Articles from Integral Leadership Review4/7 – The Perils of Pernicious Polarities:Contemplating Creativity, Collaboration, andComplexity.2015-04-07 19:04:47 Alfonso Montuori

Alfonso Montuori

Alfonso Montuori

Back in the late 80s and 90s I ranted and raved in print and of f about the factthat our understanding of creat ivit y in the US was focused exclusively onindividuals—inevitably the lone male genius–and there was no recognit ion ofcreat ive interact ions, of musical groups, theater product ions, movie making,and the performing arts in general, let alone women (Montuori, 1989; Montuori& Purser, 1995, 1999). A few decades later, the t rend has shif ted.Collaborat ion is in, lone geniuses are out . Open-plan of f ices are in, cubiclesare out . Brainstorming 2.0 is in, solitude is out . It ’s We-think and Open-Sourceinnovat ion all the way (Leadbeter, 2009). Americans have apparent lyembraced collaborat ion to such an extent that a few years ago, Susan Cain,soon to be the author of a popular book on int roverts, called it the newgroupthink (Cain, 2012).

Cain right ly crit iques the superf icial aspects of the embrace of collaborat ionand part icularly the way it ’s been forced down people’s throats in schools andof f ices. Clearly not a fan of the new t rend, she tells us that the best work isdone alone. The problem I have with this—both with the collaborat ion t rendand Cain’s counterargument—is that it is of ten too polarizing. It ’s locked ineither/or thinking even when it t ries not to be. In the case of the collaborat ioncraze it ’s also of ten forcing people to be “collaborat ive” when it ’s not clearwhat collaborat ion really means except that everybody has to be involvedwith everything, part icularly because the new (collaborat ion) is most lyident if ied as being in opposit ion to the old (the lone genius), which was allabout one person, of course. Goodbye to the “great leader,” hello topart icipat ion and endless “input .” Cain gives examples of this forced

gregariousness and they’re not pret t y, part icularly for a stone-cold int rovertlike me. Open-plan workspaces with no privacy at all are one horrif yingexample, although their most ly dismal failure means they are fortunatelyalready on the way out . But one doesn’t have to have a mind sharpened bysubt le hermeneut ics to see that Cain herself f inds the idea of collaborat ionrather t rivial when it comes to creat ivit y.

I am a card-carrying loner. I have f rankly not been much of a fan ofcommit tees, “teams,” and so-called “brainstorming” over the years. When Ireceived a 360 feedback about 15 years ago one of the big take homemessages for me was that I should make an ef fort not to drum, surrept it iouslyread a book, and generally appear so completely uninterested duringcommit tee meet ings. Fair enough. But as much as I agree with the right toprivacy, I part company with Cain when she essent ially argues thatcollaborat ion has nothing to of fer creat ivit y, which “really” happens in solitude.

I remember when I f irst saw the slogan “there is no I in team.” It ’s not that Ifeared losing my individualit y, or resented the fact that I would not be allowedto shine in f ront of my colleagues. If anything, I was most interested indisappearing. It seemed like a recipe for disaster, given my experience, and aslogan that would f it rather nicely in an authoritarian system. In fact , itsounded like the slogans I heard when I lived in China in the mid-80’s. Af ter all,in a cheerful lit t le piece ent it led Combat Liberalism Mao Zedong (Mao, 1961)had argued that liberalism

stems f rom the pet ty self -interest of the bourgeoisie which puts personalinterest foremost and the interest of the revolut ion in the second place. Itis a corrosive which disrupts unit y, undermines solidarit y, inducesinact ivit y, and creates dissension. (A communist ) should be moreconcerned about the Party and the masses than about the individual andmore concerned about others than about himself . Only then can he beconsidered a communist . (pp. 515-516).

That ’s pret t y st raight forward, I think. Now in our environmentally conscioust imes we also see many new variat ions on this slogan, one of which is “f romego to eco.” This slogan is of ten accompanied by two drawings. The f irst is ahierarchy with a man at the top. The second is a circle with a series of f iguresthat are so un-hierarchical they seem to be f loat ing miraculously in theluminiferous ether. There is a pig f loat ing above a woman who in turn ishovering precariously between a snail and an octopus. In some variants of thisego to eco poster, under the hierarchy we read WRONG, and under the circlewith the f loat ing woman and the pig we read RIGHT. That ’s also pret t yst raight forward, I think. It ’s not easy being green, certainly not if it involvesdeveloping our skills for levitat ion.

