Читать книгу Creative Courage - Altidor Welby - Страница 16

I've said earlier that I believe that we all yearn to thrive and grow at work individually and collectively, no matter who we are or what age we have reached. We can join great companies, create and lead distinctive organizations, or work on projects of our own design that we are passionate about.

My invitation to you, in this book, is to join me and see how improving your organization's innovation culture means improving its entire culture. If you separate or enclose the innovation units, that is like putting creativity in a corner of your company, missing the opportunity to expand the mind-set of creative courage to everyone inside of your group. There is a collective opportunity for everyone in your organization to integrate the mind-set of creativity, imagination, and innovation and to contribute to the present and future relevance of your projects, goals, and aspirations. The days when only a few people in your organization had the monopoly on innovation are either numbered or already a thing of the past. In that spirit, I've develop a framework, inspired by my personal professional practice, that I hope is simple without being simplistic, and that extends on the mind-set of creative courage.

As you will discover, this framework can help create or consolidate your personal and organizational innovation culture. It can also help you to practice even stronger strategic review of your innovation culture at any level of your company or other type of organization. Whether you're a CEO or start-up entrepreneur, the framework underneath creative courage can help you assess your best practices, identify the area where something is missing or needs to improve, eliminate the approaches that are counterproductive to your innovation culture, and find the creativity to invent new practices when needed.

My hope is that Creative Courage inspires you and people everywhere – in government, business, organizations big or small, mature companies and starts-ups, and, of course, the professional creative world. We all can use creative courage to make our projects and businesses better. The practices that I discuss are not exhaustive or all original to me, but I've used all of them, and my hope is that you do too, challenging them, improving them, and adding some of your own imagination.

As I wrote this book, I was reminded of how important a role humility can play when we tackle enormous challenges. Creativity, imagination, and innovation are messy, and through creative courage, we can find beauty in that too. We can discover what a colleague at Cirque inspired me to integrate years ago: things are not perfect, but we can strive for just enough perfection, what she called “perfect enough.” As a repented perfectionist, I discovered that in the process of creating something beautiful, impactful, and meaningful, I could settle for more than just good enough without getting cut in the elusive quest for perfection, was also an inspiration to the practice of creative courage.

Each of the following chapters has three main sections that will be identified by their respective icons: section I () raises the curtain on a personal story, often close to me, focusing on the narrative elements relevant to the main theme chapter; section II (), titled Insights, explores concepts, practical applications, and questions that you might find useful to continue your reflection; and section III (), Your Story, offers a space for your own reflection, reaction, and emotions to the content to expand. In this section I also summarize the essence of the chapter and add a checklist of few key reminders.