We were studying how creativity is being stifled
at workplace due to stringent rules and procedures which more often than not,
does not do any good to anyone.
It was interesting to be part of a
brainstorming session where almost everyone was chipping in with reasons why
organizations are losing people with creative ideas. We started pointing
reasons starting from how fear of failure causes people to keep comfortable in
their own cocoon, or how it is the higher management and missing leadership qualities
that are the reasons for bogging down creative ideas.
We also did not spare the family
environment as a reason for the first place of stifling the creativity among
individuals. Why not, it is actually true! How many times are we encouraged in
our homes while we are very young to do things which are new to everyone? We
are not. We are showed a path right from the childhood and asked to follow it.
Every time when we try something new we are forcefully asked to retreat, and we
oblige.
So we were getting all excited about how at
one or other instances, we all faced situations where we wanted to discover a
path which was beyond the expected and accepted protocol and how we were
stopped from doing so.
Our teacher was especially very interested
in bringing out most of all of us through our knowledge as well as experience
on how the creative minds, like our (pun intended!) have been made to work like
machines. She gave us a beautiful structure on how we need to overcome that.
Try to do things which are not written in rulebook, try to do things
differently than you would normally do, do things which are interesting for you
rather than what you should be doing, open the brain to a new world and new
things around to make it work in a more creative manner.
It was all going so well and I started to
feel more creative than I was when I entered the class.(yeah!)
The class ended and ma’am started to give
us feedback on the article reviews we had submitted in the last class. I was
excited after listening such positive views from our teacher on being creative,
treading the unusual and going out of the box for something which is
interesting etc. I got my article review back with a note on it – “It is not an
article from an academic journal but from a blog. Repeat with a penalty
assignment”.
I was shocked! It was such an interesting
topic that I really wanted to do a review on that. I knew it was not from an “academic
journal” but how does it matter as far as the article is interesting enough to
be dealt with. I even wanted to share my understanding of this very interesting
article with the class. But here I am, forget about a positive feedback of the
heart-ridden review I did for the article, I have actually got a repeat
assignment. I told ma’am, this is such an interesting article and I did my
review nicely, why should I be getting a repeat assignment. Ma’am replies – “
As per the instructions given, you should take an article only from an academic
journal with these constraints and must analyze it only on the basis of
analysis parameters I have given to you. Also the article must be attached only
before the review. These rules must be followed strictly for the article review
to be considered completely”. And I had nothing to say. This was happening
within 10 minutes of a insightful discussion where we were trying to find out –
how
actually
creativity is stifled?
Cheers,
