On January 24 1975, Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett arrived at the Cologne Concert Hall hungry. Trying to find a morsel before performing he discovered the wrong piano, a tinny sounding instrument, had been delivered.
From this chaos developed one of the greatest jazz improvisations ever recorded. It has sold over 3.5 million copies.
What if you were in that situation? Would you walk out? Methodically struggle through with dogged determination? Or would you truly create?
Whatever was the intended program, the different tones of the unexpected piano required a creative approach.
Jarrett said the music was improvised and "on a certain night and should go as quickly as it comes." One section is a masterful 12 minute improvisation vamping between the chords of A minor 7 and G major. With two chords he could create a masterpiece.
We find throughout history that the greatest periods of history and the greatest achievements ate made in hardship, necessity or challenge.
Yet we try to control risk, manipulate the odds and take control.
Business people particularly try to smooth risk and plan with projections. This is of course necessary. Yet look at the balance sheets and you find an almost universal truth. It was when things went wrong – when all the projections flew out the window, that the creativity and drive of the inspired few lifted the company to the next level.
Nobel Lauriat Ilya Prigogine demonstrated that we grow in direct proportion to the amount of chaos we can sustain and dissipate. All systems go through different phases of life. Each time our system is overwhelmed by too much energy it is moved towards chaos, unable to dissipate the excess.
Pushed to the brink, the system either breaks down or breaks through. If it breaks through it reorganizes at a higher level and the adjusting system grows dynamically.
In the same way, life’s stressors push us to reorganize at a higher level and increase our prowess to manifest our desires.
"You cannot solve a problem from the same level of thinking that created it" said Albert Einstein.
Sometimes we need a creator push to force us to look beyond our limits, to seek the answers already within and to grow spirally to greatness.
1. Have a "yes-yes" attitude
Most of us have a ‘yes-but’ approach to problems. “It may work for you, but I’m…” There is always a ‘but’ that can stop you.
Instead presume an option is true and fly with it. Mentally play out the game of ‘what if?’
2. Begin like a child
look at the problem as if for the first time. Pull away the lenses of experience and rediscover the situation. Don’t edit what breakthrough’s come to mind, just let the creative right brain fly. Later you can edit your ideas with practical experience. Just start from a new foundation first.
3. Don’t try to be right
Being worried about being right can kill your creativity. Keep an open mind. Again you can edit the technicalities of your thinking later. If you don’t your accountant or business analyst will do it for you anyway.
4. Be prepared to put off judgment
Encourage your ideas. Brainstorm. Create first and exhaust all the options, then think of some more.
5. Recognize and let go of assumptions
Your kids keep asking ‘Why?’ It doesn’t matter how logical your answer they still want to know ‘why?’
“What is important is to not stop asking questions” reminds Einstein.
Yet when it comes to the solutions of crisis the first thing people do is search for certainties. Yet it’s when logical certainties fail that creativity must find new building blocks for the logical mind to build upon.
Of course we must grow from what is proven. Technology is built on known realities. However, the creative talent that changed the world looked in the opposite direction.
It is as if the logical left builds the machine that the creative right inspired. It is at the middle, the point of the heart, that logic and creativity, expansion and constraint, find a point of balance in the seat of our compassion.
At the point creativity and crisis find balance then we discover the solutions that serve. There are always opportunities for those who are willing to serve.
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