Laying the Groundwork for a Creative Environment • 103
the right degree of anxiety and tension will allow for greater awareness,
alertness, and directed energy to complete activities. David Whyte
likens creativityto re, bringing great warmth and fear at the same time.
A creativere builds but it can result, sometimes, in getting burned,
especially in the workplace.
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One of the key ways to do that, of course,
is to take the comfort level out of being too compliant with the existing
way of doing business or hiding behind the rules, referred to by Dietrich
Dorner as “crippling conservatism,” which restricts one’s options.
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Here
are some ways to encourage a certain degree of anxiety and tension to
further creativity:
• Give visibility about the project’s progress by reviewing repeatedly
one or two key metrics at every meeting.
• Have other team members serve as devil’s advocates to question pre-
vailing thinking.
• Have people become responsible for complete deliverables.
• Mention at meetings any potential problems or issues looming in the
background that could negatively aect the project.
Establish Priorities
Priority setting provides an excellent means to accomplish both concen-
tration along with anxiety and tension. Priorities tell the team where to
focus; they also provide high drama by demonstrating impacts if they
fail to achieve them. Of course, the priorities must be realistic, based
upon constraints, such as time and money. Setting deadlines for those
priorities more oen than not builds anxiety and tension in a meaningful,
constructive manner. However, unrealistic deadlines imposed from else-
where will inhibit creativity, and the same goes for vague ones. A balance
is necessary. Dietrich Dorner says that the propensity to solve a problem
sooner rather than later leads to making incremental mistakes that
accumulate. is behavior is reective of not setting specic goals, that is,
being too broad.
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Consequently, a vague goal or goals serve as criteria that
make it dicult to assess progress.
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Here are some ways to establish priorities to further creativity:
• Have team members participate in determining and assessing
priorities.
• Provide continual feedback on achieving priorities.