The creative process is a process of surrender, not control.
—Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way
I write the book that wants to be written. Behind the first sentence is a thread that takes you to the last.
—Paulo Coelho
I was sitting next to the writer Paulo Coelho, who wrote the inspira-tional worldwide bestseller The Alchemist and whose books have sold more than 100 million copies. We were at the Cannes Film Festival, and it was Naomi Campbell’s birthday party.
“The book is the boss,” Paulo said. “You have to trust the creative process and just let it flow.”
“The book is the boss,” he repeated. I nodded and smiled. Paulo meant that you may have a certain concept in mind as to what your book is all about. You may even have taken notes on paper and put some initial ideas down. But once you sit down to actually write the book, the creative process takes over, and you are no longer in control.
You have to step back and let the magic happen.
This applies equally to anything you are setting out to create, whether it is starting your own business, creating a new product or service, or bringing a new project to life.
You may believe that your initial ideas are the best in the world, you may even have an exact plan for how you want to go about it, but in the end, the book is the boss. This means that every creative project or idea has its own energy, and you had better go with that energy and surrender yourself to it.
You have to follow and trust that process. This is the key to getting fantastic results.
You Need a Minimum Structure
Hendrik was the star of the party. We were 16, and he was a gifted young piano player who could bring any house down. I couldn’t get very far with my Rachmaninoff and Chopin. Somehow the classics weren’t nearly as exciting as what Hendrik was doing.
One evening I took him aside and asked: “How do you manage to play like that? What’s the secret?”
He showed me a pop music sheet with chords on it. He explained what the chords meant and how to play them. I sat down, looked at the chords, and tried it.
“But that doesn’t sound like you!” I said, disappointed.
He laughed: “Of course, you don’t just put the chords down. That sounds boring. The chords provide the basics, the foundation. Then you put feeling into it and improvise, always taking the chords as a foundation. You simply play around the chords.”
I smiled. “Click.”
I learned that in every business, team setting, project, idea, product, or service that you want to bring to life, you need a minimum structure that sets the stage for the creative process to unfold.
Once the necessary structure is set, though, you have to step back and let the magic happen.
Let the Magic Happen: The Secret Behind Creativity and Innovation
Just as in music, there’s a fine line. You need just enough structure to enable the creative process to happen, to give it room. But if you are too focused on structure, you will stifle the creative process and suck the life and soul out of it.
This is why great innovation happens only when businesses or individuals understand the creative process. And it’s not linear. As my friend Jez Frampton, the global CEO of Interbrand and the number one authority on branding in the world, likes to say: “Businesses don’t jam enough.” He’s right.
Creativity and innovation are the two biggest drivers of long-term success for any business, corporate brand, or multinational. For the last five years, corporations have been focusing on cutting costs out of the supply side. Now small businesses and big multinationals alike have to focus on building the demand side, and here innovation is the biggest issue. Now more than ever, the ability of any business to consistently produce innovation at the highest level determines its long-term success. Since the innovation process is not linear, busi-nesses and big corporations can profit immensely from understanding the creative process better and how it can be used to produce optimum results in innovation.
You have to trust this process. This means that you have to step back and let the magic happen.
In music, structure might mean setting up the studio, taking care of the band, and the basics of the recording. For example, every- body has to have copies of the music to give them a basic idea of where we are going. But then the flow, the “jamming,” will take care of the rest. The magic happens once you step back and let the energy flow.
If you’re running a business or a project, do your best to provide the minimum framework that is necessary to let the creative process unfold. However, you cannot turn into a control freak. If you do, the creative process is dead.
Your project, idea, service, or product will have a life and energy of its own, and you have to trust and go with that energy. It will have better sense than you.
The “One”: Focus on What You Want to Express or Create
Don’t try to innovate storytelling, tell a good story and it is magical.
I see people trying to work so much in style, finding different ways to tell the same thing. It’s like fashion. Style is the dress,
but the dress does not dictate what is inside the dress.
—Paulo Coelho
I don’t know exactly where ideas come from, but when I’m working well ideas just appear. I’ve heard other people say similar things—
so it’s one of the ways I know there’s help and guidance out there. It’s just a matter of our figuring out how to receive the
ideas or information that are waiting to be heard.
—Jim Henson
When I’m writing a new song or playing with the band, I always focus on one central image, the meaning of the song that I want to get across.
That central image, the “one,” as I call it, serves as the basis for every-thing I’m doing when I’m in the zone and playing.
Equally, there is a one that guides the creative process behind every project, product, service, or business.
You have to focus on it to make whatever you are doing truly out-standing. In musical composition, this one will evolve naturally. I start with the chords or the lyrics, and then the one will emerge if I give myself up to the song.
Every business fulfills, or should fulfill, a need, and it is precisely that need that is at the core of every corporate vision. When it comes to business, the one central theme, motto, vision, or mission that your company is built on, just like Bill Gates’s motto “A PC in every home,”
will be your focus and your guide. Once you fully concentrate on the one, the creative process will take on a life of its own in the purest and most positive sense of the word. It will lead to outstanding results if management doesn’t try to impose too many rigid structures on it.
Just as a musician tunes into the central meaning of the song and improvises around that, any great manager or CEO or project leader tunes into the essence of her business or project and lets the rest take care of itself.
She improvises around the chords with feeling and passion.
She flows like water and knows that she will achieve outstanding results, even though she may not always know where this process will lead.
You cannot control the process.
The Invisible Hands
This is what I call the “invisible hands.” Why? At some point when I’m sitting at the piano and composing, my hands move by themselves.
They literally take on a life of their own. I’m sitting there, focusing on bringing an inner vision to life. You cannot control the hands. Sur-render to them.
It always takes a bit of courage, but I know I have to trust the process and let the energy flow.
It will take me there, but I have to step back and let the wisdom that simply knows more than I do take over.
The same is true for any business or project, idea or innovative process, in your personal life or in business, whatever your profession may be and whatever area or industry you are in. The basics are always the same, the process is always the same, and the results will always be outstanding if you observe these simple rules.