The point I’m making here, if rather laboriously, is that it ’s easy to fall vict im toopposit ional thinking. It ’s one thing to crit ique the myth of the lone genius, it ’sanother to deny the relevance of the individual, of solitude, and say goodbyeto “I” and “ego.” And let ’s face it , if it were really so easy to say goodbye to “I”

and to “ego,” we probably wouldn’t need so many self -help seminars.

I agree with Cain that we may have gone too far, certainly if we’re talkingabout forced collaborat ion. I’m f ine with her suggest ion that creat iveindividuals include a lot of int roverts and that creat ivit y requires periods ofsolitude. But she loses me with an excessive ping- ponging back in the otherdirect ion when it becomes clear she sees no real value in collaborat ion. I’m allfor solitude. I spend 70% of my day on my own, surrounded by books. But I amnot a misanthrope, and I do enjoy spending t ime with people. In fact , there aresome people whose company I very much enjoy, and to a large extent they’rethe reason why I have been pushing this “social creat ivit y” thing for years now.

The evolut ion of creat ivit y remains a fascinat ing phenomenon for me. Itdocuments how we have const ructed our understanding and pract ices ofcreat ivit y over t ime. It illuminates what , in turn, that const ruct ion says abouthow we think, who we are, and what we feel st rongly about . It ’s clear, forinstance, that our view of the lone genius emerged as a result of valorizing ofthe individual during the Renaissance, then found it s greatest art iculat ion withthe Romant ics, became inst itut ionalized with American individualism, followedby a rout inizat ion of charisma, if you will, in the “Genius Bar” at my Apple store.I became part icularly fascinated by how we const ruct our understanding ofcomplex phenomena when I not iced the blind spots in the understanding ofcreat ivit y, most notably collaborat ive creat ivit y—no research on bands! Howcould that be, with all these brilliant people working on creat ivit y?

Two examples f rom my own experience illust rate some of what ’s missing forme. The f irst is that as a musician in London I loved spending hoursimprovising with my f riend Eddie Kulak, a brilliant pianist . Out of thatexperience we created a band that was a joy and also eventually became abit of a cross for both of us. Of course we now look back on it with greatfondness. I think we would both agree that our playing was of ten bet ter whenwe played together rather than with other people, in the sense that—throughthe miracle of recording—we could listen back and of ten shake our heads,laugh, and wonder where that part icular f lurry of notes came f rom. Andtogether we also sparked each other’s creat ivit y to produce material for ourband in a way that we had not been able to do on our own, with other bands,and in other musical partnerships.

Later on in lif e I have enjoyed the intellectual equivalent of these jam sessionsin my long walk-and-talks with a small number of f riends and colleagues. Thisis not brainstorming, not commit tees or “teams.” It ’s not forced. This is twopeople walking around Tokyo or Chicago or Monterey, occasionally stopping incafes, and talking about ideas and watching the sparks f ly, get t ing excitedand inspired and opening up new possibilit ies and direct ions…and then goinghome to digest it all in solitude, in the same way that Eddie would write songsaf ter our jam sessions, and I would explore musical rif f s, themes, andarrangement ideas. In other words, it ’s a much more informal but deepcreat ive and intellectual convivialit y that simply has nothing to do with

brainstorming or commit tees, and involves both interact ion and solitude. I thinkthis something most of the people I’ve ever spoken about it can relate to, andyet I have found that our thinking about creat ivit y, collaborat ion, and solitudeis seemingly t rapped in these opposit ional categories rather than drawing onactual experience.

For too long this sort informal creat ive convivialit y has been completelyignored by the research. The assumpt ion was that the only way one couldhave collaborat ive creat ivit y was in some kind of formal set t ing, even usingexplicit rules. This is clearly not the case, and most certainly the result of avery un-relat ional view of the world. As an ant idote, I highly recommend TonyKushner’s wonderful piece in which he argues that it is in fact a “f ict ion” that hewrote Angels in America on his own (Kushner, 1997). Kushner’s ref lect ions donot just apply to playwrights, of course. Joshua Wolf Shenk’s fascinat ing bookPowers of Two, is the f irst really solid popular t reatment of creat ive f riendshipsand dyadic collaborat ions, and Vera John-Steiner’s a more academic one(John-Steiner, 2006; Shenk, 2014). For a more rollicking, alcohol-fueled version,with a few more part icipants, there’s always Plato’s Symposium.

