Category: creativity

art, career, creativity, dreams, Gordon MacKenzie

Finding your inner dragon

Christa Avampato

One of my dearest friends, Amy, left for Geneva today. She’ll be there for six months interning for the U.N. I am so proud of her and excited to hear about her adventures in a new place. Amy is someone who “paints her own canvas” as Gordon MacKenzie would say.

I have finally finished Orbiting the Giant Hairball. I was enjoying it chapter by chapter, putting it down after each because there were so many thought-provoking ideas embedded in nearly every sentence. Gordon MacKenzie fully understood the idea of making every word count.

Among all of the beautiful doodles and thoughts on how to run a company, invigorate meetings, and inspire creativity in even the dullest environments there is one story that stands out to me. It’s the first time a business management book actually made my eyes well up. At the very end of the book, Gordon MacKenzie writes a letter from God to a new born child. He uses the analogy that each of us is born with a blank canvas and a sense of wonder. Somewhere along the way the canvas is taken from us and hidden away where the adult world can draw boxes on it. The canvas will be returned to us once we are deemed responsible, only after we have been properly trained to color within the boxes.

Gordon wanted us to buck that notion. He wants us to “create the biggest, brightest, funniest, fiercest damn dragon” we can. He wanted us to grab our own paint brush to swoosh “through the sensuous goo of Cadmium Yellow, Alizarin Crimson or Ultramarine Blue.” In a very real sense he is asking us to reject stifling forces of any kind in any area of our lives.

To be sure, Gordon’s challenge to us is terrifying. We have done well in high school, gone to college, maybe even graduate school, and worked hard to move up in our careers, all to be told that by doing so we may have just been coloring boxes rather than creating a work of art that expresses who we are at our core and what we value and love. 

However, there is something even more frightening than this challenge that Gordon asks us to take up. The final line of the book is “If you go to your grave without painting your masterpiece, it will not get painted. No one else can do it, only you.” Very similar to John Lennon’s quote “most people die with the music still in them.” And it’s true. So few people fearlessly and relentlessly live their dreams and truly build their own road to happiness. My New Year’s resolution: to move even a little closer to swirling my paint brush in Cadmium Yellow, to dabble outside the lines, and learn to play my own music. 

The photo above can be found at: http://www.trishamclean.com/chakra/orangedragon.jpg

career, creativity, cubicle, job, office space, social work

Improving officespace: death to cubicles

Christa Avampato

How the color taupe ever made its way into U.S. offices I will never know. I am so sick of this color I could scream. My friend, Alex, and I talk about this regularly. Humans love and crave color; so how did corporations miss that? There is nothing inspiring about taupe and if I can’t be inspired then I can’t work.

I’ve been thinking about the subject a lot lately as I am in the process of moving into a new space at work. Originally, the facilities people were trying to figure out how to cube it up as I am sharing the office with another person. I fought my urge to roll my eyes and gag. Cube up this beautiful office? What??

If I had my way I’d paint it some fabulous color, put down Tatami mats, create a “Beautiful Mind” wall, and leave that space as open as possible – no walls thank you. I’m getting my way, partially. No fabulous paint color (white is all that’s “allowed”), no Tatami mats. I am going to have a beautiful mind wall and though the space won’t be totally open, it will have bookcases and a credenza in a cherry finish as a “wall” as opposed to taupe cubicle walls. It’s a start.

The progress has been driven by my boss and to the members of the facilities team who took us downstairs into the depths of our corporate building to the warehouse where they hide the cool furniture. We’re hoping to have the place set up and be moved in by the end of the month. And here’s the kicker: the maintenance team is excited to do the project. It’s something new and different for them. Finally, a creative outlet for them! They hate the taupe, too.

