Good afternoon, the sun is poking through scattered clouds and the flowers are peering out of the soil! After 3 days of snow earlier in the week, it is wonderful to see and smell Spring arriving. I hope it arrives for you literally and metaphorically soon!

I’ve been sifting through this month’s Fast Company magazine in between projects. There is a great piece about the “Most Creative People” and in the midst of the article, a small little graphic about the biggest barrier to creativity in business. In ascending order, the barriers are government 1%, office politics 2%, conflicts with others, 3%, quarterly profit demands 11%, bureaucracy 23%, inertia 28% and fear of the new 32%. (Fast Company February 2014 p, 49)

Now there are a few directions we might take with this little bit of data. I am though intrigued by the three biggest, bureaucracy, inertia and fear of the new. I am reminded of one of my favorite books, business or otherwise, of the last 20 years, Gordon MacKenzie’s https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/100469.Orbiting_the_Giant_Hairball . This remarkable book explores the question, where is creativity in business. MacKenzie relates a wonderful story of creating a job at Hallmark, where he worked for 30 years. The job was called the “Creative Paradox”.’ He would sit in his office, and people would come in from all over the massive organization and pitch ideas to him. He would say simply, “yes, sounds like a good idea.” Every single time. Yes. And so the pitchers would go back to their respective departments and say something like, “Creative Paradox at head office likes the idea”, and hearing that management would more than likely agree, not wanting to risk the wrath of  someone at head office called the “Creative Paradox”! In one fell swoop MacKenzie had reduced the bureaucratic barrier, the inertia barrier and the fear of the new. Frankly, not all of the ideas actually had legs, but some did, and they were implemented to the benefit of the organization.

Now, some 16 years after he wrote the book, and 15 years after his untimely death, Fast Company notes that the issues MacKenzie fought so hard to change still remain. While the job title of Creative Paradox might not work anymore, his main role, to say ‘yes’ certainly would. We live in a time filled with fear. We live in a time when our governments, our mainstream media and our own conversations with each other, often turn to fear and fear mongering. We are enslaved by fear. So here are three things you can do starting right now to break the chains of fear:

1. Do something different every day. Come home or go to work by a different route, go to a different restaurant, have a different date night with your partner, go for a walk through the neighbourhood, rather than watching TV tonight….
2. Say yes to yourself about a dream. If your dream has been to go skydiving, go for it, if it’s been to learn to sing, go for it, if it’s been to ask someone out, go for it.
3. Smile at people on the street. Seriously, smile at people on the street. There are no zombies, there are no vampires, the people on the street, or the subway, or the bus are people just like you and me and they are generally speaking not dangerous at all. So smile at them. You’ll feel better and so will they. And slowly but surely, you’ll find that you are more courageous, and the community you live and work in is no longer as scary a place.

And we’ll see that creativity appears that much more regularly in our working and social lives.

May this week give us time find some creative courage.