THE BIG FIVE: EXPERIMENTATION

Why creativity needs inefficiency.

Last week we turned up the dial on Openness, the first of the Big Five Creative Behaviours. This week it’s all about the second one: Experimentation.

Think of it this way: if openness invites possibility, then experimentation allows us to discover what’s possible.

The creative process is an iterative one. Using our creativity is trial and error, so experimentation, as a fully dialled-up behaviour, is crucial.

Sounds simple enough in principle.

In practice, not so much.

Why?

Well, we live in a productivity-obsessed world, increasingly focused on results, outcomes, and what can be measured.

Productivity needs efficiency and predictability. It favours the shortest route from A to B because then, we can see the outcome before we begin.

Creativity though, becomes the casualty of productivity.

Experimentation is different. It needs the detours, the diversions, the dead ends.

Experimentation actually needs inefficiency.

Every experiment follows the same basic pattern. We start with a question or an idea. We test it. We observe what happens. We learn from the results. Then we adjust and try again.

Interestingly, that’s also the creative process.

Using experimentation as a creative behaviour encourages us to loosen our grip on the outcomes  by committing to the process instead. We try new combinations, test unconventional ideas, and push the limits of what’s possible without knowing whether or not it will work.

By prioritising the process over the results, we discover things we never would have found otherwise.

The journey will probably take longer. There’ll be more jeopardy along the way, but the results will almost certainly be more creative. That’s the payoff. To earn that payoff, we will need an increased tolerance for risk, a higher threshold for failure, and a willingness to be brave.

To help put this creative behaviour into action, I’m going to leave you with cooking as an example, because cooking exists on a scale of creativity.

At one end, you have efficiency and predictability, the end where you diligently follow a recipe, leading you to the known results. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this, when we’re hosting a dinner party for twelve people, predictable outcomes are welcome. Following a recipe is not in itself a creative act though. A replication of someone else’s recipe might taste fantastic, but your creativity is not being drawn upon to arrive at those results.

Cooking becomes a creative act when we treat it like an experiment.

By dialling up experimentation as a creative behaviour -  deviating even slightly from the recipe, adding an alternative ingredient, tasting the flavours and then tweaking them, introducing a new technique, even just a splash of imagination - we turn the process into a creative one.

Bangers and mash every night of the week might not be creative but experimenting with how we make bangers and mash differently every night of the week; one night caramelising the onions, another adding mustard, another serving it in a Yorkshire pudding…and why not?

The more we experiment, the more permission we give ourselves to play, to have fun, to stop worrying about getting everything right straight away. That’s when the dial is turned all the way up, and when our creativity wakes up and gets moving.