I came across a post on the website http://www.coolhunter.net/ that addresses the problem of boring office space with outrageous ideas. And given the rut that corporate office design is stuck in, I think being outrageous may be the only way to wake us up from our cubicle-induced coma. Enjoy these wild officescape photos and I hope they inspire you to buck the taupe.

http://www.thecoolhunter.net/design/CREATIVE-WORK-ENVIRONMENTS—Do-you-work-in-one-/

creativity, story, TED, women, writing

A Woman of Her Words

Christa Avampato

“What is truer than truth? The story.” ~ Jewish Proverb

TED recently posted Isabel Allende’s talk on passion. In a room full of scientists, technologists, and innovators, Allende talked about story telling, about women, and about the importance of having a warrior heart. She speaks bravely with humor, honesty, and grace about the state of women in the world, and the picture is bleak, though hopeful.

When the news reports talk about war casualties, 80% of the people they are talking about are women. The women of war have suffered unbelievable cruelty and horror. They have endured gruesomeness beyond measure, in the lands formerly their homes and in refugee camps. Once they are displaced by war they have hardly anywhere to go and hardly anything to take with them: women own 1% of the world’s assets though do 2/3 of the labor.

In the world of philanthropy to help the needy, again women lose. Even though they comprise 51% of humankind, women’s programs receive only $1 for every $20 that is donated to men’s programs.

After all of this sad news, you may wonder where in the world is that hope I mentioned in the opening paragraph. And here it is: the stories of women are haunting them so much that they cannot help but write them down. We are becoming an entire generation of story tellers. 35% of on-line teenage girls have created a blog, in contrast to only 20% of on-line boys who have done so. 57% of people in the news industry are women.

The trend of Tech Fatales is emerging: Women are more likely to use mobile phones, digital cameras, satellite radios, and DVD recorders. Why? Because to listen and tell stories, we must connect. We don’t just want to contribute and make this world better. We are striving to make it good.

Allende talks about a woman whom she met in a refuge camp named Rose Mopendo. After tragedy upon tragedy, Rose and her 9 children finally made it to the U.S. In Swahili, “Mopendo” means “great love”. And what we love most is the truth, and so we must love and propagate our stories.

So it is no wonder that we are writing history in our own hand. Allende goes on to say that “heart drives us and determines our fate. It matters more than training, more than luck. The world needs dissidents, mavericks, rebels, and outsiders.” If this world is to be a better place, it needs us to rise up, to question everything, to put ourselves out there as risk takers and rule benders. And then, please, write it all down. We can’t afford to have anyone forget the lives we have lived.

To see a podcast of Allenede’s talk, click this link: http://www.ted.com/talks/view/id/204
The picture above can be found at http://www.artinthepicture.com/artists/Georgia_Okeeffe/red_canna.jpeg

art, creativity, museum, New York

Delightful Doodles: the art of William Steig

Christa Avampato

Yesterday I took a walk across Central Park to stop in to the Jewish Museum of Art at 92nd Street and 5th Avenue. There is a new exhibit there that celebrate the art work of William Steig, a cartoonist who achieved early fame as an illustrator of the New York and became a children’s book author at age 60. Though he is most famous for conceiving the idea for and creating the story of Shrek, that one work, as wonderful as it is, does not do justice to a career based on enchanting doodles.

Like many art exhibits, this one has multi-media components – a short film, narrated by Steig, about his life and work, models of the Shrek characters, letters he’s written to and received from monumental figures in the art world, interactive pieces such as a children’s library, and of course, his marvelous sketches. Immediately upon entering the exhibit, the greatest nugget to genius is written plainly on the wall. When asked about how he developed such a successful career, Steig said “I don’t think like other people. I never really did grow up.”

It’s his wonderful sense of honesty and childlike desire to connect with people on a very profound basis that had me smiling all throughout the exhibit. His doodling and intentional coloring outside of the lines kept me dreaming, entering his world of fair tales that had meaningful lessons to teach viewers about their real, everyday lives. Steig said his best work came from drawing with no direction, with no purpose. Drawing for the sake of drawing.

