"Creativity in Management"

humor is an essential part of spontaneity, an essential part of playfulness, an essential part of the creativity that we need to solve problems, no matter how ‘serious’ they may be.

Creativity is not a talent. It is not a talent, it is a way of operating.

Well, look, the very last thing that I can say about creativity is this: it's like humor. In a joke, the laugh comes at a moment when you connect two different frameworks of reference in a new way.

The most creative had simply acquired a facility for getting themselves into a particular mood — “a way of operating” — which allowed their natural creativity to function.

We need to be in the open mode when we're pondering a problem but once we come up with a solution, we must then switch to the closed mode to implement it. Because once we've made a decision, we are efficient only if we go through with it decisively, undistracted by doubts about its correctness.

once we've taken a decision we should narrow our focus while we're implementing it, and then after it's been carried out we should once again switch back to the open mode to review the feedback rising from our action, in order to decide whether the course that we have taken is successful, or whether we should continue with the next stage of our pla... See more

the open mode, is relaxed… expansive… less purposeful mode… in which we're probably more contemplative, more inclined to humor (which always accompanies a wider perspective) and, consequently, more playful.It's a mood in which curiosity for its own sake can operate because we're not under pressure to get a specific thing done quickly. We can play, ... See more

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...You must make a quiet space for yourself where you will be undisturbed.

“We're pressing, we're pressing, we're working too hard. Relax, it will come.” Alfred Hitchcock

As we all know, it's easier to do trivial things that are urgent than it is to do important things that are not urgent, like thinking.