I am naturally an extroverted person. I love talking
and sharing with people, and I genuinely appreciate an alternate perspective.
As a result of having such a social outgoing personality, being alone isn’t enough
for me to be creative. I have found that when I truly WANT to be alone and
focused is when I can become the most creative and thoughtful. If I don’t want
to be alone, I will just click on the Google chrome icon on my computer and
wire myself into some social interaction, I’ll pick up my phone and text
someone, anyone, even my mom, because I generally don’t like or want to be
alone. When I can rid myself from all the distractions and find the serenity in
being alone, I can really start innovating or coming up with new ideas or new
approaches to things. Most recently I have been working on a multimedia dream
catcher piece of art. The circular top part I painted on a canvas and the
bottom stringy parts with the beads and feathers were added later with hot
glue. I finished the drawing and painting very shortly after buying all of the
supplies, but then the half-finished piece of art sat in my living room for at
least two months waiting for me to finish it. With school starting and my
friends coming back into town any spare time I had I was either sleeping or
catching up on school or social things. One day I just clicked, and “got the
bug” to stay in, pour myself a glass of wine, and finish my piece. The end
result looked a lot differently that what I had originally intended because in
that moment I was able to make creative design decisions that were far better
than my original concept. I also think that the time I spent between starting
and finishing the project allowed me to adapt and create a much better end
result that I would have done all in one sitting. By waiting to finish, and
spending little of that time thinking about the project I was able to finish it
with fresh eyes. I am especially uncreative under stress or in cases of urgency;
I like to be able to take my time with things. This doesn’t mean I can’t finish
on a deadline, but that I can’t wait until the last minute.
I have had an extremely bad personal experience with
organizational creativity. I used to work at a fairly nice boutique, not
particularly high end but definitely had classier elements. There was horrible organizational
culture and communication. The store’s owner had a very absentee mindset and
gave all of the power to the store manager. The store manager was very close to
me in age, around 3 years older. She had a very closed off attitude and would
often shut down ideas that were different than hers even if they were better
because she took them as a threat. The store owner had no idea this was
happening and in her eyes everything was perfect. The sales associates became
very disengaged and uninterested in solving the stores problems such as revenue
declining or not meeting daily/weekly/monthly goals. I often times felt embarrassed
to speak up if I had an idea for a twitter or Facebook campaign or post, or if
I had thought of a potentially better way of doing simple tasks to save time or
effort. The manager’s cold shut off snobby attitude made it very hard to want
to do anything besides show up for my shift and sell to customers. Anything
beyond that was effort that a lot of my fellow sales associates did not want to
give.
Although I think being creative for me at many times
is something I find easier to do in solitude I wouldn’t disregard the benefits
of working within groups. What I have found to be most successful when working
in groups, especially in the business school when my groups are full of members
who truly want to work and put in the effort, is to converge and “brainstorm”
and then diverge and delve deeper. I cannot discredit the value of different
perspectives and attitudes brought from different people to solving the same
problem, but to really get at the heart of some group work I think
brainstorming general ideas and coming up with tasks to divide between members
has produced some of the best work. It ensures everyone is on the right page
while still allowing individual members to work independently and be creative
without having to constantly check with everyone else and be interrupted.
I think what would benefit me most personally is
train in various approaches and learn, and then apply specific techniques when
I see fit. I see no harm in performing more of the activities like the one we
did in class on the creativity day, to get myself in the mindset of different
ways of thinking and being creative so that in the real world I can have a sort
of toolkit of approaches to choose from. I don’t think one way works for every
situation and I myself would love to learn new ways to be creative.
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