Creativity Regained

 
"If you create an atmosphere of freedom, where people aren't afraid someone will steal their ideas,they engage with each other, they help one another," says Redford.

Redford says that storytelling is as important for today's businesses as it was for the Ute tribes that once inhabited this land. Organizations with no knowledge of their own stories borrow cheesy imitations from the media or steal them from competitors (that is why so much advertising appears interchangeable). And Redford believes storytelling can be fostered by the design and flow of an organization's social and community habits, like the informal gatherings at the Owl Bar. "I think any culture without mythology and storytelling is doomed," says Redford. "Stories are a way of communicating, a way of keeping certain things alive."

Conversation: In preparation for my visit to Sundance I listened to 100 hours of taped interviews with Redford. When I arrived we walked together around the village, and I watched him collaborate with staff members and artists throughout the week. And here's the remarkable thing: In all that time, I never heard him repeat himself. Even when I would read back to him his own words for clarification (a process that usually makes people self-aware) Redford was uninterested -- he was already on to the next idea.

While most people, especially people in business situations, use conversation as a forum for presenting themselves, Redford uses conversation to become himself: He intends to be different when it is over. Just talking with him is a lesson in shaking off old ways of thinking. Like a chess player, he sees the whole picture, follows the moves, and finds the connections before you know where you're going -- then he turns the board. If you're lost, he turns it to give you a leg up. If you're safe, he turns it to keep you fresh.

"You had to think not only revenue, but the quality of that revenue," Redford explains. It is a philosophy he has never abandoned.

Management theorists stress the importance of conducting companywide conversations but not of having leaders who are great conversationalists. At Sundance no one asks a question to which he or she already knows the answer. Words and ideas move in one direction only -- forward.

It's not as though business doesn't recognize the importance of organic growth -- corporate annual reports routinely proclaim a commitment to innovation. But it's not showing up anywhere else. "The innovation right now in business -- as far as I can tell -- is coming out of paper and air," says Redford. "The signs are everywhere. The collapsing of certain corporate structures, the mergers, the consolidation that was supposed to beef up profit are clearly, by and large, not working."

Innovation at most companies is pursued with desperate, random acts or unevolved strategies; or it is so incremental and predictable that it isn't really innovation at all. Sundance, by contrast, doesn't just encourage innovation -- it ensures that it happens by process and design. Most companies won't find it a stretch to imitate at least some of Redford's tactics. Expose people to a variety of conflicting perspectives. Hire for raw ideas. Throw innovators back on their own resources. Perpetuate institutional memory. Allow for experimentation, mistakes, and dead ends. Employ short-term mentors. Don't respond slavishly to market research. Engage in conversations that lead to new conclusions rather than persuade people of foregone ones. Periodically switch environments. And if you are the company leader, give generously to innovators of your time and attention.

Perhaps most important, make clear that you yourself are on a quest for the genuinely new and that -- like Redford -- if you achieve that quest you will immediately start searching all over again. "There's no endgame at Sundance; there's not meant to be," says Redford. "It's still evolving and it's meant to keep evolving.

"I don't believe in endgames," says Redford, "except the one that's forced on you."

Stephen H. Zades (szades@triad.rr.com) is the founder of Odyssey Network, a strategy and brand consulting company in Winston-Salem, N.C. This article was written in collaboration with Dr. Jane Stephens, English Department chair at High Point University. Their book, Mad Dogs, Dreamers and Sages: Growth Through Discovering Imaginative Intelligence, is available at www.eloundapress.com.

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