This had me wondering all the way home what works I could create if I had no agenda in my creations. How would I live my life if I just did what I wanted to do without any sense of having to do something “useful”? By letting go, we can break-through.

creativity, innovation, invention, work

CEOs can learn a thing or two from cows – more from “Orbiting the Giant Hairball”

Christa Avampato

My friend, Dan, and I recently went to Maine to spend a weekend doing absolutely nothing of importance. It turns out that Maine is a great place for this kind of activity. I wish there were more Maines in the world. Dan is a master maestro of a delectable mix of jazz, big band, and lounge-y cabaret type music. I am not doing it justice with that description. It’s great stuff. He’s the only guy I know who’s ever run out of space on a giant iPod.

Dan brought his iPod as well as the iPod car kit so that while I drove he could entertain me spinning his fabulous mix. Being avid Sesame Street fans, he played me a set of tunes that included “Cookie at the Disco” and my personal favorite “Proud to be a Cow”. (You can read the lyrics through this link as well as download a “Proud to be a Cow” ringtone. http://www.lyricsdownload.com/sesame-street-proud-to-be-a-cow-lyrics.html. Build it and they will buy!) We should all be proud to be cows.

Today I was reading about those dreaded corporations and how they make it their job to drive every last ounce of creativity out of their enormous legion of exceedingly boring grey cubicles. This isn’t always true – it just happens to be more the norm than the exception. So imagine if dairy farmers judged their cows the same way that executive management judges their employees. Cows spend about 10% of their lives hooked up to milking machines in a barn. That’s the only time they actually produce something tangible. However, the other 90% of their lives they are performing magic turning grass into milk in some alchemic process that I do not even pretend to understand.

What would our dairy cases look like if those dairy farmers pressured those cows to “be more productive”? Impossible. Cows can’t make milk any faster than people can churn out creative ideas. Creativity is a strange alchemy as well. It needs time and patience to percolate. Corporations that think they can speed up creativity are as destined for success as a dairy farmer who thinks he can speed up milk making. If a farmer needs more milk in a shorter period of time, then he needs more cows. And if a corporation needs more creativity, then it needs more creative people.

The picture above can be found at http://www.blog.thesietch.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/02/zoom-cow.thumbnail.jpg

books, career, creativity, discovery, happiness, innovation, Steve martin, work

Is that a cocoon you’re building?

Christa Avampato

One of the main tenants of Yogic and Buddhist texts is that the world provides the exact teaching we need at the exact moment that we need it. For Christmas, my boss gave me one of the best books I’ve read to date, and I’m only on page 57! Orbiting the Giant Hairball: A Corporate Fool’s Guide to Surviving with Grace. It’s so incredible, that I’m planning on writing a series of posts related to the book. I strongly recommend anyone who works for a living, or who has ever worked for a living, to purchase this book.

I’ve been highlighting like mad, as I am known to do with my books because I think writing in them gives them my own personal touch. I have fought every single impulse to “nest” or “build a cocoon.” I’ve always wanted to feel at home everywhere I go, and wanted to have the freedom to come and go as I please. And then I moved back to New York six months ago, and have a hard time imagining I will ever leave. On page 45 of the book, I read 4 words that helped me realize I must find a way to love this city without needing it. “Cocoons can be paralyzing.” And this isn’t just true for a physical cocoon – an apartment or home – it’s a cocoon we build through relationships, friendships, our family, our job, and our hobbies. The conundrum becomes: “how can I feel safe and secure and confident without feeling stuck in a rut?”

I am not saying that anyone should run out and quit their job, dump their significant other, and move half way around the world to a country whose language they don’t speak. That’s anti-cocooning to the extreme and may land someone is quite a mess of unhappiness. There are ways to keep our outlook fresh while not turning our world upside down, though an occasional shake-up may be needed! Below are a few of my favorites:

1.) Take a vacation to some place new – and I don’t mean to some beach that looks like every other beach you’ve ever been to and lay around in the sun until you are a prime candidate for skin cancer while reading those horrible “beach reads”. I mean get out and meet new people on your vacation. Take a new class. Take a group tour. Learn a foreign language and try to order in a restaurant. Try a new sport. Bringing newness into your life in a foreign place will unlock parts of your personality you may have never known you had.

