To be truly visionary we have to root our imagination in our concrete reality while simultaneously imagining possibilities beyond that reality.
—bell hooks, Cultural Critic and Writer
So, I’m thirty-five thousand feet in the air when the spunky flight attendant taps me on the shoulder, smiles, and says, “Watch this.” She grabs the microphone and with a gleam in her eye instructs everyone in the cabin to turn to the right-hand bank of windows and stare out into the sky. “Do you see it?” she asks into the mic.
The flight attendant pauses for a moment, then grabs the microphone again and says, “If you missed it, turn to your left.” This time, the passengers crane their necks urgently, clamoring to see whatever they missed the first time around.
One by one, the passengers survey the sky, determine they’ve missed “it” again, and return to their naps, books, and electronic devices. That’s when the flight attendant taps me on the shoulder and says, “We’re on an airplane flying five hundred miles per hour…we’re not flying in a circle, duh!”
Turns out, there was nothing to see out that window at all. The flight attendant was just having some fun and in the process demonstrating something that philosophers have taken lifetimes trying to prove: All human beings fall into one of two buckets: either we are one of the masses following inane instructions, or we are grabbing the microphone giving the instructions.
Upon closer examination, I realized that what she had done was subversive in other ways too. Usually it’s the pilot who grabs the microphone and points out the mountain ranges and glacial formations. It’s the pilot who makes funny, muffled jokes; it’s the pilot who announces that we are stuck on the runway or warns us of upcoming turbulence. Usually, the pilot is the lead singer, and the flight attendants are the backup chorus. But this flight attendant had shown us that you don’t need to be the one wearing the stripes to wake people up, make a joke, or pick up the mic and take charge.
This strange incident reminded me of a brain-teaser question a friend in high school once asked me. Who is more important, a surgeon or a car mechanic? Then, after a beat, she added an important detail: When your car is broken down. The point is that no one’s skills are objectively more valuable or important than anyone else’s. What matters—as with most things—is context.
In the workforce, we all have unique skills and talents. And no matter what your rank or title is, there will be times when your skills are more valuable and times when they will be less valuable, depending on the task or challenge at hand. Depending on the context and the needs of the team or organization, sometimes you’ll be the surgeon and other times the mechanic.
Maybe a pipe leaks in the office building and it’s the maintenance worker whose skills become most important. Or maybe the CEO is struggling to improve the company’s social media footprint, and it’s the Instagram-savvy marketing intern with the right skills to help him out.
There is nothing like a corporate hierarchy to choke the life right out of an idea. Am I right? Oh, you need to ask a decision maker first. Okay, I’ll wait. What, you have to ask another decision maker? And another? A work culture in which every idea has to make its way past every single decision maker is a work culture in which nothing gets done. And if you think that all flat organizations have decision making figured out, think again. I worked at one flat org, and lemme tell you about the painstaking hours and days it took to make one teeny decision because nobody wanted to step on anyone’s toes until finally the CEO would just swoop in and make the decision for us. This was a hierarchy cloaked as a flat org, and it made decision making as efficient as trying to capture a unicorn with pimento loaf! And let’s not forget that CEOs always have to be cognizant of the quarterly numbers, share prices, and payroll before deciding to take creative risks. Often, it’s the people with less responsibility and a less flashy job title—or in other words, the people with less to lose—who have the greatest capacity to decide to be boldly creative.
If you’re willing to subvert traditional hierarchy, you’ll be on your way to breaking down barriers between people, fostering more connection and collaboration, and creating fertile ground for ideas to take root and blossom. We’re so quick to assign people labels in the workplace—these people are “the creatives,” these people are the “decision makers,” these people are the behind-the-scenes support staff whose role is to be “seen but not heard.” A culture that assigns such labels is one where creativity dies on the vine because people are afraid of violating their assigned roles, or speaking out of turn, or expressing an idea that might help the company because it falls outside their specific job function.
If you ask me, many companies could stand to take a page from the Fluxus art movement of the 1960s. Just as every industry has its rules, regulations, and hierarchy, so does the art industry. Museums and galleries are often anointed as the gatekeepers of artists, responsible for choosing, grooming, and inviting those special few to grace a gallery wall with their work. The Fluxus artists kicked that hierarchy to the curb and created sets of instructions to inspire anyone and everyone to make and experience art anywhere, at any time. Borrowing from the world of music, the Fluxus artists called their works “scores,” because they were meant to encourage people to conduct their own experiences and stage their own performances.
Here is one from Fluxus artist George Brecht:
Exercise
Determine the limits of an object or event.
Determine the limits more precisely.
Repeat, until further precision is impossible.
(To read more scores by Fluxus artists like Yoko Ono, Geoffrey Hendricks, Alison Knowles, Nam June Paik, and more, check out the Recommended Resources listed at the end of the book.)
The following score was inspired by Brecht’s and made in honor of one of my all-time fave restaurants, whose owners realized that the people washing dishes deserved to own a home just as much as the managers of the restaurant, so they decided to pay everyone the exact same wage!
See the steady stream of dirty dishes
Watch the steady stream of dissatisfied customers
Determine which employees are more important than others
Determine which employees deserve to own a home
Calibrate salaries accordingly
Both in the business of art, and in the art of business, creativity requires cracking the veneer of self-importance, recognizing people’s unique abilities, and giving everyone permission to come on board and grab the mic.
Leadership isn’t a position you can attain by simply climbing the metaphorical ladder. It’s not about fame or glory or ownership. Being a leader lies in the being. We don’t have to be officially in charge to lead; leadership is something that already exists within us and something we already do (or can do) every day. If you go to work and are supportive, empathic, creative, communicative, and even a little inspirational, then you’re already leading!