I have long been fascinated by the possibilit ies of organized but subt le andgenerat ive approaches to creat ive collaborat ion, start ing with scenarioplanning and search conferences, and now with “the art of host ing,” anumbrella for a rich range of collaborat ive processes. Because the abilit y tothink and work together in a way that is generat ive rather than dest ruct ivelyconf lictual, is essent ial in these content ious t imes, and one we’re notpart icular skilled at , it ’s vital to have processes that foster intelligent , creat ivecollaborat ion. It ’s also important to bring forward images of creat ive groupsto show that there really is such a thing. I believe this is why the so-called jazzmetaphor has become quite popular.

The second example f rom my own experience is, of course, musical groups.Solitude. Work on your own. Fair enough. But again, this assumes the work inquest ion can actually be done most ly on one’s own. At the end of her NYTart icle, Cain returns to the example of int rovert Steve Wozniak: at work heshares a donut with colleagues and then disappears back into solitude to dothe “real work.” That , it appears, is the extent of the “collaborat ion:” Sharingdonuts and cof fee and exchanging some thoughts. Not clear what theythoughts about , really (“Is this Peet ’s?”). Certainly not the creat ive convivialit yI had in mind.

So what about bands, theater groups, movies? Our understanding ofcreat ivit y is st ill shaped by a focus on writers, composers, painters, andothers who can be said to work alone. The lack of representat ion of theperforming arts, the result of having the individual as the unit of analysis, hasdramat ically skewed our understanding of creat ivit y. Part icularly but notexclusively in bands that value improvisat ion, it ’s all about interact ions. Thesound of the band is an emergent property of the interact ion of the musicians.Yes, you can pract ice and study at home, and in fact you had bet ter, but on

the bandstand you almost always have to show up with others, unless you’redoing a solo concert . Miles Davis wasn’t exact ly an ext rovert . John Colt ranewasn’t either. But in order to do what they did, they always had collaborators—great bands, Miles’s celebrated partnership with Gil Evans.

The sociologist Howard Becker has writ ten eloquent ly about collaborat ion inthe arts in his classic book Art Worlds (Becker, 2008). Never one to be led bythe nose by theoret ical f rameworks and ideologies, Howie starts the bookwith the endless list of credit s we see at the end of a movie. What aboutthese people? From the costumes to the music to the cinematographer tothe director and actors to the “best boy” and the “grip” (the lat ter two beingmy own personal favorites), it ’s blatant ly clear the f inal product requirespeople working together, no mat ter how brilliant a Fellini or a Scorsese mightbe. And that doesn’t even address what ’s needed to get the movie into yourtheater, and let you know it ’s there.

It ’s not just the collaborat ive dimension of creat ivit y that interests me. It ’s theway the self is understood and def ined in the discourse of self -society,individual-collaborat ion opposit ions. Because it ’s f ramed as self versussociety, individual versus collaborat ion, we have these polarized categoriesthat will prevent us f rom thinking of the two terms together, and seeing howthey play out in the world. Echoing Kushner, social psychologists Markus andConner (Markus & Conner, 2013) write that “You can’t be a self – even anindependent self – by yourself ” (p. 44). The fascinat ing quest ion of the natureof the individual, and whether we ult imately see the individual as a closedsystem or an open system, deserves more at tent ion than I can give it here,but I believe it is a cent ral quest ion of our t ime and one that lies at the root ofmany of the polit ical opposit ions and ext remes we’re seeing in the US today.A relat ional, open system view is emerging, and in the process we should notbe surprised that “the virtue of self ishness” is being extolled in the backlash.It ’s shouldn’t surprise us that the topics conservat ives have said the mostbizarre things about are women and the environment , both t radit ionalstandard-bearers of a more relat ional view of the world (Merchant , 1980). Butit should also not surprise us that democrats have focused most ly on(relat ional) care and fairness, on support ing those in need, and thus far havenot been part icularly inspirat ional when it comes the role of individualachievement and init iat ive (Graham, Haidt , & Nosek, 2009; Haidt , 2013; Lakof f ,1996).