2.) Make it a point to get out into the world, alone. Some people feel fearful to go anywhere on their own. With kids and a spouse, this can be an especially challenging experience to create. It’s worth the effort. There is something to be said for taking a walk, going for a run, even going shopping, and allowing yourself time to be with yourself. Liking the company you keep in the empty moments is critical to break-through thinking.

3.) Try something you think you will love that is entirely useless. Feeling increasingly crunched for time, we place a premium on activities that are “useful.” I am the queen of utility. I don’t want to buy or receive a single product or experience that isn’t going to “pay off” in some way. This is a dangerous way to think and I know that. It is worthwhile to occasionally do something or buy something for the sheer joy of it. For example, a friend of mine learned Italian despite the fact that the language is not widely spoken outside of Italy. Spanish or French would have been more practical because so many more people in the world speak those languages. Still, he really wanted to learn Italian because he loved the sound of it more than any other language. At the time he saw no utility to learning the language – he did it for the fun of it. Now he’s getting his masters in ESL. Learning Italian gave him an appreciation for how difficult it must be for foreigners who come to the U.S.

4.) If pressed to name my favorite book of all time, I must say Alice in Wonderland. And if pressed for my favorite quote from the book it is “Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” Imagine what the world could be like if we followed the Queen’s advice. The impossible can become possible.

5.) And my favorite remedy to staying in a cocoon for too long – question everything. Steve Martin recently wrote a memoir of his life, Born Standing Up. In it, he says the way he created his break- thru comedy act was to question every assumption he or anyone else for that matter made about comedy and performing. I don’t think we should all start playing our favorite childhood game of asking “why?” every time we speak. However, there is value is taking a long hard look at what’s confusing us, troubling us, frustrating us, and re-evaluating possible courses of action. Can we re-imagine our situation, and what it would look like if anything were possible?

While cocoons are sometimes necessary, decidedly remaining in them until the cows come home will not helps us to live originally, and living originally may be the most worthwhile task we can ever take on.
creativity, finance, gifts, hand-made, holiday, home, homeade

Madonna had it right

Christa Avampato

How many times have we heard that giving of ourselves is much more in the holiday spirit than stopping off at a retailer to participate in the never-ending American consumerism. Great sentiment though what’s a company based on selling “stuff” supposed to do with it?

Enter the HP Activity Center.
http://expressioncenter.wetpaint.com/page/Holiday+Gifts+in+Under+One+Hour
By creating the WetPaint Wiki (http://www.wetpaint.com/), HP provides easy templates and instructions to create unique items from ornaments to cookbooks to toys to calendars to gift wrap. This is the Make It Yourself trend to the extreme and allows all of us to tap our inner artist. Additionally, you can share your creations and creativity tips with the WetPaint community, allowing you to not only make your own wares but show them off as well.

“Express yourself” never had more meaning…

business, change, creativity, education, innovation, work

On innovation: flaws in the process

Christa Avampato

Bruce Nussbaum, who writes the design blog for Business Week, recently published a post on what he sees as the greatest innovation mistakes made by companies. He references a study that was done by three large consulting firms that uncovered how companies that are widely-considered as top innovators actually go about the innovation process. What they found is astounding: most innovation happens by accident and most of the people inside the company achieve innovations by being contrarians and working against the systems in place.

While all of the mistakes are critical to keep in mind when we are engaged in attempting to be innovative, the number one reason that Nussbaum points out is the most important when we are considering whether or not to join a company: CEO sloth. While people within a company that live at the bottom of the food chain can drive innovation up through the ranks, corporate gravity is against them. If a CEO is inherently an innovative person who values ideas and opinions from people on the fringes of the organization, then innovation and innovators have a greater shot at success. Corporate leaders must be committed to walking the innovation talk and opening their wallets in support of the process.

