We hear these days, financial crisis through, that one of our main resources to use to get out of the well is creativity.
Entrepreneurs, economists and merchants agree to place this competition almost as the overcoming factor of this crisis.
From my perspective as an organizational psychologist, I have insisted for a long time on the need to encourage in all employees who are part of a company the generation of proposals capable of achieving innovative methodologies and products. However, the question that arises is whether all people really have material available to devise things different from those already done.
And the answer is unequivocal: Yes. Absolutely all of us possess such symbolic resources that allow the production of new thoughts. It is also true that not everyone has the same background. In some cases it is more nurturing than in others, but this does not imply the execution of a creative act but in any case the power to carry it out.
And this is where the knot of this question lies. Why, if anyone is creative, only some stand out in this field? Why, despite the fact that many organizations urge their staff to continual improvement, do they only find an effective response to this request in certain collaborators?
The challenge is to bring an explanation to this, and then propose a solution principle.
1. Following the hypothesis of the double brain hemisphere, with differentiated characteristics between them, we will assign responsibility for emotions to the right and that of reason to the left. Consequently, it would be the first one that has the necessary conditions for the generation of ideas, as it has the characteristics of synthesis and globalization. So, from an anatomo-functional view of our brain, it is said that if we have a right hemisphere, integrated with its neighbor, we can potentially generate ideas.
2. If we lean towards the psychoanalytic reading of the problem, we will not force things if we think that, by having an unconscious structured like a language, according to Lacan, we are inhabited by an anarchic and strange knowledge, but not without content. On the contrary, the register of the symbolic (words) abounds with materials worthy of feeding our conscience and being translated into creative improvements.
Preliminary conclusion: from any theoretical school we can safely establish that we all have the true possibility of being creative.
Back to the start
The reason why we do not find new ideas in all people can be explained in different ways, in such a way, let's start:
to. We can make each hemisphere responsible for certain blocks that conspire against creativity. Just to mention the main ones, we will mention among the emotional (right) the fear of failure and within the rational (left) the fact of not accepting ambiguities.
b. According to psychoanalysis, the unconscious does not always eject what it contains frankly. Most of the time it does so by means of transliterations that deform, substitute, disfigure or directly eliminate its representation. Thus, it is necessary to circumvent the empire of censorship exercised by conscience on him.
So the answer to our question is found, anyway, in the presence of criticism. These are one of the main reasons why it is not possible to easily find subjects in whom creativity flows.
In all of them there is an instance (call it the right hemisphere or the superego) whose main function is to judge (us). Hence the almost inexplicable constant fear of failure, of error or of what they will say if I think that something can be black and white at the same time, or crisis and opportunity simultaneously.
Companies, eager to achieve innovations based on the suggestions of their employees; Entrepreneurs who wish to avoid this global situation and economists, ready to grant exits, should be warned that they are fighting with two large opponents. The first, constituted by our personal blocks. And the second, made up of the judging gaze of others, which takes refuge in another even more ruthless: his own.
Then, the way to avoid this glassy road will be marked by the light of our desire, which only knows the responsibility derived from the acts we execute, and which does not allow itself to be defeated by the lapidary eye of its main censor (s). (it is).
We suggest that the employer always insist once more on his worker, creating the right conditions for ideas to discover a friendly territory in which to settle. Incentive systems; the formation of project teams; a leadership structure that seeks staff development are some of the axes to use.
To the employee: do not leave. Do not let yourself be guided by the temptation of inertia and the comfort of why, because the only way to change a state of things that generates discomfort is in yourself. If you trust your potential, you can translate your personal added value into action.
And to the economists, do not forget that your science is social and that it is necessary to give emotions the place that of their own right. And that the best analysis (competence of the right hemisphere) entails as a sine qua non condition, an equivalent synthesis (function of the right hemisphere).
