Читать книгу Creative Courage - Altidor Welby - Страница 11

In periods of profound transformation, that tension between past and present is highly volatile, and it can increase to the point that it challenges the coexistence of our heritage, our current situation, and our aspirations to transform the present. This increasing tension affects our world today and, by extension, our lives and our work. In such times, uncertainty expands, and as a response, the urgency for finding new solutions to complex problems increases as well. It's a dynamic driving us to innovate, transform, adapt, and even ride change to prevent being a victim of unpredictable, blind transformations. This pressure to innovate and renew ourselves while honoring our past creates fear, confusion, and doubts. And when we fall in the crack of that tension, between past and present, we can easily feel that we are misfits, like teenagers awkwardly standing between two ages.

Under that pressure, we might ask ourselves if we are going in the right direction at work. We might wonder how we keep up with the volume and the speed of changes in our life and the lives of those around us. We wonder: Are we safe? Will robots replace us? Are we about to be outsourced, outmaneuvered, or shipped away?

Looking to find solutions, we might also wonder how we can create or nurture a more innovative culture at work to answer the call of transformation. How can we leverage imagination and creativity to make our work and our organizations more robust and resilient? And how can such a culture help produce relevance both inside and outside our organization?

Around the world, start-ups, corporations, teams, dance troupes, board members, co-working space leaders, community organizations, political groups, companies, and, yes, circus collectives, also ask how can they create or foster more positive, constructive working environments. They discuss how the cultures created at work can be not only productive but nurturing, resilient, and supportive of growth, transformation, and innovation.

In my work with leaders from industries as diverse as technology, banking, beauty care, sports apparel, architecture, and design, all the way to the world of creativity in entertainment, and live experience, which I know the most, those questions arise in different shapes and forms. Visionary leaders from all walks of life and with very different focuses wonder how to integrate more innovation and creativity in the work that they do and ask how this can be done in a way that brings more value to their group:

● How do we deliver relevance, meaning something that truly matters, to the people that we serve?

● How do we build businesses that have a long-term and sustainable, positive impact on the world?

● How do we stay relevant considering our past successes?

● How do we work better together?

● How do we draw the best from our teams?

● How do we make the best of our projects?

● How do we create a lasting, positive, constructive impact on the people we serve and on the world?

These simple, yet provocative, difficult questions and the discussions they lead to have inspired me to reflect on my twenty-year experience in the entertainment world. In this book, although I honor the rich, unavoidable influence that Cirque du Soleil has had on my thinking, I speak in my own name rather than in the name of Cirque. Nonetheless, I also refer to my journey within this exceptional company that has provided so much inspiration for my career.