Meet Natalie Nixon, PhD, Mi Gente. She's a Creative Strategist (isn't that an awesome title?). She's one of the top 50 Keynote Speakers in the World and is valued for her accessible expertise on creativity, the future of work and innovation. According to marketing legend, Seth Godin, Dr. Nixon "helps you get unstuck and unlock the work you were born to do!".
Her book, "The Creativity Leap: Unleash curiosity, improvisation and intuition at work" is a mustfor anyone who really wants their team to be more innovative and creative.
I had the privilege of interviewing her on IdeaTellers Podcast. Note: Along with your reading there will be buttons to listen to the full interview for Apple Podcast users and Spotify users, respectively.
Creativity - Not Just for "Creatives"
When we hear the word "creativity", the image our brain conjures is rarely an accountant or STEM professional. Dr. Nixon challenges this type of exclusion:
"We often only associate creativity with artists, the design team, people who work in marketing, advertising. Which is totally true. Those are areas we find amidst creativity.
However, I knew that someone like Albert Einstein was incredibly creative. The best engineers are super creative. To develop an algorithm is an act of creativity."
If you're excluding yourself from the creativity lot, please, pay some attention to Dr. Nixon's words (I'm talking to you, coders).
A Real-Life Case of Creativity & Innovation
If you don't believe me, may I bring to your attention the origin of a programming language, yes, a coding language that embodied creativity in its time: Ruby
Yukihiro Matz Matsumoto is an authority in programming engineering. A few years after graduating from the University of Tsukuba, he started working on a better, object-oriented version of the coding language known as Perl. "Matz" had a hard time finding the right software language to create it. He was also particularly bored while working on it.
This situation got him thinking that about creating a programming language designed with an emphasis on programming productivity and simplicity, with the premise of language being "for humans first and machines second"…and for it to be fun 😉.
If this doesn't resonate as creative, you might need to start seeing things from a more human perspective. On a side note, Matsumoto has said that his primary motivation in creating Ruby was simply to make himself and others happier (what a guy, right?).
So, What's Creativity?
Good old Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines it this way:
creativity. noun
cre· a· tiv· i· ty ˌkrē-(ˌ)ā-ˈti-və-tē ˌkrē-ə- ; 1: the ability to create ;2: the quality of being creative.
To be honest, I think the definition is a bit circular and kind of boring (yes, I know, it's the Merriam-Webster dictionary and not a video game, but still).
I like the way Dr. Natalie Nixon defines creativity instead.
She proposes a curious dichotomy to define creativity. To be more precise, she presents creativity as “our ability to toggle between wonder and rigor to solve problems."
Let's delve into both sides of the creativity coin.
Wonder
I just love the imagery that Dr. Nixon used to describe wonder as a part of creativity while I was interviewing her. While describing it, she adopted an enthusiastic tone, even melodic. Her words made your mind wander to a broader area, to a higher space:
"Wonder is about audacity... and curiosity... and big blue skies thinking and dreaming..." Dr. Natalie Nixon, PhD.
Who knew "wonder" implied being courageous?
About two decades ago there was in Venezuela a reality called "Atrévete a Soñar" hosted by artist and empresario Nelson Bustamante (Mexico aired a telenovela with the same name a decade later). The name meant Dare to Dream, and that phrase still fascinates me.
Sometimes we need to be bold enough to give ourselves permission to dream about how things could be. Sometimes we need to allow ourselves to establish a vision about what our reality might become, despite how much that picture could be at odds with what's happening at the moment.
So, here's to you, daydreamers, visionaries, big-picture visualizers, take courage. But along with it, there's another thing you're going to have to pick up along the way if you want your dream to become reality, and for creativity to flourish in your organization, team, or life. And that's...
Rigor
When Dr. Nixon mentions rigor, she refers to exercising effort, discipline, grit to perfect one's craft. It's the prep work, and the sweat equity you earn in your doings. After all, any person who got good at anything really had to invest time in it.
Now, don't get all Malcolm Gladwell on me and think if you don't spend 10,000 hours on anything you're not going to get good at that. That was a bit of a random and inaccurate figure that he produced and has been challenged repeatedly. Don't let that keep you from staying the course and putting in the work (for the record, Malcom Gladwell still rules).
In Natalie Nixon's own words:
"Rigor is focused time on task, discipline, skill mastery..."
Mi Gente, I think you're going to like where she got the inspiration for the concept of rigor. It's from some Italian guy from the Rennaissance that painted and invented stuff... oh wait, his name was Leonardo [freaking] DaVinci.
And his quote is the following:
I just love the language that Maestro Leonardo uses here. It's just so effective and vivid.
It tells me that with rigor,you can obliterate your stumbling block. In other words, picture that email you're dreading to send, that presentation deck that you've been avoiding, the dry and boring report you feel completely unmotivated to finish, that elusive code you keep getting wrong...
...And then you go to town:
- Point at that dreaded obstacle with your index finger(s), menacingly.
- Bring your inner Luchador voice.
- Add Hispanic accent for full effect.
- Pronounce its death sentence while flexing: "I'M GOING TO DESTROY YOU...".
And then you slay, DaVinci style.
It reminds me of a previous edition of InnoLatino Newsletter, in which we talked about 'Grit' being one of the English meanings of the Spanish word Ganas.
Slay with rigor, Mi Gente.
Creativity & Innovation
If you're the type of leader that is trying to figure out solutions with his or her team, Dr. Nixon's approach is worth paying attention to:
" I think [creativity] is the engine for innovation... Everyone wants to innovate, innovate, innovate, which is fine... but it's like a dog chasing its tail, right?... I realized I think that we should be starting with creativity."
Dr. Nixon proposes that creativity is not only crucial at the conception of the innovative product, process or content. Creativity is also crucial to scale them and make them accessible:
"An innovation is an invention converted into scalable value. While it's still an invention, if it doesn't have cultural value, financial value, social value it's not an innovation yet. But how do you go from the invention to that scalable value? That conversion factor is creativity."
Creativity is not exclusive to what corporate defines as "creatives". It can be adopted to become a more productive team, to develop innovation, and to stay competitive and relevant in the market.
It was a great honor to interview a world authority in the field of creativity. I really hope you enjoy the interview and follow Dr. Natalie Nixon.
Make sure you download the free resources available (yes, free, Mi Gente) at her website: https://www.figure8thinking.com/category/downloads/