For Americans the issues of creat ivit y, individualism, and collaborat ion touchon a cent ral aspect of our cultural and personal ident it y. We can seeindividualism, so cent ral to the sense of being American, was closelyassociated with heroic f igures, mythologized cultural icons like John Wayneand the lone Private Invest igator. When I f irst started writ ing about social,contextual, relat ional creat ivit y, the response was of ten disbelief (“socialcreat ivit y is an oxymoron”) or anger (“an at tack against the dignit y of theindividual in favor of social determinism”). Today things have changed.Research shows that Millennials see creat ivit y as much more relat ional

(Montuori & Donnelly, 2013). They f ind this collaborat ive creat ivit y completelynormal. My sense is that there is a massive shake up going on in America’scollect ive mythology and sense of ident it y, and it has to do with thet ransformat ion of American individualism and the emergence of a morerelat ional view of self and world (Montuori, 1989; Ogilvy, 1977, 2002; Spretnak,2011). Cent ral to this will be the shif t f rom the lone male as the dominantimage of the “person” to a view that includes both women and men, and notexclusively white women and men (Barron, 1999; Eisler, 1987; Montuori, 1997;Montuori & Cont i, 1993; Thompson, 2013).

In a t ime of social, cultural, and economic t ransit ion such as ours, there is adramat ic increase in polarizat ion and heightening of opposit ions. PhilosopherJay Ogilvy (Ogilvy, 1989) wrote that

(t )he pressure toward postmodernism is building f rom our lack of abilit y toovercome certain dualisms that are built into modern ways of knowing. P.9

The dualisms are coming to light , and somet imes in ext reme forms. This ispolarizat ion is surely a harbinger of change, but it also leads to f rust rat ion andconceptual as well as polit ical impasse. It ’s easier to think dualist ically than tothink in a way that recognizes and indeed promotes generat ive complexit y inthe form of a more nuanced understanding of the world. This will require amore radical approach, meaning one that goes to the roots of the issueswe’re dealing with. In this case, the nature of creat ivit y, agency, individualismand collect ivism and their social scient if ic correlates atomism and holism. Thetaken-for-granted way in which we’ve been taught to think will requireexplorat ion and reconceptualizat ion. If we are re-invent ing the world, we needto understand where we came f rom and how we got here. Edgar Morin (Morin,2008) has writ ten that

…our thinking is ruled by a profound and hidden paradigm without ourbeing aware of it . We believe we see what is real; but we see in realit yonly what this paradigm allows us to see, and we obscure what it requiresus not to see (p. 86).

Making that paradigm explicit , addressing it s blind spots and limitat ions, andillust rat ing specif ically how it has shaped our thought and act ion, can assist usto not replicate it s problemat ic aspects in our at tempts to createalternat ives. Art iculat ing alternat ives requires complex thought if we are notto duplicate the very dualisms built into modern ways of knowing.

Ogilvy has made a very signif icant cont ribut ion to theindividualism/collect ivism quest ion in a series of works (Ogilvy, 1977, 1992,1995, 2002). He argues that at the heart of this historical opposit ion lie twovery dif ferent ways of seeing the world, two dif ferent ontologies (Ogilvy,1992).

As long as both individualists and collect ivists assume the ontologicalprimacy of either the individual or the collect ive, and are able to support

that ontological primacy with a corresponding epistemology or paradigm,then (…) the twain shall never meet . (p.229)

He goes on to write that

The way out lies not in opt ing for one ontology or the other, but inappreciat ing the ontological, paradigmat ic character of the conf lict .(…) Rather than seeing the individual and the collective as ontologically givenand concrete, individuality and collectivity can be recast as equal and oppositeabstractions from the concrete lives of everyday communities. (p.229) (italicsin the original)

What we’re dealing with are two dif ferent ways of seeing the world, start ingwith what we might call two dif ferent unit s of analysis, the individual and thecollect ive. If they are ontologies, it means they are descript ions of the way wethink the world really is, and consequent ly two ways we think about being inthe world. But Ogilvy reminds us that individualism and collect ivism are“abstractions from the concrete lives of everyday communities.”

These abst ract ions also create worlds, of course, as well as policies andpolit ical plat forms, in the recursive relat ionship between theory and pract ice,descript ion and prescript ion. But these categories are failing us on all levels.T ime to re-view both the concrete lives of everyday communit ies (as HowieBecker’s work constant ly reminds us) and the theoret ical f rameworks we haveused to make sense of them.

