As an adult, we would have admired a toddler’s unwavering attention – engaging fully into the activity they are engrossed, fully aware of the subject and without a moment of distraction, unless distracted externally. In that pure moment of attention is learning – is creativity. And that’s the edge a toddler has over all their adult counterparts.

As adults, we tend to delve in too much of noise. Particularly in organizations it amplifies even further, as silos, roles, processes, and urgencies of immediate work take over. Not a silent moment in the busy routines! And guess what, more people scrabble into their busy routines, the more they start to devour it. Because it lets the sensory motor to take over. It lets stimulus-reaction to take over. Consuming fewer and fewer mental capacity over time. Till the routine becomes an absolute fixed path – moment it varies, processes are brought to control it even more. And processes over time become regimented – robotizing the human agent as far as they can. In the name of productivity and controlled systems – people live this regimented life – often leaving their core personalities away, while at work.

This possibly is the most unfortunate use of the human agent and human mind. While routinising is good – routinising to remove human capacity to apply thinking is not so good. To add to this, in our industrial age, lot of attentional processes evolved around the aspect of productivity & continuity – viz. six sigma or quality and process control systems. These added more bias towards perfection and an attention based on process-led innovation.

So is there a way we may bring child-like curiosity back – that harness the inner awareness in creative problem solving at work?

Research undertaken in this area thus far is not so well-formed – but we have seen particularly through the work of Mihalyi in his treatises of flow and creativity that it is indeed linked to prolonged attention of human mind on a subject of interest. How do we allow to sustain creative interest at workplace? And what are the conditions necessary for it?

And here lies the paradox! While creative process is indeed a synchronous process – requiring attention for longer duration and continuous focus, creative outcome is quite asynchronous. And organizations of all kinds certainly would not like it. They need regimented and routinized delivery of innovation and its outcomes. In such a scenario, how is creativity to thrive? And organizations are in no way wrong, as they deliver value to the shareholders.

Is there a window of opportunity in utilizing reservoirs of creativity that lay unutilized in every organization? Ideas and potential services and products that do not surface due to unutilized human potential. There indeed may be an opportunity. Some research in this direction points to mindfulness applications in harnessing creativity at workplaces. While the subject would need deeper research – “engagement” seems to be the key, which can unlock greater potential in form of creativity. Usually, as said earlier, organizations engage with their workforce through a regimented job-based system – required to follow set processes and systems. So how do managers and leaders and in turn “engage” with the workforce more mindfully, such that people “engage” with their work more mindfully – to harness the free energy towards creativity?

The contours for such an engagement – take us back to the child-like curiosity the source of infinite learning capacities in a toddler. How do we engage with workforce to bring back some such curiosity back?

#1: Enhancing Awareness: Bringing mindfulness practices today is essential – to bring focus and attention to people – in the era of attention deficit. Introducing mindfulness practices to the workforce can not only catapult organization capacity but also individual lives and society.

#2: Allowing Space & Time: Too often managers and leaders behave like the classical helicopter mother – hovering over people to complete tasks on time. And this army of managers is indeed a creativity killer! Organizing for autonomy, rather than review is the one answer that organizations must search for – just like a toddler engaging in free activity.

#3: Valuing brokenness: Wabi-sabi, the Japanese worldview of acceptance to transience and imperfection. It is fine to engage in fixing a puzzle continuously – as there is no perfect solution – the continuous pursuit is the creativity – just like that of a toddler playing with Lego blocks.

#4: Leaving the path a little open: Process is good, over regimentation is not. Allowing elbow room for creativity is good for the six sigma processes, one would have laid down. Providing people freedom and autonomy to experiment, fail and learn.

Amongst these, the first step – awareness and attention is the key – and that forgotten art from the childhood is an important first step – as without that the remaining three elements above more of meandering than ruminating. Bringing creativity requires bringing awareness and attention.

Reference:

1. Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1990). Flow: The psychology of optimal experience. New York: Harper & Row.
2. Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. (1996). Creativity: flow and the psychology of discovery and invention. New York: Harper Collins Publishers.
3. Siu Yin Cheunga, E. G. (2020, July). Does being mindful make people more creative at work? The role of creative process engagement and perceived leader humility. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, 39-48.

Author is currently engaged in developing mindfulness applications to workplace realities and is open to your suggestions on your experiences, co-development ideas and collaborations. Do watch this space for more publications and research.