I recently listened to Ken Robinson lecture "Schools kill creativity" that was uploaded on TED web-site. A few points brought my attention. The main one addressed importance of not being afraid of making mistakes in fostering of one's creativity. He gives an example of children that usually are the most creative in their answers. In the early age they don't have goals and don't obey social norms. Instead, they do what they enjoy the most and what makes them happy. But as soon as they get into school, they start being trained not to make mistakes, get right answers instead and be "a good girl" or a "good boy".
Ken believes there's a straight correlation between entrepreneurship and ability, readiness of an individual to make different mistakes. Instead, in school we are taught how you how to minimize mistakes, how to mitigate risks and how to make right decisions. They give you an ideal picture of what you should be: a banker, a lawyer. And they kill you desire to be a dancer, an artist, a musician, because in the heads of many it's a synonym of "poor". And you, they believe, want to be reach: to get more stuff and to life life that you not necessary wanted to live when you were a kid or a teen.
On my job interview recently I mentioned that I like skydiving. I drew correlation between taking risk and jumping from the plane. I said that may be this was the craziest thing I've done in my life, but I learned a big deal from it. My interviewer didn't like this response and mentioned instead that one should always be careful in assessing risks, which should always be calculated and etc...Again, I though, the same story - don't make mistakes, be reasonable...But should you always?
A friend of mine told me a story when he broke his hand, but had a job interview scheduled. He didn't want to miss a chance to get a job and decided to attend the meeting. When shaking his interviewer's hand, a guy asked my friend what happened to his hand.
On my job interview recently I mentioned that I like skydiving. I drew correlation between taking risk and jumping from the plane. I said that may be this was the craziest thing I've done in my life, but I learned a big deal from it. My interviewer didn't like this response and mentioned instead that one should always be careful in assessing risks, which should always be calculated and etc...Again, I though, the same story - don't make mistakes, be reasonable...But should you always?
A friend of mine told me a story when he broke his hand, but had a job interview scheduled. He didn't want to miss a chance to get a job and decided to attend the meeting. When shaking his interviewer's hand, a guy asked my friend what happened to his hand.
- My other interview just didn't go well, said my friend (obviously he was kidding), who has a good sense of humor and who tried to break ice. The interviewer didn't get the joke. My friend concluded that he would want to work for a boss that doesn't understand jokes. The result? Five month after starting a job of a financial analyst my friend worked as a managing director within another company. He helped it aquire a few profitable mergers. How did he get hired? He just took a risk and mentioned the same joke on his next interview....
If you look around, current social and economic system fosters productivity, intellect and absence of mistakes. But if you never make mistakes, you can never learn how to think creatively. You will always be tightned to a standartized approach of solving problems. Instead, I believe if you make something not right, you really put effort and did your best, you should be rewarded. For example, my management professor gave us an example of the times when his idea resulted in big losses for a company. Nevertheless, he received a big bonus for that mistake. And I think that this is essentially what company's management should be: encourage people not to be afraid to make mistakes, not to be afraid to take risks, allow them trust their inner self.
Finally, this blog entry has something to do with a management class that I took in college. Every week we had an opportunity to get extra credit for our exam. Only a few people got the extra credit. I never got one, even though i was motivated to receive one, because my management exams were really hard. What I've noticed is that with each missed opportunity I was less and less motivated to keep going. As well as other people in the group I was with. Some didn't even pretend they were not interested at all in completing the assignment, because just like in casino the odds of winning "extra credit" were against the bettors (on average 5 people out of 30 had a chance to get a credit, which is around 16% chance to win).
When I think about the way to improve this situation and students' motivation what comes into my mind is prof's Kurpis bonus example. His mistake was rewarded. In a similar manner, allowing a few teams to win and receive half of the credit would do a better job to motivate them, for in the future they would wish for more points. Encouraging them take a risk (even if that involves making a mistake) with two or three points of extra credit would motivate them more, especially giving the fact that three additional points wouldn't really boost one's grade when the median for exams was either 60 or 75. My next idea may sound even crazy, but giving extra credit to a group that performed the worst in case they can explain what went wrong would also motivate them to reach higher and perform better next time. the team that found the worst way out of a situation can be seen as a creative team simply because if offered its unique approach and din't follow common rules. Tomas Edison said that he discovered 1000 ways not to get electricity, but in the end he got it. He loved mistakes and kept going and essentially he came where he wanted to.
Anyway, this is what I think. Personally, I will continue to keep wondering on the trip of my life. And i will continue making mistakes as well as learning from them. I'll keep diving for new discoveries.
Full material about creativity can be found here:
http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html
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