as the fear of making a mistake. If you think about play, you'll see why. True play is experiment. “What happens if I do this?” The very essence of playfulness is an openness to anything that may happen, You cannot be playful if you're frightened that moving in Some direction will be “wrong.” ‘You're either free to play or you're not. The best way to get the confi- dence to do that is to know that while you're being creative, noth- ing is wrong. There's no such thing as amistake. Any drivel may lead to a breakthrough. T've always found it easier to be creative if I've got others to play Robert Lindsay (left) and John Cleese offer managers sage advice in Video Arts’ new release, “A Helping Hand. with, As you continue to play with the same person, trust grows and you don't have to be so scru- pulously positive. But there's a danger: If there's one person around who makes you feel defen- sive, you'll lose the confidence to play, and it's “Goodbye creativ- ity.” So make sure you play with people you like and trust. ‘And now, the last factor: humor. I think the main evolution- ary significance of our sense of humor is that it gets us from the closed mode to the open mode quicker than anything else. T think we all know laughter brings relaxation and that humor makes us playful. Yet how many times have discussions been held, where really original and creative ideas were desperately needed, but where humor was taboo be- cause the subject being discussed was “so serious.” This attitude stems from a misunderstanding of the differ ence between serious and sol emn, I suggest to you that we could be discussing matters that are extremely serious—the edu- cation of our children, our mar- riages—and we could be laugh- ing, And that would not make what we we're discussing one bit less serious. SOLEMN PEOPLE MISTRUST IT Solemnity, on the other hand—I don't know what it's for. What is the point oft? The two most beau- tiful memorial services I've at- tended had a lot of humor. Itfreed us to feel and made the services inspiring and cathartic. But so- ? It serves pomposity and self-importance and egotism. And, you know, the pompous and the seltimportant always know, at some level, that their egotism is going to be punctured by humor. ‘That's why they see it as a threat and so dishonestly castigate it as frivolous and lightminded. There- fore, when you set up a space-time oasis, giggle all you want. So, there are the five factors which you can arrange to make your subordinates’ lives more cre- ative: space, time, time, confi- dence and Dan Quayle. 0 May 1903