The problem is that many companies don’t sufficiently acknowledge those everyday leaders who lighten up a meeting with a joke, add unexpected depth to collaborations, send get-well-soon cards to colleagues who are sick, or champion diversity and inclusion in the workforce. They give out awards like Employee of the Month, Best Sales Performance, and so on, but what about those awesome folks who contribute arguably more through their creativity, empathy, and support? Why can’t they get an award? Well, as unofficial leaders…we can give it to them! We don’t have to put an official logo on it and wait for marketing to review the copy, HR to approve it, and an all-hands meeting to deliberate over it. Why wait for someone on the official leadership team to acknowledge the awesome humans doing inspiring stuff every single day?
Decide on the awardee.
Come up with a title for the award.
Present the award to the awardee.
Repeat (often).
This award can go to anyone in your office who does not have an official leadership title but who frequently inspires others with his or her kindness, playfulness, or creativity. Once you have figured out what to call your award, cut it out of construction paper, sew it on a tea towel, email it, sneak into the recipient’s office and make it the person’s screensaver, or simply print it out and present it to the deserving awardee.
I’d like to present you with the…Inclusionary Visionary Award…You Make Meetings Fun Award…Imagination Partner Gold Medal! This award comes with a firm handshake, eye contact, a smile, deep appreciation, and a certificate made out of envelopes I stole from the supply cabinet…cuz you’re worth it!
Once you start doing this, you might find that you begin seeing more award winners everywhere you go. The barista who is always patient with you as you struggle to decide on soy or almond milk while the customers behind you get increasingly grumpy. The cook at your child’s school who sneaks veggies in from her garden to make sure the kids are getting their vitamin C. The bus driver who always waits for you when he sees you sprinting down the block. Or anyone else who takes extra care to improve other people’s lives in ways big and small: that’s leadership.
I don’t think there’s a workplace on the planet that doesn’t have a lifetime supply of sticky notes lying around in a supply closet somewhere. Sticky notes are like the Creative Trespassers of paper. They’re brightly colored, and their purpose is to stand out and draw attention to stuff we might overlook. And they even have adhesive.
Many moons ago (the 1980s) in an office far, far away, before there was direct deposit (I know, just close your eyes and try to imagine), when all employees received their paychecks IRL, in the form of an actual, physical check, there was a Creative Trespasser named Dan Tyre who used to stick sticky notes onto everyone’s paychecks. As the founder and CEO of the company, he would intercept the checks before they were delivered, and to each one he would attach a Post-it on which he’d written a motivational message or words of praise and encouragement. To this day, the recipients of his sticky notes remember receiving their checks and being excited to find a personalized message reminding them that they were seen, valued, and supported.
Unfortunately, the norm in most companies dictates that praise be relegated to HR-sanctioned intervals or reserved for when someone does something extraordinary. But Dan understood the value of disrupting these arbitrary rules for when praise could be permitted—and of showing appreciation for the dedication and passion his employees brought to work every day. After all, they don’t call work a grind because it’s easy, and sometimes the difference between staying at a job and sweating it out or leaving is being seen, valued, and supported along the way.
When I was in college, I took a class called Theater Collaboration taught by celebrated theater director Marshall W. Mason. In attendance were five playwrights, five directors, and twenty actors. Our assignment: One playwright and one director (selected randomly) would partner with four actors to come up with an idea for a ten-minute play and, with everyone’s input, write it and perform it in class. Well, it didn’t take much time for us playwrights to get irritated with the actors who had the gall to think they could write, and for the directors to watch their carefully orchestrated blocking be thrown out the window by the actors, and for the actors to insist that no one was listening to their ideas. This led to intense debates about which discipline was the most important in the collaborative process. We playwrights thought, of course, that we were the most important because without a script, there is no play, duh. But the actors argued that without them, the script is just a pile of pages. Without a director, the directors among us pointed out, there is chaos. Without a set designer there is nothing to anchor us in a place and time, and without the stage manager nothing gets done and you have to bring your own snacks! Pretty quickly, we realized that if we were going to make it through this class, we would have to let go of our perceived pecking order and put the co- back into collaboration.
Theater, by design, is a nonhierarchical pursuit. It only works when all the elements come together; if just one is missing or sticking out, the entire operation falls apart. We go to theater (or any live performance) to be moved in some way, to laugh in the dark, to cry with our fellow humans, to feel something. But when any one person onstage or backstage pulls rank, demanding to be heard over all the others, that’s when we stop feeling and start seeing the flaws in it all.
This is just as true in the workplace as it is onstage. Instead of bailing out on your part or grabbing the spotlight and trying to steal the show, we need to practice co-creating, allowing the work to be the star.
I once worked with a guy who often took it upon himself to run around the office once a day screaming at the top of his enthusiastic lungs, “Movement session!” And for ten glorious minutes, those who wished to drop everything and move their bodies would gather in the middle of the office building, where he led us in a movement session—everything from stretches to jumping jacks. It was sheer bliss. But here’s the thing: Nobody gave my coworker permission to do this; he just took it. And who could complain? We didn’t lose any clients, we didn’t lose time in our day to execute on important projects, we didn’t lose focus. In fact, we gained energy and flexibility and regained a sense of playfulness that carried into the work we did. The point is, anyone can make a decision to lead a creative revolution for ten minutes every day.
Enlist a few fellow Creative Trespassers from your office and take turns leading creative ten-minute breaks.
Each day, one leader decides on the form and the prompt for that day’s break.
Examples:
a. Writing, nonstop, and the prompt is: What is the story of your name…Go!
b. Drawing, nonstop, and the prompt is: Your first pet…Go!
c. Dancing, nonstop, in the style of hip-hop, ballroom, break dancing, tap, or twerk…Go!