Jonah Lehrer’s Imagine: How Creativity Works makes an appealing case that the future of imagination and creativity will emerge from groups rather than from solitary genius.
But before you leave the solitude of your study for a table of six at Panera to generate all of your best ideas for ministry, heed Lehrer’s warning: Brainstorming, the most popular creativity of all time, doesn’t work.
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Brainstorming encourages freewheeling output of ideas with one ground rule: no criticism. The premise is that if people are afraid of saying a wrong thing or dumb thing, they won’t say anything. Extroverts, rejoice! (Introverts, wince!) Every sentence goes on the whiteboard!
However, a Washington University study summarizes decades of research with the conclusion that “brainstorming groups think of far fewer ideas than the same number of people who work alone and later pool their ideas.” This only confirms what we have experienced a thousand times over: Committee meetings can make you dumber.
So how do we tap the imagination of networks without succumbing to the dullness and waste of groupthink? Lehrer suggests that we maximize creativity through candid group discussion of mistakes. “We can only get it right when we talk about what we got wrong” (p.159). Everyone is definitely not right.
Of course, when relational ties are unsteady, this can lead to a corrosive environment of chronic criticism. But the best ideas come when friends flood the room with lots of ideas and quickly sort the best ones out of the pack by openly weeding out the untenable ones. No one craves negative feedback. “But it turns out that we’re tougher than we thought. The imagination is not meek — it does not wilt in the face of conflict” (p.161).
The magic formula for creativity seems to be a combination of freewheeling group exchange of ideas plus fast dismissal of the weak ones. It takes thick skin and relationships that are strong enough not to be threatened by frankness. Gather your friends, flood the room with suggestions, kill the bad ideas, and watch creativity soar.
John Chandler is leader of the Spence Network, www.spencenetwork.equip.htm.