Aug
14
Creativity Is Not Just For “le Artiste.”
Submitted by Jack Pate under Business | Leave a Comment
Dr. Betty Edwards used to travel to present workshops of about a week duration from her position at UCLA. Dr. Edwards using drawing as a way to encourage people to engage the creative resources of their brains. She taught as a central element of learning to observe and record what one actually sees, not what one believes, demands, or symbolizes from the observed. This is an excellent management approach, seeing reality first, and evaluating it later. I would recommend that one retreat directly to her book “Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain” rather than my experience only. It became clear to me that Dr. Edwards taught us to draw, but more importantly to observe. The actual intense detail work of observing in order to draw, as well as the drawing itself required such concentration, as to bore the logical brain out of control. As I recall, we learned three ways to encourage the logical portion of our brain (which tends to be linear, logical, limited, and language oriented).
First, one can bore it into ceding control. Second, one can relax it by exposure to relaxing activities such as camping, backpacking, hiking, boating or other activities. Three, one may engage in some collateral, creative activities such as music, painting, or the like. These collateral activities although directed to music, art, painting, drawings, or the like are also intense, consuming and actually boring in their own right.
Thus the logical side of the brain that insists on order, simplicity (yes simplicity!) and such accoutrements to survive, cedes control to the creative side of the brain which can then handle the nearly infinite levels of complexity and frustration.
It is also important to load the brain with problem. I have found that gathering up information, studying the laws, rules, principles, and other governing parameters, as well as applying the same to solve the issues at hand is a very important, albeit frustrating, exercise.
Thereafter, engaging in any exercise that will foster the creative portion of the brain taking control of the problem will result in a successful transition in the mind. Solutions often do not come quickly. Many times, solutions to complex problems come weeks later. I have found it not uncommon to be almost finished with writing a patent when my mind comes up with several new and clever approaches. The mind creates these out of its background thinking. They usually are elegant, innovative, and utterly superior to what I was thinking before.
It is my observation that the creative portion of our brains can handle, tolerate, and thrive in nearly infinite levels of complexity. By contrast, the logical portion of the brain passes judgment on creative solutions, and pronounces them simple enough to execute, self-consistent, and within the capabilities of the linear, limited, logical brain to fulfill. Thus, elegant solutions do not appear to originate in logic, but to originate in creativity. Upon analysis, they are deemed elegant by the linear, limited, left side of the brain.
Aug
7
Get Value By Knowing How Business, Lawyers, and Industry Actually Operate
Submitted by Jack Pate under Business | Leave a Comment
A professional is not a mindless drudge yet, the world (e.g., consumer public) is so accustomed to the plentiful and inexpensive results of assembly-line manufacturing processes of industry that it is often unaware of how business actually gets done. Many of the decisions in business and industry require considerable insight and development.
Most of the tasks of business are not an automatic turning of a crank to output a predictable, almost immutable result as an output from a hopper full of standard inputs. Rather, priorities must be established, influences of various factors must be considered, outcomes must be evaluated and analyzed, data must be accumulated and reduced, and judgment must be exercised.
Producing parts by the millions from a stamping machine is reasonable in mass production. Some things are more routine than others. Nevertheless, in your life and its legal consequences, even determining an appropriate solution is a decision that cannot be bypassed. Even if execution were a standard task, determining what standard tasks should be executed is still another decision entirely.
The idea persists among some that a lawyer’s opinion is like a box of generic cornflakes on a shelf, wrapped in a label. The box can effortlessly be taken from the shelf and delivered across a counter. Such an attitude is utter nonsense. As well an individual might go to an engineer and ask for a blueprint, any blueprint off a shelf, and proceed to build any building to that blueprint. What if that blueprint is a fast food restaurant, and one needs a business high rise tower? What if that blueprint is a sewage treatment plant and one needs a restaurant?
One reason licensed professionals exist as doctors, attorneys, CPA’s, engineers, and the like is because they have learned to use a set of tools to gather ambiguous information, evaluate it, and establish probabilities of risk and reward. Their solutions will obtain results within a certain probability. Engineers may be the most fortunate in predicting their results with the most accuracy. Nevertheless, doctors have historical probabilities they can rely on for outcomes. CPA’s likewise understand the probabilities and the absolutes within their profession. Attorneys, often times have “black letter” law to rely upon. In other aspects, they have only probabilities with associated risks and rewards. Those must be navigated by a client, according to their appetite for risk and reward.
In summary, well established, predictable, routine tasks having a known output can provide many consumer products at inexpensive prices. That is not the model for unique, unpredictable, uncertain situations. A first step toward accurately assessing risk and reward is to see facts, and to see those facts clearly.