A lot of new graduates crave jobs in “strategy” and to be honest, the universities that educate them are not doing them justice in this department. Here’s what the universities aren’t telling them: Every job worth your time has a strategy and everyone at an organization must consider themselves to be creatives, to be innovators. No organization is going to welcome in a new graduate and think that their ideas are the most brilliant ones ever spouted, even if they are. New ideas are absorbed in bits and pieces and it takes patience, time, and commitment to have them heard by the highest levels of a company. A word to the wise: spend your job search time finding a boss who supports your efforts of creativity, and make sure that person has the ears of the people who control the purse strings. And understand that innovation is a long and winding road.

To read Bruce Nussbaum’s full article, visit http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/archives/2007/12/top_ten_innovat.html.

career, creativity, discovery, work

Rule breakers by nature

Christa Avampato

Every once in a while, I hear a broad, sweeping generalization that stops me in my tracks. Today, I was talking to someone about corporate recruiting at large companies and how much effort and funding they spend on recruiting and branding events at top universities. The trouble with recruiting the best and brightest to corporate America is that corporations don’t know how to keep them. Students from top universities don’t want to work for someone else. When placing bets, the students will bet on themselves. They’re bred to have a tremendous amount of self-confidence and they firmly believe that they know best. So, when confronted with a rigid corporation that can’t flex, they flee.

There are a few key qualifiers with this generalization. There are bright people at all schools, not just those with a high rank. I went to two fantastic universities, and I was very lucky to be a part of both. And while I met a slew of very smart people in both places, I also met a fair number of people who made me question the admissions standards. And to be certain, large corporations are not devoid of bright people. On the contrary, there are often many intelligent people rising through the ranks.

I don’t think it’s intellect that separates the different tiers of schools, nor the students who attend them. My belief is that it is all about attitude. From the time I was 18, I was held up to a ridiculously high standard in my academic life. Those without self-confidence didn’t make it through – the system beat them up and then beat them out. What top schools are left with are a student body who truly believes they can do ANYTHING so long as they work hard enough and want it bad enough.

And this circles back to the tough part for corporations: they don’t give the vast majority of team members the opportunity to do anything they want. Their rigid rules and love of processes stifle the very talent they worked so hard to get. A word to the wise: if large companies want talent that will drive growth and move the company forward, that talent must be given the latitude to do exactly what they were hired to do – think different and act accordingly.

The photo above can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/kathryn.davidson/Penn/photo#5103173644839047218

business, career, change, creativity, dreams, happiness, work

The Natural Order

Christa Avampato

“First say to yourself what you would be; and then do what you have to do.” ~ Epictetus,Greek philosopher

It’s easier to formulate actions than it is to really get at the core of the motivation and then develop actions that support that core. I’m not sure why. Maybe it can be likened to eating a hot bowl of pasta – easier to twirl around the edges and work in than to plunge right into the steamy center. And yet, the few times when I start out on the fringes and work my way in, I end up realizing that I spent too much energy on the edges when I should have dove right in. And when I have jumped in with both feet, even if I got burned, I learned a tremendous amount and had no regrets.

I considered this as I read about Paul Potts, a British cell phone salesman who at his heart was an opera singer. He finally got his chance to do what we loved on an episode of “Britain’s Got Talent.” Though, imagine what would have happened if not for reality TV. How many other Paul Pottses are out there who “die with the music still in them” as John Lennon would say. Was it that they didn’t know their core and spent their lives on the fringes of their potential or was it that they were actually afraid of their callings and spent their lives running from destiny?

This is good food for thought as I consider the hours of my day when I’m happiest and what I have to do to make those activities the predominant way I spend my time. I have also found that in crafting a business case for my own company, I also must start at the core. Yes, I will make mistakes and I will get a burn or two or ten. It’s worth the risk – I’d rather end up bumped and bruised than wishing I had sung the song I was meant to sing.