The new creat ivit y should not be about collaborat ion as opposed to solitude orindividual brilliance. It should not be about anemic collaborat ion or hyper-egoicgenius. I prefer to see it as an invitat ion to dive into the ent ire phenomenonmore deeply. It invites us to become aware of actual pract ices as well asalternat ives perspect ives and the pract ices they in turn involve, to challengelimited and limit ing viewpoints and develop new ways of thinking, new ways ofrelat ing, and new ways of being. It is also an invitat ion to ref lect more deeplyabout who we are and how we have def ined ourselves, how we think, thecategories we create, and how they can t rap us as well as liberate us…

ReferencesBarron, F. (1999). All creat ion is a collaborat ion. In A. Montuori & R. Purser (Eds.),Social Creativity (Vol. 1, pp. 49-60). Cresskill, NJ: Hampton.

Becker, H. S. (2008). Art worlds. Berkeley: Universit y of California Press.

Cain, S. (2012, January 13). The rise of the new groupthink. The New YorkTimes.

Eisler, R. (1987). The chalice and the blade. San Francisco: Harper Collins.

Graham, J., Haidt , J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and conservat ives rely ondif ferent sets of moral foundat ions. Journal of personality and social psychology,96(5), 1029-1046.

Haidt , J. (2013). The righteous mind: Why good people are divided by politics andreligion. New York: Random House.

John-Steiner, V. (2006). Creative collaboration. Oxford ; New York: OxfordUniversit y Press.

Kushner, T . (1997). Is it a f ict ion that playwrights create alone? In F. Barron, A.Montuori & A. Barron (Eds.), Creators on creating. (pp. 145-149). New York:Tarcher.

Lakof f , G. (1996). Moral Politics: What Conservatives Know That Liberals Don’tChicago: Universit y Of Chicago Press.

Leadbeter, C. (2009). We-think: Mass innovation, not mass production (2nd ed.).London: Prof ile.

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Markus, H. R., & Conner, A. (2013). Clash! 8 cultural conflicts that make us whowe are. New York: Hudson St reet Press.

Merchant , C. (1980). The death of nature. San Francisco: HarperOne.

Montuori, A. (1989). Evolutionary competence: Creating the future. Amsterdam:Gieben.

Montuori, A. (1997). Gylany and planetary culture: A personal explorat ion. WorldFutures, 51(1-2), 165-181.

Montuori, A., & Cont i, I. (1993). From power to partnership. Creating the future oflove, work, and community. San Francisco: Harper San Francisco.

Montuori, A., & Donnelly, G. (2013). Creat ivit y at the opening of the 21stcentury. Creative nursing, 19(2), 58.

Montuori, A., & Purser, R. (1995). Deconst ruct ing the lone genius myth:Towards a contextual view of creat ivit y. Journal of Humanistic Psychology,35(3), 69-112.

Montuori, A., & Purser, R. (Eds.). (1999). Social Creativity (Vol. 1). Cresskill, NJ:Hampton Press.

Morin, E. (2008). On complexity. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press.

Ogilvy, J. (1977). Many dimensional man. New York: Harper.

Ogilvy, J. (1989). This postmodern business. The Deeper News, 1(5), 3-23.

Ogilvy, J. (1992). Beyond individualism and collect ivism. In J. Ogilvy (Ed.),Revisioning philosophy (pp. 217-233). Albany: SUNY Press.

Ogilvy, J. (1995). Living without a goal. New York: Doubleday.

Ogilvy, J. (2002). Creating better futures. New York: Oxford Universit y Press.

Shenk, J. W. (2014). Powers of two: Finding the essence of innovation in creativepairs. New York: Houghton Mif f lin Harcourt .

Spretnak, C. (2011). Relational reality: New discoveries that are transforming themodern world. Topsham, ME: Green Horizon Books.

Thompson, W. I. (2013). Beyond religion. Aurora, CO: Lindisfarne Press.

About the AuthorAlfonso Montuori, PhD, is Professor at California Inst itute of IntegralStudies, where he designed and teaches in the T ransformat ive LeadershipM.A. and the T ransformat ive Studies Ph.D. He was Dist inguished Professor inthe School of Fine Arts at Miami Universit y, in Oxford Ohio and in 1985-1986 hetaught at the Cent ral South Universit y in Hunan, China. An act ive musician andproducer, in a former lif e Alfonso worked in London England as a professionalmusician. He is the author of several books and numerous art icles on creat ivit yand innovat ion, the future, complexit y theory, and leadership. Alfonso is also aconsultant in the areas of creat ivit y, innovat ion and leadership developmentwhose clients have included NetApp, T raining Vision (Singapore), Omintel-Olivet t i (Italy) and Procter and Gamble.

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